02 Nov My thoughts on progress so far

Since leaving my post as global community manager for NEM Group, and helping with the transition to the new structure, I have continued to support the Symbol community as a volunteer to help the community grow. Some people like birdwatching, origami, or tennis. My passion is building blockchain communities and that will never stop. I set up a website where I’ll be posting Symbol videos, starting this week – link at the end. But sticking to text format now, here are my thoughts on Symbol progress so far.

Overarching ethos

There is no longer any buying of the community. No social mining programs. Everyone involved in Symbol right now is doing it for the sheer love of everything Symbol related. This has changed the atmosphere, in my view for the better. I have never seen such a sense of optimism in a blockchain project that I am involved with. It looks like we have structure and purpose now, which is what we were all hoping for. We all have tokens and we want to contribute to grow our ecosystem as best we can because our own stake of tokens rises. This is how every community should grow to be strong, powerful, with a solid foundation, and optimized for continued growth.

Developer-community interactions

I am glad to see high levels of better-quality interactions between the developers and the community about plans for the future, what’s in store, and to be available and accessible. People want to work for free in an environment like that. This link is vital because we all need people to look up to and inspire us. Jaguar, Gimre, and Hatchet fit the bill, don’t they? Without a strong link, a community can become disconnected and disjointed – making it easy to fall into chaos, with high levels of FUD resulting. We want to make sure that doesn’t happen with such a huge potential community and the signs I’m seeing so far are positive.

Ideas and direction

The community is starting to morph into a truer representation of its leaders, the core developers – Jaguar, Gimre, and Hatchet. Perhaps this is the first time that has happened. I see a hard core of community members, doing their best to improve, educating others on how to get involved. It is particularly pleasing for me to see so many people from the moderator program still involved and active. Questions that were previously difficult to answer are now clearer. Now we know what we are doing and where we are going. That is such a huge relief because we needed that badly.

Behaviours

In terms of behaviour, we have seen more courtesy, decency, and politeness among ourselves. The various language groups appear to be as cohesive as ever. It seems that removing overt corporate interests has galvanized the community better than any other possible approach. Although that change was structural, there have been several operational changes that have improved the culture. For example, the general trend among XYMcity residents to limit direct messages brings conversations into the open, where others can contribute and provide input or even answers. This has also slashed duplication of effort in the process. Transparency has been one of the biggest behavioural differences I’ve noticed. Conversations that had previously been private are now public, which I think is a great thing.

Content

The amount of content generated by the community is increasing. Although long established in the Japanese community, English speaking content creation has been lacking. But Symbol Blog is now showing the way, and others are starting to follow. I’m confident that anyone finding Symbol Blog will have the best possible introduction to the Symbol ecosystem. Please delegate to his node because he is doing this for free and the content is invaluable to us all. We grow faster if he grows faster. Let’s help him go full time.

Social media

I have been glad to see that LunarCrush is still used to measure social media awareness of XYMCity. It fosters healthy competition, and the most regular attendees in the top 10 are not shilling. They are talking sensitively, intelligently, and insightfully about what really matters to the community. The direction we are going, the tech developments we are making, and the ideas birthed by everyone building in the ecosystem.

Symbol nodes

On the downside, however, our efforts to create a community which rewards self-starters and ignores those unwilling to do the work are yet to bear fruit. It is concerning that so many XYM token holders are not delegating to the most deserving nodes. This problem has been highlighted by Symbol Blog, but yet more awareness needs to be raised. We need to figure this out because it’s a fundamental problem that may inhibit our community’s continued growth. We need to reward the best community members by delegating to their node. Please take the time to do it.

Space Pirates

Huge credit should go to Hatchet for coming up with the space pirates idea. That was genius. I always thought that seafaring mobs and crypto were a perfect match, at least if the LINK marines are anything to go by. Pirates are often outsiders as well, aren’t they? I think we’ve all felt a little like an outsider to our non-crypto friends, at times, so it’s perfect in that way too. And space pirates too! That makes it even better.

Telegram and Discord

I started using Telegram soon after it launched, and have enjoyed the experience, but now it has lost its allure for me. I find it limited in many ways, and I prefer Discord. Telegram just destroys you after a while – trust me, I’ve done my time there. Discord is a lot more manageable and easier to navigate. I like the fact that we have read-only access to developer/core team conversations so the community can see what’s coming up, what they are working on, and this helps the community to develop real bonds. Trust in a project team is often a huge sticking point in growing communities. This overcomes that problem, right at the start.

NEM and Symbol Leadership

While I helped the core developers with the transition to this new way of working, I interacted with them more. There are several reasons why I will support them – and only them – to decide Symbol’s direction.

1.     They built Symbol. Without them, it would not exist. So it is just sheer lunacy for them not to lead the strategic and technical direction. Without them, we can’t grow technically which is obviously crucial.

2.      They are frank, loyal, and clearly have the best interests of Symbol at heart.

3.     They are not motivated by financial considerations. To me, that means they are more likely to make the morally and technically correct decisions. That is what gives any ecosystem long term value, in my opinion.

4.     They know what they are talking about. See their stance on data provenance for NFTs, despite all the hype. They stick to their guns if they believe something. I want that in my leaders. What about you?

My time at NEM Group

Regarding NEM Group, I always found the people I worked with to be amazing. If I needed anything, I got it. If I needed an answer, I received it. They supported me fully and I never had that in a job before. Not to that level. They allowed me to set up the moderator program, and the benefits of that can still be seen. But we were definitely missing Hatchet’s leadership to show us the way. Ironically this meant NEM Group being dissolved, and that was never going to be an easy decision to swallow, but it has happened.

Now that NEM Group is no more, I was clearly not required to continue as a community manager – not in the way I was before. Nevertheless, I believe it was right for the technical direction to take precedence, and for the core developers to be in control. We all did our jobs to the best of our ability. Now the landscape has changed – for the better – and we all have to find new roles. 

Many people from NEM Group seem to have left the ecosystem entirely. But I am heartened to see how many people from that time have remained. I hope others will come back once they have seen all the good that has emerged. Many are like me – true believers in blockchain changing the world.

XYMbassadors

I am proud to see how Leon, Mikun, xHarvesting, Klim, Marco, CryptoBeliever, Angel, Dragon Chris, Thilon, CB, and several other great community members I got close to at NEM are working so well for Symbol. They epitomize Symbol progress so far and never let me down when I need anything. I live to help them back. We have to keep going, not give up. Just keep building our teams and never stop growing.

I look to Nembear in Japan especially since he has everything. A magnetic character, good hearted, knowledgeable and passionate. How can anyone not like this man? Radio, Chipmunk, Essan, Yuta – they are still rocking it. I really love Nemtus too. They have seen so much happen but still stay strong.

To me we are right at the start of something beautiful. Symbol is somewhere we can exchange ideas, help each other, and grow together. In a genuine and organic way. It’s all real. We have everything to look forward to, with real technical direction. Symbol progress so far has been incredible, but the best is yet to come. Let’s do it!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/OliverMuldoon

Website: https://olivercrypto.com