Decentralized Community Building Guide #6: Measuring Success

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

Written by: Bethany

Compiled by: Misaki, Diamond, WhoKnows DAO

Every community has a different definition of success. SharkDAO's mission is to gather funds to purchase Nouns, ultimately helping people find a way into the Nouns NFT ecosystem. Source: https://sharks.wtf/

Just as every company has a different view of success, so does every community. But through my research, I found some fundamental principles that may help some recognize their true goals, maintain momentum, and continuously inspire community participation. Here are some practical cases.

Is the goal to build infrastructure or enhance participation?

First, clarify your true goal. By studying the differences between infrastructure building and participation, I derived the best advice. For example, Rafa asked me to consider building a web3 community in nearby neighborhoods. One option is to build infrastructure—parks, churches, community centers—and let people organically self-organize. The other option is to design events—block parties, game nights, town hall meetings—and encourage people to participate.

As the leader of a web3 project, you need to make a clear choice. You can build a community around a protocol (as Helium, Mirror, and Uniswap have done), or you can provide an event-based program that attracts community members back. (The latter applies not only to NFT projects but also to a variety of DAOs, learning communities, and other decentralized member-based web3 networks.) While it’s not necessary to choose both, you should develop a plan around a specific project.

Say yes to more naturally occurring opportunities and act quickly

Second, web3 is about "acting quickly and breaking the norm," requiring you to say "Yes" to new partners and opportunities. This has always been the case. New relationships formed during meetings may become the NFT artists for your next project. Misinformation on Twitter or Telegram can ferment into a new Discord channel and a game plan to campaign for a copy of the U.S. Constitution through a DAO. Given that this new era requires experimentation and rapid iteration, compressing the space to say "yes" to more naturally occurring opportunities (and being open to them) is the best choice you can make. A few examples: CabinDAO did not start as a DAO. Founder Jon gathered a group of friends to soft-launch after the early housing was built. One participant suggested using cryptocurrency to expand collaboration with other creators they had been working with. Juicebox's early appeal came from community core contributor Jango, who got involved in two early hype-driven projects (SharkDAO and ConstitutionDAO), both of which voluntarily used their products as hype tools. It doesn’t matter whether you are ready; what matters is that you have acted.

Make it impossible for people to leave the community

Third, make it impossible for people to leave. To be honest: there are many things in the world that are simply "not fun." People easily forget the feeling of laughing with strangers on the internet or doing something ridiculous. However, I have encountered some tricky projects that you can't help but support because they are just so much fun.

I bet that if you browse the "Noun'o'clock" account in Noun Square for ten minutes, you'll want to laugh. These people who hang out in Twitter spaces treat each live NFT auction like a sporting event, making quirky sounds and cracking funny jokes. This community follows project progress in real-time, watching the random generation of new Noun NFTs.

Imagine a group of people shouting at the same time: "This design is trash, but I love it." "What I like is the plant, not the shirt." "Is that a flamingo sunglasses? Come on!" "I'm still thinking about that pineapple."

Part of "Noun'o'clock" includes a social engagement strategy called "Fomo Nouns," where random Nouns (like this flamingo avatar) appear, and participants quickly vote on which one to mint. Source: https://fomonouns.wtf/‌

Earlier this year at DevConnect, I sat with core members of dfdao, a DAO whose members gathered to participate in a dark forest game competition. As someone who doesn’t play games, I was puzzled by one question: "You have a full-time job, why take the time to compete in this world-building game with anonymous people from around the globe? Why must you ensure that someone is 'testing the waters' every five minutes for a week straight?"

It wasn't until I watched Ivan's talk about the dark forest at 0xPARC that I understood the truth. When asked about community engagement in the game, he paused and said that dfdao had a loophole that allowed players to directly target opponents and deplete all resources on their planets. When he displayed the map (slide 32 of the presentation), I saw the dfdao team proudly glance at each other, grinning, facing the victory ahead with shameless smiles. That moment hit me: they were enjoying happy times in life; it was just play.

One of the happiest things I did online last year was watching the live auction of a copy of the U.S. Constitution at Sotheby’s. Discord and Twitter were filled with memes, inside jokes, and suspicion. Even when we knew we had lost the bidding opportunity—the established goal was unattainable—the community kept pushing forward. Interviewing ConstitutionDAO core contributor Jonah Erlich further emphasized this point.

"Do you know why people are building a secondary market for [$PEOPLE] tokens?""People love memes.""Do you think that's true?" Absolutely. People love memes; they have a lot of fun. I think one thing I've learned while exploring the web3 world is that it's hard to rationalize different momentum—things ferment as memes emerge and meme information spreads. I feel that if people are having fun and doing their own thing, then I won't delve too deeply into explanations; it might hurt the brain."

Sometimes you have to throw away rationality and "grab the memes that are being generated."

Nicholas Cage is the star of this performance, as it showcases a lot of meme culture around the ConstitutionDAO marketing strategy. Follow the #WAGBTC tag for more fun.

Beware: Progressing too quickly does not equate to success

The entire web3 ecosystem is developing too quickly, making it impossible for any project to become a true "winner" in the field. (Perhaps except for Uniswap, which is the most popular application supporting blockchain. At least for now.) If the volatility of Web2 has taught us anything, it’s that projects that cannot change are doomed to fail. Survival of the fittest is the key to success.