ENS name: hop.maaria.eth

My reasons for wanting to be a delegate:
Hop is a major reason I believe that Ethereum + Layer 2’s could be the winning ecosystem for dApps. Every time I’ve used Hop over the past year I have been magically delighted by the experience, especially compared to the usual 90 minute, butt-clenching, ‘did i just lose all my money’ bridge anxiety. I reached out to the Hop team last year to get more involved, and am now operating the USDT bonder with a small group of family and friends.

The low transaction fees and high throughput of L2s have the potential to unlock so many new applications that are currently not possible or scalable on mainnet. L2s have struggled with adoption though, largely due to the difficulty of moving assets on and off these chains. Until Hop, the L2 bridging experience included long settlement times, bad UX, security concerns, etc. By focusing solely on L2s, Hop created a seamless bridging experience with a single wallet interface and instant settlement of assets.

I often think about crypto infrastructure as a series of building blocks that unlock new capabilities and behaviors and in my opinion, L2s will be a big unlock for mainstream crypto adoption. Hop plays an important role in making L2 blockchains more accessible, which in turn will drive broader crypto adoption and usability. Operating the USDT bonder and providing utility to the Hop community has been incredibly fulfilling and meaningful for me personally, and I’m looking forward to continuing to build with you all as both a bonder operator and DAO delegate.

My web3 qualifications / skills:

• I have been investing and participating in Web3 since 2016
• Investments include: Bison Trails, 0x, Dapper Labs, Zapper, POAP, XMTP, and many, many more
• Have been operating the USDT bonder for Hop since the beginning of the year
• On the Advisory Board for the ApeCoin Foundation
• Co-Founder of Sixth Wall, a Web3 production studio, with Mila Kunis, Morgan Beller and Lisa Sterbakov.
  • Most recent launch was a community-driven animated short series called The Gimmicks. NFTs were free to mint and holders were able to participate in the content creation process by voting on the show storyline every week.
• I’ve been writing a weekly crypto newsletter since 2017: thisweekincrypto.substack.com
• ENS delegate and DAO member
• I understand how to reach a new audience that isn’t crypto-native, and have spent many hours onboarding folks into crypto.

What voters can expect of me:

• Expect me to vote against proposals that are not beneficial to the long-term health of Hop. In general my philosophy is that treasury assets should be spent on 1) increasing utility of the protocol; or 2) providing a critical service for the protocol (i.e. Hop Labs for Hop Protocol).
• The Hop bridge is a public utility and bonders are critical service providers.
  • I believe the bonder service should move towards decentralization over time and be operated by the community.
  • The short-term, mercenary capital dynamics we see in DeFi today won’t work for bonders, so as we progress towards decentralization we will need to consider new incentive structures that ensure bonding remains a viable service.
• Though I won’t be super vocal on Discourse, Twitter or Discord, I will be thoughtful and deliberate about every vote cast.
• I’m a big believer of the “strong convictions loosely held” mental model.