Reza Rayman - Head of Governance Motivation

Background

Good morning to you in your home country. I am excited about the opportunity of possibly working with you to develop and implement a viable governance system for the House of Stake DAO.

I am Reza Rayman (53), male, from South Africa. Academically I hold an MBA from the University of Potchefstroom for Christian Higher Education (RSA) this is coupled with a few industry specific regulatory certifications. I aim to be pragmatic and reasonable under all circumstances.

I have been in training throughout my career as a governance, risk management & compliance professional. My experience spans asset & fund management (including treasury management), private banking, international structured finance, strategic & tactical business consulting, wealth advisory, crypto and blockchain (as a user, investor and builder).

Suitability to the Role

I am a crypto native of about 6 years, I have navigated blockchains before the days of cross chain interoperability and I had to deal with the additional complexity of exchange control and tax in my home country. I have been completely immersed in DAO governance for almost 3 years.

I am a proponent of the globally accepted integrated Governance, Risk Management & Compliance (GRC) framework. This guides my understanding of business structures and entity relationships. The desired outcome here is Principled Performance.

I spent 2 years with Takadao as Governance & Compliance Manager, building The LifeDAO on Arbitrum, until March 2025. I had the good fortune of spending an intensely immersive time here. I built their governance system to the point where, when I departed, they had a handover document that laid out the transitional steps required for the handover of control, of the DAO and its real-world entity, by the developer to the community. I did this by setting up internal processes and a resource management plan (codified through entity specific bylaws) to meet DAO objectives and good going concern principles.

The system addresses DAO decision-making & signaling, treasury management, cyber security practices and risk management. The system I built can take its credits from DAOs like Synthetix, UniSwap, Arbitrum, Nouns, Curve and a few more.

In addition, I was a pivotal part of the team that developed the decentralized claims management system employed by the Takadao tDAOs, including The LifeDAO. I wrote the original strategy document and algorithm basis for the system, and we refined it until the tech team was comfortable to code it.

Since then, I have been building with Centra Sul Labs, developers of Centra Sul DAO, solutions for BRICS countries and the Global South. My role at CSLabs is freelance (ad hoc) and I advise on their full spectrum business model. Including fund raising, structuring, process development, compliance etc.

I have a deep understanding of multi-party decision-making principles (game theory), voting power distribution (veTokenomics in this case), vote counting mechanisms (simple majority, super majority) and their impacts on platform growth. I intend to align GRC with platform growth to contribute to the expansion of the NEAR ecosystem.

Context

I initially applied for the Head of Governance role when it 1st emerged publicly at the beginning of Aug 25. I have joined the community channels on Telegram, Discord & NEAR Governance forum and I follow the project on X.

I support the proposal to adopt the veTokenomics voting power distribution system as a point of departure. It brings wider community reach and consequently fairer outcomes than a 1 token = 1 vote system. It is not the final architecture though and ownership concentration risk/whale activity must be factored in.

I joined to gain some context into the governance status of the NEAR Protocol including the NEAR Digital Collective attempt at governance. I have gained an insightful picture through the community and the documents that were very forthcoming. I have a good understanding of the pain points of both the NEAR Community and something of the NEAR Foundation.

I have assessed the situation and circumstances and have come to the conclusion that community expectation and developer rollout is misaligned. This is creating a drag and could negatively impact platform and ecosystem growth.

There is a lack of transparency and trust between stakeholders and role-players. If these 2 critical principles of blockchain are absent, then the project will wilt away over time (blockchain is ultra-competitive). Blockchain was created to be transparent & trustless. Let’s work towards these objectives.

I am moved by the willingness of all that I have crossed paths with on the forums to answer questions and provide evidence of progress. This indicates the embers of a transparent culture which will propagate and thrive with time.

If I was appointed HoG (lol)

My top priorities would be:

1. Lead a small team comprising Gauntlet and the community to gain a clear understanding of their Staking Reward Mechanism V2

2. Create an organogram of the NEAR ecosystem including vesting of functions and roles, responsibilities, accountability and a single source of truth for all source documents.

3. Align strategy between the critical role-players in the NEAR ecosystem (including service providers).

4. Monitoring & preparing for the launch of the House of Stake DAO.

Slightly lesser top priority:

1. Treasury & treasury management - multi sig responsibility

2. Integrating the current governance stack for simplicity and onboarding veNEAR stakers

3. Embedding House of Stake governance into the NEAR Protocol

4. Using DAO governance as a growth vector.

5. Developing a detailed governance roadmap quarter by quarter for a 24-month period.

I subscribe to Steve Jobs’ philosophy of failing forward. I am committed to transparency and loyalty to the House of Stake Foundation and House of Stake DAO around everything Governance, Risk & Compliance related and beyond. I will give this role my undivided attention and bring what I have learnt and what I will be learning to this table.

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/reza-rayman-a1199626

Some links to my previous work:

Takaturn - Takaturn was a stand-alone savings and investment solution that is now being integrated into the LifeDAO ecosystem Takaturn Phase 2 - Plug In feature upgrade - Yield Generation and UI Feature Enhancements | Takaturn 2.0

The LifeDAO Governance Manual (Bylaws) - TLD Governance Handbook excl CLG.docx - Google Docs

The LifeDAO Multi sig policy & guidelines - Multi Sig Policy Guideline.docx - Google Docs

Takadao 1 pager - Takadao One Pager - Google Docs

The LifeDAO Security 1 pager - TLD OnePager-security - Google Docs

Centra Sul DAO high level - Centra Sul Ecosystem Strategy Document - Google Docs