There have been some attempts by NFT project leaders and community members to organise physical meet-ups ever since the birth of this space. However, due to the combination of both real and perceived barriers and threats related to doing so, a vast majority of projects are still reluctant to organise real life meet-ups.
Issues like being afraid to dox, finding it awkward to meet “faceless” individuals that one’s only known through the internet (someone could turn out to be an axe-wielding psychopath), not being able to control who approaches and interacts (there’s no block or ignore button in physical life yet unfortunately), or even logistic complications such as the fact that many NFT communities are truly global and a single physical meet-up can only take place at one specific location at a time. Of course, projects may choose to organise many concurrent meet-ups in different locations around the world instead, but that still doesn’t beat the atmosphere of one single official meet.
The benefits of gatherings in the real world were reinforced during the recent NFT Paris event — where many project leaders and NFT enthusiasts from all over the world gathered for a few days for like-minded bonding and discussions. The event was such a huge success for NFTs on so many levels, not least of which was the indisputable fact that faith in the space had returned en masse. This was despite the Solana network being down during a large portion of that time! Project leaders got to see their community members in person for the first time — some of whom they’ve been speaking to for months on an online basis only but have already formed a strong rapport with.
So what are these benefits? Broadly speaking, I can think of a few.
Legitimacy
In a space where a vast majority of projects are simply outright scams and failures, it is often understandable that investors want some sort of peace of mind — especially if they’re planning on investing a lot of money in a project. This is why the doxxing of project leaders is so important. Some may argue against this point and say that doxxing doesn’t necessarily mean that a project can’t be a scam, or that it can’t fail. However, doxxing does drastically decrease the chance that founders will run away as can be proven by the tallying doxxed and undoxxed rugs thusfar; there are far more undoxxed rugs, even when corrected percentage-wise against the total number of undoxxed projects.
Being physically present at an event drastically increases the faith that community members will have in their founders. The presence of someone standing physically before you is perhaps the ultimate dox that you can hope for.
Legitimacy is also gained by the fact that project leaders, especially if they’ve travelled from far away to be present at a physical meet-up, were willing to take the time out of their busy schedules and pay for their flights in order to do be there in the first place. Your usual Web3 scammer wouldn’t normally put in that much effort.
Of course, as alluded to earlier, all this doesn’t make a project 100% rug-proof. Nothing does. Sometimes, the biggest and most elaborate scams can do all these things just to gain the trust of their investors before rugging them. That, however, is arguably quite rare.
Bonding
There is no doubt that meeting in real life strengthens the bond within a project’s community. Communities are undoubtedly the single most important aspect of a project, and can make or break a project. When project leaders meet their community members, and when community members meet each other, good times are shared, memories are made, and friendships are strengthened.
During large events such as NFT Paris, project leaders can even meet up with other project leaders and discuss ways that their projects can collaborate. Of course this can be done online, but a face-to-face component really helps to seal the deal. These discussions and collaborations ultimately strengthen the entire ecosystem and benefits everyone in it.
Bringing the Web3 community spirit into the real world is something beautiful to witness indeed.
Showcasing
During large-scale NFT events, project founders can showcase their projects to all present and talk about their projects to potential investors in person. This is extremely effective, and still works best despite the fact that the world is increasingly going digital.
Projects can also choose to have physical giveaways during events. During NFT Paris, the Claynosaurz team were giving out physical cards that were redeemable for “croissant” NFTs. This gave everyone there the opportunity to talk to the team about their project as well as to get something tangible from it. Receivers of croissants did not necessarily need to hold Claynosaurz NFTs in order to get them — they just needed to be physically at the event.
So what are you waiting for? If you’re a project founder, go out there and organise real-life meet-ups! More importantly, you need to attend them yourself. This is far, far more effective than many of the marketing gimmicks that the Web3 world often attempts to deploy.
Written by: Jpegtologist
