Decentralized Community Building Guide #3: The Initial Stage of Community Building

Original: What We Can Learn from Decentralized Community Building[07/21/2022]

Written by: Bethany

Translated by: Misaki, Diamond, WhoKnows DAO

Sometimes the most exciting part of the beginning phase is that you don’t even know when you started; the core contributors of CabinDAO first built a physical space before they began to establish the DAO.

Image source: https://www.creatorcabins.com/visit

When it comes to community building, the simplest and most common question I get asked is: "How did you start?" But the problem is that these stories quickly become romanticized folklore in people's entrepreneurial journeys. Through this research, I will do my best to unveil the core mysteries of these beginnings. Here are the differentiated studies and observations of web3 communities:

1. Build First, Tactics Second

In Web3 (or at least in the adoption curve phase we are in today), one of the most important principles is "build before you plan." Jon from CabinDAO started building without even knowing what the cabins were for. One builder saw a tweet about the idea for a new application called "PartyBid" and decided to spend the weekend coding a V1 version.

This "don’t think, just do" approach seems to work very well for some standout DAOs, which began purely out of impulse and "good vibes." I particularly think of SharkDAO, which started with the idea of collectively bidding on Nouns NFTs, and ConstitutionDAO, which launched (and stopped) its effort to purchase a copy of the U.S. Constitution within a week.

Interestingly, in a Verge article about ConstitutionDAO, the reporter kept asking them what they would do with the U.S. Constitution and posed some practical questions like, "Where would the copy of the Constitution be kept? Who would safeguard it?" But in fact, these were not the focus, at least not at that moment. The most innovative projects I’ve learned about in web3 did not start from strategy but from possibility.

2. Selling Dreams

No matter how crypto-native or digital-first your project is, your end users are still human (even if they exist anonymously with pfp avatars), and the projects that gain support the fastest are those that rely on fundamental human psychology. I noticed four core factors that motivate people to join new projects or initiatives. (This is similar to how some early projects gained attention in the web2 world.)

Be the First

As one of the first DeFi projects to become a DAO, Index Coop fully adopted a decentralized governance model from the start, while others were still struggling to remember what the three-letter acronym stood for. Thus, Index Coop not only unlocked a network of early DeFi advocates but also attracted top community builders who had almost quit their day jobs to propose guidance and new organizational design ideas to try out new ways of working and collaborating. There are indeed benefits to being first.

Join an Extremely Talented Community (as a Builder).

This is no secret in web3, but it’s worth repeating: people want to work with great individuals. This is largely reflected today in developers wanting to co-build communities, which is also a key driving force behind the contributor communities of Juicebox and PartyBid, explaining why gaining a spot on the dark forest leaderboard in the web3 era is akin to earning reputation points on Stack Overflow. Juicebox's core contributor Jango said it best—"developers like to develop alongside their peers."

This is also evident in non-developer networks like CabinDAO, Crypto Coven, and Mirror. In particular, Mirror creatively guides the community by hosting the $WRITE competition, introducing high-quality new users at a controllable and steady pace. In fact, every web3 community I explored mentioned the quality of its members. Figuring out what "that special something" is for your own community and leveraging it to attract more like-minded members is crucial.

Push Boundaries as Much as Possible

In a more cleverly structured incentive system that meets organizational goals, the game "Dark Forest" seems designed to encourage players to break boundaries; the only way to win this world-building and planet-capturing blockchain game is to simplify the gaming experience through automated coding. The foundation 0xPARC funds games (and other projects) with the mission of promoting application innovation on Ethereum. They design competitive games with an open approach, attracting some rigorous Solidity developers to become players, who are incredibly excited about the opportunity to challenge the limits of their code.

You Will Make Money

I don’t want to use the broad metaphor of a "gold rush," but it’s undeniable that there is potential for significant gains. In a platform where ownership is paramount, incentives become more important than ever, and the key is to find balance. However, in the long run, utility-based incentive cases are more compelling. Uniswap's liquidity provider model (now in V3) is a continuously iterating model that educates, incentivizes, and empowers the core user base to engage with their platform. Numerai incentivizes data scientists to contribute successful models to its decentralized hedge fund and modifies the incentive structure to reward contributions to the meta-model rather than based on individual spending. The advice I got from there is simple: incentive design should be based on the type of community interaction you want. (Easier said than done.)

Ranking in the top ten of the Dark Forest game leaderboard seems to have become one of the highest honors a Solidity developer can achieve.

Image source: https://zkga.me/

3. Your Core Team (Still) Matters More Than Ever

Whether you call them entrepreneurs, builders, or contributors, the meaning is quite similar. In the projects I analyzed, four of them gained market attention in the early stages partly due to the core team's prior recognition and good reputation in the field. Believe it or not, those with an audience and brand find it easier to build a community and gain significant attention early on.

For reference: Loot was founded by Dom, one of the founders of Vine and Nouns. The core team of Nounders (the ten founders) also includes Dom and other heavyweights, like artist @gremplin and renowned thinker and investor @punk4156. Just like in other industries, smart people often reappear in other smart projects. The more people and projects I engage with, the more I find that projects are interconnected, and cross-project collaboration has become the norm. Just look at the origins of Partybid; it actually started from a tweet by Denis Nazarov, the former co-founder of Partybid and a16z crypto partner, not to mention the founder of another successful web3 project, Mirror. What’s another major advantage of trusted early builders? They attract more high-quality second-tier builders and contributors.

4. Beware: Speculation and Hype

In Web3, almost everyone knows someone who did the right thing at the right time and made hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars. Even in the most well-intentioned projects, you might still hear YouTube bloggers talk about "Helium being a magical box that can earn you thousands of dollars," or that Loot packs containing Divine Robes can sell for as much as 250 ETH. But the fact is that skyrocketing curves (and extremely profit-driven individuals) dilute the community. While it’s hard to avoid, it’s worth paying attention to. The early airdrop of Optimism this year is an example of an effort to curb arbitrage behavior, but there’s still work to be done. Regarding the bear market we are in, I want to say: although people may objectively lose money, it indeed provides opportunities for excessive speculation.