What role do Blockchain Foundations play in forming community?
'GM' & formation
A big part of Blockchains' charm is your contribution to global, decentralized participatory change. This participatory change - the creativity and activity - is quantified, commodified along with everyone else's on an immutable ledger.
We feed it fiat, we dedicate countless hours to learning and shaping it. Even the scamming contributes to the larger legitimacy of this immutable mind virus.
These contributions create a common thread uniting early on-chain participants. "GM", as we know it, is an acknowledgement of those who have gathered as a community to explore compelling, highly addictive ideas.
A strong IRL community is easy to spot. It's littered with decency. Polite 'hello's' on morning walks. Idle coffee chatter, busy cafes. Bustling, vibrant yards & balconies. Families enjoying their local parks and neighborhoods. That's the IRL equivalent of what 'gm' represents in web3.
Good Mornings, much like good communities, come in many forms.
A community has shared interests, curiosities and values. They're allowed to grow quickly because they innovate, share and educate one another. That's how the nucleus of a culture forms. GM isn't just a nicety, it is a necessity. It's the foundation of community building.
Community or Family? Who builds the foundations..
Blockchain tech stacks tend to have a foundation. The foundations' function is to administer, govern, moderate, educate and sometimes bootstrap their own ecosystem. They support users through their adventure - through the inevitable failure required to discover and understand nascent technology.
Foundations shape community & culture. Think of them as the information center of a budding metropolis. Info centers aren't always run well, though. They risk becoming more like families, or mobs - excluding some in favor of others - rather than inclusive community hubs.
The point here is that families are centralized. They operate via directive and have introspective, self-serving power structures. They have codes and rigid sets of participatory rules, not culture. They exist to serve their own interests, as survival of the family unit is paramount.
Successful web3 communities are different. Forget rules or directives, they adhere to loose principles of decentralization, transparency and collaboration. These principles form the social basis of a culture. Web3 communities use these principles to grow and iterate with the collective buy-in of their members.
A community that meme's together, grows together.
This engenders a genuine belief in blockchains' power to make change. Community members join a ready-made movement bound by shared curiosities, interests and goals.
Flexible principles enable members to contribute to something larger than themselves. The movement's appeal is a free exchange of ideas challenging orthodoxy and a set of common goals without the rigidity of shared histories, rules or hierarchy. Agree even loosely and you're in. That's free flowing participatory change.. that's growth.
The same cannot be said of family.
Don't meet the family. Join the community instead.
Operating like a family rather than a community is a dangerous game. Especially in Web3. Without the tools and information to establish 'community culture', a vacuum forms and a tendency for centralization takes hold. A 'family' takes control.
A centralized unit is hard to penetrate and even harder to break up. Under attack, they become insular and protective which compounds existing problems. Transparency falls away. Communications are patchy at best. Resources get lost or misappropriated. Growth (or a path to growth) in this environment is slow or non-existent.
Family vs Community. Who wins building Web3 culture?
These behaviors cement a negative feedback loop. Those needing help don't receive it and those that do, won't share. Fringe and established members stop participating, which fuels further anxiety. Resources are withheld or misused & productivity suffers. The morale and cultural vibrancy begins to decay.
Arresting that decay requires finding a way to hand control over to the disaffected. Remove aspects of centralization. Give people in your projects' orbit a sense of agency and control over its destiny.
Make tools and information available to those outside of the organization. Enable and empower users with tools and information so members can maintain, educate and energize a community of their own.
Clearly define lofty, attainable goals recognizable by a diverse range of people. Provide your people with the tools and information they need to actively participate in communicating & attaining these goals.
Energize users by putting decision making in their hands. Clearly signpost and communicate roadmaps, milestones and hurdles to achieving clear goals. Give your community a way to signpost their own path forward.
Finally, give the community an idea to champion that is foundational to their aspirations and principles.
A community with strong principles has a solid foundation and a strong sense of self. This forges resilience and makes space to bring others into the fold. It creates a vibrancy and life which is infectious and hard to ignore. It creates the room to grow which a family doesn't have. It's how strong communities win.
Thanks for reading, as always.
Chop