Putting the community first: An interview with Community Lead Cygnus

We at XDEFI Wallet have always been dedicated to building the best possible product for the crypto community.

We put high importance on engaging with and listening to our community from day one in order to achieve this.

Today, we want to talk about how we facilitate the XDEFI Wallet community and who could be a better person to explain our approach than our XDEFI Wallet Community lead, Cygnus?

Therefore Archon sat down with him for an interview.

Archon: Hi and welcome, Cygnus, can you quickly introduce yourself and tell us about your role at XDEFI?

Cygnus: Well, everyone in the community knows me as Cygnus (cygnusNord), I’m first and foremost an IT enthusiast (IT security, Python programming, blockchain), and I joined XDEFI Wallet initially as a moderator (Community Manager) and I am currently acting as the  Community Lead. 

This is a big responsibility that I take very seriously. I’m in charge of the Discord and Telegram servers, I support ticket handling, and I act as the link between the community and the XDEFI development unit. This implies that I know the product inside and out and carry out tests and retests to catch the difficulties/bugs encountered by our users or forward the feature requests that the community wants. Regarding QA (Quality Assurance), I work closely with Amin (aka Batmine), our QA Lead. Last but not least, I also write content and video tutorials for XDEFI Wallet.

Archon: How important is the voice of the Community for XDEFI Wallet in general, and what impact does it have on the overall strategy and development direction of the wallet?

Cygnus: It has a tremendous impact, and this is why we are involved 24/7 with the community. We listen to all difficulties, remarks, criticisms and wishes, and everyone has a say in the XDEFI Wallet community. 

This makes the development more organic because we always hear new ideas and feel what the market demands. Of course, we also have had to prioritise the information we collect as our development output is limited, but the community is still the best source for new feature ideas.

Archon: How have you been able to rally a loyal community of early testers when you were not well known as a brand?

Cygnus: I think it just happened naturally. The THORChain Community (the THORChain team has originally incubated us) believed in the project immediately. And the closeness of the team members (Emile, Romain (aka Retiere), Akeel (aka Yellingfore), Amin (aka Batmine)) on the Telegram group convinced the others to get involved. People wanted a multichain wallet; there was an apparent demand for it from day one.

Archon: How did you utilise community feedback in the very early days of the development?

Cygnus: Already in the very early days, we had a dedicated community space where early adopters could report issues and wishes. To encourage this, we organised different challenges with prizes. Most of these early testers are still with us and are now some of our most loyal users. 

Archon: How did you grow the overall community closer to the launch? What was your most important social channel?

Cygnus: Our marketing and partnership teams worked hard to make it possible and increase the exposure of the XDEFI Wallet brand initially. Obviously, in crypto, Twitter is an important marketing channel to grow awareness, but we always try to bring people into our Discord channel for a more engaging community experience. People who have stayed in the community with us did it because of the quality of the product and because of the information and support they have found on our Discord.

Archon: What have been your experiences with Discord as your main community channel?

Cygnus: I remember, as a gamer, everyone was using TeamSpeak and then suddenly Discord came along and started to offer more possibilities and convenient features to this target group. Very quickly, we could see that Discord was extending to many additional areas of interest beyond just video games. 

Today, Discord is an easy application to use but still offers endless possibilities for projects to organise their conversation and even integrate different workflows. 

Archon: You are leveraging these options in Discord to manage support tickets. How are you doing this and how scalable is this regarding future adoption? 

Cygnus: The ability to import or create bots is one of the most significant advantages of Discord. We implemented a bot that allows users to open a ticket according to the difficulty encountered. This ticket opens a live chat in a dedicated private room, where only the member and the XDEFI administrators can read or take part in the conversation. This protects the members from any information being revealed to explain or when sharing a link. Also, the support ensures that users do not make any hazardous or unfortunate manipulations.

This is why we always ask members to open a ticket if they have a problem.

I think the importance of providing high-quality customer support is often underestimated. We provide honest, personalised help, not robotic answers, and we continue to do so even with more significant user numbers.

Archon: Do you still utilise super users or beta testers before rolling out new features to the public?

Cygnus: We have different channels on Discord for all users regarding feedback, ideas and bug reporting. Additionally, we have recently set up a beta tester programme. These testers try pre-releases (of the XDEFI Wallet app) and ensure that everything works properly. They have a dedicated channel and reporting system, which has been coded by Pierre (aka Monsieur Barti). Anyone interested to try new features early can apply to become a beta tester, although places are limited!

Archon: When you add support to new blockchains on XDEFI Wallet, how are you personally preparing for this?

Cygnus: As a Community Lead, I have to test everything properly in advance. I want to understand the blockchain, its particularities, what is already available, what is in progress, the blockchain explorers, the coins, the tokens, the main dApps etc. I want to provide concrete answers to our users and community members who do not necessarily know this new environment by heart. I also keep an eye on partner protocols’ Discord & Telegram servers and help out whenever needed.

Archon: Not all feedback or community interaction is positive; how do you deal with critical feedback?

Cygnus: If something is critical, it becomes my priority task, especially if it’s about a flaw in our product. I then replicate the issue with different computers, operating systems and web browsers. I try to understand the conditions under which the error occurred, which can be difficult sometimes 🙂 Then I send all the details to Amin (aka Batmine), our QA Lead, who has a whole arsenal for running in-depth tests. Once the issue is confirmed, he immediately forwards the information to the development team, who resolve the issue as fast as possible. It’s essential to be responsive. Users must be happy and safe with the product.

Archon: Have you planned any future special engagement programs for the community?

Cygnus: Of course. We are constantly experimenting with new ways to engage with the community. We will introduce new campaigns in parallel with the release of new multichain wallet features, blockchain integrations and partnerships. Stay tuned!

Archon: Thank you, Cygnus, for the interview and your time!

Cygnus: Thank you, it has been a pleasure talking to you. Greetings to all of our community members!