Building Community First Protocols The Movement Story From Will Gaines Movement Labs

[Music] live what's going on everybody how's it going welcome to eth Denver oh this is really this is a big moment I I appreciate you all being here um so let's just get into it look this is about Community this is about building this is about ethereum um my story in this in bus industry begins in 2016 with the launch of crypto kitties I was working at Sony music and I saw ethereum and this nft ecosystem is being a way for artists to go direct to their fans to go direct to Consumers and to kind of do away with some of the predatory middlemen that exist in the music industry um you know I started there I obviously labels were not as receptive as I would have liked to the idea of decentralization and doing away with predatory middlemen because unfortunately that is what labels are in some cases in the best cases they're great but I went on to CIA tried the same you know tried to get the TV and film World on board kind of the same deal went on to the government of California and it was really just a lot of community building but you know not a reception to the idea of decentralization to the idea of ethereum but here we are 2025 and obviously we're aware you know now Sony has a L2 called sonum and uh the world is kind of receptive as it relates to as it relates to this uh this this industry the screen went black we're going to get it back but pretty much what I'm trying to relate to is that 2025 is a new year the government's receptive entertainment's receptive and now we're building on ethereum so what is it that we're building movement is a modular framework it's a move vm-based chain that is settling to ethereum we we want to bring the Wonder and the Revolutionary technology that is the move programming language to ethereum and to the ethereum community we want to bring our community to the infinite Garden that is ethereum so how are we doing that we started off in I joined the team in June of 2023 um I was you know at consensus a little bit before and I was playing music I was at like a VC Meetup I was a little bit bored you know how it goes sometimes at these conferences you know you you just get kind of burnt out so I was playing some music and just kind of vibing out and a really young man named Cooper scanon approached me and he told me about this idea he had for this company called movement and you know similar to what I said in in the my origin story I'd always been really focused on community building and and focused on bringing this idea of decentralization to the people and when he told me about this idea of move and how you know they were they didn't have the users and they didn't have the liquidity and he was really trying to just bring this incredible programming language to the people um I saw a vision that I could align with we came out of stealth in September of 2023 and you know I put some of the landmarks that we have on here I put I put my co-founders rushi and Cooper on screen cuz I just want to show you know this is kind of the the what this industry enables which is you know two young kids two young colge dropouts from Vanderbilt can come up with an idea and can sell it to the world and can create a community uh and Inspire someone like me to you know continue on this journey and and to build this is just an example of when we broke 100,000 followers in the Discord just celebrating it together that's an example of some of our community members outside of a [ __ ] volcano um and you know this originated with me in two2 Somey old kids with a dream and a purpose um that was bigger than ourselves this is some of the examples of the community growth that we saw and I I'll walk you guys a little bit through how this happened but I wanted you to see kind of some of the growth that we achieved um you know we're the we're the 10th biggest Global community on Galaxy we have about 870,000 followers on Discord 87 community members in Discord and 870,000 on Twitter uh and again this all started in in September of 2023 I think one of the big successes that we had and and the way that we approach this and the reason that you see such you know insane growth in terms of community was that we really believed in what we were saying and I think authenticity is one of the most important things as a community Builder as a marketer or or as a protocol as a chain that you can bring to your community I think we we're all tired of the grift we're all TI tired of being sold vaporware and the the reality is that if you're going to go to someone and say hey we want to we want to build something great great with you then you better come correct and over the course of this time um our community started to see that we weren't just here to talk we were here to work we were here to build and and this is just a reflection of that now how did that happen well one of the things that I grew up on and I I share this with vitalic is that I was a huge wow player I mean I was a sweat I was I was I was playing it every day I grew up in France I dealt with a lot of xenophobia for being an American in France and so I escaped into this virtual world and what that did for me is was it showed me like what a virtual economy look like what what classes look like what guilds look like what what organic Community creation can look like in a virtual world and so when I started at movement my second week I said to Cooper what if we took the idea of an MMO and what if we gamified the entire user experience of the movement and what if we brought this you know escapism in this in this sense of like you know fantasy world and and play that we all experien as kids to get through you know and and enjoy life what have we brought that to our community and that's always kind of been at the center of what I've been trying to do is I I've been seeking for a sense of belonging myself and so I wanted the community to feel like they belonged in all the ways that they represent themselves so if you're a teacher if you're a content creator if you're if you're you know a a if you're a traveler if you like to do events you like to explore the world if you're a builder if you're uh if you're on Chan Maxi or if you're trying to bring people in and teach them the way then there's a guild that represents you I think one of the issues that we have in this industry is that there's a sense of exclusivity um there there are walls to the great Garden you know as much as I I I'm on board with ethereum's idea of the infinite Garden we've seen time and time again that there's this idea of you know better than or this otherism and and this exists outside of our industry as well you know we see systems of Oppression that function similarly and so what I wanted to do with movement was to show that we don't move that way and we are for everybody if if you're thank you bro if if if you're here to build if you're here to participate if you're here to to be part of this industry this web 3 movement that you're reflected in the way that you want to be and that there's a guild that you can join that is like-minded as you are and you there's cross-pollination you know there are creators that are also Scholars and there are explorers that are also Spartans um but they you know they congregate together and they build together and and now it's really the movement has taken on a life of its own the first phase of my marketing Journey at movement was to build the community the second phase is that the the community is building is building with us um I'm internally grateful for the guild leaders and the members of these communities because we wouldn't exist without them so here's just an example of some of what's been achieved through this Guild system um you know we've we've achieved 52 Regional Twitter like you know they're they're TW telegram groups but they're also 52 Regional movement groups in in the real world that's what I was trying to say I think these numbers are a little bit off I think now it's closer to 44 moderators I also also want to say to anyone who's Marketing in crypto if you don't include your mods in your marketing team I would like for you to Pivot that mentality they're the front front line for your community they communicate with your community more than anyone does and essentially if if you're building a community at scale like movement is today with almost a million people it's essentially like a country these are your local Representatives these are the people that are you know brought into the ecosystem and represent you on a day-to-day basis so please make sure that you're including them um and so shout out to all the mods and we also have mods training mods so and we have Community mods so I'm really proud of all of them we we've been on five different continents from Indonesia to Turkey Germany Nigeria Vietnam China Korea Colombia Slovakia Russia Ukraine the US Ghana Indonesia Japan Australia and we're just getting started ideally we're going to be on every in every country in every city and on every continent um I look forward to seeing a movement Antarctica base at some point as we pursue this this uh this new terrain of Dai and then here's some just some amazing pictures of our community I mean I I can't even begin to express the amount of gratitude and joy it brings me to just look at this screen but this is what community building can look like many of these people I've never met in person but we share a common goal which is bringing the move programming language to the people building Community having fun playing and working at the end of the day you have to make this worth people's time we're all in it for the same reasons I may have hit something I know we're good we're totally good here's some of the success stories that have been going on and I took a quick uh list one of the things that was very important for me and I think is a really important part of the community building process is to make sure that the people that are building the community with you are a function of your team so your most Avid and your most participant community members are essentially an extension of your marketing team or of your community team so I wanted to do a quick shout out these are some of the community members who have since found work after coming up in the movement ecosystem we have a day who's now lava dbom is now in Atlant Kia as is Mr Fox halios is now part of the squirrels team Fu and used towels are part of the canopy team Tims verse and bookie Road are part of the Henry team and Kem is part of the Razer Dow team that is literally validation of my existence to see community members who came into this you know for the joy of it for the sake of it but for their own self-purpose and their own pursuit of passion they joined this community they worked their asses off and they got jobs and I think that's one of the most important parts of community building in web 3 at the end of the day some of these people are grinding for you for free and so the most important thing that you can do is to put them in positions to win and the end result of the guild system was to allow for our community members to eat and one of the things that we did within the guild system was to create this paron this building the parth on experience which was the test net example of how these guilds could function making onchain mechanisms so that when these community members are participating in the various guilds which I'll go back to again again as these individual groups are participating if they're if they're teaching people in the Discord or they're teaching people on Twitter if they're creating memes if they're you know doing Regional Explorer um events across the world if they're building daps if they're you know um bringing people in and educating them if they're onchain maxing we want to make sure that all those people are recognized and incentivized properly because this [ __ ] does not come for free and there's no free lunch in web 3 so we want to make sure that the people are being rewarded adequately I'm very qu I'm very grateful to be on this stage and I'm very grateful for the movement community and obviously all this comes down to when is the network going live when are the people going to be able to participate on mainnet this is a question I've been getting often and the and the question for you Remains the Same with me the answer is soon come movement mainnet will be in March I'm very excited for us to be able to participate in a mainnet experience obviously the testnet was incredible experience as well but I just want to make sure everybody knows it's coming y'all and I can't I can't believe how close we are part on V2 is going to be up and we're we're just we're we're grinding I'm so proud of everything that the team has achieved and I can't wait for you guys to be able to participate on it in a mainnet way but I just want to go back a bit again and just talk a little bit more about the community building process and really like how you can engage better with your community if you're in web 3 and you're and you're a builder or you're a founder and you're wondering how we achieve this level of success with building our community I want to go back to some of the points that I made about the guilds if you're focused on the Builder Community what could you be doing for the Creator economy what could you be doing for the meme artists what could you be doing for the threaders what could you be doing for the folks that you know they might be micro kol's they might have really good takes but they don't have many followers so how are you maximizing the potential of your community and I think if you were to approach it with that lens you're going to see results that you didn't see before some of these countries are countries I've never even been to in my life but when community members approached me and said hey I live in Ukraine and I want to throw an event here my my immediate reaction was let's [ __ ] get it because at the end of the day I'm not going to be able to travel to these regions I'm not going to be able to be all over the world I have to trust my community and also this is a permissionless and decentralized environment I think the the the misalignment a lot of times is that people are expecting their Community to work for them and in reality we work for the community we can only go so far as the daps that build on our networks and we can only go as far as the people who throw events and who represent us around the world so what are you doing for the community how are you building for them what can you do differently and how can you show them how much you value them uh and how much you respect their time and create a mechanism in which when they show this hard work that they're rewarded for it I'm going to go back again to the MMO example how are you treating this the teachers how are you treating the creators how are you treating the onchain Maxis and if you're doing for them what you would want done for yourself then the world is going to open up to you I want to take the last few minutes of my time today to talk a little bit about this I think we've lived in an environment long enough within this industry of you know uh this is our chain and that's their chain and if they're not on my chain then I don't [ __ ] with them uh that kind of divisive roric is also the same device of rhetoric that separates our countries that separates our people and that's played out as [ __ ] we need to come together if you're building on ethereum if you're building on salana if you're building on bitcoin if you're building onu if you're building on apos if building on movement I [ __ ] with you you're in web 3 I [ __ ] with you the the we are not at each other's throats we have problems of centralization we have problems of Institutions and systems of power that are far greater and far worse than any web 3 builder so let's build together let's build a better world and let's live the ethos that we stand in this is decentralization and uh and this is what it's all about and build for the people and the people will build with you I'm so grateful for your time I wish you all the most wonderful eccentric and loving lives imaginable my sisters in the crowd shout out to Mom and Dad I love you guys thank you for raising me and a huge shout out to the ethereum community thank you to vitalic and everybody who built this to the folks that are Manning the stage and the sound and the AV teams the people who set up the whole conference um I stand on the shoulders of these Giants so thank you so much for coming and listening and uh I got five minutes left but I'm going to leave it so you guys are the [ __ ] I love you thank you believe in yourself love yourself you got one life so live it right let's [ __ ] go you Cris man gossips tastier than breakfast