Building 3D Communities with Tim Connors, Reka eth & LDF GM

For everyone standing on the wings, we are talking about internet communities. We got Ivan from Aragon and Raz from Guild here. And uh the premise of this talk, we're going to do intros and whatever, but the premise of this talk, if you're thinking about listening in, is that we think all of us run community tools and we think that uh the future of online communities looks a lot different from the way that it looks today. And specifically like I would call them increasingly multi-dimensional, right? Like the ability to have a entirely holistic experience within an internet community without needing to rely on outside resources is the trend that we're going in and all of our tools kind of like participate in that trend in small way.

So with that uh we're going to kind of talk about what we think the future of internet communities is, how we can get there, some of the problems, etc. And I'd love to pass off to Ivan. Do a quick intro. Hey everyone, I'm Ivan. I run ecosystem growth over at Aragon.

Um, we are building onchain governance infrastructure for the future of online first communities. And I'm Ros uh co-founder and originator of guild.xyz. And we are building tools for community managers and behind also like a community infrastructure. Okay.

So, let's let's let's quickly get uh off uh stage. Ivan was sharing that he had some spicy takes. So, I think we should just jump right into it with what's your spiciest take about internet communities today. Um permissionless tech, permissioned communities. Permissionless tech, permissioned communities.

So, the idea of a permissionless Dow where anyone can enter, you're bearish on is what you're saying. So I I think like anyone can enter is one thing but then when it comes to running or like productively uh coordinating resources to achieve the objective of that community we will see a lot more uh granularity and specialization of permissions. So it will be it won't be like the whole D voting on stuff. It will be token holders or however else you want to distribute decision-making power would be empowering subgroups that are specialized in different areas and that would allow communities to scale and function at scale and you're so what you're saying is the the way that some Dows are doing it today where anyone can come in and put their hands on the controls is maybe not ideal. Yeah, it's not and and like it's it's I mean I shouldn't be voting on you know this like infrastructure level tradeoffs in in deploying smart contracts because I don't have the expertise to make that decision right it ideally I'll be like handing that sort of decision-m off to someone who has proven incentive capability and context to make that decision I agree And I think the confusion is coming from uh like the main innovations coming with blockchain are transparency and permissionless.

And like when it comes to communities, it's just not how uh it should work all the time. like the trust model which works well for D5 protocols doesn't apply to communities most of the time or like yeah almost always and it took us a lot of time to realize this actually and I think uh Ivan is also like suggesting this that like communities uh are turning into permissioned communities nowadays in the web free space and like community segmentation community creation uh is becoming a way more important thing. Okay. Okay. So my question to that is if if we want to have the future of communities be permissioned with permissionless technology, why do we even want permissionless technology?

Why why are we even using all this with decentralized tech? So the the permission so the the the permission side comes to when you are allocating responsibility like most people think of it as power but let's let's stick to what it really is. it's responsibility because you become um a steward of shared resources that ideally directed some shared vision, right? And so joining and be starting to belong to a certain community that's it's fine to have that be permissionless. But having decision-m power or uh operational execution responsibilities is where you would need more um deliberate process.

And also like the other thing is that that's my my personal view of how communities would operate better. But by building permissionless tech, we allow anyone to build the community that they think they should, right? We are not we are not the decentralization police. That's like one of the things that we definitely don't want to be. Our new product has a u admin module where you can basically spin up a dow and like one single wallet controls everything.

And like that's also fine if if if if if your community is at a stage where that makes sense and that's what you need. You can start with that and then like gradually move in a direction or or you can start with like a more decentralized independent like at a time of crisis you know sort of like wartime CEO situation or whatever like like it might make sense to like move from tokenbased governance back to a multisig or back to like a single contract controlling the entire organization. We are not we're not having a specific position. We are just building tech. I think the two main issues with permissionless Dows or like communities, one of them is definitely governance.

So like if you allow anyone to participate in governance, it's probably not going anywhere good. And like uh over the year years like initially we were all very very excited about like onchain governance mechanisms and like uh uh all sorts of different like dow frameworks and then after the defy summer I think like recently recent years we realized that like actually like no governance is almost all the time better than like any sort of like governance. So like minimizing governance became more and more important. uh that doesn't mean that like uh discussions shouldn't happen like discussions still should happen about like every single thing like transparency should stay very important thing in the space but like the actual like votings like we don't have to vote for every single thing like that that's more and and also like the way we vote is like still just being figured out uh and the other thing where I think it's it it could like quickly turn into a disaster when you have a permissionless community and you want to like distribute some value back. You want to like reward the participants because that's where like uh they start registering plus accounts and like obvious like some people use like hundreds of wallet addresses and like acting like they are legit community members while they are not and like essentially just forming out and exploiting the projects and forming out the poss the opportunities from the projects and the the companies or like found foundation any any organizations behind those projects.

Would you guys agree that like kind of in summary the permissionless tooling is not necessarily with the end goal of making you know permissionless access to control but it's it's it's a framework that creates transparency and uh mitigates corruptability of the power structures, right? Like it's kind of like you commit to the structures of power. people can come in permissionless or per or not, but the fact that it's decentralized technology means that it's kind of set in stone and everyone can see that. Would would you agree with that kind of like characterization of the value of web3 tech when it comes to community building? Yeah, I I think like one of the main advantages is that you have the rules on chain transpar and like c certain actions.

So the game can be played offchain. The rules of the game are onchain. They are permissionless. They are sensor. They're capture resistant and everyone can see them and no one can change the rules of the game without the the consent of the other players.

That's like a analogy I I I like. But then the transitions becomes like very very hard. Like if you have something established like uh putting out an onchain community with onchain rules is almost like sending out a spacecraft into space you you can't just really like support it. Maybe like you can like send another spaceship after it but like it's really difficult to like migrate from one onchain structure to another. I like the spaceship analogy.

Uh I want to bring the conversation to a next level. We're all all So, you know, you got you got Aragon, you got Guild, you got 101. We're all building tools for communities in Web 3. Um, how do these tires hit the road in the future? Like, we're we're all putting so much effort into making new things possible.

How can we like how can like people that are not super deep in the space understand the value that we're trying to create? what what is going to be possible with the help of tools like ours 10 years from now. I think with COVID and the the new generation like generation Z uh like community plays a much like a very important role now and not just in like grassroot uh organizations like foundations but also for like even brands and like companies uh and not just in the web free space even though like the web free space is on the frontier uh on on this. So like I think community-led organizations going to be very very important and to get there we need to build out the right like public goods to enable them to operate and currently it's not like 100% possible to do that like fully on chain. So like we have to build out infrastructure pieces and actually like that's what we do at Guild.

And why like why is it going to be important like community-led organizations? Yeah. Uh all right. So like communities are like the way it worked initially is that it was a very asymmetric uh like uh uh connection between like brands or organizations and their audiences that was like even on the internet and like before as well the how the media operated uh it worked like that like they they had like some channels like TV channels or like a newsletter and stuff and like someone communicated to many and then that started changing with the creator economy when like everyone first of all like everyone was able to like start out as a creator. Uh but second like there were like comment section and like there were some sort of like uh uh possibility at least to like get feedback from the audience and that played out really well like we we can see how like these YouTubers are like taking over like huge media outlets and then I think the third generation or like the third iteration of this is like thinking in thinking about community and thinking about like social structures and more uh natural and like uh authentic ways to communicate certain ideas.

I think authenticity and building out trust is very very important and we are on a good track uh there essentially like with the first like transparency thanks to the blockchain and now uh with like community cation and like personalization for community members. We are getting to a point where like deeper connections even online can build out. What do you think Ivan? How how do these tires hit the road for let let me let me constrain this. How do these tires hit the road for nonweb 3 people?

So I I think like I if if I can tell you how organizations going to look like in 10 years and I'm right if I can do that today it means that we failed at being disruptive enough. So like I would focus on uh maybe building on what Raz said like there are the the the lowhanging fruit is in any sort of uh community or fan or or or supporter centric business. Uh and that's a lot of it like if you if you think like the entire spectrum of entertainment from sports through music through through through through film through any other type of media but also consumer brands right like there is no reason why loyalty points uh you know let's say I go buy brand like sneakers from brand A I acrew loyalty points there is no reason why I should not be able to vote on the next design and like there is so so for for the for the community member that creates a much more deeper bond with the brand because it becomes a brand that listens. But also from the brand perspective instead of spending like hundreds of thousands to like for for someone to walk around with a with a pen and a and a pad and like ask people like what do you think about our new design? You have actually directly your existing users tell you what they want to see next and like the the the more loyal they are the more voice they have.

It's it it strengthens this bond and I believe that that that's one of the the the ways that we can bring both new people but also like web to organizations into this space by providing direct value that they can see. It's not something abstract, right? It's something like oh like this has direct impact on my P&L but it also bring it has like direct impact on the the loyalty and the net promoter score of my brand. Yeah, I think when when community members can uh join, can participate, can connect, can uh rely on more calcified and transparent structures of power when there maybe is a financial upside or uh maybe like inability to build on top of that and we can have increasingly multi-dimensional communities. You know, another way of saying what you're saying is like we can create more human relationships between each other.

One of the big problems with communities today with internet communities is that people are lonely. What if what what if we could build internet communities like what if the Starbucks loyalty points that as like silly as it sounds, what if that could be a real community? Like what if there could be friendships made there? What you know like what if you could find your job inside of that community? It sounds it sounds silly, but I think this is like this is kind of the thesis of what we're doing like put in some way.

It's that we can build communities that are like cities because of the technology that we're using that they're providing lots of different angles. Yeah. So that there there's the concept of like um hyper local celebrities that can occur online. So basically it's leveraging this data. you maybe you order some like obscure Starbucks drink and that's the only thing that you drink and like by leveraging this data you can service surface like that you know they're like five other people like this in your city would you be interested to like jam with them right like when I say jam I don't mean like literally maybe but like also like just meet talk cuz maybe you're like fans of like a specific way of preparing your coffee or whatever like it can enable the discovery of people with whom whom you have a lot of things in common which historically has been constrained to your geographic like like the a radius of I don't know like 10 to maybe 50 miles from where you were born and now you can like surface and coordinate and connect with with people that are similar to you in non-geographical ways that are probably more meaningful.

Yeah, I I mean I don't know if you guys would agree with me, but I feel like a lot of the weird social uh conflicts that we see in the US and maybe around the world is at least in part a result of people feeling like they're not in a community, that they're not being supported and they're not like given a place to grow. And so to me, that's the big opportunity here across all web 3 communities is that we can make like flourishing human tribes like actually like beneficial to humans again and like all of us are just playing a small piece in that. Yeah, I think that comes back to trust and I definitely think that like uh most online communities are islands. Maybe they are not cities. uh maybe they will at some point uh but like in creating an intimate space for community members is very very important or like for any any uh groups online and I think this usually works better in games or like historically worked better in games.

uh most of my uh experiences with like multiplayer games, I think they can lead us to like understand what the future holds us for for like community building and uh online organizations. Are there any that you would like suggest checking out to understand that like games? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Um maybe like joke though. What is that? Joke race. Joke race. Okay.

So yeah, that's not a very traditional game, but uh definitely a good one. Uh what I was thinking is more like uh like the OG games like Runescape, Club Penguin, and like WoW and and all these different like massive multiplayer games. Uh I think they they all started the metaverse and the metaverse is not not necess not even necessarily like a 3D word or like you don't have to wear VR or stuff like that. Uh nowadays I think my my best like metaverse experiences are are happening in telegram actually and what I even mentioned like the joked da the joked is a nice or like the joke race is a nice game too it's a fully onchain game where you can uh it's essentially like think about it like game of thrones but like in 30 minutes and uh like it's it's about a vote like someone has to win a vote but the vote is non-trivial uh you have to uh Like sometimes you have to be the second, you sometimes you have to be the last, sometimes you have to fit to certain conditions. U and it's a very fun game.

Yeah. Yeah. And and and like the thing is when you create this fun gaming experience where coordination adds benefit, uh people would start using tools to coordinate and form like like uh I don't know if you've played Dark Forest. It was like all the all the rave last summer. So it's like a XDI native zk based game like space exploration and like basically so first season people were like figuring out the rules.

Second season there were already Dows being formed where like people would like capture planets and donate them to each other so they can like rank higher as a collective. Dows were being formed around it to like govern the expansion of a of an you know space exploration empire. So coordination games are are emerging everywhere where it adds value. So just providing a fun setting where people would start experimenting with these with these tools. It's it's a it's a nice way to on board.

What and not sure if you guys will have thoughts but we'll try. What can community builders in web 3 like learn from the success of games in their ability to bring people together? Like if I'm a community builder and I'm trying to organize people around uh like an interest group and you know we're not we don't have the luxury of like sitting around playing games together, how can I what can I learn from the success of games? I think a very important thing to understand before building a community is to like everyone in a community is there for a reason like there has to be some incentive and in a game like it's pretty clear the value proposition is that you're having fun but like uh in most branded communities nowadays because like this is becoming a trend for companies for commercial companies for creating and operating communities it's like if they like those people are not fans necessarily like they are like they don't have any and they don't have any skin in the game and they like if they don't have any incentives it's going to turn into a ghost town like uh if they don't even get fun and like to be honest like on Discord it's just it's not very easy to have fun like especially when it's noisy and stuff so uh maybe the incentive is to meet other similarly thinking people or like maybe the incentive is to learn something from the community uh but it can be like skin in the game as well so like a tribe uh that like thrives together but uh it's very important to have the right incentives and games games know that well yeah I I think so the 100% agree the incentive is uh an important element and like you know bring it all back like that's why I think like permission communities are a very interesting um way of at least starting because then it's it's much more easy to um be deliber liberate around what why are we all here right because you know what what Russ was mentioning like like if you start introducing financial incentives like you going to you're going to start having like behaviors that do not add to the overall experience of others right and ultimately to to start having this feeling of belonging start to start feeling like a community it like you have to feel that you're getting out more than you're giving my My favorite example with permission communities is probably professional networks. So like uh you can only join a group of people if you are an expert in a field yourself and then you can enter the group and talk to all those other people who are also experts and you can gain a lot from that actually.

Um let's let's talk about incentives for a second. I don't know if um I don't know if you guys saw uh I put so we're we're a learning platform 101 is a learning platform where you can like uh take courses and lessons and then earn uh NFTTS and uh recently we posted uh well I posted a thread and we basically came out and saying uh learn to earn is bad idea. We don't think it's going to work. we shouldn't pay people to attempt to get them to learn things. It's a terrible incentive mechanism and we we just decided to like take that stand and say that it was never going to be released even though it was part of our initial premise.

So, it was pretty spicy take but that's my personal opinion and I guess like my question to you guys is what do you think of monetary token rewards? Uh and it are there better ways of incentivizing people? I I think for learning the best reward is recognition and that can take any forms like that can take like a piece of paper even but like the recognition that you went through certain learning processes and now you know certain things like I think that's that's the most most important incentive and then you should be able to like take that piece of paper and like show other people that like I I did that I I know about these things and would you say the same for like any type of community contribution if you're trying to incentivize like work or like I'm I'm I'm just talking about learning in general. Yeah. I'm I'm I'm I'm super bearish on learn to earn.

I think you should learn to do or learn to brag and like that's that's that's what people are doing, right? Like people go and play trivia to be the winning team. So, you know, you can just give away like like onchain credentials like this person has completed this course and he knows they he she they know this thing and like giving them something that's purely financial just breaks a lot of the experience for people that would genuinely be interested in what you're doing and would genuinely want to contribute and like also I mean basically the the entire industry is learn to earn. There's so many opportunities to make money by leveraging things that you've learned and your skill set. Like I I I think learn to earn is a terrible idea.

Yeah, I'm I'm really against uh paying users of any products as well. I think this is this this was kind of a small disaster in the crypto space that like last couple of years we started paying like users. It led to a a state where like a lot of new like upcoming like early adopters are now using products because they are expecting some like financial gains. Yeah. If I if I was to make if I was to put a prompt or a call to action out to web3 community builders, it would be to stop paying people to do stuff like it's it's like you're just setting a a bad standard.

All right, I know we have 45 seconds left, so I guess I uh would love to give you guys an opportunity to make closing thoughts. um if you have anything in mind, please share or maybe you can share uh what your call to action would be to the community. So uh ultimately this is not like the the the be all end all of knowledge. Go go go on Aragon, build it out, run it however you think it should run. My opinion shouldn't matter.

You should you should experiment. That's why we're building the tech. And uh yeah, check out guild.xyz XYZ and uh shout out to David Felves and uh Shan MC Connor and uh check out the joke dial too. Awesome.

Thanks everyone for coming. Uh if you are a fan of 101, I have some merch over to the side. Thanks. Thanks. Listen.