Author: Morris Huling
TOA’s new Crypto Co-Founders Klub is aiming to build the next generation of community-focused Web3 companies.
Web3 has brought the importance of community to center stage. Successful projects like Aave, Uniswap, ENS (Ethereum Name Service), and the Bored Ape Yacht Club are all powered by engaged communities.
“Ownership. Governance. Collaboration.”
This new cohort of community-focused companies is reframing and deepening their relationships with their users, partners, and co-developers. Ownership. Governance. Collaboration. Web3 communities provide a framework for members to contribute to projects and to benefit from their success. These communities are really micro-economies, where a rising tide lifts all ships.
TOA’s Crypto Co-Founders Klub is focused on helping entrepreneurs build within this new framework.
Mutually Beneficial Relationships
Web3 communities create value because of the mutually beneficial relationships that they create between projects and their communities. Members of a Web3 community have a vested interest in the success of the project. This makes them more likely to remain engaged, participate in development, and spread the word about the project.
This last point is probably the most important. As a Web3 community grows it acts as a viral marketing machine, accelerating the growth of the community and the associated project. There is no place in Web3 where this is more prevalent than the NFT market, but all kinds of Web3 projects are benefiting from this kind of community-powered marketing.
Community Ownership and Governance
Web3 projects create these mutually beneficial relationships with their communities via community ownership and governance. The most common way that this is accomplished in Web3 is by organizing as a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization).
DAOs are a new kind of organization without centralized leadership. Instead, DAOs are governed by their community members and predefined, automated rules for how decisions are made and capital is allocated. DAOs allow community members to submit and vote on proposals to move the project forward. The ownership of DAO governance tokens also allows the community to benefit financially from the success of the project.
Recently, projects have been utilizing airdrops as a way of rewarding their early supporters or attracting potential users. Airdrops involve crypto projects sending free tokens to their community members in order to drive engagement and adoption.
Community Collaboration
Web3 projects benefit greatly from collaboration with their communities. Project transparency is key to this collaboration. Web3 projects are built and developed in public. They maintain public roadmaps outlining near-term and long-term initiatives. Their teams are vocal on social media (mostly Twitter) and make themselves available to their communities often.
Most of the interactions in Web3 communities are happening on the instant messaging app, Discord. Discord allows for community managers to create an efficient, organized structure for communication. Well-managed communities allow community members to share information and help each other. They create channels for the development team to gain valuable insights into the needs of the community.
Projects are also driving community collaboration via open source development. Providing open-source developer guides and APIs empowers communities to develop ecosystems around projects. The more communities integrate and build on top of projects, the “stickier” they become.
Wondering how you could join the Web3 revolution? Apply to TOA’s Crypto Co-Founders Klub:
- Connect with top-notch business and tech talent
- Join interactive sessions with leading blockchain founders and experts
- Meet a co-founder that can help you bring your idea to life
- Join an existing project and become part of a founding team
