Product Development for Q, a Community Effort

Things have changed since mainnet was launched and it doesn’t stop at how we are developing the off-chain software components for Q, especially our UIs.

Before the launch, we were a small group of people that had a naturally limited view on how the user should, could and would interact with Q. We tried to involve people with different backgrounds and swapped viewpoints and “hats” on a daily base. We evolved processes and flows, created great user experiences and occasionally had to change it all over again because of a new perspective that we gained along the way. That worked quite well for the time before mainnet launch. But today, with the mainnet up-and-running and a growing number of active stakeholders on the network, the situation has changed drastically- and this is great!

One recent example demonstrates how things are different now and allows us to catch a glimpse of a bright future of decentralised product development:

A validator node operator encounters technical issues and can’t get his node to work. The Q core team tries to help, with limited success. The issue seems to be on the hosting side: Deranged VM configs or some docker wizardry that’s running wild. Hours and days pass and finally, the issue is solved: It was a running process limitation on the hosting provider side. Case closed!

In retrospective, the validator node operator realises that in such cases of unplanned (and even planned maintenance) downtimes, a feature that allows validator nodes to leave the validator ranking temporarily would be highly beneficial. So he gets in contact with us and makes a suggestion to implement this feature within our dApp UI.

A brief brainstorming session later, the team not only adds the new feature request to the product backlog, but also finds a workaround which any validator node can use today to temporarily “pause” its ranking.

We wore the validator node operator hat quite often back in the days, but this issue had slipped our attention.

At first sight, this story doesn’t sound revolutionary. It is for us though, since we are learning more and more how valuable user feedback from the Q stakeholder community is. User feedback is highly appreciated and a prerequisite for a successful evolution of Q ecosystem which we strive for.

We are happy to receive your feedback and suggestions on our Discord Community Server!