ApeCoin DAO contributor and Special Council nominee, Waabam, left his job as a lawyer to go $Ape full time, and now he is looking to bring his legal skills to the ApeCoin DAO's Special Council.
The election season of 2023 is underway at the ApeCoin DAO, with 21 contributors officially running to replace Yat Siu or Alexis Ohanian on the DAO's Special Council this summer.
Among the candidates vying for a position on the ApeCoin DAO's Special Council is ApeCoin DAO contributor Waabam.
“Since leaving my job as a lawyer at a national Canadian law firm late last summer, I have been a full-time participant and leader in the ApeCoin DAO,” Waabam wrote on his ApeCoin Candidate page. “During that time, I helped steer the DAO through a crisis of governance. I have authored or co-authored many of the AIPs that now comprise the governance structure of the DAO. I have developed strong professional relationships with the current members of Special Council and the Ape Foundation’s legal counsel, and I have built a long track record of making a positive impact in the ApeCoin DAO. As the DAO moves into this next phase of its evolution, I have thought long and hard about where I can best put my unique skills and experiences to work in service of the DAO. After many conversations with DAO members, voters, mentors, and other leaders within our community, it’s clear I can add the most value as a member of the ApeCoin DAO Special Council."
To find out more about Waabam and why he’s the right $Ape for the job, the Bored Ape Gazette reached out to him for an interview. Check it out below:
1.How did you get into the ApeCoin DAO?
“While I've been a member of the DAO since ApeCoin launched, I started participating full-time in the DAO 10 months ago, in August 2022. At that time, I had recently left my job as a lawyer at a national Canadian law firm, to start participating full-time in web3. As I looked around the web3 space to figure out where I could contribute and where I would fit, I kept coming back to ApeCoin. A $1billion treasury. A legitimate chance to become the coin of metaverse culture and blockchain gaming. The crossroads of DAO governance, NFTs, culture, art, and gaming. The support of Yuga Labs - the biggest culture driving company in web3.Even though the DAO was in a very difficult spot in August 2022, with only 5 or 6 active contributors, the potential of the DAO was too great for me to ignore. So I started working. First as a member of ApeComms, then as a Steward of WG0, then as the ApeCoin Community Manager for Bored Club Canada. I've been building in the DAO for 10 months now, and my work continues.”
2.In a sentence or two, why should the community vote for you?
“The DAO operates in an incredibly uncertain regulatory environment, and it falls on the Special Council to ensure that the actions of the DAO are compliant with all regulatory and legal requirements, in consultation with Ape Foundation legal counsel. I am a lawyer with years of experience in regulatory compliance, and I am one of the leading contributors to the ApeCoin DAO, having been an author or co-author of most of the AIPs which now comprise the core infrastructure of the DAO. We are trying to achieve huge things as a DAO, but in order to realize them, we need somebody on Special Council who deeply understands the DAO, and who is able to go toe-to-toe with Ape Foundation legal counsel, to ensure that the DAO's most ambitious AIPs make it to vote.”
3.What would you like to accomplish if elected?
“If I was elected as Special Council, I would work hard to make sure that the DAO sends working groups to vote, because fully decentralized and fully autonomous working groups will allow the DAO to finally achieve many of its long-standing goals. Goals such as returning revenue to the DAO, creating a comprehensive onboarding and growth plan, and creating more use cases for $APE. I would also continue to connect with community members, to find out their priorities and concerns, and to propose AIPs to help address their concerns and improve the DAO. I believe that Special Council members should be leaders and active contributors to the DAO, who are actively proposing improvements to the DAO, above and beyond their base responsibility of ensuring regulatory compliance. This is why I've recently proposed AIP-262, to require all AIP authors to explain how their AIPs will benefit the DAO, and AIP-267, to require the Ape Foundation to publish a live dashboard tracking the size of the treasury, how much has been spent, and an estimate of when it will run out at our current rate of spend. As a Special Council member, I would continue to listen to the community's concerns, and propose improvements to the ApeCoin DAO, in addition to stewarding the AIP process and protecting the DAO from regulatory risk.”
4. Where do you see the DAO a year from now?
“A year from now, I want to see the DAO have fully autonomous and fully decentralized working groups, including the Metaverse Working Group, the Treasury Working Group, and the Marketing & Communications Working Group.Through these working groups, we will have finally achieved the following long-standing goals of the DAO. We will have hired a professional communications & marketing team, and we will be implementing a comprehensive onboarding and communications strategy, developed by industry-leading experts. The DAO will be growing at an exponential rate. We will have a team working on partnerships with metaverse companies and web3 gaming companies, with multiple use cases for $APE, and many more games and metaverse experiences in development that will use $APE. All of the additional $APE utility will bring in tons of new users and holders of $APE, and will have a positive impact on the token price and the treasury size. We will have a treasury working group or other independent legal entity set up to receive revenue, which will allow us to sustain our DAO operations, and ensure that we can remain a grants DAO for decades to come. Through all of these initiatives, and through the efforts of hundreds of dedicated community members, ApeCoin will be realizing our potential of becoming the coin of metaverse culture and blockchain gaming.”
5. What makes you different from the other candidates?
“I have more experience working in the DAO, and a better understanding of how our DAO works, than any other candidate running. I authored or co-authored the following AIPs, which comprise our core DAO infrastructure:
AIP-196: BORED AIP: Bringing Order and Reliability via Ecosystem Decentralization
AIP-239: Working Group Guidelines & The Governance Working Group Charter
AIP-240: Community Discourse Facilitators
AIP-245: Working Group Charter - Metaverse
As a Steward of WG0, I worked closely with Special Council, and developed professional and respectful working relationships with all of the current members. I was the DAO lead on the RFP to find a Cayman Islands-based administrator. My responsibilities in this process included writing the actual RFP, interviewing the potential bidders, and making assessments and recommendations for who the successful bidder should be. In the process, I gained a deep and nuanced understanding of the internal operations of the Ape Foundation, and how our DAO works. In addition to all of this, I have spent years working as a lawyer in regulatory compliance. The most common work I did as a lawyer was studying how regulatory frameworks might impact the proposed courses of action of my clients. I would then advise those clients on the trade-offs between the benefits of the proposed courses of action, and the potential legal risks of proceeding with those actions. This is exactly the decision making that Special Council must make while exercising the main responsibility of their role: deciding whether AIPs should go to vote, or be sent back to the author for reconstruction. They must look at each AIP, and weigh the benefits of what the AIP will bring the DAO, against the potential regulatory and legal risks that the AIP poses to the DAO. This responsibility is incredibly important. If Special Council is too careful, our most innovative proposals & ideas will be lost to regulatory uncertainty & legal risk. If Special Council isn't careful enough, the DAO could be targeted by regulatory agencies, tax authorities, or worse. The treasury could be severely threatened, and the impact on the $APE price could be catastrophic. It is not an exaggeration to say that Special Council members' decisions can make or break the DAO. This is why we need a Special Council member who is extremely knowledge about the DAO, who understands its infrastructure inside and out, and has professional expertise and experience in regulatory compliance. This skillset is what separates me from all of the other candidates.”
6. Do you have anything else you’d like to add or say?
“My DM's are always open. I am taking this role as an elected representative of the ApeCoin community extremely seriously. Please reach out to me, and let's talk about the DAO. I would love to hear your priorities and concerns. Together, we will build ApeCoin into the coin of metaverse culture and blockchain gaming.”
ApeCoin DAO Contributors who would like to find out more about Waabam’s campaign can reach out to him via Twitter @ Waabam_eth
The window to vote in the ApeCoin DAO's first round of Special Council voting opens on June 15th, and $Ape holders will have until June 21st to cast their votes and support their preferred nominees. After the first round of voting, the top five nominees with the most votes will proceed to the second round of voting and officially become candidates. The DAO will then conduct one more election from June 22nd to 28th, during which the community will elect two Special Council members to replace Yat Siu and Alexis Ohanian on the board. Take a look at the full Election season timeline below:
