Foundation Mission Request: Season 7 govNERD Lead [OPERATIONS]

[opjulian]

Proposed Foundation Mission Request: The Foundation has previously issued Mission Requests to experiment with govNERDs, who help shepherd proposals through the feedback, approval, and voting process. The govNERDs have been effective at reducing the role of the Foundation in this process to date. In Season 7, the govNERDs will continue to evolve as an open contribution path. As recommended by the Season 6 govNERDs, we will experiment with having 1 govNERD Lead in Season 7 that will continue to establish and manage this contribution path throughout the Season. If we find it is more effective (in balancing power, responsibilities, etc.) to have multiple Maintainers, we may revert to this structure in future Seasons.

Intent: A set of interoperable Stage 1 chains doing $250M in cross-chain asset transfers

Total grant amount: 10,000 OP for Season 7 and 2,857 OP for Reflection Period

Should this Foundation Mission be fulfilled by one or multiple teams: One

OP Labs or Optimism Unlimited Sponsor: opjulian

Submit by: January 9

Selection by: January 15

Start date: January 16

Completion date: July 24

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How will this Foundation Mission Request help accomplish the above Intent?

An important part of the Season 7 Intent is that it requires a decentralized governance system to achieve it. The govNERD program supports the Season 7 Intent by ensuring the ecosystem has the robust, decentralized governance infrastructure and support needed to coordinate and execute at scale. Experimentation with one govNERD Lead role in Season 7 builds on the program's proven success reducing the Foundation’s role in executing core governance operations.

What is required to execute this Foundation Mission Request?

The Lead's role is procedural, communicative, and managerial. Key responsibilities include:

• Strategic Leadership
  • Design and implement program improvements
  • Establish clear performance metrics and quality standards
  • Experiment with automation as a way to scale operations
  • Maintain strong communication channels with the Foundation and community
• Operational Management
  • Coordinate and oversee the work of govNERDs
  • Ensure timely and high-quality completion of tasks
  • Develop and document best practices and processes
  • Provide regular progress updates and performance reports during check in with Foundation
• Community Engagement
  • Gather and incorporate feedback from delegates and community members for continuous program improvement
  • Foster collaboration between govNERDs and ecosystem participants
  • Maintain transparency in program operations and decision-making
  • Provide opportunities for high context community members to join the govNERDs through the contribution path

How should the Foundation measure progress towards this Mission Request? Token House milestones are mostly about accountability, so they should measure progress towards completion.

• govNERDs performance is measured against individual responsibilities and tasks
  • Foundation satisfaction score (target: >8/10)
  • Delegate/Citizens satisfaction score (target: >8/10)
  • Foundation does not have to step in to respond to procedural questions

In addition, the Lead will

• Manage the tasks workflow for the govNERDs
• Collect feedback, tasks and relevant meeting notes to be shared with the community in an end of season retrospective.

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Application Instructions

To apply for this Foundation Mission, please complete the form in the expandable section below and leave your response as a comment on this issue thread. Submissions will be open until [January 9], at which time the Foundation will review all submissions and select [1] individual/team to complete the work defined here.

Submission Form

Copy the entire application below and leave a comment on this issue with your answers completed. A representative from the Optimism Foundation may reach out using the contact info provided to request more information as necessary.

Foundation Mission Application

Please verify that your team members below:

• Individual: Please specify your delegate/citizen name
• Contact info: Email address, telegram
• L2 recipient address:

Please link to your Optimist Profile or Organization ID here. All candidates are required to create an Optimist Profile by following the steps at [atlas.optimism.io](http://atlas.optimism.io/) and sharing their profile link below

Please link to your voting history and any voting rationale you’ve shared. This can be for the Token House or Citizens House

Please demonstrate any non-Optimism experience you believe is relevant to this role.

Please outline any contributions that demonstrate your knowledge of the procedural operations of Optimism Governance.

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Please note: All of the contributor roles and associated rewards described here are intended for independent and engaged community members who volunteer to provide their knowledge and expertise to the Collective and receive an honorarium in the form of OP. These volunteers are not employees of the Collective, the Foundation, or any of its affiliates for any purpose

[alexsotodigital]

Season 7 govNERD Lead Submission:

• Individual: Alex Soto | alexsotodigital
• Contact info: email address: [email protected], telegram @alexsotodigital
• L2 recipient address: alexsotodigital.eth | 0x3cd5fEC7FA9827cf0d262D6be5421A61CF615794

Please link to your Optimist Profile or Organization ID here: @alexsotodigital

Please link to your voting history and any voting rationale you’ve shared. This can be for the Token House or Citizens House:
Here is my recent delegate statement and my Delegate Communication Thread for the Token House.
I also participated in the Citizens House, during season 6, as a guest via Pairwise and Impact Garden, measuring the impact of the Governance infra & tooling projects.

Please demonstrate any non-Optimism experience you believe is relevant to this role.
I bring over four years of experience as a group facilitator specializing in project management, process systematization, and training teams to adopt best practices for effective collaboration. In addition to my studies in dynamic governance models and agreement building. My approach prioritizes clear communication, streamlined workflows, and the integration of lessons learned through short iteration cycles to drive continuous improvement.
As a skilled moderator, I excel at fostering inclusive discussions that ensure all voices are heard while maintaining efficiency in decision-making. My interpersonal style—marked by approachability, patience, and a genuine commitment to team development—makes me well-suited to support both individuals and groups in achieving their professional goals in the contribution path.
I am particularly passionate about refining systems that improve operational efficiency, establishing performance metrics, and creating opportunities for collaboration across teams.

Please outline any contributions that demonstrate your knowledge of the procedural operations of Optimism Governance.
I have been part of the govNERD contribution path since its beginning, where I have contributed in multiple types of tasks from giving feedback on the program, verifying public documentation, creating summaries of forum posts and suggesting operational improvements; which made me obtain the full role of govNERD.
Also, based on the mentorship of the govNERD maintainers, I proposed a series of initiatives that became group efforts, which I coordinated. This allowed me to get to know more closely all the wannabe-govNERDs who are currently part of the program.
I was also a member of the Code of Conduct Council and participated in the Super Contributor Cohort 0 of Superchain Eco, which gave me a deeper understanding of the role of govNERDs in the collective.

If chosen, this role would be my main focus and priority. And a great source of enjoyment.

🙂

[dmars300]

Basic info

• Individual: Diego Mares
• Contact info:
  • [email protected]
  • @dmars300
• L2 recipient address: 0x64FeD9e56B548343E7bb47c49ecd7FFa9f1A34FE

Relevant links

• OP Altas Link: https://atlas.optimism.io/dmars300
• Retro Funding Rounds Rationales:
  • RF 3: https://gov.optimism.io/t/round-3-voting-rationale/7030/2?u=dmars300
  • RF 4: https://gov.optimism.io/t/retro-funding-4-voting-rationale-thread/8396/2?u=dmars300
  • RF 5: https://gov.optimism.io/t/retro-funding-5-voting-rationale-thread/8922/18?u=dmars300
  • RF 6: https://gov.optimism.io/t/retro-funding-6-voting-rational-thread-optional/9240/12?u=dmars300

Additional non-Optimism experience

I founded & Lead Cryptoversidad: https://cryptoversidad.com for 3 years (2021-2024), a company focused on education and content about blockchain technology.

Contributions that demonstrate knowledge of Optimism operations

• I’ve been a highly involved Citizen since RF3 (see rationales)
• I was govNERD Maintainer in Season 6.
• I co-design the govNERDs Path for Season 7.
• Stats from my account in the Forum: https://gov.optimism.io/u/dmars300/summary
  • 440 days visited
  • 1d read time
  • 7,200 posts read
  • 73 posts created
  • 241 hearts received

[eduardovegap]

Season 7 govNERD Lead Application

- Individual: Eduardo - vegayp

- Contact email: [email protected] and telegram: t.me/vegayp

- L2 recipient address: 0x1d921dff757610FbDB0073479e12c0a07d382677

- Please link to your Optimist Profile or Organization ID here: https://atlas.optimism.io/vegayp

- Please link to your voting history and any voting rationale you’ve shared. This can be for the Token House or Citizens House: Haven't vote.

Please demonstrate any non-Optimism experience you believe is relevant to this role:

• For the past four years I have been leading different communities efforts across different protocols like: TEC, ENS, gashawk and dm3. In many of these instances, governance has been an important piece that, more often than usual, doesn't work properly. A lot of missinformation, timings missed, lack of onboarding, voter apathy and so on. I'd like to tackle these and create a horizontal process of governance, that feels inviting and welcoming rather than confusing and chaotic. My past experience providing onboarding to technical and difficult topics, creating incentives for ecosystems and continuous feedback loops at the organisations mentioned before, makes me excited and fit, to bring this knowledge to Season 7.

Also lead a governance experiment at ENS called Small Grants, which was a cycle of grants that relied on the delegates choosing projects who deserved Public Goods Funding, with a frequency of at least once a month, which provided intense feedback and strong relationship with delegates.

Please outline any contributions that demonstrate your knowledge of the procedural operations of Optimism Governance.

I have been a Grantee from RetroPGF 2 and 3 (for dm3 protocol), and as well as A Governance Grant during Cycle 11. , during that process I grew familiar with the Optimism Ecosystem.

Thank for considering this application! And good luck to the other applicants too.

[divine-comedian]

Foundation Mission Application

Individual: Mitch
Contact info: [email protected] | @divine_comedian
L2 recipient address: divinecomedian.eth (0x826976d7C600d45FB8287CA1d7c76FC8eb732030)
Please link to your Optimist Profile or Organization ID here: https://atlas.optimism.io/divine-comedian

Please link to your voting history and any voting rationale you’ve shared. This can be for the Token House or Citizens House

I've participated in 15 Snapshot votes in Optimism Citizen House, you can see my history here:
https://snapshot.box/#/s:citizenshouse.eth/profile/0x826976d7C600d45FB8287CA1d7c76FC8eb732030/votes

Please demonstrate any non-Optimism experience you believe is relevant to this role.

Currently I lead Product Dapp Development at Giveth as well as our Governance/DAO Operations, leading an organization of around ~30 people.

I draft, plan and execute a wide variety of cross-functional projects ranging from agile product development, managing the orgs day to day operations, to even facilitating organizational change. I manage many high level stakeholders and bring tons of expertise in drafting documentation, spreadsheets and project management artifacts.

In addition I have +2 years experience as a Solidity Developer and actively write, test and deploy smart contracts for Giveth.

Previously I worked in the Token Engineering Commons leading Rewards system development as well as a project manager and QA for the Commons Configuration Dashboard. Some of my daily tasks included:

• Leading a team of 5-7 cross functional contributors to build the product "Praise System"
• Operating a retroactive rewards system using Praise and SourceCred
• Conducting community analysis excercises

Please outline any contributions that demonstrate your knowledge of the procedural operations of Optimism Governance:

I've participated in Retro Funding 3,4,5,6 as a Voter and in RF 3 & 5 as a Reviewer as well as multiple rounds as part of an RF grantee team for Giveth and DeVouch.

My team also received a Mission Grant with which was used to build DeVouch where I lead product development and provided grant updates via the gov forum

Please specify which role you have obtained via the govNERDs contribution path (wannabe-govNERD, govNERDs-in-training, govNERD): wannabe-govNERD

[SovereignSignal]

Foundation Mission Application

Individual: Sov

Contact info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Telegram: @sovsignal

L2 recipient address: 0x164475571349BA9487C1CA2A34702d91Dba1E8Ad

Please link to your Optimist Profile or Organization ID here: https://atlas.optimism.io/sov

Please demonstrate any non-Optimism experience you believe is relevant to this role:

• Current Head of Grants at Gitcoin, where I manage complex operational processes, establish clear KPIs, and coordinate multiple stakeholder groups
• Over a decade of senior management experience running a profitable systems integrator, demonstrating ability to build and maintain effective operational procedures
• Former Board President of an innovative 501c3 Food Bank, successfully managing volunteer programs and establishing clear governance processes
• Active delegate for multiple major DAOs (Gitcoin, ENS, Radicle), with proven track record of fostering cross-ecosystem collaboration
• Creator and curator of LlamaoGrants, Blockworks Grantfarm, and Crypto Grant Wire, showing ability to create and maintain comprehensive resources for the public good
• Successful grantee from major protocols including Polygon, Aave, and Ethereum Foundation, providing practical insight into effective program management

Please outline any contributions that demonstrate your knowledge of the procedural operations of Optimism Governance:

• Active participation in Optimism's governance processes, including serving on the Grants Council in Season 6
• Created comprehensive documentation including walkthroughs on Mission Reviews and operational procedures
• Host of Green Pill Podcast episodes focused on Optimism governance and grants
• Experience in creating and maintaining documentation for governance processes
• Track record of meeting response time requirements and maintaining high engagement levels across multiple governance systems
• Demonstrated ability to bridge technical and community needs while maintaining clear communication channels
• Strong focus on establishing and documenting standardized operational procedures for repeatable processes

I am particularly excited about the govNERD Lead role for Season 7 as it aligns with my experience in:

• Program Design & Management: Proven ability to establish clear processes, KPIs, and documentation systems that can help achieve the Charter's 48-hour response time and 100% completion rate goals
• Community Coordination: Experience in managing distributed teams and coordinating stakeholders to ensure efficient execution of governance operations
• Process Improvement: Track record of developing and documenting operational procedures, with focus on scalability and knowledge transfer
• Operational Excellence: Commitment to dedicating 10+ hours per week to ensure program success and maintain high satisfaction scores from both Foundation and community

I believe my combination of operational experience, community engagement skills, and proven ability to develop and maintain governance processes makes me well-suited to help the govNERD program achieve its Season 7 goals of becoming the trusted operational backbone of Optimism governance.

[opjulian]

Thank you to all who applied! The applications for this Foundation Mission Request are officially closed. The foundation will reach out to candidates if additional information is required and announce the individuals selected to fulfill this Foundation Mission by January 15 in this thread.

[opjulian]

Hi all

The announcement for this position will be made on January 16.

Thank you for your patience!

[opjulian]

Thanks to everyone who applied to be a govNERD lead in Season 7!

The applicant pool for the posted govNERD lead was highly competitive and the foundation went through a holistic review process to evaluate each candidate.

The foundation has selected @SovereignSignal to serve as the govNERD lead over the course of the Season 7

To all who applied: Your dedication to the govNERD community is what makes this program thrive. We're grateful for your participation and enthusiasm, and we look forward to your continued involvement in shaping our collective future.