Interview with the Nerd: Olivia
A chat with the former Cosmos China & IRISnet Community Manager ❤
One of my favorite things about Cosmos Network is that it has incredible people in its ecosystem.
The kind of people who, when you get to know them, touch you so deeply that they always leave you with something more than before.
Devoting yourself day after day to a community is this: taking care of people in such a sincere and direct way that you can do nothing but give space and importance to everyone, without reservations.
Because behind every Community Manager there is love.
For your job, of course, but above all, there is love for the people who cross their path with you every day.
In these months I’ve had the luck to meet many of these extraordinary Cosmonauts.
Finally, after the interview with dogemos, I can host at Interview with the Nerd another member of the Cosmos Community that I have esteemed and admired since our first meeting.
I’d also like to steal her cat, but that’s another story.
Daniela: Welcome Olivia(Yike) at the Cosmos Guardian ❤
It’s been a long time since we saw each other, and unfortunately, all the upcoming meetings were canceled due to COVID-19.
I’m very glad you found the time for this interview.
Since I’ve known you you’ve always been one of the most active members of the Cosmos community, working not only in the IRISnet team but also in the Cosmos China one, following with care the Chinese speaking Cosmonauts.
May I ask you to introduce yourself briefly?
Olivia: I entered into the blockchain industry in 2018. I used to work for a cryptocurrency custodian wallet project. They built enterprise-level wallet and custodian solutions.
Then I joined IRISnet. The IRISnet core team is contributing to the Cosmos open-source code and building the Cosmos community in China.
I’ve just left the team due to personal reasons, but I really want to express my gratitude to IRISnet.
It is a solid project in the Cosmos ecosystem and provides a good platform for my career.
I meet a lot of passionate and long-term community members here, like this interview’s host Daniela :)
(Ed. Actually I approached Cosmos for the first time in July 2019 lol)
While I was working there, I was responsible for English and Chinese content writing and translation, event planning, social media operation, and community management.
And I am proud of a series of activities that I led, such as Binance DEX listing and Community Coin Voting, Shanghai Blockchain Week Vlog, community governance activities, 1st mainnet launch anniversary celebration, etc.
D: Surely you have always done your best to bring your own contribution to every project you took care of.
This is one of the many reasons why I saw you as an example to follow from the beginning.
Since I have known you, you have been very active in all communication and social channels (Telegram, twitter…) related to Cosmos Network. Can I ask you in all this time what are the things that fascinate you most about the ecosystem and the chain itself?
O: The vision of the Internet of Blockchains of Cosmos network fascinates me most. As we can see today, the Cosmos ecosystem is very strong.
There are a lot of projects built on Cosmos SDK and Tendermint.
With the launch of IBC, they will power each other and create a network effect.
D: Now I would like to explore with you the very essence of a community.
In your opinion and what are the points you need to focus on to keep your project’s community active and involved?
What do you think is the best way to approach a crypto user & someone who is not familiar with the blockchain?
O: The decentralization is what matters most in the community of a mature blockchain project. Folks can contribute their own ideas, technology, and resources to the project. For this goal, we need volunteers who have aligned incentives. But in the very early stage of a project, the core team members should be active, make enough interactions with early community members and give them proper incentives to attract long-term members and promote community-driven innovation.
The best way to approach a crypto user:
The best way to approach crypto users for me is to establish relations with other crypto communities. Doing AMAs, airdrops and hosting events are all good ways.
We need to find out those with more engagement from community members. Don’t be afraid of those speculative ones who sell your tokens immediately after the airdrop. They are just a normal part of an ecosystem.
About non-crypto user:
I would like to say if I can approach more non-crypto users, it will be a huge success for both me and the project, because it is not an easy thing but will have a big potential influence.
We need mainstream media, influencers, and big companies from the non-crypto field to talk about it. But currently, some of them still have a bias in this industry or they just don’t dare to speak out due to the regulations.
So I think to get a better ROI for the whole industry in terms of non-crypto user education, the companies or projects with bigger influence should take the lead, like those tier-1 exchanges. For the other projects, they should figure out ways to survive through the bearish market and just follow the trend.
D: It’s interesting to see how you have very clear ideas about the approach to be taken towards both users, crypto and not-crypto: in my opinion, this is also a determining factor to have effective communication with the community, and it is clear that you are perfectly able to use the tools at your disposal to develop ad hoc content to satisfy both.
Can you tell me more about cosmos China?
What objectives are you focused on at the moment?
Do you mainly use traditional channels (Twitter, Medium…) or have you also adopted other platforms?
O: IRISnet and Tendermint have established a strategic partnership so:
- We have contributed to the Cosmos repository with some innovative modules such as on-chain governance and software upgrades. -
- We also developed ICS 20 token transfer of IBC.
- In addition to technological contributions, we helped to build and grow the Cosmos community in China as well.
People in China have very different online regarding reading and communication habits.
Because of the VPN limits, most of the end-users cannot log in to Twitter and Medium.
Here I have summarized all the popular communication channels in China:
Those are the official channels of Cosmos China:
- Wechat subscription: cosmosnetwork
- To enter Wechat group, add ID: cosmos-irisnet
- Bihu : COSMOS
- Weibo: Cosmos-Tendermint
- Twitter: @cosmoschina
- For developers who speak Chinese, you can join QQ group: 796875456
D: It’s certainly not an easy task to manage and develop effective communication for each of these channels.
Creating content while being quick to reply to users’ messages always puts you to the test.
Now I have a personal question to ask you: after all this time spent inside the blockchain and crypto, are there any projects you’d like to collaborate with?
O:
I believe that DeFi will be the trend in building a new global financial pattern.
I am interested in projects like Uniswap, MakerDAO, and Nest.
You must have heard about Uniswap and MakerDAO. They have many English introduction materials. You can search for them on the Internet, so I will not elaborate here.
I want to talk a little bit about NEST. It is a totally decentralized project. You cannot find any official community manager or official Twitter account. There are only NEST fans and volunteers. It is quite well-know in China but not have that high reputation overseas.
Back to the project itself, it is an Oracle protocol on ethereum (but actually can be migrated to other blockchains). You can see the Oracle issue leads to a 4 million loss for MakerDAO on March 12 this year.
But NEST can solve that problem with a mechanism of a distributed quotation, arbitrageur verification order, chained price, and asset series growth scheme. For more technical details, you can refer to the link below.
I would like to say it has a genius design in the game theory to balance the interest of the ecosystem participants meanwhile solving Oracle price feed issues.
D: Time really flew by writing this interview.
Thanking you again for your availability, I would like to ask you just one last question:
In your opinion, at the moment, what would be successful use cases where to apply the blockchain?
Do you see the global adoption of this technology still far off?
I have to admit that the most successful use cases with regard to this industry are centralized exchanges but they do not apply the blockchain technology in trading service and it is a pure Internet business. So I just want to say that DEX has the potential to go big.
Among them, I think Uniswap could be the best.
Some enterprise-level blockchain applications are popular currently in China. But IMO they are distributed ledgers based rather than applying “blockchain” especially in terms of ideology.
So, unfortunately, I think other global adoptions of this technology is still far off.
INSERT COIN(S) TO CONTINUE…
In these difficult times, in which social interactions that we used to consider a routine are now denied to us, I really find a new beauty in this series of interviews.
Thanks to it I have the excuse to spend some time with friends I haven’t seen for a long time and talk to them about what is happening, agreeing with how lucky we were and we didn’t even realize it.
See you in a few days with Persistence’s interview!
🐾 Congratulations Olivia for joining the Binance team! 🐾
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