Hello, NEAR Community! Glad to share my one week experience as a NEAR mod.
PS. I’m completely new to Web3 and Open Web. My background is more of from the crypto and DeFi industries (the marketing side). I am most familiar with crypto and DeFi platforms, how wallets work, etc. Before this mod trial, I started helping with guild marketing.
I started coming in as mod last January 3. I was added to the moderators’ Telegram group and the NEAR Concierge Team on Discord - and was welcomed warmly by our diverse NEAR mods team. Here are some key highlights that happened last week:
Day 1
- I created my first NEAR wallet!
- Bought NEAR via Binance worth $20 (I didn’t know where to buy - so I looked it up on on the website
- Transferred NEAR from Binance to NEAR with my one-time funding address
- Monitored all general channels (#chat , #staking , #community-support , #ecosystem-success , #global-onboarding , and also #community-support) and familiarized myself on how mods typically answer questions sent to these channels
- Took note of the following problems/concerns users are sending in these channels
- How to fund their NEAR wallet
- Asking mods / other community members for 0.1 NEAR to activate my wallet
- Problems with bridging from Ethereum network to NEAR protocol
- Asked Hai (one of our mods - who was very very helpful!) questions about how to answer some concerns (but didn’t reply to any of them yet)
- Started to read through the FAQs page to get a grasp on how to support the community
Day 2
- Watched walkthrough videos on YouTube on how to bridge from ETH to NEAR Protocol (users often have problems with bridging)
- First time sending 0.1 NEAR to a community member
Day 3
- Deeper dive into the technical parts: What is the faucet? PARAS? How does AURORA work?
- First day I was given mod access on Discord
- Gave two or three people 0.1 NEAR (not sure if this is advisable but wanted to help out some community members)
- Continuously monitoring and trying to reply to some general questions sent to the channels
Day 4
- Still monitored all general channels (#chat , #staking , #community-support , #ecosystem-success , #global-onboarding , and also #community-support)
- Tried to answer some general questions
- Met the whole community team with Grace (yay :D)
Day 5
- Learned that problems like these need to be addressed to the Wannaswap community
- Monitored all general channels
Day 6
- I realized that being a mod is just not for me at the moment as I’m aware that I’m not that knowledgable about the industry yet, thus not that confident to answer technical stuff after a few days of being onboarded.
Moving forward, it has come to a decision that I will only now be supporting the community team marketing-wise and completely letting go of the moderator role.
After a few days, here are some of my observations:
- This might be the best moderator team I have ever worked with! Very punctual, straightforward, very knowledgeable, friendly, PLUS you can feel the team spirit and dedication from each one of them. I honestly commend the team for that!
- From a new user perspective: An official platform walkthrough would be so much helpful for someone like me who is a complete beginner in the space. As mentioned, I’m new to Web3.
- There is not much owned educational content (infographics as step by step guide). Some mods share infographics or guides posted by other platforms’ social media posts - this is not wrong, but an owned infographics would be so much better.
- After answering questions from the community, mods encourage to read more about their concerns on Zendesk. Again, I’m not saying that this is wrong, but in my opinion, a better consumer experience for beginners is giving them simple, easy to read and comprehend step by step infographics on what they need to do to be fully onboarded without ever leaving the platform they are currently on.
That’s all! More power to this awesome team!!
