NEAR DevHub Unplugged | Season 01, Episode 01 | DevHub: One Year In and What's Next for 2024

Captions as YouTube publishes them, usually machine-generated, so product and people names can be misheard.

1. 0:00

   Hello friends welcome to the first Dev hob podcast live from newon 2023 with me Vlad and Boris welcome friends thank you thank you heav your con yeah GM GM yeah GM so happy to be here it's very early in the morning fourth day still standing yeah barely but yes it's been intense but it's great so this is going to be the first episode of a Dev hot podcast series yes was a a idea we had a few

2. 0:30

   months ago and I met Alejandra in ape right Korea or Vietnam or both yeah I think yeah so we I start I was trying to do something like this and everyone was say oh no ab ab I didn't know it was you I said oh no he's the guy but he's very the his podcasts are very controversial so that's a guy so yeah I made an event or something and he came so then here we are he made a POS near social and everything so he's the first h near

3. 1:00

   social funded podcast probably I don't know probably yes controversial is on the eye of the beholder I guess on the ear of the listener but I'm very excited to start to capture the history of Dev Hub to get the stories of the developers contributing there's always been a challenge in getting into the technical aspect I met this developer in Australia I was going to recruit him and he works

4. 1:25

   with many ecosystems and I asked him to describe near oh cuz he gave me some pretty funny accurate descriptions of other ecosystems and I was like ah describe near for me and he's like there something like geeky but not afraid to get too Technical and I was like damn that's pretty good actually tweet we can take that as a def logo yeah not afraid to get too technical yeah we're here live at nearon around us are the bodies of the hackers that

5. 1:57

   have those didn't make it yeah it's been rough over the last two days Vlad before joining devhub what were you doing before devhub I was working in pagota Inc on the anything that is data related so it was Data platform team that's how it's called but so I was leading it and we tried to build and ship things like enhanced CPI indexers rpcs Explorer and I was involved in many things even before if you like going back in

6. 2:30

   Timeline I I was basically contributing to almost every death tool in y system so you the person that they ping late at night the rpcs are down again exactly we hate you which was like uh bless and curse at the same time let's start looking into Dev hob as a as an entity when did it start how did it evolve and when did you get involved lad it was so it was a history so I would say like I guess involved with near system

7. 3:01

   in 200 when I was born yeah no it was a bit later than I was born but the whole idea of devhub was floating around in newor System since very early days it was like core values that we wanted to promote in the new system to begin with like developers was the core value of near and last year around July we started to work on this initiative that we initially called Dev governance for just just small problem to solve back in the days it was naps we wanted to create

8. 3:38

   such important pieces of infrastructure near Improvement proposals yeah yeah and so it was roughly July I guess last year but then Dev Hub had a scope creep and we basically created a lot we had the Ambitions but we didn't have a team yet to help us with all the admissions and only a was it April or something like this that we came up with the name Dev Hub actually so I don't know like where to even say like when we started to to be involved in that because Dev H is the

9. 4:12

   reason we ask is because someone somewhere along the line did a masterful transition an evolution caterpillar turned into an eagle from my end there were the Grassroots down that were meant to be in their gndc and at the time there were three Grassroots Dows marketing creatives and developer Dow Dev hop now and each Dow due to its own performance in set of circumstances took a different fate it's almost like the story of the Three Brothers in Harry Potter devhub and I've

10. 4:51

    been saying this for a long time was very smart to literally just run as far away as possible from governance and focus on its own thing which in maybe counterintuitive ways now has led to it grow and absorb more of that governance that's why I'm so curious on what was that original intention and maybe what are some of those like guiding principles that have enabled you guys to be maybe insulated from a lot of the

11. 5:18

    noise and to just really go back to the core and get things done sure yeah our main motivation was the pain in the community that we felt ourselves and we wanted to get it resolved uh with naps it was just you would sub submit nap and nobody would review it you would try to engage for the community nobody would be there it would just void emotional damage we I experienced it myself I was on both sides I was proposing and nobody was reviewing and I was trying to help

12. 5:49

    to review but also didn't have time to to do it properly and didn't know like what people are actually talking about because I was not expert in that area and it was like we probably need to have relevant people in the room that's how we started to just bring relevant people to the room that's that's how and we started to call it work working groups um it was about the same time as uh NDC also was talking about working groups but I feel like the hubs were much more

13. 6:19

    like expert focused n DC was just like purpose focused which is also like fine but it was a bit of a different um lens I feel and huge difference yeah I I don't have much to say but because that happened before I came in so I'm you can just not you're looking great so whatever BL says I definitely experienced that I actually wrote like a vision or guiding principles for the centralized governance around some groups being default dead just creating a telegram group is not enough just saying that it

14. 6:54

    exists is not enough unless somebody actually comes forward and they have the skills and experience at the time and they deliver let just call it default dead they have to prove themselves to grow into existence and once again the opposite for the working groups I joined some working groups which is hilarious because I didn't understand anything in the call there was one for like data analytics or indexers Tiffany from

15. 7:18

    pakota was just running through the entire thing was just Cod and screen and crazy stuff happening I was just like I don't know what this is but I'm excited that it exists like it it was very reassuring to see the people that needed to know uh perhaps few were than we needed but it was yeah expert driven and that's why I'm excited to see how it has expanded out as it has gained more stability I guess usually scope creep

16. 7:45

    has a negative connotation no not really it it was a challenge it was a challenge that we wanted to have it's it's it's a problem you want to have that's good problem to have yeah yeah thanks and and but it also was just a identification challenge for ourselves until we arrived to the name Dev Hub it was really hard to communicate this scope of our work somehow when we created the name even though like it's obvious today it

17. 8:16

    totally was not obvious back in the days and it was a lot of iterations until we arrived to Dev Hub and and finally we could communicate with almost everybody with just one word we are Dev Hub and it had really like align like you can come up with any name but if it's not aligned with what you want then people will constantly can be confused and would assume different things yeah with devop I think it's actually aligned with what

18. 8:43

    we are doing I was telling my Engineers for the hackathon that the name had to be either super Crystal Clear what we do or some really weird that is memorable so people something in between you don't remember the name it's confusing but devop is great yeah yeah sometimes people when I came in the main thing will be like what you do what do you do right so that's but now the Mandate of being developer oriented

19. 9:15

    it's resonates more with the name right death Hub death Hub so now I think we are definitely moving into other areas that we need to have more control because the the existing PS I I came with a little bit of L slate with do the death rails and bring ideas so I've been bringing an approach of AB testing so we're testing stuff and these some of this stuff have been moving into areas that are not naturally ours and sometimes it been hard to try to make it

20. 9:46

    fit into the death so when I talk with everyone okay however we frame this is about developer deel bringing developers into the ecosystem so try to make it fed into the death of mission now it's getting more challenging Bas in probably recent conversation with the El and stuff we need to probably go a little more so it would be hard to make it fit into the that but it's still the the main idea is

21. 10:10

    that developer acquisition engagement I I think that's why when people think of scope creep it seems like a negative thing because there's a set of assumptions the first one is you've got regular TR capture so if one person is doing something no one else can and then scope CP means that you've got the one entity doing more things things which is taken away from someone else's activity

22. 10:32

    that's why scope CP can be good if it is happening for the right reasons whatever but you always want to leave that door open Alternatives or competition oh definitely we we didn't try to capture flags from other teams we just noticed ourselves that um there is a lot more void in ecosystem that we actually can f can can help with um we didn't have time at that point in time and if we felt like we can do it we can do it for the ecosystem we have a good understanding

23. 11:04

    how to do it but we didn't have the resources H and this realization helped us to basically bring Boris bring Joe bring Maria to the to to to the team the team grew grew from just three people talking in a room to now we have full almost half of the hacker HQ space to to help us on different things and totally not overlapping directions that we are empowering people to do one one thing that I learned over the years I started

24. 11:37

    as a software engineer myself being like individual contributor and while I was working in pagota I was moving into direction of managing people and building teams and one of the trainings that I went through was changing my Paradigm of thinking about management in general from I'm from Eastern Europe where there is a lot of influence of top down management I I I have very negative connotation of word manager in my

25. 12:06

    country and I I was like a I was not feeling well becoming a manager myself so but the training went very well for me I was like I I learned about different approaches to management and the way like can they they presented this like it's a tree structure but it's not top down it's like bottom up actually like it's a tree that managers are supporting the peers and the the ecosystem so that's how I see my role in

26. 12:36

    devhub uh to support uh whoever I can on their like success uh path and just be make them productive as much as possible yesterday at Dev Hub panel I said like uh I believe that every human has a superpower and we just need to play to those superpowers that's what I my my mission here I believe I agree with blad that we didn't take any flags from other teams but there there are things we needs to be done and

27. 13:08

    we we need to have it done so probably that's where probably you can see that we are jumping into the other marketing we need our own marketing or marketing done for specific for developers that is not the same that is probably traditional being done we need our own approach to communities like H stuff like that that's what I thing regarding how we do the management I have a different School of Management I I got

28. 13:32

    my management training in crypto that it was different from the one you get to school and I got it working in places like Harmony was like the war right it was like heavy like Community was brutal like every week you're being accused of taking money or having sex with grantis it was stuff so from that you but did you do it no I'm innocent no comments no but but it was tough Harmony was tough I came when I when I started to came to Aurora and so they give you the space to

29. 14:06

    do your own thing just you ring into that so I know how the community Works what works what doesn't work so the the the my Approach testing and chipping and see what works and what's not and some but always cheap deliver if it doesn't work move to something else but the the only way to do that is not talking about more about management but leadership I just try to enable people to do stuff and if they and give them enough power and I think that's what the maxim and

30. 14:37

    vad gave like enough power that go out do it do your own mistake if you fail let's talk about it but I had never been constrainted like it sometimes we discuss stuff but it's never oh it's very horizontal so that's probably we are starting to get in a little more trouble and I expect we will get in more trouble from now on if you're not getting in trouble you're not getting things yeah done the perfect is the only thing that is perfect is that's not

31. 15:03

    Haven even been started yeah I experienced that some people weren't dormant and no one ever complained or said anything against them because they were like a ghost like they were not there so I guess that yeah it comes to the territory I I I do think that as a bystander looking at the technical picture and I'm a very visual learner it would really help to try to have a lay of the land and understand where when do you need that leadership to then attract the people to

32. 15:36

    do different types of work because usually when the frustration comes in is sure you attempt to do something and it may not work but there's like a lot of nuance as to did you really try Why didn't it work if this was given to a different team under a different set of circumstances could it have done differently and the main challenge that that we have now in crypto is that because everything is

33. 16:01

    decentralized we have a lot of problem having conversations that should be pretty standard if I'm deploying $50,000 a month in marketing here and you guys are doing X for X price what's the Benchmark yeah because you can do something quite Niche and get outsize returns in something that moves the needle for you these is uncorrelated so I think that we need to find a way to give people autonomy to experiment but also work together and I think we need to give the opportunity to people to

34. 16:35

    fail the my main issue that dealing on the community is like the why them and not me right like I found this team I found this team so why did you give the money to the team what did you give to me so that's the one we've been I've been trying to address beforehand I'm telling this one people we assume that this project might not succeed it might be that other team team could have done better but this is the one we're doing right now how the if I go to with Team B then team a will be the same why B and not a and a not be so

35. 17:06

    that's the one I'm trying to like preemptive because that happened to me in the past a lot oh you give the money to this project when I was doing this so how do you know right so I'm that's one of project we this money we're giving more think about it we're working much more with the project so that when the proposal goes to new social is more ready to be approved but still it may F

36. 17:30

    May Fail and to be honest like V is that will tell you only 20% of the projects so but the V you define success are you looking for a 100x next company or a failure that inspires five new developers to join because the cost of acquisition for developer must be very high for for me succeed is in three years that the project is still there still working that would be a suc if it fail and if they didn't still it didn't made a rook pool that's a succeed too

37. 17:59

    and they fail organically that's fine but I mean did they seal the money yeah that's that's a failure yeah yeah but checking yeah so that's for me is the part of success fails but it seems that the bar seems to be higher in crypto because everyone is attacking each other everything is public right oh every now every everyone knows how much ER money I give to the specific every sense so they they know right being a grand allocator is hard especially at the ecosystem level

38. 18:31

    because you got to have the big picture like for instance to me personally and maybe this is why I'm allocating money as part of the dev Hub if you find one project and that initiative fails but the team is still around and they're learning and contributing they could probably get hired by another team or that's not like a full failure you didn't expect to make money from the investment and there's value being

39. 18:55

    generated in ways that weren't intended and thaten happens all the time I agree the idea can fail the team does not necessarily fail after that and the knowledge and the experience the the valuable knowledge that needs to be extracted from there is postmortem basically document or something or just thinking about it as a team as a there's everybody involved there basically make this be a really good Segway to if we

40. 19:20

    apply some of that reasoning to like the microcosm of hackathons I've heard some very interesting Reflections IIA things that they're too short to build real products I've heard explicit guidelines that we're looking for teams that can work on the projects like longer term there are new resources to make sure that the hackathon participants are as good as they can be maybe can you give us a

41. 19:45

    really quick lay of the land of what the devop has been doing in terms of hackathons in general like the presences year some of the lessons and then we can go into hacka box and the future you want to take this one uh I can do but you want yeah the hackaton we have the hackbox we're organizing the hack the hackaton you will start seeing us more and more in the local events we are decentralizing the death rails we just

42. 20:09

    launched the Chinese death rails we're actively talking with Brazil Brazilian death rails H Korean death rails so the first stop is there you doing the hackaton and being more active and more engaged with the developers giving the better tools then we want after they win or after they probably not necessarily win but they were engaged we are we already devised a boss BS hacket on

43. 20:32

    engagement strategy we brought Joe from chardok and he is working to create a very wellestablished set of strategies to keep it in the environment give them what they need and find them their space within the ne ecosystem so that's why we are working heavily on that you will see a few things happening like monthly challenges more engagement for the developers you and it will happen very soon like December January will be very on top of it I think the mo the most important Discovery for myself when we

44. 21:06

    were like brainstorming the ideas how to bring developers more engaged and how to make our ecosystem even better was that like we need to give people purpose of being in the ecosystem to feel to make them feel connected and also be empowered so that's like a lot of opportunities these days not only hacken tons not only specifically crafted challenges but also Fellowship programs

45. 21:32

    mentoring that is still not a part of our thing but we are looking forward to is a purpose thing at odds with devell cu the way that I see it and and and I'm it's not only the it's it's all over the place it's about contributions to the core and and then yeah I'm asking as I'm pitching for a job here cuz the the way that I see it when we need Devils to be able to assist Hands-On Technical and meet hackers where they are at hackathons but I've spend two years

46. 22:06

    trying to find the place of where do the evangelists go first of all where are they and how can we Empower them like where are the cheerleaders where are the people that can get the message and replicate it almost as well or hopefully better with more energy than Ilia or the insane amount of content that we've had on stage because I feel that's a layer that we're missing we need the cheerleader to go there tell a story get everyone excited and then Devo can be there to support as needed it could be

47. 22:37

    the same person if you find someone very special like Joe I think he could do that but my experience has been sometimes Dev RS are waiting for the technical component because that's our area they may not be as good or have the time to be communicating it's almost like a sales role sure I I was actually giving getting a lot of inspiration from rust Community myself and how I I I've

48. 23:02

    been organizing local events in my home City for rust just gigs so I think the like there is a need for some spark and showing people how simple it is sometimes to run a local Meetup which is just basically your friends your I know fellow Engineers that you can also and Inspire and get get some cool fun things done over the weekend what what not so I think we we need to create this culture of being empowered and just what I'm

49. 23:35

    trying to avoid to for people to see to view Dev Hub as like top down structure of like they they are only given grants we want to actually people to start to elevate themselves and share among each other so this is I think very important let's levitate together I think it was Maxim or Eugene the dream let's attribute it to Maxim to be able to close in a high note he said that there were two types of meetups one where

50. 24:00

    whatever they ask for thousands of dollars to the marketing D the other one it's two boxes of pizza and quality conversations in a room like people show up because of the brain power and yeah it's good to know that Dev Hub is in the hands of the people that believe in the two Pizza yeah yeah thank you very much man and definitely y we we'll be around re reach out to us and we are definitely working more on the more in the regions if you need to be your area to be cover

51. 24:30

    either start your own thing or come to us and we'll help you to do your own thing and then find that inspiration I think inspiration is local I just tell the metap pool guy he want start the Mexican death RS if in Mexico what you need to do to bring developers is open a bottle of tequila let's buy bottles of tequila you said it I did it but yeah probably thanks so much for being here uh this was my first time and subscribe to the dev hop podcast we're going to

52. 24:55

    have more conversations like this one hopefully will be inspired empowered elevated we can all levitate towards greatness together and uh stay safe awesome thank you man thanks