Product Management in Web3, Vadym Nesterenko, Kolibrio | ETHSofia 2025

Transcript

Um, hi everyone. Thank you for uh coming for a talk. Um, I'm Vadim. I'm a product and growth manager and uh D5 researcher. And today I want to talk about uh product management in crypto. what it's like to be a product manager working with the blockchain apps and what are the uh differences with the web two approaches that uh overlooked and can be utilized um in in regular day-to-day practice. So, um yeah, and uh I think that uh even though crypto apps more and more with the and uh more traction, I still think that um a lot of uh

a lot of uh traditional tools that uh we have from web two uh underlooked and uh yeah, so I want to go through this uh agenda topics today uh swiftly because of course each of which is um deserves its own lecture or even course but uh I really hope that uh after this uh talk there will be some uh more understanding what uh some differences and uh yeah so like first of all why even qualified to talk about this Um,

I'm in crypto full-time since 2017. I know for better or worse, uh, I worked with different types of products. It's like infra typical B2B and, uh, B2C apps that are focused on, uh, mainstream audience uh, with like 10 thousands of users. And, uh, I'm an active user myself like since uh, like early days of DI from 2019. So I believe this really helps uh to be on this introspection um as a product manager working with uh blockchain apps.

So is PMing in web 3 really that different because like uh if we look for instance for more mature project companies like Binance and Coinbase I don't know for sure but I uh think that their approaches are like pretty similar what we have uh like uh in traditional world but uh there is definitely some pecularities um of launching products uh on chain specifically. So the first uh feature is uh that most of the products are uh it's early stage and it's startup culture is super chaotic. So you can uh be less

reliant on this like frameworks like jobs to be done until you like finish uh putting it in ocean like there are like 10 competitors coming to you. So it's more like dynamic. Like the next thing is uh for product managers and growth people they're usually not like technical and so it's more demanding and versatile because like crypto is very interdisciplinary. So we have like to follow all the all the fields like finance, economics, like uh technology, some arts and governance and uh be ready like to combine it in into one one

solution and uh and of course it's open nature and decentralized this uh because um you're always in front of your community, your audience and your competition. So again for better or worse uh you can use it for for your advantage and of course it's more uh intense competition and uh you have a major product stakeholder is the community which I talk about a bit later.

Yeah. And it's uh it's pretty experimental and narrativedriven. So it's always um a challenge to balance between following a shiny thing and uh and stick to your own vision and and values. So the key cornerstone of any product is your users, your their pains and what problems you want to solve for them and like uh in crypto because there is a non and privacy culture and sometimes it's really hard uh to understand who your users are really because uh all you see some random PFPs uh on Twitter, Telegram and it's uh it's it's

hard to better to know them and again because of some of privacy ethos it's harder to get some insights from analytics. Uh so but on the other hand uh there's onchain data and you can use it for your advantage and especially even if you're not yet launched you can uh check your competitors traction and try to build user personas and um good also example of crypto being open.

Um I I believe many familiar with Pumpfun and uh a founder shared some time ago his approach of of building the app. How he called DM'd 3,000 of people before launching or like during launch asking for a feedback. It it seems pretty obvious and natural process but I I believe it's uh something that uh not everyone is doing. So um I think people are generally pretty open and uh especially because in crypto many things are heavily incentivized so it can be used for uh to advant as a beneficial to your to improve your product.

Next uh important pillar is user experience. It's about this many people are talking and uh here at Ethopia there were a couple of talks and panels so I'm not going to say a lot about it and also because user experience is quite a very vague term and it's quite like ethereal and impalpable because uh many say that it's like a key limitation to like for crypto adoption or it's some it's some promise that will bring um next 1 billion users But personally I believe that uh there are a lot of uh great building blocks already. There is like almost close to

perfect end to end cycle to for uh for a user like to on board and provide features. And as I mentioned at the beginning for a product manager uh the key goal is uh like to combine all these pieces together because uh you have to follow all the things like uh even like layer 2 on Ethereum they can have like different gas settings you have like to follow like uh what's happening like with routing on mainet because you want to provide a fair price for your user and like there is some new on like on boarding experience like with pass keys and u a lot of development on

different types of abstraction chain abstraction account abstraction and uh I think more than ever it's uh for a product manager to prioritize the things correctly because a lot of shiny things and like again like to compete for mind share uh yeah so uh But uh even though there are great tools for instance recently I tried uh when you can like use a D app like for instance unis swap logging in from account you create with pass key and you don't have to have a wallet extension or any wallet at all.

So it seems like a uh breakthrough but still we have the exist phrases you have to pick chains sometimes two versions of one asset on a chain and it's pretty um also dangerous like uh recent new E7702 that allows like uh account obstruction for one transaction. A lot of adoption is from scammers who are like fish uh users. So it's quite understandable why why apps uh quite uh try to be safe with this. Um yeah but in the end uh it's like not everything about UX. Sometimes you have terrible

not terrible but complicated UI and uh if it uh solves your problem maybe maybe it's uh the main thing. Um yeah and uh because we have as I mentioned this a lot of building blocks and um and very huge competition and like there is this joke that there are more apps uh sorry more solutions and projects than uh users. So like there is a huge uh competition for them and especially like many projects incentivizer usage. So any any feature release you have like to

think about like how how how to go to market it. And of course there is like community but community not necessarily can be your users. And it's also a uh two-edged sword because there there is like a perfect example for instance like uh hyperlquid when there is like uh a perfect storm in terms of how it's like was fair launch and um community and baybacks and we see that like the leading one of the leadings like perb decks and community works for them. So it's of course uh great example but sometimes but sometimes uh a project is a hostage to to to the user uh to to to the

project uh because like if something goes wrong especially like price drops you have like uh to please them and to shift your attention to things that less important and that's why we we saw this a lot of experiment experiments in like defy summer and later on when initially it was a great interesting vision but like focusing a lot on like token model for instance but not on your core product can be uh not very good to you in the end. So yeah the last part is uh like revenue management because uh in a

in in the protocol there are like many product stakeholders which you can serve and again as a product manager you should u try to to align it on like uh again to economics basis on a product basis and um and also how to prioritize that because as I mentioned it's uh your token not necessarily can contribute to your core product so it's can be a huge challenge like how to balance this and especially if community pressures to do something with it and uh so your goal is just uh I think how how to adapt and to

use it to to convert for some product insights and improving the product. Um yeah and uh a few like case studies I one of I mentioned is uh like pump fun is a great like product approaches uh especially like communicating with users uh personally like when last application I was working on like all of my like top users because 70 80% of the volume and usage was coming from five 10% of the users. So, uh I was like communicating like 24 hours, 7 days uh a week with them. So,

it's like this personal touch is is is really working and uh um yeah and hyperlquid uh as a case study. Of course, it's uh really hard to say what can be learned because it's uh hard like to replicate. There is this meta right now and everyone's trying to to do the same. But of course, uh it's quite challenging. Um yeah, I think uh that's pretty it. And uh if uh there are any questions, I would happy to answer.

Heat. Heat.