After four years in Developer Relations within the Metis ecosystem, I’ve learned that effective feedback loops between developers and product teams aren’t just about collecting complaints, they’re about creating a systematic approach to understanding, documenting, and solving the real problems that prevent developers from shipping successfully.
My Journey Into DevRel
My path into Developer Relations came through working in the Metis ecosystem, where I spent four years helping decentralized applications (dapps) integrate with our Layer 2 solution. My role centered on ensuring projects could navigate the subtle but critical differences between deploying on a rollup versus a traditional Layer 1 blockchain. I needed to understand our ecosystem’s infrastructure landscape intimately and connect projects with viable alternatives when gaps existed.
What drew me to this work was the direct impact I could have on project success. Every conversation revealed new insights about developer needs, which not only helped individual teams but also expanded my own understanding, knowledge I later applied when building my own product, Koris, a programmatic influencer marketing platform.
The Technical Reality: Why Context Matters
The feedback I collected revealed patterns that might seem minor to outsiders but were deployment-critical for developers. The most common issues centered around inconsistent block times. Unlike traditional blockchains, each transaction on our L2 created its own block, making it impossible to reliably adjust parameters dependent on block numbers, like reward systems that many DeFi protocols rely on.
Even more complex was explaining finality concepts. On an optimistic rollup, finality isn’t binary. We had “temporal finality” where transaction data gets posted to L1, but the state remains unconfirmed until transactions can be re-executed on the main chain. This distinction becomes crucial when building cross-chain interoperability solutions like bridges.
Metis operated as an Optimium, posting data off-chain to reduce transaction costs, then reconstructing it on-chain later. While this saved money, it created developer experience challenges. The introduction of blobs has since simplified this landscape significantly, making on-chain data posting more affordable and the developer experience more intuitive.
Building Effective Communication Channels
My communication strategy evolved around immediacy and clarity. Most of our developer support happened through Telegram, enabling real-time problem-solving. When developers hit blockers, they needed answers fast, not scheduled meetings.
The key was being direct and specific. Critical questions usually centered on RPC issues, but occasionally we’d receive feedback about infrastructure gaps that required ecosystem-level solutions. For example, when AAVE wanted to deploy, they needed Chainlink oracle support. This wasn’t just a technical requirement, it represented a strategic ecosystem decision about which infrastructure partners to prioritize.
From Individual Problems to Systematic Solutions
We maintained dedicated chat channels for established projects. When major projects encountered problems, we documented the solutions and added them to our public resources. This approach transformed individual support requests into ecosystem-wide improvements.
The pattern recognition happened organically through daily interactions. Some issues appeared once and disappeared; others kept surfacing with different projects. The repeated problems got expanded documentation and proactive solutions.
Managing Dependencies and Expectations
One of the trickiest aspects of my role was managing situations where solutions lay outside our direct control. When developers couldn’t access specific infrastructure like Chainlink Keepers, we couldn’t just promise it would be available tomorrow. Instead, we focused on providing viable alternatives, like suggesting Gelato Functions as a replacement.
This approach required maintaining deep knowledge of the broader ecosystem. I needed to understand not just what our platform offered, but what alternatives existed and how to help developers make those transitions smoothly.
The Human Element
Developer Relations is ultimately about translation, not just between technical concepts, but between different organizational priorities. Developers face immediate blockers that prevent them from shipping. Product teams balance multiple competing priorities and longer development cycles.
My role became bridging this gap by communicating developer needs in terms that resonated with product priorities. Instead of just saying “developers are frustrated with RPC issues,” I’d contextualize it: “Three major integrations are blocked on RPC reliability, and two are considering alternative platforms.”
Applying These Lessons to My Own Product
When I transitioned to building Koris, I applied these DevRel lessons to my own product development. The blockchain-specific issues I was previously solving weren’t relevant to my platform. But the fundamental approach remained valuable: anticipate developer needs, document solutions proactively, and maintain clear communication channels.
For Koris, the main integration challenges were finding reliable RPC providers and subgraph support. Because I’d documented these types of infrastructure decisions extensively in my DevRel work, deploying my own product became straightforward.
Key Takeaways for Building Better Feedback Loops
Effective feedback loops between developers and product teams require three core elements:
- Immediacy in communication: Developers don’t want to wait for scheduled check-ins when they’re blocked. Choose communication channels that enable real-time problem-solving.
- Pattern recognition over individual fixes: Not every developer complaint needs to become a product feature, but repeated patterns deserve systematic solutions and documentation.
- Alternative solutions for external dependencies: When the perfect solution isn’t available, having well-researched alternatives prevents developer churn and maintains momentum.
The goal isn’t just collecting feedback, it’s creating a system where developer needs directly inform product decisions, where individual problems become ecosystem improvements, and where the friction between building and shipping gets systematically reduced.
Most importantly, remember that behind every integration issue is a developer trying to ship something valuable. The faster you can help them succeed, the stronger your entire ecosystem becomes.