Introduction
I am following this Project for almost 9 months now. And with following I mean tracking every step of this community in the forum and every tiny development step on GitHub. I do this to get the vibe of a project which gives me a feeling if it has the potential for a long-term progress. In this review I want to talk about my experiences especially regarding the community evolvement. It’s easy to look up the technical development of the wallet, but some new users may be interested in the soft factors which are hard to gasp if you research for good projects to invest.
My first days
I joined the DeepOnion Airdrop one day before the third airdrop. It was too late to receive the airdrop already next day, but I was assured to get in the participants list for the 4th one. I hadn’t research much about DeepOnion at that time, because it was free anyway. But I was surprised by the fact that they planned to last the airdrop for 40 weeks. “40 weeks? That’s a hell of a lot time in crypto. Some roadmaps don’t even plan that far in the future.”
It impressed me, because it meant that the team behind this project had a plan. A plan that must be consistent in a way, that it would be worth to invest time and patience for a very long period. Starting from this point I started to observe the development daily:
Days later the first hype starts and the DeepOnion community grows very fast. The first all-time high price attracts many new people. It is a typical pump and dumb scene, so it doesn’t last long and many people leave after the price settles down again. The community forum opens its doors and a big part from the discussion about DeepOnion moves from the Bitcointalk ANN thread to the community forum. Most topics are either tutorials or low-level shilling thread. Yet, every day new members join the board bringing more life to the community. Meanwhile the price settles down below 1 Dollar. In the light of the all-time high weeks before, many people are uncertain about DeepOnions future. I am also not sure where this project is leading to. Github was almost dead, the community board contains mostly low-level content, almost no technical discussion at all – So it’s obviously that most people are rather interested in fast money than in the project itself and even less in the technical part of the project.
But every single week, the airdrops were executed successfully according to the schedule. So, I stick to it and hope for the best. It wasn’t an easy decision, because highly invested people decide to leave, who gave other members confidence in the project before.
DeepPoints
DeepPoints get introduced, that gives the start for a very aggressive marketing campaign. The whole crypto space gets flooded with marketing spam about DeepOnion. The community grows in huge dimensions, mostly by people that just use DeepPoints as an income source. I personally torn about the marketing methods. On the one hand I don’t like this aggressive marketing technic, on the other hand I know that it’s working. There is a lot of truth in the saying “There isn’t such thing as bad publicity”.
But I am truly concerned about the community. The forum is completely spammed with low quality post with even lower quality English. I don’t like to visit the forum anymore, because there wasn’t anything interesting to read anymore. And I was sure that other people think the same, which leaving would be a huge loss.
Finally, the rewarding DeepPoints stops and most of the low-quality newcomers leave again, which I am glad about. But I have the feeling that also some of the (for me) important minds also left, that gave the project value.
Side note
For me a good community tech project must a have balanced community. It should contain a mix of different kind of people with different professionality and skills and is structured like an onion in different layers. The heart is of course the core team, which is the steady working organ that drives the main technical development and indicates the future roadmap.
The core team is supported by technical professionals from the community, who are aware about the technical development. They can give feedback regarding the next development steps, making little commits on github, testing new features and finding as well as fixing bugs. The technical professionals can be also the communication connection between the dev team and those, who are just interested in the technical development, but are not really educated in the specific field. They are settled in the third layer.
This third layer also includes people with other professionals, that can give important feedback and contribution to the project in different areas (like marketing, product design etc.). Since the core team does not cover all important professionals, the community members from the third layer can influence the project significantly.
On the other hand, they can offer first level support for the forth layer, saving the dev team a lot of time that is better invested in the development. Furthermore, some members are developing side-projects, which supports the adaption of the main product, helps to gain more attraction and even increases the main product features and usages. Of course, these side-projects can also come from members from the second layer.
The forth layer contains people, that are not necessarily interested in the specific technology. But they like the movement or/and the features, that the product offers. This layer includes the most amount of people. Even though they don’t contribute to the development in a direct way, these members are crucial for receiving mass adaption. They offer very important feedback about the handling of the product and play a main part in marketing efforts.
In my opinion, this structure of community projects is very important for its success. Every layer should contain a decent amount of people with a steady communication between the layers.
Having this in mind lets go back to my story:
Community Progress
It is clear, that the concept I explained above is not matching the current DeepOnion community. The structure is mainly represented by the core team and people from the 4th layer. That’s why I am concerned about how the current community can become the driving factor for the project. Anyway, many spamers leave the board, which I think is a good thing.
At the same time the new year begins and the overall market starts to shrink. And with the shrinking market, the onion price starts falling and falling. And yet again, I was concerned about the success of the project. How will the members react to the decreasing price? Will they lose faith? But I look back and remember that we are already come this far. My ideal community vision is not reached, but I analyze its potential again: There are already fantastic side-projects like DeepDice, community Mining-pools and websites with airdrop statistics. I conclude that I will stick to my plan and thereby stick to the project.
The next weeks confirm that I made the right decision. The development speed increases. Every announcement follows another announcement. But I make also other little discoveries. People start to raise more detailed questions regarding technical issues. Other ones give specific feedback and tell about their own experience in their specific area. I start to recognize an evolving of the community structure. Threads with error reports that would have been abandoned in the last months, are now filled with specific solutions approaches from community members. The second and third layer gain new members day by day, which makes this community in return even more attractive for this specific kind of people.
Conclusion
We reach today in the timeline my little story. And despite all the concerns I had since joining this project I have never been more convinced of this project. We are currently in a successful transition phase from a low level so called “shit-coin” community to a very serious blockchain project. I have seen many people coming and leaving this project, yet it never touched the project overall. And with every additional day this community is becoming more and more stable and is getting nearer and nearer to my ideal structure for communities for community projects.
For those who are also here for a longer time: Compare todays threads and discussion with those from months ago. There is a 180° turn.
I am glad that I never made my decision by emotions. Instead I tried to keep the most possible objective position with led me stay here for almost 9 months now. I am looking forward to the next months.
I hope I could give a little impression about DeepOnion and especially about the soft factors and the social development of the community. We are on a good way, but there is still a lot to do. We have still to work on making this project and community more developer friendly. Developers like to be challenged and fascinated. Thus, we should create a good environment for them with exciting tasks and thrilling visions.