Meet Waves Association members: Vladimir Zhuravlev
Vladimir Zhuravlev, head of the Waves Association’s Membership Working Group, talks about the association’s activities and plans to launch a DAO.
Q: Let’s start with your background. Could you briefly talk about your education and experience?
A: Six years ago, I started doing commercial development in Python and JavaScript, also acting as a programming instructor. I even hosted two educational courses with Geekbrains. I studied at Higher School of Economics in Moscow and at Humboldt University in Berlin and got a bachelor’s degree in business informatics with extra credits in finances and business administration.
Q: How did you become head of the Membership working group?
A: I’ve been a member of the Waves Association since the very beginning. Initially, I was accepted as a member of the Funding & Grants Working Group. In 2020, I was involved in many global projects in the Waves ecosystem, launched my own project, Certificado, took the global prize at Odyssey hackathon, leading the Waves team, and started work on the Waves DAO. Based on all that experience, I proposed myself as head of the Membership Working Group and was elected by the working group’s member voting last December.
Q: Please, explain briefly what exactly the Membership Working Group does.
A: The role of the Membership Working Group is to attract new members and to handle interaction between existing ones. In the nutshell, what we are doing includes working on a member attraction strategy, developing benefits for existing members and improving collaboration with them. The Membership Working Group collaborates closely with the other two working groups — Funding & Grants and Research & Development — to attract experts they need and help establish communications.
Q: In your opinion, what personal qualities and skills are most vital to head this working group?
A: Apart from general attributes required for working in the blockchain space, like tech and finance background, I’d mention the ability to listen and gather opinions of various stakeholders. Since the association has many members, head of the Membership Working Group needs to aggregate everyone’s opinion and interests and manage to combine all of them, without losing focus. This takes a lot of patience. In addition, project and event management skills are vital for this role.
Talking about skills that are important for all association members, I should say that since the association’s main goal is the discovery of promising projects in the Waves ecosystem, it’s vital to attract to the association individuals with experience in project implementation, understanding of the blockchain space and tech expertise.
Q: What has the working group achieved so far?
A: Overall, so far, we’ve been mostly busy with preparatory work. Many things need to be taken care of before we can move forward rapidly. For example, over the last six weeks, the working group has held two meetings, discussed ways to attract new members from various social spheres, created a knowledge base concept, started collecting skill portfolios from members and established communications with other association entities. I’d say that currently we are almost done with preparatory work and should soon start moving forward fast.
Q: What are the main difficulties and challenges you have faced as the head of the Membership Working Group? Are there any areas that need improvement?
A: In my opinion, for now, a weak point for the entire association is insufficient communication. Often, it’s hard to stay up to date on what is happening in other working groups. Also, it’s difficult to communicate with external parties, like, for instance, lawyers. I believe that solving this communication issue will allow us to move much faster. Another issue that is holding back a rapid growth of association member numbers is a lack of understanding in our community of what exactly the association does and why it is vital. We need to show Web 3.0 enthusiasts that by belonging to the association, they could impact the growth of the entire industry.
Q: Could you briefly speak about the working group’s plans for 2021?
A: In January 2021, we started accepting new members, but the main focus is still on setting up the association’s processes and making it more efficient and attractive for Web 3.0 enthusiasts. This is why we are working on various initiatives, like a knowledge base for members, members’ pages on the association’s website and possible membership benefits. This year, I see our working group boosting the inflow of new experienced members and making the Waves Association a better place for networking. My dream is to see members proud to be part of it. The biggest thing that’s going to happen very soon, helping to streamline work processes, will be the launch of the Waves Association DAO — a smart contract-based framework for operating with existing processes.
Q: Could you tell more about the Waves Association DAO? Where did the idea come from?
A: This story started half a year ago. At the Waves Association, we realized that there is a need for a contemporary tool to govern processes transparently and make relationships between members and community more trusted. The DAO concept fits these requirements perfectly, so, I did some research into existing DAOs and proposed a structure for a new-generation DAO that we started to work on. Currently, we are working on releasing this tool to the developer community. After that, in the spring, it will be used for voting on distributing one of the association’s grant batches. In the future, we aim to bring all Waves Association processes into this framework to make them as transparent as possible. Could you imagine all Waves Association processes visible to every community member, so that everyone could observe what is happening right now, what decisions are being made by whom and stay current on the association’s strategic path? What excites me most about this product is that our concept can be used by other organizations, which makes the DAO one of those applications in the Waves ecosystem that can be utilized independently.
Q: What are your expectations from the Waves Association in general? What are the main tasks lying ahead?
A: The mission for the Waves Association remains unchanged: developing the Web 3.0 industry and boosting blockchain adoption. So, the main task is to select and support projects that can help execute this mission. After distributing 150,000 WAVES in grants in 2020, the association is going to attract more promising Web 3.0 products. This is a complex task, because for improving efficiency, we need more R&D, more members, more communications and more experience shared. This is what we are currently focused on. I believe that by taking advantage of the diversity of its experienced members, the association will become a powerful player in the Web 3.0 space, significantly contributing to its growth.
