The Ideal Starting Point For Protea
Ethereum Meetup Communities
This article forms part of the documentation around our early experiments. Our vision has since expanded, and we are now working towards creating a universal, adaptable, and interoperable protocol that provides a diverse set of utility tools centred around the idea of tokenised trust + commitment. With this we aim to build the foundation for an emergence of new co-operative networks, from grassroots communities to global marketplaces. To find out more, read our latest article here.
Last week we published an article introducing our Minimum Viable Dapp (MVD). This week we’ll focus on some of the underlying thoughts that culminated in the launch of Protea. We’ll give insight into the fit between Protea and Ethereum meetup communities, and why our MVD is aligned to solve the attendance issue, which can be observed in these communities.
The Beginning of a Journey
Ethereum has attracted a substantial following over the past few years, which is loosely held together via individual meetup communities.
The Ethereum meetup community ecosystem is an ideal starting point for Protea. Here we have a community that has an understanding of the technology that Protea is built upon. This means that existing frictions of usability are more easily accepted within this community when compared to others. As a dedicated part of growing Ethereum meetup communities over the past few years, we have developed a deep understanding of the underlying ecosystem.
Currently there are more than 3500 Ethereum meetup.com communities around the globe with more than 1 million community members. This is a five-fold increase in community members since 2017, and an eighteen-fold increase since June 2016. Clearly there is a substantial intangible value inherent in this community ecosystem.
Our approach to translating that value into the tangible will be modular, gradual and iterative. We want to add value to the ecosystem in areas where we have identified room for improvement, and which can be solved through tokenized processes. We intend to solve non-critical problems before those that are critical to the ecosystem, learning from the implementation of those solutions and then moving on to bigger challenges. In order to understand this more deeply, some elaborations of the Ethereum meetup ecosystem as it currently stands.
The Ethereum Meetup Ecosystem
Stakeholders
By and large, Ethereum meetup communities tend to exhibit a recurring underlying structure of stakeholders, as shown in the figure below.
Organizers
Organizers can be individuals, groups of individuals or companies. Without them, meetups would not exist. Organizers manage meetup logistics such as promotion, venue and speakers.
Sponsors
Given that meetup events are predominantly offered as free events, organizers rely on sponsors to realize an event (some organizers take on the role of sponsors themselves). Sponsors are incentivized to fund meetup events in return for exposure to the community, with varying underlying incentives driving their contribution.
Speakers
Speakers typically are seasoned members of the community, who provide value to the community by sharing their insights. In doing so, they also gain exposure to the community.
Attendees
Finally, the community itself is a diverse group of individuals, all with varying levels of expertise and involvement in the industry. Community members attend meetup events to learn about and engage in the space.
Points of Friction
There are friction points within this meetup ecosystem. These friction points become more apparent when looking through the lens of an organizer. To provide context, some of these are briefly touched on in the following.
Funding
Many meetup organizers do not have guaranteed funding for their meetups. Because most meetup events are not revenue generating, meetup organizers rely on corporate sponsors to ensure the continued funding of their events.
Value Creation Alignment and Governance
There are no effective governance mechanisms that ensure meetup organizers align community value creation with a shared purpose for the community. For instance, there are organizers who start a meetup community, hold onto that community and yet never go on to organize an event. Others use their meetup community as a platform to promote themselves, sometimes this may even result in the detriment of the community members.
Attendance
Ethereum meetup events are often oversubscribed. Yet, many of those who do RSVP don’t show up. Others who would have liked to attend, weren’t able to attend as RSVPs had reached their capacity. We see this frequently in larger meetup groups such as Berlin or Cape Town. At those meetups, often there are over 100 people on a waiting list that don’t show up for fear of being turned away at an overpacked venue.
Final Thoughts
Crypto-economic incentive structures in tokenized ecosystems open up a world of limitless possibilities that can provide solutions to all of the outlined problems. While funding and value creation require intricate balancing of incentive structures and complex Web3 constructs, the attendance issue is far less complex and can readily be addressed. To ensure that Protea delivers utility from the very beginning, we have chosen to solve the attendance issue with our MVD. This ties into our modular, gradual and iterative approach to translating community value into the tangible.
Solving this attendance issue before those that are more critical to the ecosystem, such as funding, value creation alignment and governance will open up greater accessibility to Ethereum meetups. Establishing a solid foundation will allow us to move on to bigger challenges, such as the implementation of more intricate crypto-economic incentive structures, which will in turn provide solutions for sustainable tokenized funding and alignment of value creation within Ethereum communities.
We’d love for you to join our journey!
