Zen-dragon.eth Delegate Thread

Delegate Citadel
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Name: Zen Dragon

Address or ENS: zen-dragon.eth linked to 0x25B70c8050B7e327Ce62CfD80A0C60cCcf057Fa6

Discord username/TG username: Zen Dragon#2923

I have read and understood the Delegate process: Yes.

I understand that becoming a delegate is a significant commitment: I do. Becoming a delegate for Balancer’s governance system is something of paramount importance to me. I will do everything in my power to uphold the values of the DAO.

My reasons for wanting to be a delegate: I have been invested in the community for just over nine months and a baller for five at the time of writing. Since joining I gravitated to supporting the community to understand the dynamic systems of the protocol. Notably I wrote extensive documentation on the veBAL governance model and several other functionalities of Balancer. Now I am also a grants co-lead and take consideration of what projects can benefit our Balancer overall to be an everyday train of thought. I believe I can act as an arm of those who trust me to vote in the direction which will benefit Balancer & the community for long term growth & prosperity.

My view on Fernando’s vision 1 for Balancer: I hold Fernando’s vision to be of upmost importance when proposing to be a governance delegate. I got my start by helping the community based on explaining the white paper, or initial framework, in digestible terms. Looking forward, I have been in full support of the new governance system and providing an easy-to-understand environment for projects to build on top of Balancer permitting our protocol phase to flourish in terms of both governance and partner expansion. My interpretation of Fernando’s vision is that making Balancer the best option for teams to build their projects while being fair to our stakeholders is a delegate’s and the greater communities’ purpose.

My web3 interests: I am extremely interested in nuanced value propositions in the Defi space. The implementation of complex financial systems via smart contracts coupled with fair governance is fascinating to me.

Languages I speak/write: English

My skills and areas of expertise: BS in Petroleum & Natural Gas Engineering & worked for University Mathematics department. I created several calculation value function & price impact spreadsheets Value & Swaps [1] - Investments [2] ; and am a major contributor to balancer.tools and have written our entire DAO gitbook. This is in the process of being merged with the official Balancer documentation. My skillset is technically and mathematically oriented and to be more useful for the DAO I am currently learning several coding languages to leverage my skills for our greater benefit.

Other web3 projects I’m involved in: CoWSwap “CoWmunnity Star” (no compensation)

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BIP-14
Vote: YES I see this as a core staple for the future of Balancer to progress under dynamic real world circumstances.

BIP-15
Vote: YES - I do believe this gauge is beneficial to the Balancer ecosystem. This hopefully will both expand TVL, outside interests, and overall fee generation for the platform.

BIP-16
Vote: YES - We need to have accountable and reliable people on this team as well as any in Balancer. This change will provide individuals who work in everyone’s best interest.

BIP-17
Vote: YES - There is an initial agreement in place for every DAO contributor to be comepnsated properly under. We need to be sure to honor our prior agreements as best we can. This propsoal allows us to do so before the evolution into Service Provider framework takes place.

BIP-18
Vote: Abstain I am in the proposal as a team member. I will not vote due to conflict of interest.

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[BIP-19] Incentivize Core Pools & L2 Usage

Vote: YES A phenomenal framework to implement sustainability to the pools that drive our protocol in a successful direction. I see this as similar to, but more efficient than, the original veBAL proposal, which I also favored and therefore necessary.

[BIP-20] Funding Proposal for Orb Collective

Vote: YES Orb has a proven track record of delivering great products. I am on board and look forward to their future endeavors.

[BIP-21] Funding Proposal for Ecosystem Ops and Development Squad

Vote: NO This was not an easy decision. I am in the camp of conserving capital as best we can. When a bull market returns expanding our resources in this way may be a fruitful investment. For now we need absolute core pillars to be the only ones funded.

[BIP-22] Fund Balancer Grants for Q3

Vote: ABSTAINED because I am a team member in the proposal. I appreciate all those who vote in either direction.

[BIP-23a] AURA/ETH/graviAURA Gauge [Ethereum]

Vote: NO I do not see this as mutually beneficial to both Balancer and Badger. Reference jomox comment from the similar curve proposal. Proposal to add bveCVX/CVX pool gauge - #3 by spadaboom - Proposals - Curve.fi Governance

[BIP-23b] auraBAL/ETH/graviAURA Gauge [Ethereum]

Vote: NO See BIP-23a

[BIP-24] Allocate BAL to a Ribbon Finance Vault

Vote: YES. I am comfortable with the risk reward profile of this investment. We should be pursuing healthy yield opportunities using our treasury funds within reason. The initial proposal was for a larger portion, I voted for and support this smaller amount and hope to see it become a useful line of passive income for the DAO.

[BIP-25] Enable AURA/ETH 50/50 Gauge

Vote: YES. Aura is already and is going to be a crucial part of Balancer’s ecosystem and proves to already be expanding Balancer to new horizons. I appreciate their team and see this synergy as helpful to both parties mutually.

[BIP-7] Enable auraBAL/[8020 BAL/WETH bpt] Gauge [second vote]

Vote: YES. See BIP-25

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[BIP-8] Enable TetuBAL/20WETH-80BAL Gauge [second vote]

Vote: YES. Tetu’s product will be useful in expanding Balancer’s ecosystem long term.

[BIP-26] Enable MAGIC/USDC Gauge [Arbitrum]

Vote: YES Arbitrum, while our least popular chain can benefit greatly from additional traffic through this gauge.

[BIP-27] Enable DIGG/wBTC/graviAURA 40/40/20 Gauge [Ethereum]

Vote: YES I have seen many concerns regarding DIGG. While I do not see the token as high growth myself I am willing to approve the experimentation in terms of gauges. If it is passed and is a failure in terms of volume vs expenditure, I will opt to kill the gauge.

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[BIP-28] Kill CREAM/WETH Gauge [Ethereum]

Vote: YES - This gauge is being used for what I consider to be malicious intent. CREAM is not a project which is in good moral or financial standing, it is not fostering a healthy Balancer ecosystem, and ultimately is being used as a vehicle to abuse and sequester BAL rewards.

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[BIP-29] Introduce GaugeAdder v2

Vote: YES. This is great for future development of the ecosystem.

[BIP-30] Purge Unused Gauges

Vote: YES. Needed both for a UI cleanse and to decrease the likelihood of bad actors in the future. Some of these were grandfathered in and should have to go through the organic gauge voting process to be reactivated.

[BIP-31] Authorize the Batch Relayer v3

Vote: YES. Solves disclosed vulnerabilities and is better for the protocol overall.

[BIP-32] Funding Proposal for Daoism Systems: PROTOCOL REVENUE SHARING FOR POOL & FACTORY CREATORS

Vote: YES. A great solution for developers to come to the ecosystem and be able to build in a permissionless while being compensated based on the adoption & utility of their product. Happy to see Orb’s commitment to concurrently see this through.

[BIP-33] Orb Marketing Budget Proposal for the Remainder of Q3

Vote: YES. As noted in the forum post, i trust this team and their goals. They are lean and devoted. I look forward to their efforts materializing.

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[BIP-30] Purge Unused Gauges [second vote]

Vote: YES. Needed both for a UI cleanse and to decrease the likelihood of bad actors in the future. Some of these were grandfathered in and should have to go through the organic gauge voting process to be reactivated.

[BIP-34] Enable the 50/50 RBW/wETH Gauge on Polygon

Vote: YES. RBW is a unique and active project. Their official / primary liquidity sourced here. This makes sense and I respect the choice to go 50/50.

[BIP-35] Whitelist the Laguna Games’ Gnosis Safe for Balancer’s Voting Escrow

Vote: YES. No problem with allowing another project to participate in the ecosystem. Happy to have them join the wars.

[BIP-36] Enable TEMPLE/DAI 80/20 Gague (Ethereum)

Vote: YES. Will bring protocol owned liquidity into the pool as well as become their primary liquidity source. Risk is minimal and happy to onboard a new project.

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[BIP-37] Allocate BAL Liquidity to Polygon & Arbitrum Multichain Bridge

Vote: YES. Balancer is deployed on these networks, it is beneficial to us to have ease of access for users in bridging to them.

[BIP-38] Request for BAL Allocation to Orb Collective

Vote: YES. The Orb team was previously promised this amount in a vesting schedule and I see no reason for this to not be upheld.

[BIP-39] Repay Aura Treasury for Unclaimable Rewards

Vote: YES. While I do not favor covering in this way, the amount is small and is not a double payment in terms of extracting value from Balancer.

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[BIP-40] Enable FOLD/ETH 50/50 Gauge [Ethereum]
Vote: YES. Risks are limited here due to FOLD being an active project with a roughly 80MM MC at the time of writing. I appreciate the new pool deployment for fee control, happy to have this project on Balancer’s roster.

[BIP-41] Whitelist THX Network Gnosis Safe multisig for Balancer’s Vote-Escrow

Vote: YES. THX started with us and has been a loyal project to the Balancer Protocol. Glad to see another team interested in taking part in the ve governance model.

[BIP-42] Enable rETH/weth Metastable Gauge [Optimism]

Vote: YES. This is a great expansion of pools onto Optimism. Expecting healthy utilization / fee generation from this. Looking forward to see more on the network.

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[BIP-43] Redeem Treasury FEI for USDC

Vote: YES. This 100% necessary to fund Balancer’s current amount of service providers.

[BIP-44] Support Balancer Space delegation on Snapshot for vlAURA holders

Vote: YES. Happy this will be done. This is a much more user friendly governance function.

[BIP-45] Balancer LP BAL into MLP

Vote: YES. Investment is not major and is a low level of risk. Glad to support Tracer’s new product as well.

[BIP-46] Enable SILO/ETH Gauge on Ethereum

Vote: NO. I am currently a fan of the gauge framework thread and this pool would fall into the capped category. I would like to hold off on approving this gauge until a more defined framework is agreed upon.

[BIP-47] Balancer <> Across Protocol for Bridging Tokens Across Chains

Vote: YES. I am in favor of the bridging process being painless for BAL holders. The amount is reasonable & risk of losing funds is ALARP.

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[BIP-48] Kill FEI/WETH Gauge

Vote: YES. The project is essentially seizing operations. makes sense to no longer support the gauge.

[BIP-49] ComposableStable and AaveLinearPools: permission granting

Vote: YES. These permissions require prompt and responsible response time. This is best current option in my opinion.

[BIP-50] Set Protocol Fee on Yield

Vote: YES. Very excited for this to be implemented. Another layer of innovation and revenue for the protocol. 50% is a fair value.

[BIP-51] Gauge Migration to Composable Stable Pools

Vote: YES. This is a necessary step in in implementing improvements to Balancer overall.

[BIP-52] Allocate BAL Liquidity to Aave

Vote: Allocate 100k BAL I was hesitant at first to choose the largest value of 4% of the treasury. Realistically though it is best to put our assets to work and find the risk to be as low as reasonably possible.

[BIP-53] Enable crosschain Gauges via LayerZero

Vote: YES This is extremely exciting to me. When veBAL was first launched this sounded like a clear, but difficult to implement, way forward. Glad to see this coming to fruition.

[BIP-54] Authorize Balancer Labs to initiate distributions on Optimism gauges

Vote: YES Gauges on Optimism is a huge win for Balancer. Glad to support this. Thanks to the team who made it possible.

[BIP-55] Funding Proposal for the Balancer OpCo

Vote: YES The frontend of Balancer has been on a steady upward trajectory in terms of UX. This team has been great to the Protocol and I am happy to see them continue that track record.

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[BIP-56] Re-enable CREAM/WETH 80/20 Gauge [Ethereum]

Vote: NO. This should simply not be re-enabled. The gauge is meant to benefit Balancer’s ecosystem.

[BIP-57a] Introduce Gauge Framework v1

Vote: YES. The framework is a set of guidelines and recommendations. The community can choose whether a gauge fits the mold or not. This is useful for long term growth.

[BIP-57b] Introduce Gauge Framework v1

Vote: 2% - I would be willing to go down to 1% as well, but i feel 2% is a fair compromise. 5% is simply too high for all preliminary gauges.

[BIP-58] Increase Snapshot Quorum

Vote: 500k - When it comes to the gauge voting we have had a heavy showout but not all votes typically reach the higher 1-2 million marks. 500k is a good start.

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[BIP-59] Enable MAI/USDC Gauge on Ethereum

Vote: YES. - MAI / Qi have been loyal to Balancer for a long period of time. There is no substantial risk to approving this gauge and I believe, outside of a strong relationship, it is beneficial to the protocol overall from a fee and TVL perspective.

[BIP-60] Enable XSGD:USDC “FXPool” Gauge [Polygon]

Vote: YES. - Warms my heart to see a grantee reach this level of success and involvement in the protocol. The Xave Finance team / project will bring a unique and useful nuance to the protocol with this pool. Excited to see this and hope it goes through to approval.

[BIP-61] Operating Procedures for DAO’s Selling Their Locked BAL Position OTC

Vote: YES. - I feel this keeps the vote escrow system as fair as possible without granting special rights to the contract wallets governance may approve along the way. A logical precedent will be set if this passes the way I am voting.

[BIP-62] Stable v2, composableStable, Weighted v2 Permission Granting

Vote: YES. - Kudos the the contracts team for getting all these great new rollouts done. Fail safes and precautions must always be taken. This proposal is coherent with the current status quo and I support it.

[BIP-63] Enable IB/WETH 80/20 Gauge w/2% emissions cap [Optimism]

Vote: YES. - Great to see not only another Optimism gauge, but the 2% cap from the framework being respected. The team plans to bribe and host primary liquidity with Balancer, as well as has a subjectively healthy and active growth trajectory. I am all for these healthy developments.

[BIP-64] Revised Gauge Migration to Composable Stable Pools

Vote: YES. - This is exciting to me. Migration to the new pool factories for future rounds of bribes and gauge voting is a huge step for the protocol and all the new pool factories. 2 thumbs up.

[BIP-65] Enable INV/DOLA 50/50 Gauge on Ethereum w/2% emissions cap

Vote: YES. - Similar to my motivation for [BIP-63], the project aims to host primary liquidity on Balancer, bribe, and promote trading. Respect the framework.

[BIP-66] Migrate Lightly Used Gauges to Capped

Vote: YES. - This is a necessary and fair step to all other future gauge proposals. To be grandfather in to a full scale gauge after the gauge framework’s deployment would be create a bias in the ecosystem.

[BIP-67] Enable rETH/RPL Gauge [Ethereum]

Vote: YES. - Great addition to the protocol overall. Looking forward to see rocket pool become an even larger player in Balancer and the staked Ethereum space.

[BIP-68] Enable wstETH/LDO Gauge [Ethereum]

Vote: YES. - Lido has been a key player on Balancer with the wstETH metastable pool for quite some time. This pool will bring healthy competition, TVL, volume, etc. Happy to have this pool launching.

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[BIP-69] Whitelist Beethoven X Gnosis Safe for Balancer’s VotingEscrow

Vote: YES. - Welcome to the party Beethoven friends. Excited to see the proposed strategy from BEETS unfold and Optimism pick up more momentum.

[BIP-70] Authorize the Batch Relayer v4

Vote: YES. - Another upgrade of the batch relayer to extend the use cases for boosted pools. Exciting stuff for sure, happily support.

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[BIP-71] Enable wstETH/weth Gauge [Arbitrum]

Vote: YES. - Welcome to the party Arbitrum. Normalizing wstETH gauges is a great driver for Balancer.

[BIP-72] Enable wstETH/USDC Gauge [Arbitrum]

Vote: YES. - Equally critical to BIP-71.

[BIP-73] Whitelist the gauge for the USDD/FRAX/USDC Pool to receive BAL emissions

Vote: NO. - USDD I am not a fan of in this configuration. Perhaps paired a bb-a-usd. The slight depegging event on June 19, 2022 also is concerning. Would like to see this team succeed on Balancer and then come back around to be voted on with some supporting stats.

[BIP-74] Fund the Balancer Maxis for Q4 2022

Vote: NONE - ABSTAIN. - Will not vote for a SP which I am in.

[BIP-75] Orb Marketing Budget Proposal for Q4

Vote: YES. - Shoutout to marketing keeping their budget in mind and delivering quality work. Loving the technical and interactive twitter threads personally. Hopefully can make a show someday soon.

[BIP-76] Balancer Grants Budget Proposal Q4 2022

Vote: NONE - ABSTAIN. - Will not vote for a SP which I am in.

[BIP-77] Friendly Balancer Protocol Fees for Integrators

Vote: YES. - New projects and grantees in particular will benefit here. We should want Balancer to be inviting and mutually beneficial for those who build on top.

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[BIP-78] Delegate Aave Holding to Llama

Vote: YES. - The Llama team has come in with good intentions and valuable insights on Balancer governance in my opinion. Grateful to have them around and to step up and have our best interest in mind with AAVE.

[BIP-79] Enable COMP/wstETH Gauge [Ethereum]

Vote: YES. - This is a much smarter alternative option to the current COMP/WETH gauge receiving a heavy amount of emissions. This would benefit COMP holders and the protocol overall.

[BIP-80] Enable bb-rf-asUSD/bb-rf-aUSD Gauge [Optimism]

Vote: YES. - Great to see this reaper boosted pool style come to fruition. Excited to see new use cases for boosted pools. Great for LPs and protocol revenue. Thanks to the BeethovenX team as well.

[BIP-81] Enable wstETH/bb-rf-aUSD/bb-rf-aWBTC 50/25/25 Gauge [Optimism]

Vote: YES. - Same as BIP-80; see above.

[BIP-82] Enable bb-rf-aWETH/wstETH Gauge [Optimism]

Vote: YES. - Same as BIP-80; see above.

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[BIP-83] Enable DOLA/bb-a-USD Gauge [Ethereum]

Vote: YES. - Straight-forward gauge approval. Great to see intentions of bribing and using bb-a-usd for base adoption.

1 Like
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[BIP-84] Revoke Hexagon’s Friendly Fork Status

Vote: YES. - Hexagon is not up to par to hold this status. Nothing personal, strictly a poor business decision was made by the DAO at the time. We can do better, hope their team comes back later on with some heavy progress to earn this title.

[BIP-85] Redeem TRIBE

Vote: YES. - Appreciate those who monitored this and proposed to redeem. Long story short, we need to keep our treasury close to our chest and healthy to fund the DAO sustainably.

[BIP-86] Enable bb-rf-aUSDC/bb-rf-aUSDT/bb-rf-aDAI Gauge [Optimism]

Vote: YES. - Boosted pool gauge for key stables on optimism, count me in. This is crucial for our L2 push. Thanks to those who made it possible.

[BIP-87] Enable rETH/bb-rf-aUSD/rf-grain-OP 50/25/25 Gauge [Optimism]

Vote: YES. - Similar to BIP-86 these are key assets on Optimism and i support these liquidity routes being established.

[BIP-88] Enable rETH/BEETS/bb-rf-aUSD/bb-rf-grBAL Gauge w/2% emissions cap [Optimism]

Vote: YES. - Similar to BIP-86 & 87 these are key assets for our protocol(s) on Optimism and i support these liquidity routes being established. Respect the 2% cap as well.

[BIP-89] Enable wstETH/bb-a-usd Gauge [Ethereum]

Vote: YES. - Time to migrate to the new bb-a-usd pool. Smart route, yield bearing assets, all good stuff.

[BIP-90] Enable rETH/bb-a-usd Gauge [Ethereum]

Vote: YES. - See BIP-89. Its time, lets ride.

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[BIP-91] Temporarily Adjust Optimism Fee Split

Vote: YES. - This makes sense to assist our Optimism deployment make it through the bootstrapping phase. We need to secure our foothold here and the revenue will make large difference there as opposed to a small impact for our current usage.

[BIP-92] Deploy Liquidity Bootstrapping Pools to BNB Chain

Vote: YES. - A light lift for the team(s) involved and will overall benefit any long term expansion efforts. Hopefully Fjord will be able to leverage this in everyone’s favor.

[BIP-93] Enable BADGER/rETH 50/50 Gauge [Ethereum] w/10% emissions cap

Vote: None - Did not cast a vote here. I would have voted no, but it would not have made a difference based on the outcome. BADGER is not a high volume token aside from when pool APR is propping it up. With gauges for various pools already it does not make sense to direct more BAL to this token. Silver lining is rETH yield… Perhaps approaching another situation where a guideline should be in place against this, but governance has spoken.

[BIP-94] Enable wstETH/LDO Gauge [Arbitrum]

Vote: YES. - wstETH and LDO make sense to pair on both Arbitrum and Optimism. Lido is proving to be a great partner for Balancer in conquering L2s and the staked eth market.

[BIP-95] Enable wstETH/LDO Gauge [Optimism]

Vote: YES. - See BIP-94

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[BIP-96] Enable palStkAAVE/AAVE 80/20 Gauge w/ 2% emissions cap [Ethereum]

Vote: YES. - Happy to vote for Paladin expanding their horizons with Balancer as well as through the use of a staked AAVE wrapper. Two groups of interest being support at once here and respecting the 2% guidelines. Thumbs up.

[BIP-97] Enable IB/rETH 50/50 Gauge w/2% emissions cap[Optimism]

Vote: YES. - Good to see more rETH pairings and the L2 push on Optimism continuing. Primary liquidity source for IB and bribes intended. Good stuff.

[BIP-98] Fjord (Formerly Copper) and Balancer Exclusive Partnership

Vote: YES. - In my opinion Fjord is a sensible risk for the DAO to assist to lengthen this exclusive partnership. As the crypto market is volatile, token and NFT launches through their Fjord will see ebbs and flows but overall they are one of the best places to do this while leveraging Balancer tech. The financials make sense in terms of Balancer getting returned the principal plus a revenue share after the fact.

[BIP-99] Pay DAO Multisig Stipends for H2 ‘22

Vote: YES. - Thank you for your loyalty to Balancer.

[BIP-100] Allocate BAL Liquidity to Silo Finance

Vote: YES. - It is good for Balancer to utilize it’s idle treasury to facilitate market operations for Silo’s lending markets and deepen ties between the two protocols.

[BIP-101] Enable tetuQi/QI Stable Pool Gauge with 2% emissions cap (Polygon)

Vote: NO. - Tetu has been gaining traction on Polygon and by encompassing QI they are leveraging a long time partner of Balancer to align interests. The 2% cap is respectable and I believe tetu will be a key player on the Polygon network for quite some time. *Edit - I had to change my vote to NO due to the maximum amplification factor, 5000, being used on this pool. Mathematically this does not make sense to do until a pool reaches an extremely sustainable state, if ever, which it is currently not in. I suggest reducing the A factor by 100x to 50.

[BIP-102] Enable the THX/stMATIC Gauge on Polygon with 2% cap

Vote: YES. - THX has been patiently waiting for this pool and I am glad they have the opportunity to finally apply for a gauge. The team plans to move more liquidity over from Uniswap and have been loyal to Balancer overall.

[BIP-103] Karpatkey Balancer Treasury CU Proposal Update

Vote: YES. - Was on the fence here; but overall I believe treasury handling is a necessary process that the DAO needs to have in place. Karpatkey has a proven record, and the proposal outlines a model which incentivizes them to perform their responsibilities in a results driven way.

3 Likes