Why Web3 Communities Are Going To Be More Connected Than Ever Before
Margaret J. Wheatley, organizational consultant and author of the well-renowned book Leadership and the New Science, said “There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.” Today, with Web3 communities, users have quickly understood the concept of decentralization and are growing faster than ever.
Community Building In Web3
In a Web2 space, your interests will not always be aligned with the service, and your say doesn’t count at all. For instance, if you were to converse with 3 people in metaspace or the physical world, each person would have control over the conversation. However, if that conversation was carried out on Facebook, Discord, or Twitter, things would be different. There would be veto power, which can be used to snub anyone’s opinion out of the conversation.
In a Web3 community, your interests will always be aligned with that of the service. That is because you are part owner of the service. You have the power to decide the direction it takes, the improvements it makes, how it evolves, and how your privacy is protected. If there is a conflict of opinion, you could always take your vote elsewhere.
On the other hand, in a Web3 community, decision-making does not lie in the hands of a single person. The defining feature of Web3 communities is that they are decentralized and community-led, and do not have power resting in the hands of a select few. In a way, every member is a moderator who can decide what type of content can be hosted.
No Alliance To A Hierarchy = Open And Healthier Communities
BeetsDAO, co-founded by Jordan Garbis (noxcusej), is one such community that focuses mainly on purchasing music-related NFTs and pools funds for group investments. Recently, BeetsDAO created and launched the ‘Nyan Dogg’ NFT, which is a collaboration between Snoop Dogg and the original Nyan Cat artist that brought in approximately $250,000.
In a DAO, every single member pools in their input to fulfill a specified goal, whether it is to collect funds for a charity, or pool resources to achieve a goal in the physical world. As Lisa Xu has accurately described inher article, “DAOs are not just another use case of Ethereum — they are organizations that give users a home to explore the entire Web3 ecosystem.”
DAOs also work as exclusive member groups, where people who wish to join have to fulfill a certain task (such as buying an NFT) to gain membership. This helps in discouraging random lurkers, trolls, and mischief-makers from entering, ensuring that only people who are truly keen on entering get access to do so. This makes the environment of the community safe, enhancing community sharing and interaction.
DAOs are also being put to good use, like the Komorebi Collective. Co-founded by Kinjal Shah (a partner at VC firm Blockchain Capital), the Komorebi Collective has 35 female investors and funds female and nonbinary crypto founders.
coto by Eve World looks to create such a DAO, one of women creators who will be token holders and contribute to the governance of the platform. Healthy interactions on our Discord channel ensure keen women get to interact with community creators and formulate the creation of communities together.
Incentives For Those Who Engage
Community building in Web3 takes on the element of rewarding each and every member with tokens for their active participation in the community. This grants users special privileges such as voting powers to make decisions or access to exclusive events within the community. This encourages users to contribute and add value to the community since they are financially incentivized and rewarded for their active participation.
For instance, Friends with Benefits (FWB) is a social community that is token-gated i.e. people need to own 75 FWB tokens to join the community. But apart from this, the community also has options to join them by earning ownership via designing, writing, or contributing to various workstreams.
Another popular example is BFF, an open-access community that educates and empowers women and nonbinary people in Web3. Co-founded by entrepreneur Brit Morin*,*BFF airdropped Friendship Bracelet NFTs to over 8,000 members at their first live event. These Bracelets act as Member Passes to all things BFF, including the ability to mint their NFTs.
Web2 platforms solely restrict communities to just followers and users who engage with posts by commenting or liking. Take Instagram for instance. Engagement rates are determined by the number of follows, shares, comments, or double taps a post has. Such a centralized approach means there are no incentives provided to the average follower, thus discouraging them from participating in events hosted by the content creator. Add to this the fact that algorithms dictate the content we interact with, and neither user nor creator gets to truly discover and interact with each other.
In a Web3 space, everyone is rewarded for every action or step taken to contribute to the community and increase its value. Social tokens can be dished out for something as simple as creating a profile, just to encourage the user to engage actively. Plus, DAOs tackle the disparity between revenue earned by platforms vs what is given to their creators; every member of a DAO can earn, thanks to their membership tokens and the value attached to them. Cooper Turley, the man behind several popular DAOs,breaks it down: “a DAO is an internet community with a shared bank account”.
If we take the music sphere, we use Spotify or Apple Music to buy and then download the song. It’s just a one-way process that has no form of interactivity with the concerned artist. However, with community building in Web3 spaces, musicians can monetize themselves. As Aashima Arora, Investments Lead at Polygon says, Web3 can “eliminate geographical boundaries where fans across different countries can play a role in engaging with their favorite artists in a better way.”
For example, the American rock band Portugal. The Man created their special community token called the PTM coin. A band that has refused to create an official fanbase for fear of milking their community for money, Portugal. The Man wanted to involve their fans in ways that went beyond just spending money. As explained in this Rolling Stones feature, creating a token of their own gave them the chance to create a fan-controlled community that the band can support.
Portugal. The Man used their special token as a way to enhance engagement with their fans when things like backstage passes and concerts were put on hold during the pandemic. They first reached out to their biggest supporters to gift them coins, encouraging them to share the tokens with their friends and the fan community. Owning just 10 PTM Coins gets you a laundry list of benefits, including access to a special audio archive, texts and video chats with the band, new merchandise access, and more. This is just one of the many ways users are incentivized by participation with the community.
In All…
With blockchain networks that ensure safety and anonymity, Web3 communities are a thing of the present and they are increasing as rapidly as ever. You are not a passive user who just consumes, but a member who gives and shares equal regard with other peers of the community as well. Overall, community building in Web3 reflects and emphasizes the decentralized nature of Web3 as a whole.
FAQs On Community Building In Web3
What Is Decentralization In Web3?
Decentralization relies on blockchain technology where peer-to-peer connections are made without having any intermediaries. Web3 itself is built on blockchain that uses nodes to host websites instead of allowing a centralized server to do so.
How Does A DAO Work?
DAOs work on the communities that they establish. There is no hierarchy, and every member of the community has an equal share of the organization. These communities are based online and they use blockchain technology to store data that is spread in the group, be it transaction records or any decisions made.
How Do Social Tokens Work?
Social Tokens are a kind of cryptocurrency that allows artists, musicians, and influencers to monetize their skills and services. Participants are rewarded with social tokens whenever they engage with the creator and are awarded special privileges such as decision-making via the tokens, access to unreleased music, and more.
By Aparna Acharekar, Nandhini Gopal, Anuya Chakravarthi
coto Team
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