Onchain Communities
Part IV: Community
So far in this Onchain series, we've reframed compensation, shared brand and IP within the context of an onchain cooperative. Today, we’re discussing community—the cornerstone.
While most trad companies have considered community almost as an afterthought, onchain communities do the exact opposite—they’re fundamentally managed, governed, and operated using some form of token from the start.
Putting communities onchain makes sense from the literal sense that blockchain is one of the greatest networks to ever come online, and transactions between nodes signals value.
In this post, we'll discuss how onchain communities can be built, engaged, & structured.
How do you build onchain community?
The value of creating a community is in gathering, matching, and connecting people that have shared values and perspectives.
Onchain communities serve to provide accessible entry points to a company, team, or service through various levels, often facilitated by token-based access. While a community manager might dream that members go all-in with their energy from the start, the reality is that people have limitations in terms of time and attention. The key lies in meeting your community where they’re at, and providing uncomplicated ways for them to increase their involvement gradually, based on their own capacity to commit.
Picture this as a collection of doors that new members can open, each at their own pace. Some of the best tools to use are Guild for token-gating and Hats Protocol for setting roles and permissions.
Identify community entry points
For example, we identified 4 entry points for the Indie community:
Indie Movement: Globally changing perceptions about work
Entry point: Social platforms, events, speaking, networking, & education
Indie Frens: Those curious about the indie life, testing the waters
Entry Point: Discord light
Indie Members: Actively contributing to the Indie mission
Entry Point: Project work, discord channels, governance & community calls
Indie Core: Leading the cutting-edge of Indie concepts
Entry Point: All channels, strategy documents, core repos and design systems
How do you engage onchain community?
Community thrives in active involvement and mutual exchange. Communities share this in common: they’re a Choose-Your-Own Adventure storybook that champions bottom-up development, community-driven decisions, and gatekeeper-free zones. Members are empowered to propose and shape ideas, nurturing genuine ownership and engagement, so how you think about engaging your community matters.
Here are a few engagement strategies:
Option 1: Paid engagement
Engagement through rewards involves strategies including sponsoring events or bounties to fuel community contribution. Warning: this can be abused and can often come off as inauthentic if not supported by other types of engagement—use sparingly.
Ideas for paid engagement:
Sponsor events related to your community
Create grants/bounties
Create token/equity rewards for participation
Example: Nouns
Nouns' daily auction raised so much ETH that the Nouns created Prop House, a governance stack created to fund a diverse set of projects that proliferate the Nouns meme.Tools that help with this:
Token bounties for contributions (dework)
USDC bounties for contributions or community challenges (Prop House)
Option 2: Value-add engagement
Elevating community connections involves creating new, distinctive, and valuable experiences that reflect the values of your community while providing education.
Ideas for value added engagement:
Create an educational or training program available to members
Host an event or create a playbook for local member groups to host an event
Host a festival or party available to members
Host expert workshops to provide expertise and advise to members
Example: FWB
FWB, a cultural DAO, organizes FEST, a "crypto Woodstock" annual event spanning three days that celebrates ideas, music, and culture.Tools that help with this:
Community chat (like Telegram, Discord, Towns, etc).
Token governance and voting (Aragon, Snapshot, etc.)
Option 3: Capture engagement
Capturing engagement entails tapping into pre-existing interactions and channels.
Ideas for capture engagement:
Create job board
International communication platform or forum
Community-based product
Example: FriendTech
You can login with Twitter and immediately port over your social graph to bootstrap the community experience.Tools that help with this:
Discussion forums (Discourse, Discord)
Transparency dashboards (custom subgraphs built on The Graph)
How do onchain communities make decisions?
At Indie, we think a lot about balancing freedom and structure. Inclusive decisions need a framework. For decisions to embrace inclusivity, a well-crafted framework is indispensable. Too much unchecked creativity can veer us off track, while an excess of rules might stifle the very spark we seek.
We can approach this with a scaffold—a decision-making framework—to ensure democratic choices, not just in votes, but through conversations & shared experiences.
Process can become the enemy of progress
Bringing community onchain involves using processes informed by our tooling—like token-gating specific channels, following a step-by-step voting proposal, and distributing funds according to a set method. While these processes provide clarity, it's crucial to differentiate between decisions that need rigid processes and those that can be agile. This way, process won't hinder the community's ability to quickly make day-to-day progress.
Decision-making matrix
To address decision-making, communities can list decision types, then analyze urgency ⏳ (X-axis) against voices required 🗣️ (Y-axis) in this matrix. Where urgency represents timeline, voices required reflects governance.
Using the matrix:
Step 1: Identify Common Decisions
Step 2: Categorize Decisions into the Matrix
Step 3: Document Process
An example to put it into context:
A website tweak — Low ⏳, Few 🗣️
Managed by project lead, updates are shared in a public call, and quick iterations are made based on feedback.
Updating our bylaws — High ⏳, Many 🗣️
Might have an accelerated timeline, providing time for review, proposal period, and open voting for member majority.
Accessible documentation of your community's processes is vital for all members. It outlines how your community functions, serving as an operating manual that ensures transparency and understanding. Failing to document this manual can lead to confusion and inefficiencies within the community.
As a best practice, regularly check how decisions are working and adjust the process based on feedback for better results. And don’t forget: listen to your community.
The upgrade through community
Embracing community-driven dynamics over the politics of the corporate world points us toward a promising future. Today's standout companies consider and include their communities as shared owners. Shared ownership may have been an exception in the past, but is quickly becoming the expectation. *Me tossing corporate clichés & “happy employee” programs in the bin*
Building an onchain community = 'for the people, by the people'.
Tools we discussed for onchain community
Token-gating (Guild)
Roles & Permissions (Hats Protocol)
Token bounties for contributions (dework)
USDC bounties for contributions or challenges (Prop House)
Transparency dashboards (custom subgraphs built on The Graph)
Community chat (like Telegram, Discord, Towns, etc)
Token governance and voting (Aragon, Snapshot, etc.)
Discussion forums (Discourse, Discord)
If you’re a founder establishing your onchain community and have thoughts about what we shared today, we’d love to hear from you.
Let us know how you approach building communities, and stay tuned for our next post: Onchain Cooperatives: Equity.