Internal turmoil in Nano community – where does Nano go from here?

December 17, 2018

Nano community has mysteriously lost one of its most prominent community managers, Troy Retzer. Troy was very active and knowledgeable part of Nano core team and enjoyed respect and affection by Nano holders and fans.

However, two days ago a news broke that Troy is not a member of the Nano team anymore. A very terse and short message by the team saying:

”

We can confirm that Troy is no longer an employee of the Nano Foundation – obviously we all wish him the very best for the future and thank him for his contribution to the project over the previous months”

They refused to give more details “out of respect for Troy’s” privacy. Needless to say that community reaction was borderline resentful and general uncertainty creeped into the Nano ranks.

Some of the comments that sum up the sentiment:

“Yes. It is objectively weird. These other comments seem like whistling past the graveyard.
Troy is a high profile figure, a public figure, with a lot of people and a lot of money attuned to him.
That creates a bit of a duty – even if unofficial – to act with the community in mind.
And that means leaving for whatever reason you’d like … but sharing enough info to assure the nano public that nothing is amiss and their money is not facing yet another hidden risk.
I’m not saying something’s up. I’m saying this isn’t being handled correctly.”

“Zach leaves and there is a statement. Troy leaves there is no statement + shut up, don’t ask + Nano isn’t a public company.

It doesn’t make sense, it’s not professional, it’s not courteous. Whatever the reason for Troy leaving, how much is it to ask to make a short neutral public statement. I know RC3 is on beta but we are literally talking about a 10 line statement that could be written by a non core member.

And of course I know Nano isn’t a publicly traded company. But my local soccer team isn’t either. Yet when the head coach leaves a statement is released on the website. They don’t owe me anything either.

I’m just going to let it rest but the whole ordeal leaves a bitter taste. Shame”

I agree with the vast majority of Nano holders in reacting to this departure and the brief and non-informative explanation just adds fuel to the fire. Even though individual privacy should be regarded as the most saint of human rights, there was still a better way to solve this that would leave the holders happier and calmer and not inflict on Troy’s private reasons for leaving Nano.

What are Nano chances of really becoming THE payment coin of the future?

This is the question asked often by Nano holders on Reddit. They are genuinely wondering how does a coin with great technical predisposition and superior solutions to other leading payment cryptocurrencies lag so much behind in recognition and usage.

Here are couple of answers he received:

As a Nano fan here are some points I think let it down currently and really hamper its potential usage as a currency:

“Official” wallet, especially the mobile version is awful, bad UX (signup process in particular) and only the basic features (no address book etc.). Canoe is what I use and it’s much better but the average consumer would likely find / download the official wallet first.
No direct fiat entryways (with any volume* also not including the few card gateways charging 15-20% fees..), this being all methods including consumer entries (coinbase etc.), advanced (no fiat pairs on large exchanges) or offline (Fiat to crypto ATMs).
No good merchant provider for major / offline merchants. Yes, I know there’s brainblocks and that’s great for small businesses, especially those with crypto-knowledge but for the majority of merchants, they need something like BitPay which enables them to have no risk because the Nano is instantly converted to Fiat and paid to them as such.
Not a known name – Merchants accept Bitcoin because they’ve heard of Bitcoin and want to capitalise on the hype around it, not necessarily because they like the tech. Nano doesn’t have that buzz around it (frequent media mentions, day-to-day conversion topic last year, generally most people know what it is now) nor does really any other cryptocurrency, even Ethereum or Ripple. The only thing that’s really going to fix that is adoption. If a merchant provider or fiat gateway that focuses 100% on Nano could come into the space, it may then speed things if they do marketing correctly and introduce the general population to Nano in that way.

Other than the reasons enumerated by this well-informed and knowledgeable user, obvious reason for Nano’s struggle is tough competition – payment coins is an arena full of heavyweights, starting from the king itself – bitcoin and followed by a whole bevy of projects like bitcoin cash, litecoin, dash, monero etc.

Nano is also infamous for their poor marketing efforts, or to be more precise complete lack of such. Nano team apparently took an approach “build it and they will come”, fully relying on the technology and neglecting all other business aspects of a project of this magnitude.