Democratizing Staking: Building a Community Beyond Technology

Transcript

I'd like to invite our next speaker, Mr. Dimma Gusakov. Mr. Gusakov, the floor is yours. [Music] Hello folks. I'm super happy to be here. The day is coming to an end, so I won't be talking. I'll try not to be very boring and I'll try to like give a bit of an enjoyment for you. So today we're going to be talking about the importance of building a community behind a brilliant product or a brilliant technology.

And first of all let me again introduce myself. I my name is Dimma and I'm a technical leader of the team working on the community staking module product in LA. And you might have two questions. The first one, why do we have community in the name of the product? Are we so much about community? And the second one, why the hell on earth tech lead is telling you something about community? We will answer both of these questions right now. But to start with, we need I need to do a bit of an introduction. Raise your hands. Who can who of you guys knows how Ethereum staking works and can explain it to your friend?

Not much. Cool. It means that we need this very short introduction. So probably the shortest version, the shortest way to explain Ethereum staking is by this picture. So we have a user and user have to lock or so-called stake at least 32 ETH to get the ability to run Ethereum validator which would be for sure beneficial for the network because network needs validators and then in return for fulfilling validator duties user will get rewards. That's probably the simplest scheme and to be honest that's the core of Ethereum validation.

But there are some things that are not that user friendly with native Ethereum validation. So first of all, it is incredibly expensive. 32E with the current market price is a price tag on a average house and you can only start with 32 E if you're doing vanilla Ethereum validation. than the reward system. It is more like a an occasional contract rather than a full-time employment because you get very like you get much more rewards for producing blocks or participating in the sync committee and these duties are literally selected randomly. So you never know how

much would you get this or that amount running Ethereum validator. And there are several few things that I won't be covering right now, but you should just know that the core idea of Ethereum staking is to make it secure to make Ethereum secure and the mechanism itself should be secure which it perfectly does. But the rest especially when it comes to users is not that amazing. So that's why we have CSM community staking module a product within lido within a staking protocol that allows people first of all to also participate permissionlessly. So to run Ethereum validator the only thing you need is 32 ETH and the ability to run validator in CSM it is the same but instead of

needing 32 E you need something from 2.4 to 1.3 E per single validator. You get a rewards multiplier. You get a reward smoothing so that your rewards are not like this occasional contract. No, they are very very very even and smooth. And we have even a concept of a performance threshold where a short-time maintenance or outage will not impact your rewards. So technically speaking, if we look at the ETH validation issues that I've mentioned before and we apply CSM on top, boom, we have it solved.

But is it all that great with CSM? So we have I've just explained you in a few words one of the most exciting products in Ethereum staking. And is it enough for the product to be successful? Well, not really because there are several things that cannot be covered by a great technology or a great product. In CSM example, we first of all faced the thing that running Ethereum validators and nodes is not that popular. And judging by your answers about Ethereum staking, I guess most of you never even thought about doing that.

And you are probably hearing about it for the first time. So even though there is a great product here to do that, you've probably never heard of it. Then the more node operators join CSM, the harder it is to support them. Because the one thing is working with professionals, with professional operators, they do their on their own. So you don't need to support them much. But with community operators, with people who are way less experienced, you definitely need to put some efforts into the support into helping people. And the more operators you have, the harder it gets. And again, as I've just mentioned, so just making a great product is probably not enough for success. So the solution here is a strong community

around a product. And today I'll be talking about the community that we have that we built around community staking module. But it the things that I'll be telling you today, they apply to each and every technical or even non-technical product. when it comes to building a community around it. So the community is a great place is if we try to explain it like in a few key words features or so we can say that a community is a place where people can find like-minded people to hang out. So for example all of you sitting here can be considered an an addon community or Japanese Ethereum community because you are all here and you're probably sharing the same

interest. I guess some of you have already talked with the others and learned something from the others. So the more experienced people were sharing their knowledge with less experienced and vice versa. And you've even discussed some cool ideas and stuff. So community is definitely a cool living thing. The challenge here is that it is not easy to build a strong community. And today I'll be sharing a very simple things that might seem even obvious for you guys but the these are the things we learned in CSM in LA while building CSM community.

Yeah. So the first thing the main thing the thing that I going to tell myself a hund time like each and every time I will start a new product or whatever and I will tell you guys is that if you want to have a strong community around your product around your technology you should be a part of a community and what I mean here is not just being a moderator who comes into a discord channel or chat and like oh here here's this activity Oh, we have a new post. No, not like that. You should be one of the people sharing the same interests.

So, for example, in CSM, CSM is about running Ethereum validators, right? You've probably already learned that and I personally run Ethereum validators and will a friend of mine also from Lido runs validators and all of my team members are running validators and we are all members of our community. So we perfectly understand what is important for people crazy enough to run Ethereum nodes. And a great example here is at least that's what I heard that in Japanese work culture to become boss to become team leader or director or CEO you are obligated to start from the

bottom. So it's not like in America where you can travel in between companies knowing nothing about what people do in the company. You are just a cool CEO. No, you need to know what is important for your people and the same goes for the community. You need to know what is important for your community so that you can succeed with it. Next thing, there should always be something to do in your community. Um there shouldn't be a case where you've a few people gathered here and imagine again the case you've all gathered here and then instead of me being here on the stage and other panelists or whoever we're just sitting and doing nothing that's going to be terrible right so

there should always be something to do and what can help here is you being a part of a community so to transform your community into a thriving community into the community where something is always happening. You cannot just trust that the community will do it on your own on their own. You should help them. The they're telling me that there's five minutes left, but there's no chance. Okay. Uh but if you will simply trust that the community will do it on your own, you might fail. So be the one to start that. Again, if you if your community is like CSM about some particular topic, in our case, running

nodes, then what I do when I have a problem with a node, I try to solve it. If I cannot solve it, I go to my community and share it as a question. If I solved some problem, I go to my community and share my experience. And following me and following my other teammates, people in the community, they do the same things now. And right now, community lives on their own. One obvious thing that I'm going to tell you is if you want your community to grow, you really need to go and spread the word about your community. It might seem super obvious, right? But we live in the world where information is not just accessible, it's overly accessible. And

we are overwhelmed with tons of different sources of informations. And it's really hard to filter out what's important for you. So if you believe that you are sharing similar interests with your friends, then go and tell them that oh hey, here's a here's a cool community we're starting now. Here's a cool product we are working on because even though they might have access, they likely have access to this information, this information might went under the radar for him for them. And one last thing uh that we've learned, active community members should be supported by you. And not to be a person who is just standing here telling you some random stuff without proofs. I

want to invite a person who is currently doing his own stuff. Dyiki, can you please come to the stage for a second? And while he's coming to the stage, Dyiki is indeed an active community member in Japanese CSM community. He's not a lighter employee or not lighter contributor. No way. So, Diki, can you tell us like a few words how you ended up joining CSM community and how do you feel about it? >> Hi. Um, my name is Diki. Should I speak in Japanese? >> Um, there's no description. So, my name is Di. Um, I learned the CSM operator for one year. So the journey get started with Sam sitting over there who is also taking initiative of um introducing CSM

and the sort of staking the notion of the source taker across Asia. And then the reason why we think CSM and the source st is pretty much important and community is important is we have full of censorship resistance and we are we will have full control of the transaction which is something you know we can take care of the blockchain directly. the sense of like this failing is pretty much related to like a decentralization the s notion of decentralization so u we need a more stas of course so like please join to the CSM and let's buy it with slido cool amazing thank you so much let's give that a round of applause and this is exactly the thesis that we have on the slide right so your active community

members are your best allies I haven't told him before the talk that I going to use today to help me. But so that was a total improvisation. Thank you so much again. And now since we have a few more minutes left, let's quickly walk through the things you should never do when building a community. You should never have the community that is inactive or stale or where nothing is happening happening. If you feel that if you if you are starting building a community and it's that's not much of a buzz in in the community right now. Okay, be the one to start that and make sure and keep an eye that something is always happening there.

There's no way that you're going to succeed in building a community around a product if you are not a part of this community. So, always be a part of a community. Um, never think that you can just make a product and the community will self-organize. Why? because you never know if it ever will and it might organize in a very unexpected forms. So build a product and put at least some effort into building community around it. And the last but probably the most important thing, you should always listen to your community. Because if you have a product or a technology and the community around it and you are as a developer of a product, you are not

listening to your community, you will create a huge disconnect between your technology and the community, which is definitely a no-go. So definitely avoid these four things. And now to wrap it up, let's talk about your community and why do you even need it? Because your community is the source of your ideas, the best source of ideas about how to make your product better. And to be honest, around 20% of features that we have in the community staking module arrived directly from community requests. and the rest of them were somewhat inspired by us listening to our community and to other communities.

The next thing is that your community is your best partner in spreading the word. What people typically do in crypto, they spend a hell ton of money on marketing. CSM is has the lowest marketing budget in Lido and probably one of the lowest budgets in uh in a well-known crypto. But still there are more than 400 node operators already and I believe that it is all thanks to the community that we have around CSF. And the last thing when building community do not forget that we live in a multinational multicultural world and your community should not be limited to a local size. it can be but

also do not forget that you can go beyond and you can have the community and people involved in your product all around the world. So thanks to two people who are helping us with CSM which is Sam who's sitting here Sam. Yes. And Isaac who who who is not here uh we have people all over the world. So we collect ideas from them. They spread the word about CSM and they enjoy running validators. So strong community is the strong product success for you. And to wrap it up and if you got interested at least a bit in Ethereum staking or you want to learn more about again Ethereum staking

CSM and just have fun and really get in touch with people from CSM community, go scan the cure code and join us tomorrow at the same time for stakers guild in Osaka. Thank you very much guys. Another unexpected thing. Sorry. >> Did another unexpected thing. So do you are not the only one who uh prepared something unexpectable today, right? Uh hey, I'm Sasha. By the way, I'm also a CSM contributor. So we work together.

Moreover, he's my brother. But uh not only you prepared surprise for Daiik, but Diki also prepared surprise for you. So I want to invite him on the stage right now. So actually Dimma got his birthday today. So um but we the Japanese people will give you the birthday cake to you. Happy birthday Dimma. [Applause]