How Uniswap Labs Is Building DeFi Community From the Ground Up in Latin America
Most Web3 community managers operate online. Ana Westfall from Uniswap Labs is out in the streets of Sao Paulo handing out donuts.
In Episode 4 of Behind the Community, aartoo's Aaron sat down with Ana, one of Uniswap's Latin American community managers, to talk about localised community building, DeFi education as a growth strategy, how IRL events outperform big conference sideshows, and what the future holds for community managers navigating a rapidly evolving AI landscape.
Ana's background is unlike almost anyone else in Web3. Twelve years in corporate finance. A blockchain MVP built with Consensys. An OG role in Solana's Superteam Brazil. And now she is bringing Uniswap directly to people who have never heard the word DeFi, trading donuts for two minutes of their time.
Table of contents
- Who is Ana Westfall?
- Uniswap's internationalisation strategy
- A day in the life of a localised community manager
- Why community managers belong on the product team
- How new L1s and L2s impact Uniswap's community
- IRL events: why smaller beats bigger
- The donut campaign: grassroots onboarding done right
- The future of community management and AI
- Frequently asked questions
Who is Ana Westfall?
Ana Westfall is a Brazil-based community manager at Uniswap Labs with over four years in Web3, a 12-year background in corporate finance, and an OG role in founding Superteam Brazil. She is a self-described ecosystem maxi with no allegiance to any particular chain, only to growing the user base.
Ana's path into crypto is one of the more unusual origin stories you will hear. She was working in the beauty and grooming division of a multinational corporation when a finance director's lecture on blockchain sparked her curiosity in 2016. A few years later she was building a blockchain supply chain MVP with Consensys to trace electric shaver components, until the 2019 pandemic meant people stopped shaving and the project stalled.
From there she dedicated herself to crypto full time. She joined NFT communities, became an OG Superteam Brazil member as it was being founded, worked with MetaMask, and eventually joined Uniswap Labs in late 2024.
The lesson for anyone watching: you do not need to start at the top. Ana started as a community member.
"I call myself an ecosystem maxi. To me it's all about growing the ecosystem and expanding the user base."
Ana Westfall, Uniswap Labs
Uniswap's internationalisation strategy
Uniswap Labs discovered that 60% of volume flowing through the protocol was coming from outside their core English-speaking markets. That insight drove a dedicated internationalisation programme, hiring local community managers across Asia and South America to bring DeFi education and community presence to regions that had been largely underserved.
Ana is one of several regional hires across Latin America, alongside counterparts in Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia. The model is deliberately local first. Before even introducing the product, the goal is education: helping people understand what DeFi is, why it might be better for them than traditional finance, and demystifying the idea that blockchain is too technical for a regular person.
For Aaron, this is a perfect case study for why cross-language and cross-platform tooling matters. aartoo was built to support community managers operating across multiple languages, platforms, and geographies simultaneously, giving them a unified view without needing to manually parse every Telegram group or Discord server.
A day in the life of a localised community manager
Ana's role breaks into three areas: DeFi education for new audiences, feedback loops with existing traders and product users, and acting as a local bridge between institutions and Uniswap's global team. It is a hybrid role that spans community management, growth, and informal business development.
Most of her time goes toward showing up: events, meetups, online workshops, and direct conversations with people who have never used a DEX. Finance literacy is a starting point before crypto literacy can even begin.
The second pillar is feedback. Ana actively collects product feedback from traders and community members and brings it back to the product team. This is the loop that many projects fail to close, not because they do not care but because they have no structured way of capturing what their community is actually saying.
The third area is institutional. Uniswap has API and aggregator infrastructure that is relevant to banks and financial institutions exploring DeFi. Ana serves as a local point of contact for those conversations, connecting them to the global team when the time is right.
Why community managers belong on the product team
Community managers sit at the most direct point of contact with users yet are consistently excluded from product standups and roadmap conversations. The result is that high-signal feedback from real users never reaches the people who could act on it. aartoo was built specifically to close that gap by surfacing structured insight from community data.
This was one of the most pointed conversations in the episode. Aaron noted that community managers are still widely viewed as a support function rather than a product function, meaning they are rarely in the weekly standups where sentiment shifts and user feedback could directly influence priorities.
Ana added an important nuance: a great community manager also has to use the product. You cannot translate feedback accurately if you do not understand it from the inside. She pointed out how many people working in Web3 community or growth roles have never actually used the product they are promoting, and how that gap limits the quality of insight they can bring back to the team.
The takeaway for community managers: use the product, document what you find, and find ways to get that information in front of the people who can act on it, with or without a formal seat at the table.
How new L1s and L2s impact Uniswap's community
Uniswap's protocol is currently deployed across 13 or more networks, and the team was present on Monad from day one. New L1 and L2 launches are generally positive catalysts for the Uniswap community because users in those ecosystems need a DEX with deep liquidity and a strong UX, and Uniswap being there on launch day matters.
For community managers at DeFi protocols, this is a real consideration. Every time a new chain launches and gains traction, there is a wave of new users who need to understand how to use the tools built on top of it. Ana's localised role means she is often the first point of contact for those users in Brazil, explaining not just Uniswap but the broader DeFi stack.
Aaron noted from personal experience having used Uniswap across seven or eight chains in recent months. The protocol's multi-chain presence means its community spans an unusually wide range of ecosystems and there is always something new to explain.
IRL events: why smaller beats bigger
Ana's most memorable events have been intimate gatherings of 20 to 30 people rather than large conference side events. At that scale, you can actually talk to everyone in the room. The connections made are more genuine and the feedback is more valuable than anything you collect handing out branded tote bags at a 500-person happy hour.
Uniswap ran over 40 events in Brazil last year. Ana's favourites were the ones where she had time to sit down with each person. A content creator night for Brazilian KOLs stands out as a highlight: bringing together people who talk about DeFi and crypto to an audience that might not otherwise reach the Uniswap team gave those creators a direct line to someone they could actually get in touch with.
The contrast with large conference events is stark. At a big sponsored happy hour you talk to five or six people if you are lucky. At a 30-person dinner, you talk to everyone. The depth of connection is completely different and the signal you take back is far more useful.
The donut campaign: grassroots onboarding done right
Uniswap Brazil took a branded Volkswagen combi van across Sao Paulo for two days, distributing 200 donuts to anyone willing to download the MetaMask wallet and spend two minutes learning about DeFi. No prior crypto knowledge required. The campaign showed how much people appreciate being talked to rather than marketed at.
This is the kind of campaign that does not come from a growth playbook. It comes from a community manager who understands that fear and unfamiliarity are the real barriers to DeFi adoption, not technical complexity.
Ana described how people were downloading the Metamask wallet without knowing what on-chain or DeFi meant, and finding the setup surprisingly simple. The wallet does not require saving a seed phrase immediately, removing one of the most intimidating steps from the first-time experience. Within two or three minutes of conversation, people were onboarded.
The Volkswagen combi wrapped in Uniswap branding became a talking point on its own. Ana documented the campaign on her Twitter, including a short documentary, which is worth watching for anyone thinking about grassroots community activation.
The future of community management and AI
Both Ana and Aaron agree that AI will not replace community managers. The irreplaceable element of the role is human connection: going to events, sitting with people, listening, and feeding real insight back to the teams that need it. What AI will do is remove the time spent on moderation, FAQ responses, and data aggregation, giving community managers more capacity for the work that actually moves communities forward.
Ana made a point that extends beyond the AI conversation. She observed that non-technical community members in various Web3 projects have already started building apps using AI tools with no engineering background. That shifts what community participation can look like: engaged members become contributors and even builders.
For community managers, the practical implication is clear. Embrace tools that handle repetitive tasks. Use the time you get back to do the things no AI can replicate: showing up, listening, building genuine relationships, and translating what you hear into things the product team can act on.
The future of community management and AI
Both Ana and Aaron agree that AI will not replace community managers. The irreplaceable element of the role is human connection: going to events, sitting with people, listening, and feeding real insight back to the teams that need it. What AI will do is remove the time spent on moderation, FAQ responses, and data aggregation, giving community managers more capacity for the work that actually moves communities forward.
Ana made a point that extends beyond the AI conversation. She observed that non-technical community members in various Web3 projects have already started building apps using AI tools with no engineering background. That shifts what community participation can look like: engaged members become contributors and even builders.
For community managers, the practical implication is clear. Embrace tools that handle repetitive tasks. Use the time you get back to do the things no AI can replicate: showing up, listening, building genuine relationships, and translating what you hear into things the product team can act on.