Sigma Committee Nominations Thread

The Sigma proposal has passed its Snapshot vote. Now the community must select 3 delegates for the committee.

These people will be responsible for reading, responding to and approving Sigma pool applications. They will work with the core team to deploy the pools and handle any necessary maintenance for them, such as updating on-chain token lists and doing any necessary research to ensure that portfolio methodologies are followed. They will also handle assignment of liquidity mining rewards for new pools.

This thread is for nominating members of the community to serve as delegates. You may nominate yourself or another user if you/they have not already been nominated. The nomination process will end on Friday and the top nominees will go to a vote by NDX holders to select the committee members.

We’ve set up a channel for the community to interview nominees on the discord. The channel name is sigma-interviews.

Please use a separate comment for each person and do not nominate someone who’s already been posted.

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I’d like to nominate myself for committee membership.

You all know me as @laurence on Discord, but I’m pretty open about who I am IRL.

Specifically, I’m Dr Laurence E. Day: a 32-year old mathematician/programmer/ex-banking analyst with a chequered history in Ethereum Dapp development. I’m a functional programmer (Haskell) by career, currently working for an industrial automation outfit in Oklahoma, USA remotely from Leeds, UK.

As a very brief potted history: prior to what I’m doing currently, I’ve worked in risk reporting analysis at Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore, compilation software research at Intel Labs in Oregon, USA, and co-founded a startup with the inaugural head of data science at the United Nations World Food Programme that focused on community-based/AI-powered decentralised lending for the financially underserved. Prior to that, I picked up an undergraduate degree in mathematics and computer science, and a doctorate in theoretical computer science. I promise you you don’t care about the topic.

My most recent degree (an MSc in financial engineering) concluded very recently with a thesis on optimising value investment strategies against stock indices in developing nations, so my interest in NDX was pretty much guaranteed from the start anyway.

I’d be grateful for the chance to act as the analyst of the committee, and I believe NDX would benefit from having someone around ready/willing to crank out statistical analyses of proposed indices. On this latter point, Igor Rivin - the co-creator of the CCi30 index [on which the DEFI5/CC10 methodology is based] is a colleague/friend of mine, and has expressed an interest in performing analyses of these instruments with me in paper form: this is likely going to happen regardless of whether or not I serve on the committee, but may go some way as a legitimising factor for NDX.

I’ve a potted history in Solidity development - the old guard around here will probably know the nickname `Norsefire’ for the Zethr and EthPhoenix projects (although I’d sooner it was forgotten!) - suffice it to say that I’m quite comfortable acting as a maintainer for index universes as well.

By all means - if you have anything you want to grill me on, I’m in Discord - please, go ahead!

Thanks for your consideration.

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I’d also like to nominate @blurr.

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Hey everyone, I’d like to nominate myself.
I would love to be able to help! This project has a lot of legs and I love what your doing with it @IndexedTeam.

I am currently a full time team member at Yam.Finance in charge of their Treasury and Operations. I built and lead the design of Yam’s Treasury. Yam’s treasury is built around the idea of capital utilization and growth. Currently the treasury consists of yUSD, ETH, DPI, Index, Sushi, and UMA. ETH/DPI is paired to farm Index, Yam/ETH is paired to farm Sushi, and ETH is used as collateral to mint synthetics on UMA to earn rewards. We have a diverse set of assets primarily due to the asset utilization strategy I put into place. There is great synergy between projects like Yam and Indexed.

A bit about my personal background: BS in Systems Engineering with minor in Finance.
Worked in Wealth Management for ~10 years. Received my securities license. Expert knowledge in risk management, mutual funds, insurance, mortgages and sales.
After wealth management, I built and ran restaurants. Two restaurants were built from ground up, including design, construction, hiring, marketing, guest relations, accounting and all systems. One is a quick service restaurant 4-stars on yelp. The other one is a full-service restaurant 4.7 stars on opentable.com. Expert knowledge in operations management from top down. Managed a team of 60 employees.

My alternative life has been in crypto since 2015. Crypto is my passion. I believe in the future of it, I eat sleep dream crypto. Created multiple crypto related products and services, from a hedge fund to physical secure crypto gift cards. This is where my passion lies.

Obviously Yam is my primary focus but given that there’s a lot of overlap and synergy between the projects and DeFi in general, I would be honored to help.

Feddas

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I nominate @redphonecrypto

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I also nominate @CryptoMessiah (twitter handle). No idea if he would be interested though.

How about we try to get one VC onboard like @Arthur_0x from DeFiance Capital? Their portfolio is outstanding and I think there are very few people who have such broad knowledge about the overall defi landscape.

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Alright then, Essay time. Thanks Laurence for the ping.

First of all a little about me, and my credentials for a post like this. I’ve been in defi for longer than defi has had a name.

One of the first uniswap and compound users way back in the dark days of late 2018, since then I’ve had my fingers in a number of pies. I’ve ran numerous styles of bots from frontrunners to liquidators to snipers and everything in between, more recently pre-farmed CRV, smash and grabbed the BZRX onchain launch, weeks minting ROOK before anyone understood how and a lot more besides. Basically, if there was profit to be had, I was probably sniffing around. This, analysing onchain data and sniffing out edge has been a 16 hour/day job for the last 2+ years, and I like to think I’ve picked up a few things in that time, giving me an excellent overview of the entire ethereum native market.

My main doxxed wallet, my CV if you like, is arguably proof of this if you fancy digging through it, and I am more than happy to discuss certain things in a non-edge eroding capacity over on discord. I’m the third largest non contract NDX holder after Molly at time of writing, and was one of the earliest larger wallets to take an active farming position in the protocol. This isn’t to say I don’t have my fair share of fuck ups - the largest EMN refundee by over 2x, and I am, as far as I know, the owner of the most expensive failed transaction on a blockchain - ever. Costs of doing business.

From a strategic point of view, any NDX payed out by the committee to farming pools must provide value for the current holders of the NDX token, that is effectively the sole function, and raison d’être of the committee. As such the decision making process, coin and index analysis decisions and everything else that falls under its remit will be undertaken with this in mind. I do feel that security, namely ensuring that an entire index doesn’t get taken down by a single token is by far and away the most important concern the committee must confront. Assuming the projects included in some of the smaller index’s like the proposed DEGEN index were drained and dumped into available liquidity, this could have serious ramifications not just for NDX, but for those projects outside of their inclusion in an index, whilst the obvious governance failure at this nascent stage would have a very negative if not catastrophic impact on the project going forward.

I have watched DAO’s and projects implode before, largely as a function of poor governance. Following DigixDAO as it went under and seeing the mistakes being made in real time… Sometimes experience like that is hard to quantify on paper, especially given this would somehow be my first active public role in a protocols governance, but it does exist nonetheless.

I’m not, and have never been overly interested in cultivating any sort of outside recognition. I’m pseudo-anonymous and like it that way for the same reason I don’t use twitter. Just not something I enjoy doing. There are however quite a few people, some of them here, who do know me on a personal level, and can by and large attest to much of the above.

Lastly, and possibly the most importantly - conflicts checks. This is easy in that I don’t have any - outside of my personal token predilections and innate bias. I do however have a very strong incentive to create value for the protocol, if only because I own quite a lot of it. Whilst I hold these tokens my interests are quite clearly aligned with yours.

If I didn’t think I were able to bring value I simply wouldn’t be doing this, my time is expensive and above all else I’m focused on the bottom line. The numbers. So let me focus on them for you as well.

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Flattered, ser :pray:

I am pretty swamped w some other obligations at the moment, though. I would like to nominate @0xBay who set up the Degen Discord and really got the ball moving on all this.

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I’d like to nominate myself for commitee membership.

I am @litocoen on Twitter and Discord and run a crypto education platform called cryptotesters.com. I am also involved in a range of other DeFi projects.

My passion for educating users about DeFi made me realize how powerful indices are for normal users who just want quick exposure to an emerging sector without having to actively manage their portfolios.

This is why I took a great interest in indexed and have been involved pretty much since Day 1 and helped on the marketing side. Some people might know that I helped with:

  • Writing threads on twitter about the project and getting a first wave of users in Discord
  • Getting Molly to invest
  • Suggesting to @redphonecrypto to launch $DEGEN on indexed
  • Pushing for integrations in Zapper, Zerion as well as the yieldfarming page on Coingecko

As well as a few other things… I am passionate about this project which I have seen emerge from the very beginning and enjoy cooperating with Dillon and the rest of the community a lot!

I see so much potential in this project and will continue to help regardless of the outcome of this nomination.

Thanks for your consideration.

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I’d like to nominate @Norsefire

Great applications, can’t wait!

Good day everyone,

I would like to nominate myself for a spot on the committee. My name is Josh Swigart. I am a Nurse Practitioner (not a nurse, big difference). I have never taken part in governing, in regards to finance or blockchain but i do have experience leading. I was a leadership member on Student organization, and National NP association in college. I also was a member of the honors society called Sigma Theta Tau in graduate school. I currently am attending Yale University for my Executive/Leadership Doctorate in healthcare and an MBA will follow.

The reason i think i could contribute is i know human behavior very well and can anticipate what individuals and masses will do long before they do it. I have my own practice currently and treat inmates with severe psychiatric/neurological illness around the state of California (currently where Charles Manson was housed). I have a keen ability to smell and root out BS.

I bring a level headed approach to stressful situations and am also solution focused rather than problem focused. I pride myself on having high integrity and doing what is right while considering all possible outcomes of any current good or bad situation that an organization may face.

I also have a passion for this project since discovering it. I have been investing in Crypto since 2017 and have never seen anything like it. It instantly made me think that over time this could be introduced to the general public, the regular workforce (replacing 401k), and that regular individuals could once again have the ability to retire, payoff homes, get out of debt, and basically not be enslaved to a system that does not care about them.

I can provide references if needed

Thank you for reading.

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I nominate strategy for strategy

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After reviewing the proposals for potential indexed funds, I’m nominating myself for the sigma committee. Rather than presenting a new index, as I’m fully supportive of the existing, outstanding proposals, I’m proposing variation to the pipeline of creating indices.

A critical element of defi is the aspect of community. I strongly believe the community should create, govern, and manage issued indices for the progression of Indexed Finance. Concurrently, the Indexed Finance team should create and manage additional indices. Collectively, we will establish a range of investable opportunities across a spectrum of risk that varies for each investor type as not all investors are alike and capital demands differing yields.

By establishing a range of investable products, Indexed Finance offers a presentable solution for larger pools of capital with various investment appetites. Further, this proposal will allow team members to strategize and implement select funds for the growth and development of Indexed Finance, fostering an advantageous approach to maintaining and growing a larger investment base with Indexed Finance.

In terms of my background, I’ve professionally focused on private equity/venture capital investment strategies, research, and transactions for all of my young career. I’ve worked on four continents in cities such as London, Singapore, and Seattle connecting mostly with fund managers, entrepreneurs, early-stage investors, technologists, journalists, and professors. Prior to the professional world, I studied English Literature and Corporate Finance while maintaining a strong interest in the crypto space since the mid 2010s.

This proposal offers an opportunity to consider Indexed Finance indices as a basis for not only high-yield but investors will low asset allocation to fulfill their existing capital requirements and constraints. The proposal presents Indexed Finance with an opportunity to establish a team of guidance and credibility for all investors seeking available yield with Defi.

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I second the nomination of @0xBay

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I love the way Lito said that he would help regardless.

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I am super impressed by some of the qualifications of the candidates, I know Indexed will be in good hands.

I can’t edit my original post anymore but I’d like to add a few value adds:

  1. My operational experience of actually running another DAO. Running a DAO is very different than running a company. There needs to be a balance of power and decision making between token holders vs team. At Yam.Finance we err on the side of token holders, all our proposals go through a detailed governance proposal process. Which would be important at Sigma as well.

  2. I would like to propose three indices that I am currently already working on.

  • A risk managed crypto index reducing extreme volatility by using hedging and gold. Anyone reading this is likely a crypto investor and by default that is highly volatile. Long term if we want to make Indexed.Finance a house hold name, we need something a bit less volatile.
  • Yield gaining index. An index that is able to attain yield via different methods such as farming or staking without high risk to underlying assets.
  • A multi DAO collab project - in stealth atm.
  1. I have a clear understanding of technical capabilities and limitations of how indexes can be built and managed. For example, depending on the AUM of the index, rebalancing can be costs prohibitive if done too often, because each rebalance will have slippage / gas costs. There are potential vulnerabilities to indexes as well.

Thanks for your consideration.

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I would like to nominate 0x_b1. Their group is fearlessly building and coordinating defi out in the open and is supporting many smaller cap projects.

Just saw your Bond proposal, you would make a great addition to the committee.