Hello friends,
The last few months have been an incredible journey. The NEAR ecosystem has experienced very rapid growth that has put everything from RPC nodes to NF staff and Guilds to the test.
During the months of November and December we experienced several win, a couple of setbacks and a lot of learnings.
Below is a summary of the core initiatives and results:
Product Consulting
For lack of a better term, we spent a lot of time doing what could be described as ‘consulting’ work. Silicon has always had two main operating modes with the same objective: assist projects improve their product and go-to market strategy to increase adoption, awareness, and growth of NEAR ecosystem as a whole. The two modes are:
- ‘Open-Door’ Policy: we meet with anyone that reaches out to us - directly or via referrals, brand new with an idea or advanced and about to launch. We are often a sounding board and establish on-going relationships of trust, a resourceful friend you can always lean on when you need help.
- Pro-active approach: We spend A LOT of time (full time+) navigating the NEAR (and increasingly Aurora, Octopus) Ecosystems to keep up w. projects, trends, and in particular gathering sentiment and feedback from the community. Leveraging the relationship building, we reach out w. bug reports or feature suggestions, etc. I like to see it as open-sourced market research
- Project Specific: come in to assist with a well defined scope of work
Some of the most notable engagements over the November, December period included working closely with the TENK team and Misfits launch, that have since ignited an NFT explosion. On-going work with AstroDAO, Metapool, REF, OIN Finance, among others.
Global Onboarding Project
While the intention was always to hand over the Global Onboarding Project to a new full-time Product Manager at the NF, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to kickstart the project and be involved. One of the things I like about NEAR is the willingness to trust people, fuelling growth within the community.
The Global Onboarding project stretched our ability to execute beyond our current capacity, both in terms of what was expected professionally and the time commitment. After eight weeks it became clear that the scrappy, messy, community initiative described above was not the right fit the more corporate, laser-focused need of the task at hand.
Once again, we are thankful to all who trusted and supported us in leading this initiative. The challenges of this project continue to push us to become better people and professionals. We continue to grow together.
Podcast
The Wild User Interviews Podcast is one of the Silicon initiatives that I enjoyed the most. It is also an excellent example of an initiative that has been temporarily on hold as I prioritised other workloads and juggle to re-organise things. It saddens me to admit that even though I have three excellent interviews that were recorded months ago, I have not had the chance to edit or publish them.
The Wild User Interviews podcast is expected to make a roaring comeback very SOON.
YouTube Channel
As we wrestled with ways to mass-onboard new users, and as NEAR was reaching ATH in both price and newcomers, I started generating more content for YouTube. The aim was simple: deep dives into products that would take a total beginner into a confider user (who can explain the same concepts to someone else.
While I continue to tweak the structure of the videos, content, etc. so far the reception and growth have FAR exceeded any expectations. I am particularly moved by some very encouraging comments, but the analytics are also a strong signal that this is an area to double down on.
Content includes:
- Farming Guide: HUGE Returns on Trisolaris…
- $WANNA be rich? Ultimate Guide to Farming WannaSwap
- Ultimate Guide to $META IDO on Skyward
- HOT! OINDAO v3 Launches on NEAR. How to issue nUSDO
- Just in! Terra x NEAR Partnership. How to …
- How to Earn Passive Income on Bridge Economy
- Max Returns w Yield Optimizer Vaporwave…
- (Earn More with xREF: Deep Dive into REF Finance latest single-sided revenue-sharing vault (NEAR) - YouTube)
- Deep Dive Myriad Social
- Alpha! Leverage Like a Boss w Burrow Cash
- THIS will unlock BILLIONS. Deep Dive into ROSE Finance
Analytics
The content pipeline is filling up quick. If you are a project or guild interested in being featured - please reach out!
Way Forward
We are not the only ones evolving, to keep up with growth there are A LOT of changes being introduced to the Guilds program.
While I will continue to help out anyone and everyone that needs some product help and is open to feedback in my personal capacity, the time has come to expand the Silicon Council and pass on the baton.
I’ve always admired the way in which Claudio executes - we got in touch around this time last year. Together we set up NEAR Hispano and very quickly he was able to recruit and entrust a remarkable Council that to this day continue to deliver while we stepped aside as advisers, affording us more time for other projects.
I’m in the process of recruiting new Council Members for Silicon! If you, or anyone you know interested in joining, please reach out!
I will continue to focus on creating the best content possible and focusing on some personal projects that I believe will add the most value to the ecosystem.
