Named Neuron Proposal: Paul Young

Governance
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My name is Paul Young and I would like to ask for your vote in approving my named neuron proposal. Thank you in advance for your support.

Neuron ID: 8777656085298269769
GitHub: https://github.com/paulyoung
Twitter: https://twitter.com/py

About Me

I enjoy writing software, designing interfaces, and building developer tools.

I’m involved in various aspects of the Internet Computer (the IC) but that is not something I consider to be a core part of my identity.

I also wouldn’t say that I identify as a “crypto” or “web3” person and I think that gives me a certain perspective on things.

My Experience

I used to work as a Software Engineer at DFINITY on the SDK, among other things.

You may be familiar with some of my work from that time:

  • I wrote the first version of dfx.
  • I started the Motoko Language Server project.
  • I added support for compiling the Motoko compiler to JavaScript, and created a web-based Motoko editor with Language Server support.
  • A lot of the first Motoko code I wrote made it into the motoko-base package.

More recently, I was a mentor and speaker at Motoko Bootcamp. A recording of my talk is available here:

I regularly attend the weekly DFINITY Dev community call on Discord and volunteer my time in a number of the technical working groups.

I’m currently working full-time building something on the IC and hope to share more on that publicly very soon. I also want to build useful tools and share them with the developer community.

My philosophy towards building on the IC is that I would prefer to discover challenges and explore solutions to them than to move functionality off-platform.

Voting

I am an individual and will be voting in my own interests. Those interests may change over time. I have, however, invested a lot of time and effort into the IC and I would like to see it succeed.

I am not committing to manually vote on every proposal but my intent is for my neuron to always vote. It will initially follow ICDevs.org for Governance and the DFINITY Foundation for All Topics Except Governance. I will manually vote when I am able to, or when I feel it is necessary.

Aside: I would like to normalize having named neurons regardless of whether they vote manually or not. If unintended consequences arise from this, I would like to see the NNS improved as a result.

I anticipate that my manual voting will be aligned with improving the experience for people building on the IC and for end users, as well as generally to approve things that I think will make the IC more successful.

Disclaimer

I reserve the right to change how I vote at any time, including any follow relationships. If at any time you disagree with how I am voting you may unfollow my neuron.

19 Likes
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I will definitely vote yes for your proposal.

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and MY AXE! (has to be at least 20 characters…)

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Glad to see your named neuron @paulyoung ! Will also be voting to support you.

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I will be voting yes and would love to have an internal conversation between the two of us if/ when you have time. Just a quick brief question though, would you be open to voting early enough so that individuals who may not want to follow, but use your neuron vote on all subnet management per se (IMO these are the ones newer users struggle with determining), and then decided on governance themselves for the slight chance we disagree on that one topic or proposal? Or would you mind explaining/ making it public in some type of IC forum what way you will vote prior to casting so a user would unfollow, or perhaps how a new user could unfollow your neuron before their vote is a caster with yours if, as I mentioned, they for the slight chance disagree on one governance issue as these can be highly debated at times depending on geographic location if that makes sense…

I mainly want a mentor or teacher to follow silently, who has the best intentions for the overall network with the technical know-how and passion for education. So, the subnet code is always voted on properly. I don’t want to say blindly say “yes” to code I truly do not understand. It could be problematic if other newer users/stakeholders do this without explicitly understanding the crucial aspects of subnet management on a higher level. However, I do want to reserve the right to my education without perhaps needing to remain active in the conversation.

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I’m not committing to do any mentoring or post anything about how I will vote/have voted.

I might engage in those things in an ad hoc fashion but I’m otherwise going to stay focused on building things.

I’m also not committing to voting at any particular time.

My neuron will be following other neurons, so I understand the desire to still able to vote manually. I would like to see that addressed by @wbp’s Proposal to Enable Manual Voting Throughout the Entire Voting Period of Governance Proposals

Other neurons may be committed to doing things the way you describe but you’d need to do some research on that.

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Thank you for the effective feedback @paulyoung and I appreciate the transparency. I will still vote yes, however, this was appreciated by me personally. I specifically appreciated knowing that this is an option from someone with an outside perspective, yet, truthful and played a major role in the fundamentals or development of the code and dfx that others learning may not exactly understand. I hope we continue seeing more individuals like this & I will continue doing the research mentioned. I look forward to seeing what you build in the future.

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Awesome! I always appreciate your contributions. You have my vote.

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+1 for supporting this named neuron. Great concise policy write up @paulyoung

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100% support this named neuron.

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This proposal is now live.

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