AFC Application - Marcelo Alvarenga

Governance Astar Finance Committee
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  • Full Name and Timezone: Marcelo Alvarenga, UTC-5
  • Relevant Experience:
    I have several years of experience in the blockchain space, having worked as a director at a Swiss bank specialized in digital assets. My background bridges both finance and technology, holding a degree in economics and being a full-stack Rust developer. Moreover, I recently completed wave 6 of PBA Campus organized by the Polkadot Blockchain Academy, further deepening my technical understanding of Substrate and the broader Polkadot ecosystem.
  • Track Record of Contributions:
    I have served for one year on the Treasury Council of Moonbeam and Moonriver, where I contributed to proposal assessments, budget allocations, and strategic planning. I’ve also been a backer of Astar and its ecosystem since the original parachain auction.
  • Motivation and Goals:
    I’m applying to the Astar Financial Council to contribute both my technical expertise and financial governance experience to support sustainable growth in the Astar ecosystem. My goals for this term are to promote transparency, improve treasury proposal standards, and support impactful initiatives.
  • Weekly Availability:
    8–10 hours/week
  • Verified Onchain Identity on Astar:
    Zi8UE4iU6E4VQVebkdSWfWYXPwVL9pmE7ZBNYsiuMdPQvFc
  • Disclosures:
    I have no conflicts of interest to declare.
  • Commitment:
    I am fully committed to attending live meetings, contributing actively, and operating with transparency and accountability.

I remain available for any questions.

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Hi @marcelo

Thanks a lot for your application, can you confirm this is your profile on Moonbeam:

  • Could you share more about your knowledge related to DeFi?
  • As director of a Swiss bank specialized in digital assets, was this more towards compliance or as possible investment instrument?
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Hi Marteen,

Thanks for the questions.

Yes, I can confirm this is my profile there.

I am pretty knowledgeable and have tried hands-on pretty much every category of DeFi dApps across several ecosystems (EVM, Substrate, Solana, Cosmos). I have used most dApps deployed across the Astar chains as well (e.g. Starlay, ArthSwap).

I have worked both on business operations (e.g. hot and cold digital custody, on-chain transactions) and on sales (e.g. direct exposure to digital assets, structured products, discretionary mandates, options, futures, among others). I have a solid knowledge of compliance requirements for digital assets in Switzerland.

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Hi, @marcelo san

This is my first post on the forum.
Nice to meet you all.

I’m excited about the establishment of the Astar Finance Committee (AFC).
However, I’m concerned about the risks of using treasury assets for DeFi operations during a time when markets are turbulent, such as with tariff policies, and would like to know if the timing poses any dangers.

If there are risks, I believe we should carefully choose the right timing.

I’d greatly appreciate the insights of Marcelo-san, who has a career as a director at a Swiss digital asset bank and is well-versed in DeFi.

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That’s a valid concern @AstarPunks, and I agree that timing is an important factor, especially in uncertain market conditions.

That said, I believe the AFC should focus on establishing clear procedures and risk management frameworks that allow for consistent, principled decision-making regardless of short-term volatility. While we should remain risk-averse with treasury assets, it’s equally important to ensure we are not overly passive. Capital efficiency is key to maximizing the impact of the treasury.

By defining allocation guidelines, risk parameters, and diversification strategies in advance, we can strike the right balance: protecting the treasury while still enabling it to grow and support the ecosystem effectively.

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@marcelo san
Thank you very much for your response.
I learned a lot from it.
Personally, I would like to express my support for you becoming a member of the AFC.

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Hi @marcelo

thank you for your application.

Having somebody with your background in the team sound like a good fit to me.

Could you tell us what are you 2-3 bigests achivement while you were part of Treasury Councul of Moonbeam?

If you were ellected to be part of the AFC, could you tell us what kind of DeFi investment strategy you’d see fit to maximize Astar community treasury while keeping risk to a reasonable lvl?

thanks for your time :slight_smile:

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Hi Marcelo and welcome to Astar :glowing_star:
I think that having someone who has experience with other ecosystems can help Astar differentiate strategies to optimize treasury management.
I would just like to go into more detail about the results achieved previously, could you please provide some examples or the goals achieved with your management of Moonbeam’s Treasury? I would like to know in broad terms what are the strategies you would like to use for the treasury :smile:

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Hi @Mouthmouth68 and @VasaKing!

During my time on the council, the treasury in Moonbeam served a different purpose. Our primary goal was to fund critical infrastructure that would otherwise be economically unfeasible (e.g., RPC providers, new wallet features).

We allocated a portion of the total treasury budget each semester and voted reactively on proposals submitted to the forum. This was before OpenGov.

One of the major achievements during my tenure was that the treasuries actually grew in GLMR and MOVR terms, despite funding several costly proposals. Additionally, the Council introduced a structured framework to evaluate proposals from RPC providers, ensuring fair and consistent decisions. Each semester, we typically received 4–5 proposals and selected 2 based on these well-defined criteria.

DeFi investment strategies should be defined collectively by the AFC, ensuring alignment with the community’s best interests. Some approaches that could be suitable could be building POL (e.g. what Polkadot does on Hydration) and diversifying treasury assets (e.g. Polkadot is also doing that with stablecoins), always taking a risk-averse approach in my opinion.

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Hi @marcelo

Thank for your answer.

Regarding your achievement with Moonbeams treasury, what are the actions the Moonbeam treasury coucil implemented to grow the treasury despite financing costy proposals? Was it a simple “proper management” or you and the council applied additionals strategies?
Also, i’m not very knowledgeable about moonbeam income, what were the treasury source of income at that time? (just curious ^^)

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Hi @Mouthmouth68

I made a mistake in my previous statement. Only the Moonriver treasury increased in MOVR terms. The Moonbeam treasury decreased in GLMR terms, although by far less than the amount we spent (about 500k USD) during my time on the Council. There is a comprehensive transparency report available here if you’re interested.

20% of transaction fees were directed to the treasury. My mandate was solely to evaluate proposals and approve expenditures within the allocated budget, not to actively pursue strategies to grow the treasury. So, in response to your question, it was more about proper management of resources than additional strategies.

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Hi @marcelo, thank you for your interest in becoming part of our AFC team, a team that will be deeply committed to protecting our resources, allocating them to actions that generate a good return, and, as a result, increasing our treasury.

As @VasaKing mentioned, your experience in another ecosystem could provide us with a different perspective on how things should be done or on actions that have proven successful in the past.

However, I would like to know more about your involvement in the Astar ecosystem. While this is not a requirement, I would like to understand if you have contributed in any way, as I am interested in learning more about your ideals regarding our protocol. In addition, I would like more references to your contributions: posts, links to the Moonbeam forum, recommendations from friends within the ecosystem, or anything else that can help us get to know you better.

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Hi @Juminstock,

I have been involved in the ecosystem since its early days. I got into Polkadot before it was listed on any exchanges (private round) and actively participated in the first rounds of parachain auctions for both Kusama and Polkadot. That’s when I discovered Astar (and Shiden). Since the TGE, I have maintained a considerable investment in ASTR and have been hodling/staking ever since. I have been present on-chain (Astar, Astar EVM, Astar zkEVM, yet to try Soneium) and have been a hodler of an Astar Degen since launch.

The link to my Moonbeam forum profile has been posted by Maarten above. You can check my activity there!

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Hi Marcelo, Welcome, as the other guys have asked I would like to know what was your strategy to grow the treasure of the other networks you participated in.

  1. What assets or instruments did you use to obtain returns, or mitigate risks?

  2. What was your plan for tokenomics to adjust to the reality of the market, since it is very changeable, for example, did you recommend to move to stable or deposit native tokens in staking protocols, LSD or liquidity pools to mitigate price drops ? or on the contrary when the price increased what kind of strategies did you recommend to maximize performance?

  3. Can you give an idea or a sample of the research you did on the projects/protocols you recommended to use in DeFi to perform the economic strategy, what did you analyze to enter?

  4. What role of importance would you give to ASTR in case of being elected and what recommendations would you give about the ASTR tokens belonging to the fund placed in dApp Staking.

The market is untamed, and to manage treasury requires more than TradFi market experience, it requires a constant and adaptable strategy where risk mitigation is the main standard, in other words, it requires a clinical eye to see the economic gaps that can be exploited while surfing a market that is wild and changing, especially in times of low volume and general liquidity. Thank you.

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Hi @Vangardem,

As previously mentioned, my mandate was not to actively grow the treasury, so questions 1 and 2 don’t directly apply. The growth I referred to was the result of sound budget management: carefully defining and allocating expenditure so that revenue from transaction fees could replenish the treasury over time, at least to some satisfactory extent in order to keep its runway as long as possible. What we implemented at Moonbeam was to treat both Moonbeam and Moonriver treasuries as one, such as that any proposal would have to request 80% of the desired USD amount in GLMR and 20% in MOVR, taking a 30-day average price.

My approach would be to first define with the AFC clear evaluation criteria and then assess protocols based on those standards. These include factors such as the protocol’s reputation and track record, the team behind it, available liquidity, audit reports, and, ultimately, I would review the source code myself (smart contracts or pallets) to ensure a solid technical foundation.

As for ASTR, it plays the most central role. The ultimate goal of any iniciative such as the AFC imo is to create value in the ecosystem and drive demand for ASTR.

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Thank you for your response.