Name:
Andrew Liffey/ TheOyster / @OnlyDeFiGuy
Timezone:
GMT/ Ireland!
English proficiency:
Native speaker
Committee Position:
DeFi Expert
Qualifications:
Deep previous traditional financial markets experience.
- Securities and markets regulation for The Central Bank Of Ireland
- Licensed securities broker for Interactive Brokers
- Derivatives trader for Onix Capital London.
- Moonbeam crowdloan participant.
- I can code! JavaScript, TypeScript and Solidity ( Self taught )
- Currently operating a Cryptocurrency focused trading and investing institution specialising in high frequency trading. Currently operating on 11 different blockchains, substate and EVM.
- Degree in Economics, finance and business from Tilburg University, The Netherlands.
- Long time Moonbeam developer community member and active participant in the weekly Moonbeam Developer calls hosted by Kevin. If you search my discord username TheOyster you will see I have a very large number of posts in the Moonbeam server over the last few years.
- Massive amount of experience handing user queries and solving complex user issues during my time working for Acala.
Background:
My background is in traditional capital markets, during my time in Interactive Brokers I became obsessed with the power automation leading me to a passion for decentralised finance. I left this role my role at Interactive Brokers so I could work in the DeFi ecosystem on Polkadot and learn how to code! I have spent an obscene amount of time over the last 2+ years writing code. Literally 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year building decentralised finance infrastructure. I am addicted to writing code…
Experience:
I am a highly active community member of all the decentralised finance projects on Moonbeam.
During my time in the Central bank, I was brought through a profound journey through the values of honesty, fairness, and truthfulness in capital markets. These principles, more than any others, are the bedrock upon which the integrity of any financial ecosystem is built. These values are a core part of my professional background to this day. I intend to continue upholding these values for the rest of my life and will do so if I am granted a position on this committee.
As per my internal metrics, I am by the most active market participant in the DeFi ecosystem on moonbeam, both in terms of total number of transactions and volume transacted. I am currently operating 15 wallets, 7 bespoke smart contracts, leveraging huge amounts of historical and live price data with a massive inventory management system. My firm also does a large percentage of the total XCM transactions with my wallets being some of the most active in the ecosystem.
It is my believe, that if someone is to call themselves a “DeFi expert” then they should be “in the arena”. If someone applies for this position with purely academic qualifications I personally would view that application as a very weak one. The nature of DeFi is that it is decentralised and permissionless i.e. If you’re so good at the game, then why aren’t you playing? I play this game, all day, everyday in an automated fashion with all my own capital base. I’ve built the tech, i’m in the arena, I battle in every block.
Motivation:
I met Derek Yoo at the parachain summit last year and told him this. When I was starting out learning how to code, I needed a chain with great documentation, example code, low gas fees and a DeFi ecosystem to partake in, thankfully Moonbeam was there to save the day! If it wasn’t for Alberto’s FANTASTIC job writing, maintaining and sharing the moonbeam documentation I do not believe I would be where I am today. I owe him, Kevin and the whole moonbeam community a debt of gratitude for enabling me to learn to code, while also putting up with my many many endless Javascript questions.
My two goals if I was to obtain this position are:
- Grow, develop and engage with the DeFi ecosystem on Moonbeam
- Ensure that I “put the ladder down” for the next guy/girl who has 1000 dollars, VS code and a dream.
I intend to do this via supporting the documentation team as much as possible and using my large decentralised finance network to bring more market participants into the ecosystem.
Code of Conduct:
I will commit to uphold the code of conduct.
Conflicts of interest:
-
Between January 20th 2022 and February 20th 2024 I was Operations Executive for Acala. My contract there has now ended. It ended on good terms with both the Acala community and the core Acala Team. Bryan Chen even offered to be my reference going forward. Personally, I don’t believe this is a conflict at all, as I think all DeFi parachain teams should be working together. But as my contact as now ended, this should not be an issue.
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I’m sure some may say, “do we really want an active market participant on this committee, he maybe be bias to XYZ project”. But at the end of the day, I’m on every single project, every contract, every token. I’m on everything. My incentive is such that I win if the ecosystem, community and market are healthy, high TVL and a net positive for the users. If the ecosystem wins, and the community are happy, I will be happy too. Meaning both the committees and my own incentives are fully alined.
Availability:
I can easily do 10+ hours a week, to be honest I’m one of those guys who’s perpetually online so if you need me i’ll be there 24/7.
Thanks everybody for your time, win, lose or draw you will still see me around the community, on the developer calls and reading the documentation. I appreciate the opportunity to apply for this position and have nothing but love for the greater Moonbeam community.
Supporting documentation:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-liffey-12b133165/
DeFi expert report voted on by the Polkadot community: DOT Experts Tip for OnlyDeFiGuy for Proposal #432 | Bifrost vDOT liquidity loan | Polkassembly
Decentralised finance content: https://medium.com/@OnlyDeFiGuy/diving-deep-without-drowning-why-defis-future-is-concentrated-liquidity-95db2326e4c7
