It's the Community Stupid
It’s the community stupid. Yeah, I said it. You can’t scroll your Twitter timeline without seeing some mention of the word in reference to an NFT or crypto project. “I love this community!” “Which NFT has a great community, I’m shopping?” “Mfers have the best community!” But what do they mean? What are they really saying?
In short, the community is the life blood of a project, without one there simply is no project. We could end this article there, but let’s go a bit deeper since it’s a subject near and dear to my heart.
At the end of April beginning of May 2021 I started to hear rumblings of this NFT thing that Gary V was going to do. I had been following Gary for quite a few years before then and actually had held ethereum and bitcoin for a few years as well. I was interested in blockchain technology and how it could change the world for the better, and NFT’s sounded to me like a great way to begin to “use” the crypto that I had been holding. Farming and defi were beyond me at that time but buying digital property was something I could wrap my monkey brain around.
So, terrified as I was, I set up a metamask wallet, joined the Veefriends discord server and when the day came I sat on the couch with my wife by my side and bought a couple of Veefriends. Now I had these things, these crude drawings, this art, these NFTs. I was excited, the process was so new and terrifying, my heart pounded as I minted my NFTs while I was jumping in and out of discord asking questions of the mods and the other rowdy folks in there. ⬇️My former“Respectful Racoon”
It’s hard to explain what that was like, all of this was so new to all of us. “Why is my transaction taking so long!!??” “Why isn’t my NFT showing up in my opensea account??” or the dreaded “My transaction failed!!” But we were all there. We were all experiencing this new thing together. We were learning together. We were a community.
Now, over a year has passed. I have been in and still actively participate in multiple NFT and crypto communities to varying degrees. It’s impossible for me to keep up with them all. Even harder to contribute to all of them as much as I would like. But I’ve made peace with this.
From what I’ve experienced it’s the community that embraces and evolves the culture of a project. When I was an active member of the Deadheads community we all embraced the 🖕as the go to reaction for pretty much everything. This was introduced by the project founders Jeremy and Tempo and the community loves it and uses it liberally. It has its own custom emoji and stickers in the deadheads discord server. We use it so often that it frequently throws new community members for a loop when they get served a 🖕for the first time. “Hey I’m new here, just bought my first deadhead!!” - “Cool, welcome!! 🖕🖕🖕'' There's something so simple and pure about exchanging “the bird” with someone you care about. I have a buddy that lives 2500 miles away, we exchange middle finger posts on instagram regularly, we have for years. Community and culture. Middle finger sticker emojis from the Deadheads Discord server. ⬇️
When Talley Labs, the team behind Jenkins the Valet and Azurbala dropped their long awaited Azurians pfp project the reaction of the community and the broader NFT space was a first for all of us. There was so much distaste for the reveal that the team actually scrapped the project and vowed to make it right for and with their community. Since that fateful reveal something truly incredible has been happening. There have been multiple surveys and questionnaires open to all Talley Labs NFT holders as to what they would like to see in a pfp. They’ve created a Community Council, an Azurian Artist Council, and hired a top tier creative director in Ty Carter. Creating as a community. The now infamous Chef hat Azurian ⬇️
All of this is not lost on the giants in the tech space. In a recent Twitter Space hosted by 0xPolygon Sandy Carter a former VP at AWS and current SVP at Unstoppable Web stated “The project is the community and the community is the project…the pandemic acted as an accelerant…digital identity is new form of expression that levels the playing field by providing a common unity.”
It’s a common joke in the space that in the same discord server you have 14-year-olds and 40-year-olds grinding for the same white list and calling each other ser. One goes to junior high in the morning, the other to their 9-5. There just aren’t any other spaces that can foster this type of cross cultural community building. The 14-year-old brings something that a 40-year-old can’t and vice versa. But under the guise of whatever pfp they hold, they grind and vibe and build culture.
If community is the life blood of a project then, communication is the plasma. Without clear and regular communication from founders and project teams the community will tend to get squirrely. I’m a member of the Founders Dao in the PixelVault community. We went through a rough patch early this year where communication dried up from the team and the fud from the community was relentless. Every day in the discord was bloody. It spilled out onto Twitter. Community members sold their bags and left. To their credit the team shifted course and has since been diligent about relaying available information to the community. They did one better than that too. They elevated multiple valuable community members to paid positions on the team, most of these positions having to do with comms. I like to think we’ve recovered from those dark days, only time and production from the team will tell.
NFT and crypto projects that aren’t straight up rug pulls would be well advised to value community professionals as much as a developer or artist. These are the folks that are going to be on the front line between teams and the public day after day spreading the message, selling the product, building the culture. I’ve identified some positions that I feel are vital to foster a healthy community. Community leads, community managers, mods, memers, and a Twitter presence. Most won’t need to fill each role with an individual, one person can fill multiple. But if the budget is there it’s money well spent. I am always impressed when the twitter account for a large project or organization plays the reply guy. There is something special about knowing that a real human is behind the twitter account.
Crypto will change the world for the better. I know this because I’m part of the community. Half of the fun is showing up every day and exchanging laughs, ideas, and alpha. If you don’t know what alpha is you need to find a better community. 😂Until we meet in the metaverse my dm’s are open! @JonsimsEth — This article first appeared in the December 2022 issue of Vagobond magazine.