Meme, Belief, Symbolic System and Cryptographic Tribal Culture

Author: 0xShadow

It is undeniable that we are still in the early construction phase of the crypto world, but I want to call on the builders of the crypto world that as the process of crypto construction deepens, we need to pay more attention to the construction of crypto spiritual culture. Blockchain technology is not just a specific framework for solving a particular problem, but a comprehensive technological iteration that integrates economics, politics, and culture. It is a bottom-up social transformation, and its significance to human society is no less than that of the Industrial Revolution. Because of blockchain technology, we have, for the first time, such rich feasibility, autonomy, and true freedom!

Current mainstream blockchain projects are still built around solving a specific problem. For example, Opensea is the biggest beneficiary of the rise of NFTs; they have benefited greatly from this NFT explosion, but essentially, it is an internet product. Apart from its functionality, its centralized organizational structure and product operation are standard practices of traditional internet projects, establishing moats, consolidating their position, and ultimately going public. This product has brought many conveniences to the industry, but it does not align with the spirit of crypto and is not the product form that the crypto world ultimately needs.

What the crypto world needs is not just crypto products, but more importantly, the crypto spirit: decentralization, fairness, democracy, cross-national and regional collaboration, inclusivity, and self-motivated evolutionary community organizations!

This organizational form is defined as the crypto tribe within the sub-tribe. The crypto tribe will form its own cultural narratives and memes, totems, stories, symbol systems, and crypto narratives, created by community users for the tribe. Some of these will become astonishing epic narratives, and these are becoming the cultural accumulation of the tribe. Some communities are building the future of the crypto tribe, driven by the community, constructing asset autonomy, where community participants are creators, with unique community culture, native crypto, and widely disseminated memes, collaborating beyond national and regional boundaries… The crypto tribe seems to be able to create an amazing paradigm!

Beginning: Building Tribes, Coming for Tribes, Leaving for Tribes

The sub-tribe has always contributed to novel discoveries and innovations, and its characteristics emerge in how it configures freedom and handles conflicts. To some extent, how it accommodates people and manages subsequent chaos facilitates the circulation of good ideas (McNair 2006). The more cultural customs and institutional functions resemble a public resource pool, the more effectively they can generate novelty and drive innovation.

In this regard, the effective model of culture-driven sub-tribal innovation comes from the study of creative commons and knowledge commons; these two commons studies are based on the findings of Elinor Ostrom (1990), who studied the relationship between these two commons and the governance of natural resource commons. The so-called commons is a space where a group of people is interested in an idea, a space that can create or manage valuable resources. The overall finding of successful commons research is that it helps to generate good rules rather than excellent people. Good rules make the sub-tribe vibrant. This is a template of cultural science.

The crypto tribe is essentially an emerging micro-economy, a digital nomad with a sense of innovation and free will, gathering together for a common idea, agreeing on rules and creating rules, recognizing incentives or creating incentives, evolving in self-driven ways, with their interests aligned with governance tokens. In this sense, tokens act as a primitive digital social contract, executing native incentives and governance.

DAOs are the concrete manifestation of this tribe, precisely because they mix tokens, smart contracts, and organizational processes. These "crypto economic primitives" can serve as reusable patterns for abstract workflows, making it easy to replicate across organizations. These building blocks, through the synergy of economic assets, workflows, and software, enable decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and the coordination of future forms of economy.

The initial motivation for joining the crypto tribe may be economic benefits, but many stay in the tribe for a sense of cultural belonging. The crypto tribe is a virtual space where people passionate about the same thing decide to come together to achieve grand goals. This is not really related to work; it is more like a culture, as a group of people create what they wish to create. In the crypto tribe, culture comes first, and products and projects come second, which is the opposite of companies.

In this process, retaining the best contributors and keeping them engaged long-term creates a sufficiently strong community. Only by solving the participation issues of current contributors can the growth, expansion, and mass adoption of the crypto tribe follow. Once this issue is resolved, more and more crypto tribes will continue to grow due to their long-term contributors, attracting attention from people outside the cryptocurrency field and drawing in more new contributors, thus reinforcing this positive feedback loop.

If there is one DAO that resembles a tribe the most, I would say it is BanklessDAO. Founded in 2019, this media outlet started as a newsletter tracking developments in the crypto industry. BanklessDAO is a product of community consensus; it has no legal entity in the traditional business world and operates completely independently of Bankless media.

BanklessDAO is a very open community. Anyone can join the BanklessDAO server via Discord and gain access to browse most of the information and historical work documents.

Participation in collaboration and meetings requires membership, which is conditioned on holding a certain amount of BANK tokens. However, this is largely voluntary; there is a dedicated channel in the server for applying for special passes, where one can introduce themselves and their areas of interest to easily apply for a guest pass, unlocking various functions for speaking and participating in collaborations.

Members of Bankless's Discord are either drawn by the aspiration for a bankless society, interest in internet collaboration, the potential to earn money, or simply curiosity, ultimately aggregating together.

As people gradually get to know each other, they spontaneously form more than a dozen different guilds based on their interests and abilities. Guilds function like small departments within a company, such as design, development, and legal departments, each with its own members, specialties, and responsibilities. Upon closer inspection, guilds resemble business units, each inclined to accomplish specific tasks, creating public products or solutions, rather than merely serving as functional departments for others.

Joining any guild is completely open; all one needs to do is fill in their name and specialties on the guild's Notion page.

In theory, the ultimate goal of all guilds is to promote a bankless society. Each guild has different methods and processes, but the goal is consistent. However, this goal is vague and large enough that almost any direction can be associated with it, allowing for a justification of their existence.

During discussions in the guilds, a large number of project ideas emerge. Some of these projects gain enough consensus to transition from idea to action.

Meme Culture: Totems and Symbol Systems

Jesper Hoffmeyer (1996: 61) provided this explanation: The concept of biological semiotics suggests that the life sphere is permeated by symbolic processes (symbolic reference processes) and meaning. What organisms perceive is also related to them—food, escape, sexual reproduction, etc.; all organisms are born into a symbolic circle, which is the world of meaning and communication… The symbolic circle imposes constraints or boundaries on species populations, as populations must occupy specific semiotic niches.

In other words, they must master a set of visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and chemical symbols to survive in the symbolic circle. However, this symbolic requirement for populations often poses a decisive challenge to success, which is entirely possible. The evolution of organisms proves that to survive in the symbolic circle, the development of their symbolic means becomes increasingly sophisticated, perhaps the most important aspect.

For the crypto tribe, crypto symbol culture is the most crucial part of maintaining efficient growth; it can serve as a connecting totem. Crypto symbols, or memes, can help the tribe establish better culture and recognition, assist the tribe in expressing its values to distinguish "us" from "them," thus uniting community members and making them more vibrant! New members are attracted to the network because they share common traits and recognize the same set of fundamental values—also known as "social scalability" or "social consensus." Meme culture can effectively spread and filter target demographics, helping new tribe members quickly familiarize themselves with the tribe's culture and rapidly assist in dissemination!

Generally speaking, the more times a meme spreads, the more solid its cultural foundation becomes. Almost every social organization is a meme. Religions, currencies, languages, companies, fashions, habits, and music all belong to such meme-sharing systems, as they arise from the trust of the majority.

The crypto tribe needs to create a small yet influential collection of memes, phrases, and stories so that anyone can pick them up and, within hours, speak as if they have been tribe members for years, which will make the tribe more vibrant!

In today's era, attention is a scarce resource; people can switch between communities with just a few clicks. Therefore, establishing a sticky brand is crucial for creating network effects. The easier it is for users to spread the value proposition of a network, the greater the potential for that network's development.

Bitcoin is the most obvious meme; it has long been dubbed "digital gold." On one hand, this helps newcomers understand some core characteristics of Bitcoin; on the other hand, it can spark discussions about Bitcoin as an upgraded version of gold by referencing physical gold. This comparison evokes several advantages of gold as a currency, including durability, portability, substitutability, verifiability, divisibility, and scarcity.

At the same time, Ethereum is touted as the "digital fuel" driving decentralized applications, which is the friendliest explanation for newcomers. With a well-known valuable resource as a reference, it helps everyone better understand the value of Ether in the decentralized economy. Without delving into the reasons why memes are so powerful, we can see that good memes share a potential characteristic—they reference well-known entities in the real world.

The ultimate goal of building memes is to make noise and attract attention; attention is a very important currency in the modern network, and people pay for attention. Especially in the crypto field, you must understand that attention is the only scarce resource. You want people to talk about your tribe as they would about which celebrity is going to cheat!

Rituals and Experiences of Faith

Two important elements of religion are rituals and doctrines. The function of religious rituals is to reinforce religious consciousness.

The basic content of religious rituals is the divine and sacred concepts, as well as the sense of dependence and awe that humans feel towards the divine, which determines the basic nature and expression of various religious behaviors.

In crypto culture, rituals are an extension of meme culture. By creating rituals, member identification can be built, thresholds established, and close connections strengthened. Some crypto projects are also trying to move in this direction.

TempleDAO is a unique project that gamifies rituals and has had a significant impact.

In the ocean of projects competing for attention, TempleDAO has successfully shaped a unique identity through its themed meme games. Absurd religions, shamanic musical styles, and an atmosphere reminiscent of astrology create a peculiar experience. It resonates with a large portion of the crypto community. People began to take notice and want to know more. Ultimately, curiosity attracted many aspirants to try these rituals.

The team successfully transformed participation into a memorable experiential process—this is the cornerstone of their marketing efforts. Of course, TempleDAO is not suitable for everyone. It is unfair to criticize their mysterious methods as overly exaggerated and harsh. This is an all-in gamble about role-playing, which may alienate some, but is necessary for cultivating a strong meme atmosphere. Ultimately, they managed to leverage the crypto community's love for memes to foster friendships akin to fervent brotherhood or sisterhood.

In the end, regardless of the outcome of the protocol, TempleDAO's perspective on community building will become one of the most innovative crypto legends to date. Especially the opening ceremony, which successfully gamified mundane and straightforward matters.

Narrative System - Culture Creates Community

Everything is as it is because it already is. The way it is does not begin with the Epic of Gilgamesh but is much earlier: we evolved into animals that create art and tell stories, and this way has already begun. --- Brian Boyd 2008

The power of stories is immense, far beyond the implications of fiction, myth, pretense, fairy tales, or entertainment: stories bind people together more closely. Stories act as glue, uniting people for specific purposes, and only at the level of sub-tribes does such purpose make sense.

Using the marginal yet innovative form of "digital storytelling," the core part is the utility of storytelling in creating communities, which can also be referred to as the utility of "user-created citizenship"; not just for self-expression, but to create a "we" community or sub-tribe around a certain civic activism, distinguishing us from them.

Exploring the role of stories in creating human politics. Stories organize groups into symbolic sub-tribes or "we" communities, instilling a sense of group identity among listeners. In this way, stories play a political role, advancing forms based on local, small-scale sub-tribes to a global, all-encompassing scale.

Stories generate meaningful identities for given "we" communities, placing the social world within a narrative context, infusing social values into characters, actions, and plots. Tribal organizations are social groups with symbolic identities, organized to act and survive under uncertain or adverse conditions. This "we" community or sub-tribe can be as small as a family, "hunting team," or "unit" (a term from the Mao era), or as large as a societal or global scale.

Stories are particularly important for the crypto tribe, showcasing a complete set of values, memes, and cultural amalgamations, allowing community members to quickly understand the tribe and establish identification through brief and vivid descriptions!

TreasureDAO conveys community concepts through storytelling:

Our story begins here:

Bridge World, Origin Enclave, Still Dimension.

The world's patchwork.

Throughout history, countless songs and legends have told the story of this world. Everything pauses in time, disappearing from space—silent and soundless. It is said that this world has no origin; it is a blank slate. From the beginning to the end of time, it is merely a bridge connecting many other worlds.

Until—heavenly beings gaze upon this abstract world. They discover a world filled with remnants from other worlds, rich in legends. And the essence that has existed for a long time.

This is a world full of treasures, long-forgotten relics, and erased legends.

Treasure World.

The celestial realm sees this world as the bond of all worlds. It forever weaves other worlds together. Legions are chosen to study the magic that sustains this world—guiding, managing, and protecting it.

Our story begins here.

Treasure's goal is to allow the community to guide a new decentralized Metaverse, consistently insisting that the community writes the story. The project's origin story attracts collaborators whose visions align with the decentralized meta-festival of community operation. To date, dozens of projects have established cooperative relationships with it, forming an open ecological network that continues to grow.

Expanding Tribal Boundaries | The Prototype of On-Chain Nations: Frog Nation

2021 was a remarkable year in the blockchain world. If there is anything that excites me beyond the soaring crypto market value, it might be the prototype of the on-chain nation—Frog Nation.

What could be more grand than creating a nation? The ultimate form of the crypto tribe may be an on-chain nation, but on-chain nations may differ entirely from geopolitical forms. On-chain nations are more about interest alliances formed by subcultural organizations based on cyberspace with complete ideological frameworks, rather than possessing complete political forms.

Frog Nation is a group of projects that collectively push DeFi and the entire crypto industry forward. It currently consists of Abracadabra.money, Popsicle.finance, Wonderland.money, and the latest member, Sushi.com.

Regardless of whether you like Daniele Sesta, it is undeniable that he has built something remarkable.

Daniele Sesta has successfully transformed DeFi forever and cultivated a following like I have never seen before. He is a diligent and clever person who knows how to maximize his influence. He has brought together many protocols he is involved in to form alliances. Dani's followers call themselves "Frog Nation," and they have constructed the initial form of an on-chain nation, an alliance formed by interests. They are the most loyal token holders I have ever seen, an active tribe, and this scale of endeavor has never been attempted before. Regardless of whether this project succeeds, Dani has created such a crazy moat within Frog Nation and among his Twitter followers that Frog Nation has become a symbol and a belief. No matter how Frog Nation develops in the future, I believe this path has brought new insights!

Tribal Wars - The Battle for Liquidity

Whoever controls the spice controls the universe. ------ Movie "Dune"

If there is anything that can shift internal conflicts and quickly rally tribe members together, it might be war. However, on-chain wars generally have no smoke, yet they are equally intense and exciting!

The core resource in the crypto world is liquidity; whoever acquires liquidity holds the power of discourse in the crypto world. To help the tribe acquire liquidity, members need to participate in the vigorous liquidity wars.

Most incentive designs in DeFi focus on solving two problems:

1. Discouraging people from selling your tokens.

2. Encouraging people to make your tokens more liquid.

Historically, this type of reward structure has been straightforward: I will pay you a continuous stream of tokens for the liquidity you create for my tokens. But now we see liquidity markets where leading protocols can gather various opportunities for investors to earn yield income by providing liquidity. Protocols can pay investors fees to help them increase the liquidity of their tokens.

This aggregation and the ensuing competition for liquidity are unfolding across various platforms, but the battle is most intense on Curve Finance. Thus, liquidity competition is affectionately referred to as the "Curve Wars."

We currently see major protocols in the DeFi space scrambling for CRV/CVX and other governance tokens to control the Curve Gauge. This represents a significant shift in the crypto world, and there is no doubt that this is just the beginning of the "Curve Wars."

More and more projects are joining the liquidity wars.

As the scale of DeFi continues to grow, the competition for liquidity will only intensify.

So represent your tribe, join the war, and fight alongside tribe members; this may bring your tribe closer together!

Of course, the liquidity war is just the current battlefield; there will be various grand, smoke-free wars belonging to the crypto world in the future.

Finally: How to Make Your Tribe Successful

Building a truly good crypto product is not easy, but it is even more complex to build a real crypto tribe.

As a crypto tribe, how to construct tribal culture, totems, stories, and symbolic narratives may be the most important thing to establish order:

1. A foundational tribal program that shares long-term visions and values with contributors.

2. A well-designed token incentive model.

3. Establishing a community identity system and incentive system to achieve community self-operation.

4. Autonomy/ownership—organizations provide contributors with sufficient flexibility and ownership of the project.

5. More narratives through games and memes.

6. Establishing totems, symbols, and narrative systems to voice for oneself.

Additionally:

1. Expand your tribal boundaries.

2. Join the "on-chain wars."

The core of this is:

1. Cultural order.

2. Monetary order.

It is worth noting that not all crypto tribes will succeed; most will fail. Good products do not necessarily form excellent crypto cultures. However, high-quality crypto culture will certainly nurture good crypto products.

Conclusion: The Age of Exploration, Monetary Order, and Cultural Migration on the Chain

2022 will be a complex year (this article was written in 2022). The market will face high volatility and extreme structural changes. High asset levels, escalating inflation, the beginning of a contraction cycle, the U.S. midterm elections, geopolitical wars, and more will all impact market trends. In the crypto field, this year may also be a year of market differentiation. We have witnessed the collapse of trust in traditional financial institutions, the plummeting of state-backed currencies, the issuance of crypto war bonds, and the Biden administration's focus on the crypto market. Opportunities always exist; patience is needed to be a long-term BUIDL (builder).

At the same time, 2022 is a year of great maritime exploration in the crypto world. Blockchain technology is transcending technology itself, forming its unique political, cultural, and economic systems. In this industry, we see unimaginable innovations; a brand-new system is breaking ground and thriving. As participants, we see it moving from desolation to prosperity, and now we will build together! An interesting crypto tribe, a permissionless, more democratic future of financial innovation! We will witness the emergence of new monetary orders, cultural migrations, and on-chain innovations, with the flourishing of crypto tribes bringing about a renaissance in the crypto world! I sincerely hope that all crypto narratives can succeed, and an ordinary project can become legendary due to its unique narrative!

May we all build our own crypto epic, and sincerely, I wish you success!