Hey API3 community, throwing my hat in the ring here for delegation. I am a big fan of this project and I think it’s important and healthy to have participation from delegates outside of the core team.
My name is Pedro Torres-Mackie, I’m the founder of a VC firm called Quotidian Ventures in New York and have been investing in early stage startups for over 10 years, with a few unicorns and over 20 exits under my belt.
I am an early backer of API3 and currently hold over 1,200,000 API3 tokens, so I have real skin in the game. Additionally, I am highly incentivized to pay attention to all the important proposals and vote for the ones that bring real value to the project, while also providing real constructive criticism to proposals I don’t agree with.
I think the next few years are going to be key for oracles in general and API3 is well positioned to be a leader in the space. I want to help us achieve that goal. Drawing on my network and experience as an investor in and outside of the crypto space, I hope to use my voting power to help nudge and support the API3 team and community towards building the most valuable oracle network possible.
Some things that will be important to me as a delegate:
Transparency: I will encourage the team to always be transparent and forthcoming with the community, and will support proposals that offer transparency in use of funds and decision making. I think this is one of the most important principles for any community to thrive.
Decentralization: I will tend to vote for proposals that drive the project towards more decentralization and less control in fewer hands.
Efficient use of resources: With all of the project’s resources, be it time, money or others, I will encourage the spending of those resources in the most efficient way possible, to provide the largest return to the project. It’s easy to get wasteful and I will try to remind folks of ways we can avoid that.
Responsible risk-taking: We are in a space that is fast-moving and incredibly innovative. We can’t stand still for very long, and I aim to encourage us to always be taking responsible risks that do not pose catastrophic downside for the project, but that can represent outsized value if successful.
Find me at pedro.eth and feel free to each out to me on Discord at ptm#9011 or Twitter at @pedro with any questions. I look forward to working with you all to make API3 as successful as possible!
Super cool but haven’t seen much of your input on the forums and twitter. Love to see more active engagement from VCs generally on public platforms. I know the response from core team will be he helps out a lot behind the scenes but want to see more in public forums for normies
I agree that a level of engagement is always important and good through all of the channels, especially if you’re contemplating something on the delegation side. Although this should not be a prerequisite IMO.
That said, Pedro is the only individual investor that I currently know who has actively done everything he can to advocate for us or try to ensure our success from an individual investor level. In my view, a person who has initially circumvented community engagement but worked actively with us to bring positive growth should not be discounted.
This is something I don’t take lightly nor do I feel should warrant criticism on the question of when or if he should be chosen to be a delegate of your votes, because he’s shown to me at least that he cares about the longevity of this project and can assist us at a level I’ve not seen from the average community member. Everyone plays an important role, but I will happily vouch for the merit of Pedro’s value add.
Most importantly I will mention that although our interests may be aligned, Pedro does not blindly agree to anything. To the point of how insiders will vouch for him all I can say is Pedro has been challenging us more and engaging us more than most. There’s something to be said about the stake that people of his caliber have. While I can say all day he’s a great candidate for delegation, the bottom line is that nobody puts loyalty above profit, and that’s clearly the case for Pedro. He may leverage his resources to aid in our success, but he also doesn’t take everything we communicate at face value.
I would like to urge everyone to consider delegation on the basis of merit and not on whether you’re familiar with the person proposing delegation, because I think he makes some valid points on why he’s a great candidate for delegation of votes.
@Float, while I think you have a valid point that I need to be more active on Discord and other public forums, especially if I’ll be acting as a delegate going forward, I also think we have to be careful to associate posting a lot with being helpful.
If folks do delegate with me I think they are right to expect transparency and that means posting and letting folks know what I am thinking re: proposals, but also being accessible to folks to chat and be challenged when I’m wrong, and generally being engaged in discussions so I have full context of what they community is thinking at any given time.
That said, I think API3 holders who delegate with me should also expect I might be silent for some periods of time if I think my time is better used elsewhere rather than on Discord. I think the key to all of this working well is building trust so that delegators know I am using my time as efficiently as possible for the benefit of the community and the project as a whole, even if they don’t hear from me for a bit or I’m not on Discord 24/7 replying to every thread.
You’ve got real skin in this project so when I get home in a few days I’ll delegate my vote to you bro. I would have as much as you however I’m spread out over many projects. I’ll trust that you can keep up to date more efficiently than can for the foreseeable future
