What makes for a good web3 community?

It’s clear web3 is primarily about community. The strength of verifiable ownership is that it enables us to participate in different groups, for a variety of reasons and outcomes, in a way that is authentic and transparent. We know that the other people in the community have put something of themselves into being there. So we feel like we are part of the project together.

But there’s a lot of different kinds of web3 communities right now and it’s also clear that everything is evolving rapidly. Twitter, Discord and Telegram dominate the space and funnel communities down particular structural and communicative paths — for better and worse — and we’re also starting to see the evolution of different metaverse-type platforms that push out the experiential boundaries of our digital communities in new ways.

So what makes for a good web3 community? What are some of the different characteristics that we can look to when deciding whether or not to join a new project and give our time (and money) to helping achieve its goals?

There’s a lot of different ways to look at this, but by exploring a few broad categories we can hopefully keep evolving in a more productive and beneficial direction. One that helps the projects we are in succeed and bring value to both their members and the web3 space as a whole.

The Five Pillars of Web3 Community

Thinking about how successful web3 communities build both value and purpose for their holders, the different practical layers begin to boil down to a few major categories. In no particular order, because they are weighted differently for different communities, these are: Access, Knowledge, Belonging, Mission and Patience.

1. Access

The first thing that makes for a good community is that it gives you access to something that you would not have otherwise had. This is the bread and butter of NFTs — verified ownership that relates to some kind of access or utility. It can mean a lot of different things, of course, but it is this access that creates the first value-proposition for holding any particular token. Do you want in on what they’ve got?

Token-gating a community, or different sections of one at least, also helps encourage deeper levels of trust between members; which can transform into more information shared, project collaborations and the desire to get the best for everyone in the community.

It’s also the way that projects with a lot of integrity work to bring value to their holders. Because access isn’t just about entrance into the community of the project itself, but also about how they work with other projects on access and utility partnerships that help lift everyone involved.

2. Knowledge

Once you have given your community access to the different platforms, initiatives and partnerships that your token provides, the next indicator of successful web3 communities is that there is a greater degree of knowledge transfer taking place than would otherwise be available.

Providing access and exclusivity is just the first step, which can go a long way as a status symbol, but the best communities also provide an education to their members. In a sector as rapidly evolving as web3, a good hands-on education provided by the right communities could be something that leads to a productive and fulfilling career.

This doesn’t just have to be focused on learning in a traditional sense, though, because much of it is experiential and the age-old wisdom that comes from ‘learning by doing’. Having supportive communities that not only provide the avenues for education, but also the discussions and connections needed to put that education to practice, count for a lot more value than many people currently realise or give credit to.

In many instances it’s also about having first access to information. The communities most highly regarded (at least right now) are often those that provide the best ‘alpha’. For some, this just means which pump-and-dump are they going to run with next — but for those looking to make a difference in web3, it can mean learning how to spot new trends and innovations. The fun part in web3 is that this often means in the coming weeks or months, so the benefits of learning and acting on new information can be readily seen.

3. Belonging

Sometimes it seems that a lot of people in web3 miss the most obvious utility, which is that sense of belonging that comes from enjoying your time with a group of people. This often shows itself as a kind of tribalism, which can have both positive and negative consequences, but at its most basic level is about a core part of the human experience: friendship.

The best communities are those that enable us to open up about ourselves and behave in a manner that is more authentic and real. This often means overcoming the profit motivation — most easily achieved by having the project be in profit, funnily enough — and bringing people together for an experience that is about more than just financial gain.

The strongest and most long-lasting communities are built around these friendships, creative partnerships, group activities and other forms of utility that bring us into contact with that human desire to belong to a thriving society.

4. Mission

The above categories are all dependent on one primary thing: that the project has a strong sense of purpose and identity. Having a clear set of goals that the project is aiming for — which can be anything from artistic, entertainment, technical or social benefit goals — enables the other types of community structures to form around it in a manner that is sustainable and compelling.

Without a clear purpose and mission, projects become unfocused and tend to change direction too often. Not only does this mean they are more likely to make mistakes, but it also means the community is less cohesive and, without a common understanding of why they are there, less loyal too.

Having a clear mission also enables projects to outline how they want to get there, which provides deliverables for holders to keep the project team accountable. Too detailed a roadmap can be detrimental in a sector that is so fast-paced that it’s difficult to plan more than six months ahead; but equally, without a sense of where the project is heading it’s far too easy to flounder about and waste any funding the project may have. Which leads to unfortunate cash grabs and revenue raising based on poor decision-making, or that isn’t to the benefit of the community as a whole.

5. Patience

Patience is a virtue, but web3 has little of it. There are serious issues with the expectations that holders place on project teams, demanding huge market-shifting announcements every two weeks and constant reassurance. That speaks less to the idea that we are wanting to become part of a creative, vibrant community and more to the problems with gambling addiction that the space is currently inflicted with.

Beyond the many problems that degen gambling brings, though… patience is also a two-way street. Teams in web3 do need to be more accessible than in other sectors and that requires a high degree of professionalism, combined with a level of authenticity and transparency that can be intimidating for anyone to deliver consistently.

As community members we also need to be patient with those who might ask the same questions over and over again; or those who are lashing out in different ways; and, yes, even to those who aggressively criticise the team for ‘not delivering quickly enough’. Regardless of how valid any criticism may or may not be, responding with frustration will only work to the detriment of the community in the long term. The best web3 communities are those that find ways to respond with compassion, or at least humour to the many challenging social interactions that can take place in the space.

Conclusion: What about profit?

I’m a strong believer that web3 needs to move away from the profit motive in order to grow into its true potential. The endless and ruthless search for quick gains only serves to erode the positive elements of sustainable communities that have been discussed above.

However, that doesn’t mean we have to ignore the fact that people are investing real money (and time) into these projects and should be able to expect an appropriate return. It just means that we need to start thinking with longer time horizons and also broadening our concept of value beyond purely stacking ETH or other monetary metrics of success.

In the end, creating a stronger and more sustainable community also serves to increase the chance that monetary gains will also emerge. When you focus on the elements of a web3 project that have more meaning and a deeper sense of purpose, the other benefits tend to result on their own. By doing so, they arrive in a more sustainable way rather than the flash-in-the-pan hype cycles that do little other than trap people on a hamster wheel of disingenuous web3 interactions.

By focusing on developing a clear and relevant purpose for their project, web3 teams can bring together loyal holders with a wide range of skills and knowledge. Holders need to understand the pressures of delivering a successful project and give the time and support needed to those teams that are acting with integrity. From there communities are formed that will grow together, build together, profit together and… hopefully… even start to change the world, together.