July 8, 2024
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This article was originally published July 8, 2024 on Rocket Bites.
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As the CEO and co-founder of HashPack, the leading wallet on Hedera Hashgraph, I've had the privilege of witnessing firsthand the power of community in the Web3 space. Today, I want to share our perspective on how we at HashPack build and nurture our community through user-centric design, and the unique challenges and opportunities this approach presents.
HashPack originated as a community project. We were a random group of four Hedera enthusiasts in a community discord server that one day got together and decided to make a wallet. Though we have come farther than we ever thought we would with this project, to this day we keep our community roots close to our hearts. But what does this really mean in practice? For us, it's about fostering and maintaining a two-way dialogue with our community. We believe that to truly serve our users, we must first understand their needs, pain points, and aspirations.
This approach is particularly crucial given the dual nature of our user base. As a non-custodial wallet provider, we serve two primary demographics: the retail users who rely on our wallet for their day-to-day crypto activities, and the builders who want to connect with our users. Balancing the needs of these two groups with our finite resources is a challenging act, but one that we believe is essential for the health of the entire ecosystem.
We make a deliberate and constant effort to reach out to both sides of this community. In fact, a large portion of my day goes towards keeping tabs on how the Hedera ecosystem is feeling at any given time, and I know our CTO Tyler takes great effort to join every Twitter space he can and really listen to what is important to the community.
I really find it both rewarding and also incredibly important to chat with HashPack users and community members, hearing what you’re excited about, what you’re frustrated about, and relaying that information to my team. The same goes for creators and builders. I have so many people that I’ve worked with in this space that I’m happy and proud to call my friends, who have built amazing things, and I’m always on the lookout for exciting projects that are just coming to life or teams that have had their head down building for months and are finally ready to reach out again.
To the HashPack team, community engagement isn't just about passively gathering feedback—it's about co-creation. Some of our best ideas and most impactful improvements have come directly from our users. Token sorting on the assets screen, the ability to sort NFT folders, incognito mode, these are all examples of UX improvements that are directly from user feedback. Our official discord server and twitter account are the primary ways we’ve received feedback, but we also get a ton of insight from our support tickets and just chatting with people casually day after day.
When our users take the time to tell us both what you love and what you hate about HashPack, it indicates to me that we’re doing something right, because if our users didn’t care they would just leave.
On the builder side, there’s so much to talk about that it’ll have to wait for another day. But just as a quick summary, we of course have the staple integrations such as in-wallet swaps (Saucerswap) and onramps and native staking. We have collaborated with SentX, the leading NFT marketplace in the ecosystem to allow for in-wallet NFT browsing, buying and selling. And we have also integrated three launchpads (SentX, Altlantis and TierBot) for in-wallet NFT ecosystem visibility. These are the obvious integrations with our community builders, but did you know that token icons are now served through collaboration with a third party? We used to host all tokens directly on our servers (centralized), but a collaboration with DaVinciGraph means token projects can now serve their token information across the entire ecosystem in a decentralized manner that other builders can use. We have integrations with Hashgraph Name Service (HNS) and Kabuto Name Service (KNS) for web3 domain names which show up in place of the ‘0.0.xxxxx’ account number if you have one of their domains. The price feeds for the tokens are served by Saucerswap, and all mirror node calls are run through our friends at Validation Cloud and HGraph (and previously, Arkhia and Ledgerworks).
We are also validators for Hashport, the native bridge on Hedera. We work very closely with the Hedera WalletConnect team which is currently still under active development.
And of course, I would be remiss not to mention our close relationship with Swirlds Labs and the Hedera development team. Through our collaborations we are able to keep the wallet up to date with the latest features on the Hashgraph. Notable accomplishments are day one support of Smart Contracts V2 and Native Staking and continued EVM equivalence support. We support community-led standards such as HCS20 points and Hashinals. We’ve worked hand in hand on Hedera Improvement Proposals (HIPS) - the HIP412 NFT Metadata HIP, which sets the standard that every NFT on Hedera follows, was written by myself with the input of every community member I could find at the time. I could keep going but again, it’s far too much to fit into this post.
Needless to say, we really believe this collaborative approach not only leads to better products and user experiences, but strengthens our community as a whole. When we work together, build together and support each other, we foster a sense of ownership and belonging within our community that enables us to be more than we could ever be by ourselves.
Of course, that isn’t to say it’s easy. Crypto moves fast and sentiment can turn on a dime, and it can be exhausting having to not just stay up to date with the rapidly changing technology but also keep tabs on the latest community drama. I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the challenges that come with this user-centric approach. As a small startup team in a rapidly evolving space, our resources are often stretched thin. It's not always easy to address every concern or implement every suggestion. But we've made a conscious decision to try to help everyone, regardless of their status or influence in the community. And we do our very best not to play favorites—every voice matters to us.
This commitment to inclusivity and fairness can sometimes mean slower progress in certain areas, but we believe it's crucial for building a strong, sustainable community. We're not just building a product; we're nurturing an ecosystem.
So if you’ve reached out, if you’ve provided feedback, please know that even if we haven’t responded to you, we’re listening, and we care.
Part of our mission at HashPack is to build out a stronger community that can help each other. We envision a future where our users aren't just passive consumers of our product, but active participants in a vibrant, supportive ecosystem. By encouraging knowledge sharing and mutual support among our users, we aim to create a community that's greater than the sum of its parts.
In this vision, HashPack serves as a focal point—a hub around which the community can rally and grow. We're not just building for ourselves. We believe that a stronger HashPack community means a stronger Hedera ecosystem as a whole. Our success is intertwined with the success of the broader Hedera community, and we never lose sight of that fact.
As we move forward, we remain committed to this user-centric, community-focused approach. We know there will be challenges along the way, but we're excited about the journey. Because at the end of the day, it's not just about building a better wallet—it's about building a better Web3 future for everyone.
In the coming weeks and months, I'll be sharing more insights into our journey at HashPack, the lessons we've learned, and our vision for the future. I invite you to join us in this conversation. After all, that's what community is all about.
May Chan
CEO and Co-founder, HashPack
