Personas of the StakeWise ecosystem

[brianchilders]

Hello StakeWise Community!

I’ve been thinking much more about how to help the StakeWise core team bootstrap the DAO from an organizational perspective and two recent topics of State of the StakeWise DAO and StakeWise Landing Page Redesign got me to thinking that it might be good to start understanding the personas that are part of the StakeWise ecosystem. Rather than try to boil the ocean, I thought we could maybe start with a few basic personas that might be useful to target as part of helping to mature the two topics mentioned.

To start, it might help to categorize the opportunities that do exist within the StakeWise ecosystem.

Here are two high level opportunities that I see. If you can think of more, let’s discuss on this thread!

Opportunities are: Investing and Building

Investing
Within the Investing opportunity, I see two different types of personas: Passive Investor and Active Investor.

Note: not attempting to categorize investor types at this time - but for additional reading to get an idea of where we could go with this, check out https://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/funding/playing-matchmaker-5-types-investor-personas/

A passive investor would hold SWISE and stake ETH via the pool (as SETH2) to capture returns.

An active investor would do everything a passive investor does, but then also participate in governance (by submitting Ideas initially, then creating Proposals, and then work with the StakeWise team to submit the Proposal to a vote), community calls and participate on Discord/Telegram/Reddit to help generate value in the DAO.

Building (think SWAT team idea)
Similar in vein with the investing opportunity and the two personas within, you could develop two personas in the SWAT team.

One could be a SWAT Bounty Hunter. This persona would complete ad hoc building tasks in line with their appropriate skills and earn rewards for doing so.

Another could be a SWAT Committed Builder. This persona would be shown as being a consistent contributor across a range of tasks / projects.

So then how would we onboard these four personas?

Persona #1 - Passive Investor - You like the mission, values and future prospects of the StakeWise DAO and believe value will accrue to the SWISE token over time. You are happy to hold onto the token, and leave it to the DAO and core team to deliver on the StakeWise roadmap.

To onboard yourself, you would purchase some SWISE tokens and stake some ETH (exchange for sETH2). Here is a helpful YouTube video [Stake on the StakeWise platform and Ledger Nano S - YouTube].

You’d also probably want to stay on top of the latest StakeWise news and announcements. Follow them on Twitter [https://twitter.com/stakewise_io] and join the Discord [StakeWise].

Persona #2 - Active Investor - You’d want to do more than just hold onto your SWISE / sETH2 tokens. You want a voice in how we invest, deploy assets, partner with other organizations/DAOs and other key decisions relating to the growth and future success of the DAO.

To onboard yourself, you’d want to do everything that a Passive Investor does. Additionally you’d want to stay on top of the calendar of community / builder calls (via the Discord events / forum events list), listen in, and share your perspectives on our growth and strategy.

You’d also want to familiarize yourself with the StakeWise forum [https://forum.stakewise.io/] and propose ideas, discuss and debate others’ suggestions and vote on key decisions [Snapshot]. (Perhaps I could come up with some sort of Governance Quick Start Guide based on the way things seem to be run here today.)

Also as an active investor, you’d explore what else is happening in the crypto ecosystem. Share new / other ideas via the StakeWise Discord and forum about new opportunities for the StakeWise community to generate income and generate value for the StakeWise protocol.

Persona #3 - SWAT Bounty Hunter - You have skills to contribute to the StakeWise DAO but you can’t commit long term. You’re looking for one-off tasks or projects you can complete to earn SWISE rewards.

To onboard yourself, you’d want to join the StakeWise Discord server and introduce yourself in a (to yet be determined) builders channel. Perhaps explain why you’re interested in StakeWise and share where you think you can contribute.

Explore the various channels and join in discussions where you can add value. From time to time, SWAT bounties may be announced for specific tasks. If one fits your skillset and availability, let everyone know you’re working on it.

Stay up to date on the StakeWise forum [https://forum.stakewise.io/] where additional SWAT bounties / contests may be announced.

At the end of each month (or bounty period), fill out / submit evidence of capturing the SWAT bounty outlining the tasks/work completed and bounties/rewards you believe you are eligible for.

Persona #4 - SWAT Committed Builder - You love what we’re doing in the StakeWise DAO and you want to be an ongoing part of bringing our vision to life. You can commit a certain amount of time each month towards this, in your area(s) of expertise.

To onboard yourself, follow the steps to be a SWAT Bounty Hunter as outlined previously.

Yet to be determined - set up some sort of monthly rewards program and define a builders compensation program. I don’t think we as the StakeWise DAO would be ready for this - we may want to not worry about this persona until we see how the SWAT Bounty Hunter persona works out.

So there you have it StakeWise community / DAO. What do you think? Would these personas work? Should any be added? Modified? Removed?

Thankful for any discussion on this topic!

Your community/DAO member,

Brian Childers

[kiriyha]

I think these personas are roughly how I would describe them too, except I’d probably separate the DAO participation component within Stakers into the Builders category, and rename it into something like Citizens to convey their willingness to engage in governance & protocol duties.

I’d also say that Active investors should probably be called so because they want to use their staked ETH in DeFi, and hence they actively farm / ape - it is a little different from DAO participation.

Finally, within the Builders category, in my opinion the split is likely to emerge around people with different skillsets / backgrounds - e.g. Creatives (for visual / content tasks), Architects (for technical tasks), and Influencers (for sales / intro tasks). Their motivations in the end would be the same - contribute to the DAO and earn SWISE in the process. Let me know what you think about this!

Moving beyond categorisations, I think it’s important to understand why we categorise in the first place. The answer is to tailor our messaging & product offering to these personas to draw more of such people over time.

I would say right now StakeWise has mostly Passive investor types, of whom some occasionally dabble in farming within sETH2 / ETH pool, given its relatively low-risk nature (however, I would still describe them as Passive investors according to your definition). I think to attract more of them, we need to generally raise awareness about StakeWise as a top-tier liquid staking protocol to get on the radar of more people. Perhaps a referral program is necessary, perhaps a marketing stunt, or a consistent strategy, but it’s mostly about awareness since the product 100% meets the needs of this clientele I expect. So overall, to capture this crowd, I think we need to raise awareness and maintain the product offering as is.

This takes us to the Active investor types, who might (or might not) control more ETH and can help StakeWise broaden its community & network because they would likely be the people who already belong in different DeFi communities. I believe one of the key goals for StakeWise right now is to attract these folks thanks to the benefits for adoption of the protocol and community growth that they may bring. To do it we need to finalise the integrations the team has been working on, with respect to borrowing / lending, options, farming etc. Once more can be done with sETH2 in DeFi, I believe we will get more of the Active investor types, and experience another growth spurt. I believe this area needs to be addressed in the next month for StakeWise to evolve to the next level.

Finally, the Builders. I believe in decentralisation and find that the most valuable contributors push the conversations forward & start projects even without prompts from the outside (like SWAT). However, they are incredibly rare (so we’re lucky to have a few - you know who they are!!). With that in mind, I believe the majority of the Builder types will be driven by i) incentives, and ii) interesting tasks, and the goal of SWAT is to specifically address that. So I think we’re covered on that front.

Just my 2 cents on this topic - happy to hear your feedback