[Meta-Governance] Nominate James (jkm.eth)

Your preferred name/ENS name: James (jkm.eth) Forum username: jkm.eth Twitter profile link: @jkm__eth

Why do you want to be a Steward of this Working Group?

ENS DAO has been going through a lot of systemic changes recently, requiring the community to find alignment. At the same time, we continue to see people show up with a desire to collaborate and help build the ENS community. I believe ENS stewards should take charge in helping the DAO navigate these changes and should also enable contributors to participate in the ENS community and feel appreciated. My experience equips me to fulfill these duties, which is why I would like to serve as steward for the upcoming term.

I have been focused on crypto every day for the last 14 years. I got my start in 2012 as a co-organizer of the Tokyo Bitcoin Meetup, where I soon found myself representing the crypto industry in front of TV news cameras in the wake of the collapse of Mt. Gox. A year later, I moved to San Francisco and was an early employee at both Coinbase and Kraken. I then became Chief Product Officer at Breadwallet, where we grew from 4 employees to 45 before being acquired. All of these roles required me to be aware of shifting community narratives and to adapt to the challenges and opportunities they brought: I experienced the birth of Ethereum, the Bitcoin block size debate, the fork of Ethereum Classic, scaling strategy disputes, and all the other successes, failures, rises, and falls.

Outside of crypto, I have real world experience facilitating governance for IRL organizations that have a lot of similarities to how ENS DAO operates today. As one example, I served 4 years on the board of directors for British Mensa, a non-hierarchical society which is owned by its members and has a centralized legal entity that is authorized by the membership to work on their behalf. The board of directors is elected by the members and tasked with overseeing the office, which is led by a CEO. This is similar to how ENS DAO is collectively owned by the token holders, who empower ENS Labs to undertake vital work that keeps the whole system running smoothly. As director, I had to find ways to capitalize on the many contributions of volunteers, while also ensuring those contributions didn’t conflict with the vital work being done by the CEO and her team.

I am also involved in two separate community organizations that operate through formal consensus. I was trained as a consensus facilitator, and have since seen firsthand how these organizations are able to make decisions and resolve disagreements through compromise, without voting. Although voting is still required in ENS DAO, proposals can always be negotiated and improved to make them less contentious before moving to the voting stage.

When it comes to ENS specifically, I have authored an ENSIP, participated regularly in community calls, and submitted an application to this year’s SPP3 program. I know what it is like to be a community contributor, most often volunteering my time for free, and have seen firsthand all the friction, frustration, and satisfaction that can bring.

Ever since I first got into crypto, I have been looking for non-financial use cases that can benefit the real world. Social coordination and digital identity are the most exciting use case I’ve seen, which is why I’ve donated my time to ENS. I believe ENS can foster a vibrant developer community by allowing contributors to make an impact, and ENS DAO can continue to lead by example with community decision-making done right. This is what I will bring if elected.

Any other information you wish to share with Delegates (e.g. potential conflicts or existing engagements)

I am part of a team who has applied for SPP3. No other conflicts.