Community-building is the process of bringing people together to form connections and foster a sense of belonging. It is a crucial aspect of society, as it helps individuals feel valued and supported and contributes to creating value and meaning. Building communities can be challenging, though. Just like in the vast expanse of space, it can be tricky to create an environment that fosters the growth and interaction of individuals who share a common interest. Using the metaphor of star formation, we can begin to understand how Popula, a Web3 community platform, can offer the perfect conditions for communities to form and thrive.
From Proto-Communities to Thriving Networks
Stars are born within clouds of dust scattered throughout most galaxies. Turbulence deep within these clouds gives rise to knots with sufficient mass that the gas and dust can begin to collapse under their own gravitational attraction. As the cloud collapses, the material at the center begins to heat up. At the core of these massive swirling clouds of hot gas, known as a protostar, the force of gravity eventually accumulates enough mass to trigger nuclear fusion, releasing energy and forming a new star. Community building, like star formation, is a process that takes time and effort. Like a star, a community starts as a proto-community, a generally small group of individuals with shared interests or goals just beginning to come together. Over time, the community grows and evolves, just as a protostar becomes a full-fledged star. Through accretion, community members join forces and create something greater than themselves.
The Elements and Composition of Communities
But how can like-minded individuals find each other in this vast world? Like a cloud of gas and dust, communities form when their members are pulled together via gravitational attraction to a creator, a brand, an idea, or a project. These individuals may come from different backgrounds and have different skills and experiences, but they are drawn together by shared goals and values. As they work together toward their missions, they forge connections and build relationships. At the center of every star is a dense, hot core that fuels its energy and sustains its existence. Similarly, the core members of a community are the ones who drive its growth and sustain its vitality. These core members initiate discussions, organize events, and welcome new members, providing leadership and guidance to the rest of the community and helping to keep everyone focused and motivated. As the community grows and the quality of its output increases, its gravitational pull grows along with it, attracting more members to join. Gradually, the community takes on a more defined shape and structure, much like a star becoming denser and adding layers atop its core. New members are drawn in by the community’s energy and enthusiasm, and they, too, begin to contribute to its growth and development, forming layers with various degrees of involvement and responsibilities. Some may be occasional contributors, while others may be more active participants, but each member is essential to the community’s growth and success. Like stars, the higher the mass of the community, the stronger its gravitational pull.
The Ripple Effect of Gravitational Pull
While stars are the main product of this cosmic activity, the dust produced around a star is critical to forming minor celestial objects around it, a sort of byproduct of star formation. Planets, for instance, emerge when gravity and other forces cause material within the giant, donut-shaped disk of gas and dust that circles young stars to collide. In other words, the leftover material from the star’s birth is used to create planets and other objects that orbit the central star. Similarly, once a community reaches maturity, it may inspire some members or external spectators to explore new frontiers and launch their own communities. These side communities may keep orbiting around the original community, forming a gravitationally-bound system and contributing to its overall richness and diversity.
Popula, A Star Factory for Communities
While grandiose, the process of star formation is a relatively uncommon occurrence within the universe. Ordinary matter, while accounting for approximately 5%, is overshadowed by dark energy and dark matter, which account for 70% and 25%, respectively. Only certain galaxies or specific nebulae within them can serve as a favorable breeding ground for new stars to form. This can be attributed to factors such as the presence of black holes or sufficient matter density, which can kickstart star nucleosynthesis. These particular regions of star formation are often referred to as “star factories” due to their rapid transformation of gas and dust into new stars. Similarly, online communities cannot form arbitrarily but require a suitable environment.
Popula is an active community-forming region of Web3 that provides suitable conditions to kickstart community-building, furiously transforming individuals with shared interests and passions into new, full-fledged communities.
Specifically, Popula has two unique features that benefit communities and their founders, as they streamline the process of community building, the same way a star factory facilitates the formation of stars.
- An independent smart contract for each community. Like stars, communities go through different phases and change over time. All this information about communities’ history, along with all content and interactions produced by their members, is fully recorded on the blockchain. What’s more, because each community is independent and unique, just like each star, its information is recorded in a dedicated, independent smart contract. This ensures complete sovereignty and enables true ownership of the content and engagement generated. In this way, Popula combines the ownership typical of personal blogs or websites and the distribution width of web2 platforms.
- The Drip Protocol is the core engine of Popula and Drips, the non-transferable fungible tokens issued by it, are the lifeblood of Popula. The Drip Protocol is a smart contract that:
- enables Proof of Engagement, the consensus all community members can easily reach on who contributed what. This is possible because all interactions are recorded on-chain and rewarded with fixed numbers of Drips, thus creating a scoreboard for all members.
- introduces a unit of measure of productivity. The more Drips an individual or a community accumulates, the more that individual or community has been active and contributed.
- provides a proxy for reputation. By being more active and engaging more, members can grow their number of Drips and, by doing so, prove their positive contribution to the community. Because everyone can see and agree on this (consensus), the reputation of members can be established. Moreover, because Drips are blockchain tokens, the reputation built on Drips is verifiable and portable.
Besides these two key features, Popula offers a wide set of functionalities that facilitate community building and community management:
- Community Console, containing management tools like roles and accessibility settings, enables granular community management and progressive decentralization. For example, a community born around an artist might want to focus on the artist-generated content first and, over time, extend permissions to other groups, starting with a few selected curators.
- Analytics throughout Popula give an immediate overview of members’ and communities’ activity levels, driving healthy competition and forming the foundation for scientific community management.
- Upcoming: NFT Toolkit for supercharging creators and as a way to monetize, and Drip Royalties as a novel curation system, enabling provenance, visibility, attribution, and rewards. Drip Royalty deserves a separate article, but suffices to say here that they create new synergies between creation and curation, and establish a closer relationship between creators and curators. Fundamentally, Drip Royalties bring about a truly multiplayer creative environment.
Like star factories produce stars with different sizes, masses, and colors, Popula fosters the formation of diverse communities that reflect the rich tapestry of the human experience. These communities can range from small, niche groups to large, mainstream communities, and they can be united by common interests, backgrounds, or causes. Like a star factory is a dynamic and energetic environment, with gas and dust swirling around and colliding to form new stars, Popula is a vibrant and bustling space, a hub of activity and production, with members engaging in discussions, creating content, and organizing events. The output of a star is the total amount of energy radiated, also called Luminosity (L), and it depends on the size and temperature of the celestial object. Similarly, the output of communities on Popula is measured by the number of their Drips, which depends on their size, aka the members count, and activity density, aka the activity per member (total activity/number of members).
Some of Us Are Looking at The Stars.
In facilitating community building, Popula plays a crucial role, just as a galaxy plays a crucial role in the formation of stars. It provides the space, tools, and resources for communities to come together, share their ideas and interests, connect and collaborate, and grow into vibrant and diverse groups. Just like stars start as proto-stars and eventually evolve into full-fledged celestial bodies, communities on Popula can start small and gradually build up and turn into mature communities. By using the metaphor of star formation, we can understand the importance of creating a space that encourages the growth and collaboration of individuals with a shared interest. And just as stars light up the night sky, communities on Popula light up the Web, enriching our lives and expanding our horizons.
🐝Explore more about Popula Testnet or join Popula Community Builder Group. We alway welcome questions, suggestions and feedback!
