Introduction
Web3 projects continue to popup here and there. Its is a vibrant emerging sector. We are not surprised to have so many projects attempting to provide various products and solutions. Unfortunately, not all web3 startups survive the first full year or longer. A lot of factors might affect the success of a web3 new business and its continued existence. One of those important features that must be there is a strong, supportive community.
Web3 project founders understand the massive role communities play for a startup. Teams invest heavily in promoting and marketing their projects. Why do web3 projects need a strong community? What are some effective ways to utilize strong communities and accelerate the growth of a web3 project? Find out in this conversation below.
Strong communities for vibrant web3 projects
There are many reasons to have a strong community behind a web3 startup. Consider the following:
1. Achieving decentralization
One of the strong principles of web3 as a concept is decentralization. The idea here is that power and control are not concentrated in one place. No single person makes decisions in a decentralized organization. Instead, the community of users or participants participate in decision making.
In traditional systems today, a few highly placed individuals make all the rules and implement them. Not everyone's voices count. But in a decentralized network, power is held by everyone and all views are considered. All participants are part of the decision-making process. This is what web3 is known for.
In order to achieve decentralization, a web3 startup needs a strong and vibrant community. This community forms the foundation for achieving all their goals. The community thus becomes part of the decision-making process. The community retains the overall power and control for that web3 project. Without a strong community like that, web3 projects would struggle to operate in a decentralized manner
specific ways to achieve decentralization through a community
In the execution of a web3 project, consider the following 3 examples why a community is needed to achieve decentralization:
- Governance: The very first area where a community is needed to achieve decentralization is in governance. The way a web3 project operates is purely democratic. The team does not make decisions alone. Instead, the community votes for proposals brought forward by the project.
The community performs a collective role in influencing proposals and changes to be implemented. The voice of the community counts here. Each web3 project usually have a voting mechanism that allows community members to support or not support a proposed activity or change.
Without a community, there would be no members to vote decisions. If a web3 project lacks sufficient membership or participants, the team might be forced to make all the decisions. But with a strong vibrant community, the team just make proposals, but the community votes based on what they want. Hence, decentralization is achieved in a web3 project by a community voting proposals.
- Distribution of tokens: A web3 project often have tokens to fuel all economic activity on the platform. Tokens oven represent value and influence that each community member holds in the project. All web3 projects allow users to purchase tokens through the token distribution activity. How much influence a users has is often dictated by how much tokens they hold.
Token holders often participate in various decision-making activities such as in governance mentioned above. Now the web3 startup team distributes those tokens to - yes you guessed right a community! So in order to have a good token distribution program, the team needs to have a strong community.
Token distribution remains a huge way to achieve decentralization. The more participants there are during token distribution, the more decentralized a web3 project is. So each web3 project needs a community to participate in token distribution, which in turn is one major way to spread power among participants and achieve decentralization.
- Blockchain nodes: Web3 projects require users or consensus operators to run the nodes. Each transaction in the network must be validated by a node operator. Node operators usually reach some consensus on the state of the blockchain at any point in time. A web3 project with many users participating in the running of the operations help to achieve decentralization.
The more nodes a web3 blockchain network has, the stronger it is. This is because if any of the nodes was attacked and the network is shut down, it does not affect the smooth running of the blockchain because there are many nodes in operation.
Nodes operations are a way to achieve decentralization because it involves so many participants. Where will these node operators comes from? They are part of the community. Without a community of many node operators, a web3 blockchain might struggle to achieve full decentralization.
The above discussion has shown that decentralization which is a strong feature of web3 projects cannot be achieved without a strong and strong and vibrant community. This is one reason successful web3 projects usually have or build strong communities.
2. Backbone for operations
Another major reason to have a vibrant community is that they form a basis for all operations by the new business. The community serves a lot of different roles and they are the foundation upon which the new business builds and grows. Consider the following 3 roles:
- Early adopters: When a new product is launched, it requires a market - the users. For traditional businesses, various marketing strategies help them to get these early adopters. But for a web3 project, the early adopters are the community. They are the first users of the product and the first customers too.
Early adopters help to shape the direction and speed of the growth of the web3 startup. The more early adopters there are, the faster a business grows. Early adopters shape the growth of a project in many ways. For example, the are a strong marketing unit for the team. They recommend the new product to family members, friends and colleagues. This word-of-mouth marketing helps the new project to gain more users and followers.
The role of early adopters is crucial. If they are many, positive and enthusiastic about the product, the project grows at a really fast rate.
- Feedback: Another role the community as a backbone plays is to provide feedback to the team. No new product is perfect. The community are first users of the product. They do provide useful feedback by recommending any necessary changes to make the product more desirable.
A web3 team badly needs feedback from the community. It helps them build a brand that the market likes. Feedback helps a web3 team to personalize their product, adding or removing features based on what the community wants. At the end, they are able to build and grow with the community, creating products that reflects the the values of the market.
- Investors: A very crucial role played by web3 communities is to help the team raise the funds needed to finance the project. Each community is a looked at as the primary investors in any web3 project.
Earlier, I talked about token distribution which is a regular feature of each web3 project. The community help web3 teams raise the money needed to run the project by participating in token distribution. As such, they become the very first investors in the project.
Without investors, a web3 project simply dies off. Funds must be accessed to run various activities. And it has become obvious that as the community purchase project tokens, they make the initial investments the team needs to finance all activities of the business.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it becomes obvious how much of a gem a community is to project founders in web3. Basically, a strong web3 community makes for a solid project. You can see that in the way Inleo (formerly Leofinance) community continues to build and grow in a robust manner. It has a vibrant community.
On the other hand, a web3 project with a weak community will struggle so much. Most of what it needs to grow such as feedback, investment, early use, and other important activities would be lacking and that affects growth.