Elation Studios
What is your field of expertise?
Elation Studios consists of co-founders, Fakhul Miah and Troy Tohid who have expertise in banking, fintech, web3, communication, business development, risk management, F2B complex processing & execution, large budgets, and global team management.
Fakhul Miah: CEO of CreDA the world’s first decentralized credit rating service. Fakhul has been in the investment banking industry at Morgan Stanley for over 15 years, most recently serving as Morgan Stanley’s Head of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa Cleared Derivatives Client Service Group. Prior to this, he was the Global Head of Institutional Margin Financing, Margin Technology Development and Risk Control.
Instrumental in the buildout of crypto futures in 2017, including operational flows, product architecture, risk modelling and margin methodologies.
Troy Tohid: Executive Director at Morgan Stanley with over 15 years’ experience in the banking industry supporting an institutional and wealth management client base across fixed income, equities, and cleared derivatives asset classes.
Degrees in Finance and Marketing, primary skill sets in client service, and managing large globally distributed teams of over 150 individuals.
What is your goal with Elastos by the end of the council’s next term?
Increase adoption and awareness of the project, primarily through new exchange listings, partnerships and attraction of external builders, users, and investors into the ecosystem.
A cohesive ecosystem is also critical, for the project to succeed we need all key participants to be working in harmony and moving in the same direction, the community, the council, the core teams, and the foundation.
What is the main issue with ELA, looking at its market performance (dropping out of top 100, currently sitting 500+ in terms of MC)?
A lack of awareness and business development. The core technology/infrastructure is in good hands and is being continuously iterated and improved. A key missing component is awareness and promotion of this technology to attract new entrants to the ecosystem, developers, users, and investors.
A resolute business development team to get out there and promote the project, build new relationships, and find new partners would be a strong step. Elastos has had no real representation at any major industry events or meetups in the past year, this is where deals are often done, and new partnerships formed.
What should be Elastos’ killer dApp in your opinion?
A dApp that has a real-world use case that can highlight the true need for Web3 beyond simple NFTs or restricted DeFi, such example include:
• A secure and privacy focused messaging app such as Hyper
• An off-chain payment app that solves at least one of the limitations existing web2 apps have e.g., inaccessibility due to geographical, social, or historical data limitations
• DLT solutions that solve current real-world issues such as food security, provenance (e.g., blood diamonds) and human trafficking
How are you going to contribute to the CR Council if you get elected?
We plan to continue but improve from where we left off from last term, focusing on marketing, business development and management, ecosystem cohesion, exchange listings and anywhere else we can contribute for the benefit of the entire community.
We also intend to continue our record of attending and contributing to all council meetings, reviewing suggestions, and voting on all proposals whilst providing adequate and meaningful voting commentary.
If you are running for your first time, please introduce yourself to the community. Tell us a little about your background, prior experience, and personal vision for Elastos and Cyber Republic. Or, if you are a former council member, please share your contribution to the CRC that you have made.
As council members for the previous term, we strived to contribute as much as we could to the Elastos ecosystem, whilst maintaining long and demanding fulltime jobs within the investment banking industry. Most of our free time was spent as CRC members and whilst there is always room for reflection and improvement, we believe we had a successful maiden year as council members, key achievements include:
• 100% voting record on proposals
• Education of the Elastos ecosystem through curated material and interviews with key ecosystem members through the Elation Nation podcast
• Improved communication and cohesion within the CRC by setting up the bi-weekly council member meeting, which we hope will continue into the next term
- 100% attendance record for council member meetings
- Chaired the first four council member meetings, which included creating agendas and taking minutes that were subsequently distributed to the community
• Formation of the CRC legal entity in Delaware, USA allowing the council to open a fiat bank account, engage with third party entities and enter legally binding contracts
• Identified and contracted K&L Gates, a tier one legal firm headquartered in the United States on behalf of the CRC legal entity
• Identified and contracted tier one marketing agency, TLGG Omnicom to create and execute a Marketing & Communication Strategy
- Commissioned TLGG to perform a deep dive Elastos organizational change review and proposal
• Identified and contracted, industry leading market maker, Kairon Labs to provide support for the ELA token across major exchanges and partnership support to expand the Elastos ecosystem
• Led the council task force to perform a deep dive into funding and revenue opportunities for the CRC to alleviate sell pressure on ELA
• Provided guidance and support to ecosystem platforms and core teams when requested
• Currently pursuing and negotiating several exchange listing opportunities
Would you say the design of suggestions and proposals, and the CRC in general, has been effective? What could be improved?
Elation Studios is very much of the philosophy that there is always room for improvement. This holds true for organizations that are in their first year or have been around for over a decade. It is to this end we feel there are opportunities to improve in the following areas:
• Communication Framework between the CRC, EF and the Community
• CR Proposal Funding Challenges that continue to provide sell pressure on ELA
• CR Revenue Generating Mechanisms that currently do not exist
• CRC Voting Rules, which work at a basic level but have several improvement opportunities
CRC Voting Reforms:
Elation Studios would like the CR to reconsider the current voting rules, which allows members to either vote “Yes”, “No”, “Abstain” or “Undecided”. The later “Undecided” vote occurs when a council member has either failed to vote or their vote was not chained due to technical errors. Unfortunately, many instances where this has occurred were due to council members failing to vote and, as a result, proposals that would have benefited the ecosystem were not passed.
We would like to explore a change in the voting logic whereby any “undecided votes” would be excluded from the count. The remaining votes would be subject to the 2/3rds pass rule and require a minimum of 8 votes e.g., if a proposal had 3 “undecided” votes then the motion would pass so long as there were 6 “Yes” votes (2/3rds of 9).
In addition, under current voting rules once a CR council member introduces a proposal the council has approximately 7 calendar days to vote. This can be problematic in that it may not allow for sufficient due diligence and consideration if the proposal contains ambiguity or lacks detail. If a CR council member ‘submits’ and ‘introduces’ a proposal an additional challenge can arise, whereby the council lack prior knowledge of said proposal and have insufficient time to discuss it within the council and solicit feedback from the wider community to make an informed decision. Having the option to “Abstain” does carry merit as it allows council members who may agree with a proposal in principle but do not have sufficient time or information to make an informed decision the ability to make clear their position to the council and community. This should encourage the proposals’ originator to submit a revised proposal with the required detail. To alleviate such challenges with the current voting system we would like to further explore the following suggestions:
1. Increase the voting cycle time from 7 calendar days (5,040 main chain blocks) to be aligned with the council meting cycle of 14 days
2. Suggestions have to be live for a fixed period before they can be turned into a proposal (3,5 or 7 days), this ensures the community has time to provide feedback prior to the actual vote and the opportunity for changes to be made.
3. Creation of an emergency voting mechanism in the event a proposal needs to be pushed through in a shorter time critical window. This would require a higher pass rate e.g., 100%/min 10 ‘Yes’ Votes
4. The vote of a council member should remain anonymous until the council voting period is complete. This would reduce collusion and council members voting with the majority (requires more thought on their part)
5. Having a 13th community vote per proposal opposed to the 7-day community veto period. This would speed up the voting proposal period (2 weeks is too long). If the community vote ‘no’ and the number of community votes meets the current veto threshold (10%) then the entire proposal is rejected regardless of what the other council members voted. Else the vote is counted as a usual yes/no vote (you still only need 8 votes to pass). The community vote must have a minimum number of community votes for it to be considered (e.g., 5% circulating ELA)
Who else would you endorse for being on the Council with you?
It is great to see a lengthy list of candidates this year (currently 17) with a wide range of skills and qualities that can benefit the CRC. We would recommend most candidates that are known to us either based on previous council performance or current contribution to the ecosystem.
We would however, like to single out Ryan as an unsung hero of the current council. He has gone above and beyond on numerous occasions providing expert opinion and significant admin help to the council behind the scenes, which included taking on personal liability.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
We believe the current pool of candidates this year are strong and wish everyone the best of luck. We would encourage all community members to vote and DYOR on each candidate, these interviews are a great start.
We would also like to give a shoutout to the Secretariat team, led by Cassie (Secretary General) for doing an excellent job this past year. We endorse the team to continue and encourage them to expand their scope and responsibilities.
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