πΊ Corrales and I hosted a chat about what Web 3 communities should be called. Watch the discussion here.
Below are rough notes on the session.
Cory explained how he started with a focus on the creator economy which has now evolved into a deep interest in Web3. Perhaps there is no escaping Web3?!
Why are we asking this?
Mostly because of tokenomics, says Cory.
- The Web 2 way is classic relationship building
- The end goal (regardless of Web 2 or Web 3) always ends up back to the basics of community, itβs about people.
- The alignment is there always, or should be?
- Where he thinks weβre headed is the concept of Web 3
- There are so many power plays happening right now, big players, big investment
- So many people are trying to define it
Cory says, instead of trying to define it Web 3 perhaps we can place value systems.
- Values are still key
- Communities are no longer communities, they are micro economies
- There are so many different ways to connect and interconnect
- Is it fair to call these spaces community anymore or do they become economies?
- To envision greater things from our society.
How are communities not economies right now?
- All the members of the community can make money
- People who participate can make a living
- As a leader you donβt have to come up with the money, thatβs the job of the crypto
- Itβs meta/radical, if you build a strong community everyone is going to benefit
- People who are part of it can create their own sub communities.
- Does this change the inherent sense of belonging or purpose behind joining a community?
- Does the focus on ownership actually do it more harm than good?
Perhaps the definition of Web 3 needs to stem from a place of meaning:
- The big issue of Web 3 is that itβs kicked off by big players
- Is it top down, rather than bottom up? Even if it is bottom-up from the community perspective, the fact that the big players have so much influence creates imbalance?
- There are no definitions of this stuff anywhere, though some people are trying, it becomes a bunch of people with their own different and customized definitions.
Cory highlighted:
- Any idea can be tokenized - nft, social token, crypto coin, they are digital coins
- An example of Web 3 and how to make money with the likes of Gumroad: People can copy what you make, which means you canβt own it
- Ownership is community ownership, or one person ownership
- A lot of the value out there is the value on community owned ideas
- Our vision of the the community is the value in the tokens
How could a Web3 community name make it more welcoming? And not sound like a clique/too closed a group?
- Portia β Be mindful of who your audience is and be skeptical, take the time to explain it to them first in way thatβs understandable.
- Portia β Web 3.0 can appear very assimilated, its important to make sure that weβre approaching this industry with empathy
- Itβs important to explain what tokenomics is in ways for other people to understand easily
- Think with empathy and with the needs of other people
- Language is important here β one struggle in Web 3 is that things arenβt quickly and easily defined.
- Diversity means you are comfortably talking about things in our way, being empathetic.
- Itβs what the members deem it to be called
- Tilt: has a token that represents the community, theyβre trying the experiment, the tilt community owns it, they came up with a definition of it. They are calling it βshared success in the communityβ.
- I think web3 is giving an avenue to scale a shared value system and also equitably distribute the wealth created by the adherence to those values.
- It's also a mechanism to have value more justifiably distributed to the 1000 early adopters. They'd feel as invested as the 10-20 founding members. Thereβs security in knowing that value generated by them and their canβt be taken away from themβ Gautham
- Regulations/laws are basically a set of community values.
- What is the value of bitcoin/eth/nft - they are community values.
Maybe the framing is what should web3 represent?
- The tokenomics brings hopeβ¦βThe new hopeβ ala Star Wars? :D
- Web3 redistributes the value and gives it back to the creators, rather than a traditional organisation itself.
- DAOs - the bankless DAO
What are examples for some communities who have implemented token economy very well outside of mainstream crypto? Who is doing it well?
It would be great to have examples of communities that didn't originate from the crypto domain. Iβm looking for ones that originated as a trusting, loving, helpful group and evolved into considering adopting tokenization. Say for eg. @Rosieland tokenising :-D
- Tilt community - it doesnβt rely on the value on the coin.
- How can the value be transferred through the coin?
Will coming up with a different name just be confusing? (Unanswered)
- Curious what the intent and purpose of coming up with a different name is? - Darlene
- What are the implications of βweb 3 communitiesβ still being defined as a community? - Darlene
π¦ A post Twitter thread
Web3 may radically change community dynamics.
— Matthias Gabriel (@MatthiasGabrie6) October 13, 2021
This begs the question: can web3 communities even be called βcommunitiesβ?
Hereβs what I learned from @rosiesherry and @corycachola: