10
defi, growth, partnerships
Matty McDonald
Demetre has been obsessed with holistic solutions and entrepreneurship since high school. He designed a collegiate behavioral nutritional education program that could scale nationwide. He spent his time in graduate school developing a “one-size-fits-all” smoothie system and designing an indoor light that would allow people to synthesize their daily Vitamin D in under 10 minutes.
Demetre shifted his focus to tech after noticing a societal degradation from mainstream social media platforms. He was architecting a data-sensitive memory preservation platform when blockchain caught his attention in 2017. He recognized the technology would enable true data sovereignty and felt the need to join the movement to understand the powerful capabilities.
Demetre mined Helium and co-founded an HNT validator service in early 2021. In the summer/fall of 2021 he caught the headwinds of DeFi 2.0, participating in protocol owned liquidity and isolated lending markets. He became a defi degen putting skin in the game, diving deep into studying the incentives that drive these token economies.
Demetre holds degrees in Physiology and Psychology with a Masters in Human Nutrition, all from the University of Wyoming. Demetre is an avid Blinkist reader when traveling. At home, he truly prefers to spend his entire day on the computer, with a break to refocus his thoughts in a garage gym.
War Proposals
Reimbursement proposal: ONEforALL- A platform the Harmony community can own and outlet creativity to generate revenue for community initiatives
- User Acquisition “net” for all NFT related products
- Grass-roots onboarding
- Token gating tools
- Native Harmony minter dApp to transform community engagement into user acquisition
June 2022 Deliverables
- 🚜 Demetre Gostas 🐉: Develop treasury management strategy, q3 NFT user acquisition battleplan and NFT minter dApp, 5 user personas for DeFi. 60/80/100%
Projects
- Architecting and implementing necessary liquidity infrastructure for Harmony to enhance existing initiatives:
- Incubation for NFT and gaming partnerships
- Increase TVL on chain
- DBI
- DAO financial sustainability
Timesheet and Reimbursements
Cultural Self Assessment
Cultural | Values | Read More | Self Assessment + Personal Story |
Empathy | Communicative | conversation turn taking | 7 - I like to meet people where they are, versus where I perceive them to be. I love to brainstorm and see where our tennis game of ideas lead us. |
disconfirm own beliefs | 9 - Crow is my favorite meal, as it stimulates the most accelerated growth. | ||
self-aware & articulate | 6 - This is an area I need to improve. Although in my mind I am articulating well, I am aware I am very much in a bubble and need to seek out those who ask for clarification. | ||
Personal | share a drink | 9 - I love the smell and sips and the expectations of a conversational journey that “sharing a drink” entails. | |
spend 10 hours daily together | 9 - I greatly value the subtle camaraderie and chemistry that goes along with extended time together. I miss it when I only get 8 hours with my brother before he leaves me for his girlfriend. | ||
nurture & mentor | 8 - I try to mentor by example and nurture through thoughtful questions. Although it’s important to be cognizant of the stages of change - circumstances and timing are often gatekeepers to change. | ||
Collaborative | make everyone shine | 8 - I try to find what makes people tick early on and try to fuel their fire. I’ve had amazing practice with my brother who shines on a very specific wave-length in creative design. I’m absolutely smitten when he’s “In-the-zone” so I try to keep him there any way I can. | |
people over process | 9 - The right people will forge though the process. I love specific tech stacks and methodologies but if you find people who see the north star as clearly as you do - you’ll forge the path no matter what wagon you take. | ||
dare to disagree | 9 - I find it easy to disagree as I can approach the subject in question from a place of vulnerability. Battling convictions often spawn brilliant compromises. | ||
Passion | Devoted | long-time craftsmanship | 8 - I’ve been crafting a specific dream for over 5 years, with every fork in the path bringing a commitment to taking the road less traveled - seeking maximum growth in this short life we live. |
obsess over details | 9 - Perhaps too much. I’m a perfectionist who knows nothing. I have daily agonies over what defines high yield output vs. sunk cost fallacies. | ||
hungry & foolish | 11 - I live a lonely life, as do many trying to innovate. I’m a hungry dog on a 1000 mile walk who reminisces over a past life of warmth and frolic to drift to sleep. When I wake up the crisp air beckons another step into the unknown. | ||
Aligned | share the mission | 9 - I’m glad I’ve found people who understand the mission’s destination is a place we’ll never live to see, but it is a place we yearn to build nonetheless. | |
optimistic about flying off a cliff | 10 - Oh I’ve been off the cliff for a while. | ||
your 50-year dream | 10- My 50 year dream is to watch my wife and kids capture their dearest moments on an app I helped build that they couldn’t imagine a life without. | ||
Authentic | consistent with own actions | 9- I make sure I walk the walk - and when I lead others on to hot coals, my feet better have the deepest burns. | |
make tough decisions | 9 - I’ve sacrificed everything deemed a traditional life for a reality I am unsure is the right timeline. I’m here nonetheless as something is telling me there is no other choice. Tough is relative term to one’s expectations and the perceived expectations of others. | ||
admit mistakes | 9 - Crow is honestly one of my favorite meals. Maximum growth occurs when a current conviction has lost its foundation. | ||
Excellence | Technical | top 1% superstar | 7 - I try to surround myself with these people, as I have many shortcomings. However, I thrive in work ethic, sacrifice and an unquenchable thirst to learn what I do not know. As long as I have my sleep, nutrition and a workout - I feel unstoppable. |
effective tooling | 7 - I’m quite organized. I’m an efficiency fanatic. I like making my brain indexable with technology as to try to take more steps forward than steps back. I need to get better at excel (I need to get excel - I try to force everything through LibreOffice). | ||
relevant to our needs | 8 - I believe I live in DeFi world very few people have the patience to live in. Hopefully I can be a window into this abstract world. Other than that I love chipping into everyone’s goals and challenges! My soul is a collaborative problem solver. | ||
Potential | 10x growth | 8 - I wish I were smarter - like I really really wish I knew how to code. I feel like my sponge could have more pores, but every day I just try to soak and stretch and try to soak some more to get better in areas I feel I can contribute. | |
voracious learner | 10 - I’m truly obsessed. There’s not enough words that can hit my eyeballs in a day. I open more tabs on my browser than a bartender on a Friday night. Like how do people have time to read books? Article after article on my phone obliterate my chances every time. Planes maybe? Yeah I need to read more on planes. | ||
contrarian thinker | 8 - I relish the moments where I can be contrarian. I think those moments are few and far between as I have so much groundwork to do on any subject before I can truly have contrarian insights. Often when I think I’m being contrarian, I just didn’t do enough homework. | ||
Impact | accomplish important work | 8 - I try to deliver most bang for the buck. Important is also a relative term, as it is often a delicate dance between team alignment, personal convictions and overall impact. | |
activity < productivity | 8 - I need to improve on this - as rabbit holes of research often take me away. My best focus is after workout when I’ve gathered my thoughts and hyped after a banger playlist. | ||
thrive in chaos | 8 - I’m accustomed to thriving in the unknown; however, after years of experience I make an effort to prioritize physical well-being as I find it the best precursor to mental resiliency under fire. Although I need to work on my cardio. |
Name | Tags | Links | Leads | dj3n PRD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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DAO | ||||
Ideas | ||||
DraftsProposals | ||||
Proposals | ||||
Drafts | ||||
Drafts | ||||
Proposals | ||||
Proposals | 🚜 🎤 🐐 | |||
Drafts | ||||
Drafts | ||||
Tooling | 🚜 💻 | |||
Drafts | 🔫 | |||
Product | 🎬 🚜 | |||
Drafts | 🔫 🚜 | |||
Product | 🚜🔫 📖 | |||
Drafts | ||||
Ideas | ||||
Drafts | ||||
Drafts | ||||
Meetings | ||||
Tooling | ||||
Ideas | ||||
🚜 | ||||
Drafts | ||||
Proposals | 🚜 | |||
UX |
Name | Takeaway | Category | URL | Projects Progress | Attachments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Built-in Bribes from the beginning, with Whitelisting and Commissaire for game theory security are excellent out-of-the-gate features. The ve (3,3) tokenmomics seem to lean toward enriching initial investors which I don’t know if it’s necessary. | veToken projects | ||||
Users stake $AVAX to create their own chain, then use a native token as gas. DFK transactions on an AVAX subnet cost about $.02 in JEWEL. Point still for Harmony being cheaper. | Other Chains | ||||
DAOs must find a way to try to diversify native token treasuries into stables or other assets to protect operating capital in market downturns. 2021 treasuries got slaughtered, while 2022 treasuries fared better using bonding mechanisms, holding ETH/BTC and yield farming stabelcoins. | DAO Treasury Management | ||||
The underlying financial mechanisms in traditional finance will be completely replaced by DeFi tools enabled by blockchain efficiencies. It will be very a long and painful process - but it is inevitable. We cannot forget the gravity of what we are building and must stay persistent though dark periods. | DeFi theory | ||||
Pangolin is a feature-rich “UniV2” on AVAX that hopes to go cross-chain soon. Their governance token is owned predominantly by the community. | DEX | ||||
Similar project. Rebasing mechanism seems unnecessary. Great details on the bribing mechanisms - will be useful for our PRD. | veToken projects | ||||
It’s critical to be mindful of where the initial tokens are emitted and which actors have voting power. A reckless airdrop can undermine the entire protocol mechanics. | veToken projects | ||||
A good ELI5 breakdown of tokenomics. Who controls the supply is everything. | Tokenomics | ||||
Incentivizing a pool with the same asset in the pool can be detrimental | Tokenomics | ||||
RSK is enabling DeFi on Bitcoin. Exciting potential with our Bitcoin bridge. | Other Chains | ||||
There are many Bridges with different purposes. Bonded bridges seem to provide the broadest utility, while trust-less bridges carry the highest security. | Other Chains | ||||
Solidly took the voToken model and butchered the tokenomics by making the veTokens available to sell, no max cap supply, no fee sahring with LPs that a have a guage, as well as only sharing revenue from pools that one voted for - incentivizing malicious farming. | veToken projects | ||||
“Second, social protocols produce significant amounts of data and transactions. Every retweet, post, comment, etc., is a transaction. At a meaningful social network size (10–100 million monthly active users) would produce significant transaction amounts that far exceed current chain throughputs (Polygon currently has roughly 400,000 daily active addresses). This is by far the most significant challenge.” Cross-shard Harmony ftw. | Social | ||||
UniSwap is in murky waters as to whether the Uni token is a security. They have more marks against them than for. | Legal | ||||
Hardware wallet, password manager, Proton mail/ aliasing | Security | ||||
Alt-L1s struggling as their competitive advantage shrinks when ETH demand is low. Fee generation across the board down 60-90%. Ultra important to manage treasury wisely during bull runs and taper expectations during down-turns. | DeFi theory | ||||
Music NFTs started to heat up in 2021 and are just getting started | NFT | ||||
Deep dive | Tokenomics | ||||
Deep liquidity and a boatload of incentives were responsible for their success, but Curve has now evolved beyond just another application status - they have become a baseplate. | DeFi theory | ||||
Design mechanics are everything | Tokenomics | ||||
Several different types of investors in different markets | DeFi theory |