Election and voting for the Office of Inspector Generals (OIG) is live, voting is open for a week (24th-30th November 2023). It’s time for WAX token holders to elect a new (or reoccurring) candidate for a key position in the WAX on-chain Governance. The OIG Terms are 18 months long, so it’s very important to get the best candidate elected across the options available. Every 6 months, one of the spots are up for voting, where the candidates can re-run, or give room for a new Inspector. 

I sent out a few questions to the three OIG candidates in this election. The hope and intentions of these questions is to learn more about the Candidates, and how they view some of the topics related to the Office of Inspector Generals. They are in general open ended questions, which allows the Inspector Candidate(s) to Interpret the meaning of them in their own way. 

I asked them to respond as short or long as they want, and I personally don’t think a long response necessarily is better than a short one. The best response is the one that get across the intentions and thoughts of that candidate, regardless of length. 

1) In your words, what is the OIG?

• We get to see what they believe the Office of Inspector Generals is.

2) Is the OIG important for WAX users?
If so, why? If not, whom is it important for?

• We get to see their broader views on the direct/in-direct impact of the OIG onto the WAX users.

3) In your opinion, what’s the main use-case of WAX, and does it differ from other chains?

• We get to learn what they believe the use-case of WAX is.

4) Guilds create a lot of different things, which at times can be difficult to rate.
Which set of skills do you think an OIG member need to possess for this job, and do you believe you have those skills?

• This has been a big topic over the years, and continues to be a place of dispute. It’s difficult to assess the value of a product, service or tool. It’s not a simple task, so here we can learn what they believe is necessary to be able to perform that task. 

The order of these candidates is simply the speed of response. The faster they return with a response to my questions, the higher up in this article they are placed.

- In your words, what is the OIG?
The OIG are the mediator between the Guilds and Blockproducers, and should ensure they work well together, and do what they are supposed to, through rating them. I also believe they should take a bigger role in being the interface between the wax-team and the people using the chain. I see lots of confusion about how wax labs is run too, in regards to the OIG/WaxTeam, and I want to see if we can strengthen and solidify the roles here. (Exactly what the OIG does should also be made much more clearer for everyone, if that's even something that has to be asked, IMO!)

- Is the OIG important for WAX users? 
The OIG is, by extension, important for normal wax users, since it's the OIG that interacts with all the parties doing the most changes to how wax is run, but I don't think it is apparent or even understood by most people. This should, again, be made clearer, so everyone on wax see and understand how it's being run.

- In your opinion, what’s the main use-case of WAX, and does it differ from other chains?
I've used a lot of different chains, but for me, wax is the best, since there is almost 0 delay in transactions, it's easy to read and gather data, and stuff like immutable/mutable attributes makes a lot of cool use-cases for games. I think it should be even more focused on going forward, how good wax is for interacting with games!

- Guilds create a lot of different things, which at times can be difficult to rate. Which set of skills do you think an OIG member need to possess for this job, and do you believe you have those skills?
For rating the guilds, I think it's important to be able to read the code, and understand it, as well as have a greater understanding of the wax ecosystem. But I think it's even more important to project manager skills, as you actually need to convey the information, see the bigger picture, and make the interactions between the guilds and the OIG as frictionless as possible. Being able to give constructive feedback is crucial, and for the guilds to be able to do good work, which in turn can be rated well, they have to know what is needed most, and where they fit into all of it. I do believe I have those skills!

- In your words, what is the OIG?
The OIG is composed of 3 officers periodically voted by the WAX community and it is meant to oversee the work of the guilds that power the network.

- Is the OIG important for WAX users? 
It is very important for WAX users to have these independent officers checking the work of the guilds to ensure that the blockchain operates well and that all guilds are adding value to the ecosystem. 

- In your opinion, what’s the main use-case of WAX, and does it differ from other chains?
WAX's main use case is evidently the NFT collectibles market. It differs from other chains in many aspects, some of which include having no gas fees. The atomicassets standard for NFTs that is part of WAX is very interesting also and allows for easy gamification of projects. One of my favorite features, thinking from an end-user perspective, is the Cloud Wallet, which allows for easy onboarding of non-web3 users into our ecosystem (although it used to be even easier before the paywall was implemented). 

- Guilds create a lot of different things, which at times can be difficult to rate. Which set of skills do you think an OIG member need to possess for this job, and do you believe you have those skills?
I've been in the WAX space for 2.5 years as founder and CEO of Apex NFT Brasil, one of the most respectable dev studios for hire in the space, so I have first-hand experience in dealing with development and interacting with the chain's infrastructure, hence being capacitated for the role of the OIG.

[Further comments from Victor]
I know there's a lot of brilliant minds working on WAX and that the other candidates who have entered this election are extremely technically skilled, and I greatly respect the work that they've done. However, in my humble opinion, I believe the WAX community should eventually bring in fresh blood to the OIG (rather than always elect the same folks and maintain the status quo) and start encompassing responsibilities that go beyond the technical aspects of overseeing guild operations. Not to get off topic but I see the WAX blockchain as a platform technology that enables creators to enter the web3 paradigm, however, as great as the technology is, the chain lacks institutional marketing and coordinated product and marketing-oriented efforts for growth. Albeit I fully understand that is not the role of the OIG, I would like to use this space here to draw attention to the fact that any technology is ultimately as good as its end-user adoption and WAX (as an institution) has been failing miserably at that over the past couple of years. I absolutely love the chain, the guilds and the community, but we must grow to survive. Blockchains in my opinion are like startups, not all of them will make it in the long run, therefore it should be in everyone's best interest here to come together, foster communication and, one way or another, fight for an open channel of communication with some of WAX's top level folks in order to pressure for more engagement in efforts to pursue  the chain's growth.

- In your words, what is the OIG?
I actually wrote that for the wiki
https://github.com/wax-office-of-inspector-general/waxguilds/wiki/What-is-the-OIG

Screenshot from the WAX OIG Wiki

- Is the OIG important for WAX users?
The primary mission of the OIG is to add value to the chain by conducting reviews of their guilds, which aligns with the best interests of every WAX token holder.

- In your opinion, what’s the main use-case of WAX, and does it differ from other chains?
I may be biased due to my experience in game development, but I believe that NFT based games represent the best use case. Of course, we also have the best NFT marketplaces! Our main assets are the nearly instantaneous transactions and extremely low fees.

- Guilds create a lot of different things, which at times can be difficult to rate. Which set of skills do you think an OIG member need to possess for this job, and do you believe you have those skills?
I believe the most important skill is to stay connected with the community and the guilds, understanding what's going on, and being responsive and flexible enough to adapt the evaluation process to the reality of the crypto market. And yes, I believe I possess those skills.

Summary

The OIG election is one of the key elements of the WAX Governance system, it provides the community with a chance to steer the focus of the WAX ecosystem through changing who is helping to create and follow the set of guidelines for guilds. Any small team of individuals, will have different strengths and weaknesses. Each elected Inspector is a separate entity, with different skills and ways of operating. They all review each guild, and perform their tasks to the best of their abilities. Some of their responsibilities are outlined clearly, like reviewing guilds, communicating with the WAX team, talking with guilds etc. While some might be assumptions, either from themselves, or from the community. How they solve some of their tasks might not be how you would approach them, which is fine. 

This is why it’s important to raise your concerns, provide feedback, and vote, regardless if you have 1 WAXP staked or 1,000,000 WAXP staked. The user with 1,000,000 WAXP will have a bigger impact on the election. But if a lot of real user accounts are voicing their opinion, it will have indirect effects on the OIG.
Last election there was a lot of feedback about transparency, communication and unclear guidelines. The candidates voicing most of these concerns, did not get elected. Yet, it resulted in improvements in all those 3 areas. 

So don’t feel like your voice is not heard, instead gather your friends and vote for the candidate you think is best suited for the job. If you have any feedback, or would love to see some improvements or changes? Share them in some constructive and digestible way. Likely a message in a text chat like Telegram or Discord will be forgotten or missed. But a YouTube video or Blog post is easily shared and talked about.  

If you are a candidate, don't expect whales to vote for a person they don't know, since they entrust you with 18 months work. This is specially true if those whales build products or even operate a guild. As the elected candidate has a direct impact on their business, they will likely want someone they believe will do a good job. If they don't know who you are, they won't know if you will do a good job or not. Your task is to get your candidacy out there, known to people. Make your case, why you should be hired by the chain, for the token holders. What value do you add, and why are you better than the other candidate(s)? If you expect to be able to be passive, and earn trust from people that don't know you... it's going to be unlikely. So get out there, find ways to get your voice heard, and let everyone know. 

Let’s build a better WAX together, one step at a time