4. Vijay - Head of Product @ Superfluid

Welcome to product3 - the newsletter exploring the craft of web3 product development.

This week we say hi to Vijay (@vijaymichalik) - currently the head of product at Superfluid and before that he has been doing product work at Consensys. He is also the founder of AlfaFrens and SuperBoring! Vijay is a true web3 veteran whose journey spans wide across the ecosystem!

In about 500 words, he shares:

• His take on incentives

• What’s shaping web3 at the moment

• Advice for his younger self

How do considerations around governance, tokenomics, and community involvement factor into your product strategy and decision-making process?

Incentives are like rocket fuel in crypto and that's a double-edged sword. You have the power to attract thousands of speculators by building the right game of rewards, social signals, and attention using tokens. You'll lose them just as fast if you don't figure out how to make the tokenomics and rewards sustainable and convert that customer acquisition into lifetime value for your product or protocol. 

Community and governance are sometimes thrown around as memes - people treat community as those who complain in your discord that they haven't received an airdrop yet, and governance as full of HOA rejects and armchair economists. 

In practice, these are pathways you have to cultivate to attract and retain people who care about your project and have aligned interests in helping it succeed. You tend not to find those people by giving retroactive rewards to bagholders of some awful PFP NFT collection but by giving ongoing rewards that align with long-term value creation for your community. Unsurprisingly, this takes a lot more effort than doing blanket airdrops and hoping for the best, but I'm optimistic that more broadly programmatic incentives are adopted and show results, the more effort people will be willing to spend on getting it right.

What are the most exciting or influential trends currently shaping the future of web3?

Crypto twitter has turned into an extremely self-referential mass-psyop where people make up trends, conflicts and tier lists that don't reflect reality. Success is measured on the number of sybil addresses you generate, the TVL you bribe or the number of pre-product projects you sign partnerships with. 

The most exciting trend shaping web3 at the moment is the cold sting of reality. 1000 VC-backed L2s designed to just launch tokens and dump on retail are dying, while products with crazy adoption and retention metrics like Hyperliquid are killing it!

What would you advise your younger self?

Get on the frontlines as much as you can - building heads-down is great for a short while if you're shipping something incredible, but you miss out on knowledge, visibility and opportunities if you're not in the arena, trying things (apps). 

Secondly, distribution is king, and the sooner you figure out how to build unique ways to attract an audience and get in front of users the better.

If you’ve enjoyed this micro interview, share it with fellow web3 product people and give Vijay a follow on X (@vijaymichalik).

Have someone in mind who you’d like to see share their insights? Drop an email to [email protected] 

See you in the next edition!