Kitchen Interviews: Chef Nina, The Duck. 🦆

🦆Chef Nina: Hello CAKE holders! I am interviewing myself for the kitchen interview this time, don’t ask me the definition of interview! I am going to answer the questions about me and also about PancakeSwap. There are many… Here we go!

🦆: The first one is traditional one… about myself, my role on the PancakeSwap team and my strength.

🦆: Originally I joined the team as the Japanese community manager and now I do various tasks such as answering users’ questions, collecting feedback from Twitter/Telegram/Discord/Reddit etc, coordinating translations of the website, planning community events, organising manual tests, yeeting scammers, reporting phishing sites, making dev progress video, quacking to the other chefs etc etc. I don’t know what to call my role now but I like what Chef Hops assigned to me — duck.

My strength is… fmmm once Chef Bugs said “Duckie fights for what duckie believes with strong opinion”, so I think that’s my strength.

🦆: How did you meet with PancakeSwap?

🦆: I arrived in the crypto world at the beginning of 2021. Yes, I’m new to this industry. I was a full time software engineer at that time and trading time was very limited. Hence why I got interested in yield farming, then found PancakeSwap. At first I wondered what this joke of the project was. Imagine how a non-crypto person thinks seeing the bunny with pancakes on his head saying “stack ‘em!”… I also didn’t like the anonymity of the dev teams, because it’s suspicious from the users point of view, isn’t it? I worked hard to doxx the chefs while being an admin in the Japanese community. Oh, so I can also say my strength is “scanning online information”, which is a very important skill being a Community Manager. :-p

As a user, I am very proud to be the first PancakeSwap pancake contest winner.

Next contest? Sooon.

Btw doxxing the chefs wasn’t successful so I don’t recommend you to try. Better to spend your time on researching syrup pool projects!

🦆: What’s unique about the Japanese community?

🦆: Japanese users have a famous indirect cultural saying “what they say is different from their honest feelings”, so we have to read behind the words. Also I have to say that they have their very own pace. While the other community groups are discussing PancakeSwap’s new features or CAKE price, Japanese people are talking about “how to generate a wallet address with sequential numbers” or “best idea of task point usage”… a very interesting community indeed.

🦆: What is the biggest challenge in handling the global PancakeSwap community?

🦆: The diversity of a huge user base. There are newbies and veterans, big investors and smaller investors. Some like trading, so they want us to focus on exchange development. Some like IFO, they want us to do it more often in the most profitable way for them. Some love NFTs, while others don’t care. Some hope we can go into the gaming world…. So it’s really difficult to satisfy all of them at the same time.

🦆: What do you think is important to keep in mind when it comes to community management?

🦆: Not to try to manage it as a chef but to manage it as a fellow community member, it is all about the community!

I could make a “pleasant” community by banning anyone who gives harsh opinions and filling the group with bots who only say “strong project””nice duck”. However that will ruin the project and not what we want.

PancakeSwap has become a big project because the users have liked us and advertised us by themselves, not because the chefs are genius bunnies. Most visible example is the admins. Many of the admins are long term CAKE holders, some have been using PancakeSwap longer than me. They’ve started as normal new users, kept engaged by the project and now they are supporting the other new users. I want to increase this kind of virtuous circle.

Not only admins, we have many users who are actually standing at running the community side even though they don’t notice it. Setting up their own NFT community, holding games, writing his own weekly burn reports, tracking supply stats every week, making YouTube video tutorials, creating telegram stickers, writing blog articles about PancakeSwap etc… I can’t finish the introduction.

I know some groups want the chefs to get involved, but I want to keep them as it is. They don’t need to be “backed up by the chefs” and I am concerned that may make their brilliant activity boring.

Of course there are very harsh opinions against the kitchen, I really appreciate it. I think that the people will sell the CAKE and go away if they give up on us. However they talk about what is bad, why it’s like this, what it should be because they believe in the project. As I mentioned “the diversity of a huge user base” is a challenging part, hence we can’t satisfy all users by one shot but we will try day by day. Some users apologise after blaming me hard, it’s okay if that’s your thought. The most harsh users are admins, don’t think they are always making out with the chefs. They support ”PancakeSwap” as a project, not for the chefs so they don’t spoil us. If they think the chefs are doing something wrong against dear PancakeSwap, they criticise it very mercilessly beyond your imagination.

TLTR: We are very proud of our community. It sounds like a PR line but we really are. Love you all ❤

🦆: What do you think is the most important thing for users to survive in the crypto world?

🦆: Learning.
Many new users believe crypto is free money, if they buy tokens recommended by influencers, it goes to the mooooon and they get rich quickly. No, it isn’t. PancakeSwap has been working on lowering the barriers for the users, with an easy to use UI, less fees, etc, but it doesn’t mean you don’t need to understand the risks. Impermanent loss, slippage, judging whether to invest in or not, IFO, tokenomics, protecting your assets… There are many things you have to know, including that the user is solely responsible for their funds.

In addition, please always try to be nice to others. On the internet, some people are not afraid to use abusive language, but the people you are talking to are mostly new to you. You don’t call a stranger a scammer when you meet him on the street for the first time in real life.

🦆: From here I’ll give short answers to some of the community questions!
Why did you choose PancakeSwap?

🦆: My life has changed since I started PancakeSwap. I started paying attention to world affairs and economic news that I hadn’t cared about before, and I’ve made a lot of new friends in this world. I’ve been enjoying it so much that I’ve decided to popularise this fun blockchain technology/crypto thing. PancakeSwap is easy to use, and already had a good reputation as “beginner’s entry point” at that time, so I decided to use PancakeSwap for duckie’s great ambition.

🦆: What’s the the story behind the Panurai NFT?

🦆: Hops wanted to thank admins, who are volunteers, for their dedication to the PancakeSwap community, that’s the starting point. We had an idea with a hammer, but I didn’t want to give the impression that “Admins are banning the users”. Their original task is to guide users, and they’ve spent more time on that rather than banning users. I wanted to give the impression that “Admins are super men/women who help the users to bake pancakes”, and made a draft with a cloak and a whisk. Chef Cecy cooked it up to something much better, and she kindly added a small duckie. This is the story of why he wears a cloak and has kitchen tools with a dropped hammer on the ground.

🦆: How long is your working hour? Is it true that you never sleep?

🦆: As much as I want to quack.

🥟Chef Bun: Yes, and according to my experience working with Chef Nina, yes.

🦆: What is essential while working?

🦆: Hot tea! I always drink milk tea with honey during IFOs. Do you prefer coffee? Ok we can’t be friends.

🦆: Did you have any experience with community management before?

🦆: Not as a job, although I have been an admin of multiple non-crypto projects. My specialty is mechanical engineering. ;-)

My favourite sticker :-)

🦆: Who’s the best chef friend?

🦆: Chef Bun and Chef Fran, Community Manager(CM) chefs!! We got 2 more Community related chefs this week. Bun became Project Manager(PM) a few months back, as he’s very good at Kitchen tidying.

🦆: Do you really fight with the other chefs?

🦆: Yeah… often. What the community wants and the priorities to be achieved as a project sometimes differ. Chefs should be on the project side, but as a Community Manager I mostly stand on the community side. I have the below attitude in the fighting case, which must be a headache for CM-turned-PM Chef Bun.

🧉Chef Fran: Nina is a duck that can be everywhere at the same time. At one point I felt her as my only partner in terms of community. She is always willing to listen to users and transfer their concerns to the kitchen.

She loves to be organising things, always from different places in the world! It makes working and meeting always fun. I love learning from her, many times I’m asking her about different things. For many more quacks in the future!

🥟Chef Bun: Nina is the one who did my onboarding when I first joined the kitchen. Working with her has been a charming experience. While she is always learning something new while working with either engineering bunnies or business development bunnies. I think we all can learn something about the “learn to earn” spirit from our lovely duckie. And rest assured your feedback has been quacked and shared loud and clear with the correct Chefs in the kitchen.

🦆: How many languages do you speak?

🦆: I’d say three. I personally started to learn two more last year… one that I can pronounce but don’t understand the meaning, one that I can’t pronounce but I understand the meaning. The more languages I understand, the more communities I can interact. ;-)
*I intentionally don’t say which languages. Don’t doxx me, quack!

🦆: How do you spend your free time?

🦆: Travelling was my hobby before the pandemic. Now I mostly spend my free time planning something fun for PancakeSwap…or reading. I live by a pond, and often read a book on a bench with a café latte. I am currently reading Mastering Ethereum for the umpteenth time. It’s interesting. Yup, I need to exercise like Snowbie.

🦆: What is your time zone?

🦆: This is a question even other chefs ask me. I often travel cross-country, so I don’t have a set time zone. In the last 6 months, I changed my time zone 4 times.

🦆: Why choose to become a duckie instead of a bunny?

🦆: Ducks are much prettier than bunnies!

🦆: When did duck addiction start?

🦆: I don’t remember… I have always loved ducks since my childhood, never owning them though. I was already a duck from when I was an admin.

🦆: Do you have a Squad?

🦆: Yes I do. I couldn’t buy in the initial launch sale as they sold out so quickly, I bought them on the marketplace. My Squad isn’t a unique bunny but the cutest one. I know all Squad owners think the same, “Mine is the best” ehehehe.

🦆: Are chefs rich?

🦆: No, sorry for disappointing you. We’re all super average citizens.

🦆: Is PancakeSwap a Japanese project?

🦆: No. There were founding members with a connection to Japan, but none were Japanese.

🦆: Is PancakeSwap a Chinese project?

🦆: No. I know this kind of question is asked many times in the community. The bunnies come from a wide variety of nationalities. (and timezones too, working in the kitchen is a fascinating yet challenging experience)

🦆: Why did the former chefs leave? Any drama?

🦆: Hops had realised he had not been performing at his best and brought Snowball to the kitchen. He took over, then retired… nothing special, no fight. Other chefs left to pursue personal dreams, take care of their health, get a break from a one year dead-heat-race, to stay with family after COVID-19 pandemic… different reasonable reasons. I can call the old PancakeSwap team V1.

I was raised by the V1 chef team, so I was very sad, feeling like I was abandoned. My attitude that Snowball couldn’t possibly be better than Hops made the atmosphere in the kitchen even worse.

Luckily Snowball is a bunny rolling towards his goal, he brings a lot of new, amazing ideas that had not been in the kitchen before and promotes various partnerships. You can see them in the Q1 roadmap. PancakeSwap V2 team works well together now.

🦆: Now we have 2 questions left… What do you want to achieve with PancakeSwap?

🦆: As I have already mentioned, I want to make the crypto world more widespread. Keep PancakeSwap as a good entry point for new users, and make it more fun to stay for experienced users. If I chose one trending word…I would choose “Learn to Earn”. For me this is nothing new as anyone must learn to earn, it’s fundamental in any industry. However it’s completely new compared to existing finance, so it requires some tricks to let users enjoy and learn.

🦆: Anything you want to tell to the users?

🦆: We renewed the team, and we published our first roadmap.

Kitchen meeting Aug 2021 <-> Feb 2022 New chefs are bringing a lot of new ideas!

We finished manual usability testing of Limit orders, it was fun. Stay tuned!

However, you don’t know new chefs well, and likely have questions regarding the Roadmap items, don’t you?

Drum roll please……….

….

We would like to announce that we will be having an AMA for the first time in a year!! (Last AMA with chefs was held in Feb, 2021.)

This time we will have it on our discord server, not telegram. This is because we will use voice.
* This is a plan, if bunnies fail to configure mics, it will be a text AMA.

Please join our discord server, make sure you read all instructions and have a proper role setting there prior to the AMA.

AMA with PancakeSwap Chefs

Date: 10th March, 13:00~14:00 UTC (21:00~22:00 SGT)

Venue: https://discord.gg/pancakeswap

We will make a Twitter thread to let you post your questions before AMA, and issue the recap article after AMA. So don’t worry even if you won’t be able to join it real time.

🦆: Thanks for reading long article!! Lastly, don’t forget to follow duck’s twitter account. No project leak but kitchen-behind-the-scene will be shared from time to time.

🥞 Duck Twitter

Chef Nina 🦆

🥞 https://pancakeswap.finance

🥞 Twitter