Intro to The Brain Trust
Written by Yohan GG (gotchuglobal)
The Brain Trust, referred to as TBT, is a diverse group of developers, artists, traders, and engineers all focused on researching digital assets. Each member decided to build upon their passion for crypto to focus on empowering the growth of diversity within the crypto community through investing and helping develop innovative projects within DeFi and the NFT space. With this, The Brain Trust DAO was created.
We began simply as a group of friends intrigued by the incredible rise of cryptocurrencies and wanted to be a part of the journey. After meeting each other in a larger Discord server, we built a strong connection of trust amongst friends and realized how much we enjoyed discussing ideas, trading together, and pushing each other past our limits (really just means a lot of bullying goes on lol).
In an effort to promote positivity and hold each other accountable, Kellz, the DAOs initial founder, decided to create a space for us to join together and grow as a collective effort centered around investing, building, and portraying our talents to the world.
Each of our members started off as friends, which led to us trusting each other through all of life’s difficult decisions. We want to offer a similar experience to new members as we believe that the best way to take advantage of and support the crypto space is to connect with all types of individuals across the world.
Quote from Q, co-founder and one of TBT’s treasury managers, on why we formed a DAO explains this perfectly:
Given that we are a community, and as such there is value that exists for being a part of it. It is well understood that the value of the community is not intrinsic, and is in fact created through individual actors’ collaboration.
A DAO is an efficient and reliable way to assess this value, while also acknowledging contributions. It also allows a community to anonymously and collectively work towards a goal (or goals) in confidence.
From a macro perspective, we are already participants in a Metaverse, and are in fact a community of people vying for internet leverage not only individually, but as a group. A DAO allows us to concentrate this energy on specific objectives as a community.
The idea is to leverage individual skills and proficiencies to provide a better community for all, to create real value.
What more can be said? As the crypto space develops further and expands to more traditional frameworks, this entire community has the opportunity to spread its ideals of kinetic interactions, assisted innovation, and growth as a collective to people around the world. In an era where collaboration is possible at a moment’s notice, we have the chance to create a new ecosystem across all economies, social structures, and governance thresholds. It’s only right that we do our part in not only invoking but supporting what it means to form and join a DAO.
One key point surrounding DAOs that we find the most intriguing is the various backgrounds that each member originates from, our many talents, and how we all have something we learn from one another. We come from a diverse set of talents to say the least and are always looking to discuss and collaborate with fellow blockchain enthusiasts, developers and artists to assist in growing this space even further.
Meet the team!
Portrayed below are our illustrious core team and their favorite jpegs/profiles. We owe a lot to the Solana community and are big fans of multiple NFT projects, which we think is easy to tell.
Etsploit (etsploit)
Etsploit is a cybersecurity professional by day and an artist/developer by night. Amongst his many talents, ET simply enjoys building things and supporting those around him.
With a background as a security controls assessor/auditor and cloud architect, he has a diverse background that includes Oracle and AWS Cloud.
ET has spent countless times max bidding trades with next to no emotion and it’s where his technical side shines. He’s well known to diamond hand trades underwater, with a level of conviction that the rest of us can only imagine. Even so, he has dedicated an incredible amount of time to teaching and helping us grow in the space, and we could not be any more grateful.
However, it wasn’t until he saw the incredible world of NFTs that he realized he could pursue another passion — art.
With an initial drop as an ode to the 0N1 Force project, ET released his “Tomodachi series”, which displayed hand-drawn pieces of other members of the DAO as well as our close friends. Even with knowledge of the immense profits behind NFT sales/reselling, he wanted to prioritize royalty payments going back to the inspiration themselves or to charities amongst loved ones. It’s become evident that this is where ET finds true value in the crypto space and he’ll do anything to assist others in realizing it as well.
He has now dove even deeper into the NFT rabbit hole and currently leads our initial project, Mango Heroes. He plans for this to be the first of many and is eager to reveal more about the project in subsequent articles.
Kellz (Ke2Lz)
Kellz is the Founder of The Brain Trust community. He created The Brain Trust as an outlet for internet friends to share more intimate ideas that they normally wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing in larger Discord groups. Since then, the group has grown into much more than that and has become a launchpad for inclusivity, engagement, and member-created projects.
He is currently the Lead Engineer overseeing a team of talented designers for an industry-leading engineering firm specializing in oil and gas product design.
His passion for design has led him to become a talented graphic designer and newly minted NFT artist. Over the last year, he has been fully immersed in the crypto universe and is TBT’s in-house NFT degen. In true degen nature, Kellz has taken the lead amongst us with the most flips across Solana NFTs and has truly become the certified minter of the group.
Beyond this, Kellz has thrived as a researcher within the group, which originated in finding new and unknown projects. With a successful beginning in the DeFi sector, Kellz now has his trusted liquidity pools and is more than ready farm to his heart’s content.
MelBot (0xYogiLocs)
MelBot is our people person! She manages the community as well as helps lead Operations for the DAO. After graduating with a B.S. in Fashion Merchandising (and minoring in Fashion Design and in Business), MelBot spent a big chunk of her career path in the retail and foodservice industries. This career path has allowed her to deepen her communication skills and further hone her intuitive and empathetic nature.
Mel gets along with all walks of people and anticipates their needs before they even know what they need. At the top of the 2021 year, Mel realized how much she enjoyed administrative work as well as community management. Being that both things are effortless for her, she made the pivot to becoming a virtual assistant.
Not too long after, Mel was introduced to the crypto space & happily fell down the rabbit hole. After initially trading stocks and options, she caught a quick glimpse of a crypto chat and wanted to learn more. With a structured trading mindset, she quickly understood the ins and outs of trading crypto and flipped her way from $30 to $3k in a matter of days. After seeing such success, she was eager to learn more. She’s had the opportunity now to join other crypto projects as a community manager, where she thrives as always.
Now she lives, breathes, and dreams crypto and works to make sure everyone feels at home in this space. This has been her superpower within our group and we have enjoyed watching her progress into the helpful and encouraging person she is today.
Myco (myco_dye)
Myco is one of our resident artists and a fellow Community Manager along with MelBot. We met Myco as an expert in construction with a passion for nature and gardening. She is currently a Project Manager and heavy equipment operator for a concrete company based in the northeast and a mycology expert. She’s amongst some of the younger badasses in the group and has been insightful in providing different perspectives to our advisors.
Tackling every challenge with the same enthusiasm, Myco is now obtaining her construction management degree and spends most of her career path in the construction industry. Starting with quality control, her progress has led her to batching, equipment operating, sales, and project management.
Throughout the year, she’s devoted the majority of her time working towards a common goal with her fellow companions of TBT in the crypto world, and has continued to hone her analytical skills to execute decisions effectively. As an equal partner to her technical achievements, she is always communicative and eager to help build tight-knit communities, especially with support groups to create a safe space for those in search of information on how to navigate the ecosystem.
As of recent, she’s taken up digital artistry and has made her way to taking part in several NFT projects whose plans include contributing to society and the wellbeing of our environment.
She now plans to incorporate cryptocurrency, mycology, and digital art into the world of construction. Myco hopes to address the importance and possibility of using environmentally friendly “means and methods” to maintain our planet without having to sacrifice industrial-level strength.
One step at a time.
Yandre (yanique_a)
Yandre is a software engineer who has taken an interest in tech since hacking Pokemon games at the age of 12. He has worked and developed on multiple technologies throughout the years, including mobile, web, AI, and desktop applications.
As the DAOs lead developer, Yandre has spent time learning the ins and outs of both the Solana and Ethereum blockchains. He currently spearheads part of the Mango Heroes dev team and is more than capable of implementing his code across any project in the SOL ecosystem.
After first hearing about Bitcoin in 2014, he decided to fully embrace the crypto space in mid-2021 when he met the team members of The Brain Trust in a mutual crypto/equity trading Discord. What once began as gentle journey through the land of DeFi quickly turned to an expansive hunt for the next contract to mint from, the highest yielding farms, and wherever he can borrow against his assets for even more yield. A true passive incooomer.
As a crypto engineer and trader, he along with the rest of The Brain Trust conglomerate will continue to provide value to the crypto space through the DAO and other activities.
Yohan GG (gotchuglobal)
Yohan GG, known to friends as Market Buy or Buy *more* SOL is a Writer and Treasury Manager for TBT. As an investor in both DeFi projects and the Solana ecosystem, he enjoys learning about the newest protocols, reading up on topics across all sectors, and testing out any project that comes his way in an effort to help teams create the best product imaginable.
GG has experience primarily as a Legal Researcher and has spent time as a Clerk at law firms practicing Family, Criminal, and Personal Injury. Following this experience, he traveled abroad to Milan to study International Law and thoroughly enjoyed his time there. Even though this trip was cut short by the impending Covid crisis, he felt so reinvigorated being amongst a cultural group of people from all over the world that he wanted to replicate that same feeling in his career and personal life.
Crypto gave him an opportunity to join a collective effort to spread education and goodwill. What started as initially trading Btc and Eth on mt4, eventually turned to a full dedication to the growth and development of blockchain technology as well as its continued expansion to other parts of the world. In order to pursue such development, GG prioritizes investments in projects developing for interoperability, multichain DeFi protocols, and protocols earning yield on treasury assets to support other projects.
Finding friends that can support you in endeavors and trust at the same time can be rare, so it’s only right this group embodies this ideal of community. Even more so, GG enjoys the insightful discussion that traverses an immense number of topics throughout the group and its members. Those of interest to him include uncollateralized loans on Solana, MEV and Reorgs, protocol composers, trading bots, and crypto’s developments in Africa.
We hope you enjoyed learning more about us!
