Onboarding Diversity: Exploring community challenges and unique solutions

all right so moving on we're going to be talking about onboarding diversity in blockchain and so we have a panel of guests i'm going to add you guys in here see if i've got everybody all right go ahead and take it away team hey everyone um yeah so really excited to be moderating this panel so today we are going to be um talking about onboarding diversity exploring community challenges and unique solutions um so i'm so before we get going i'm going to get everyone to introduce themselves and share their pronouns past did you want to start this off hey how's it going my name's cash um pronouncer um he him uh or and uh what are you working on well currently i'm working on um trap chain it's a blockchain as a service for the music industry and um utilizing it enough multiple tokens so cool hey uh i'm shinju um pronoun is she and her um i'm the ceo of dystopia labs uh before that head of growth at stuller solana and tezos hey everybody my name is tokengamer jerome uh he him uh and i am working on blockchain universe it's a virtual reality meetup group uh we host events and educate people about blockchain gaming nfts and the likes very cool uh hello everybody my name is chloe lewis pronouns are she her like in the in the little bio there i'm the founder of the marmaday foundation and i guess for this talk we'll be talking more about i am also a facilitator for a guild on near called createbase where i help support the community there welcome everyone uh my name is jay harrell uh pronouns are she her and i am the community manager or one of the community managers for quan stem uh and we help a lot of companies in the space and organizations and taos in the space make sure that they're secure and trying to make sure that the the space itself is secure doing our part um so yeah before we really get started here i just wanted to take a moment uh to talk about the um the area at which the sports castle would actually sit this area specifically the confluence of the uh plateau and cherry creek rivers um roughly the area where the actual sports castle sits was the epicenter for church was the up center for trade information sharing uh and planning for the future communities and family as well as conducting healing ceremonies for over 45 indigenous nations uh including the lakota um kaioa kanachi apache shoshona among others and i hope i said those correctly so we just want to honor and acknowledge that this area is on traditional territories and ancestral homelands of the cheyenne um apache ho and utah nations again i hope i said those correctly so yeah um so we're going to go through a few questions and then after that we're going to do a bit of a live aviation session so um chloe how do you and we're gonna go each person have a chance to discuss this this is open format i'm here mostly to moderate um how do you think about community how do you approach building it uh so personally when i approach community it's usually again i think only one of the sessions i was in but usually on a one-on-one format um with the create-based guild a lot of what we do is just support different teams and projects coming into the space and so uh i really take each like project or group that comes in uh uniquely and i just try my best to uh support each individual that comes into the community as if they were like the only person in the community and i just try my best because i mean everyone who comes into each community has their own goals they want to achieve in my opinion from that community everyone has different amounts of time they can commit to the community as well so for as a community leader i feel like it's really important to get to know what those goals are for each person and i try my best just to do what i can to support um so how do i think about community yes and how do you approach building it yeah i try to take a historical approach i think about the ways in which the black community in particular has been you know sabotaged intentionally and systematically globally and how that directly affects their ability to participate in decentralized financial markets and i try to take an approach to um you know on board folks to um whether setting up their wallets or um you know going through a series of deep dives i've been personally be doing um education services and helping folks get more i guess conditioned to the vocabulary and the technical aspects of entities shouldn't you how about yourself well uh so i guess like i think of community more uh from a marketing standpoint so community to me like i view it in terms of acquisition so i view the whole world as like one giant funnel with a lot of different mini funnels based off of like what country and like what languages and then from those like mini funnels like there's different personas that you're targeting so with every single persona like there's different um content and different things that matter to them so like what you want to care about is like the composition of the people uh within this giant funnel and also making sure like they convert well further down the funnel and the more diverse it is like the more um the better it is because like we're trying to build something that's global and like if we don't get if we are able to like reach a lot of people at the top of the funnel like we're not going to be able to educate them later on down the road i mean we can it's just harder so like that's why acquisition at the top of the funnel is so important and wrong makes sense so i look at uh community in terms of you know the more aware the newest person in the space is the best it is for everyone in the room uh so when i host my virtual reality events in alt space i try to make sure that you know anybody that's walking through and and attends one of my events is aware of the nfts that we have hanging up in the room some of the different nft artists and educating them about this space and how they can get into this space uh as well as we do events so just uh last week we had a art gallery with a shout out to the art gallery art auction uh if you guys follow them on telegram we worked with them in um auctioning uh around three eighth worth of different nfts we had about 20 to 30 uh artists and a lot of those artists have never been into crypto never made crypto art never made an nft didn't even know what it was we kind of walked them all step by step through how to get into this space how to make an nft and then put their art into a virtual reality gallery which you could walk around with the vr headset or on your computer and be able to communicate and talk to other people as well as auction off those some of those pieces so and this is an open question anyone can just jump in uh what unique challenges have you encountered in building diverse communities and what are some tactics uh and or strategies you've used i'll jump right in on that one the hardest challenge i've had is getting more people in the crypto space to get into vr i can easily get people that are into video games or other platforms to jump into vr come check it out talk to them educate them about nfts in the space and they instantly buy in but when you try to tell a lot of people that are in a crypto going on crypto twitter telling them hey come check out my event silence i think the hardest part about explaining folks the differences between not logical tokens and i guess like traditional coins is like breaking out what not fungible actually means and then that gets into a whole financial discussion about you know lack of representation of folks and not having access to you know financial capital markets and then it goes into you know the just the decisive elements that have you know traditionally kept people from being able to participate in these financial markets and ultimately why nfts at the technology is um you know opening up so many new pathways for folks especially in the arts and entertainment communities where black people tend to you know um be preyed upon a lot of times like economically by different organizations within the tech industry uh so for me oh sorry go ahead go ahead go ahead yeah so i was just saying trying to make sure that the community stayed as diverse as possible in my opinion uh requires trying to search out people from more diverse communities so you know as people were saying already like crypto twitter might have one way of looking at things video gamers uh might have one more looking at things but in my opinion if you want to have a diverse community you need to make sure that you're going to that because the most diverse places and making sure that they feel welcome coming into that community so whether it's just you know making them feel like uh they can come and say whatever they want to say but also make sure that that central uh place the community meets is somewhere that people feel comfortable expressing themselves and however they might express themselves i think you know from these different parts of of the crypto space people of all different walks of life all have different ways of communicating and expressing themselves and it's it's amazing that a lot of people on the panel are you know work with nfts because even in the crate-based community we work with entities as well um and it's really important to make sure that no matter what walk area of life people are coming from they're able to come into the group express themselves and feel comfortable doing so and i think that's really how you make people feel comfortable from any walk of life within a community okay so i'm getting the sense that creating spaces and leveraging art is actually a good tactic is is that what i'm hearing absolutely um okay so so this is kind of a related question um and i don't know that it's going to add too much more but how do you approach new new communities and get them on board is there a difference um when talking about crypto blockchain d5 bitcoin or nfps etc because they're a different sort of approach or language yeah i definitely try to approach by slaying dumbing it down as as as easy as possible and at least the words the better um so just educating people as to you know why do they need to be paying attention to this space and the number one thing that gets a lot of people's attention i usually ask them right off the bat how much u.s dollars will ever exist how much bitcoin will ever exist and then they go i don't know and i'll let 21 million bitcoin and that immediately gets them to go oh that makes a scarcity behind it yeah and you know the conversation just is easier from there i think like for me um the most important thing is actually just going to a lot of different communities and listening to what they care about because communities that care about different things and like understanding like what will convert them will help you create content and create like educational information that will be more useful for that particular community because a lot of times like something that's useful to one group won't be useful to another group so the more you listen the more like exposed you are to more people like the better uh you'll be able the more diverse community you'll be able to create okay so then i guess as community builders do you feel like you are missing out on yolo food tokens and if so how or why i'll jump on this one after uh shinju's comment i think um at that point of you know trying to listen and go to as many communities as possible and try to figure out what educational materials will impact each community and bring them on board i think that that requires a lot of extra time that kind of takes away potentially from being able from in my opinion anyways from being able to focus on a lot of the d5 you know aspects of the market overall a lot of the economic action to the market in general so i don't personally for me i purposefully try and keep myself out of as much of the economic uh sides of the market as possible uh to make sure that i have as much time as possible to focus on like being in communities and listening because i feel like if i'm taking my time and you know looking at the markets and looking at the price changes every day then i might not be able to you know be in that one extra community and listen to that one extra thing that can bring people on board so then what would make um an experience in crypto say a hundred times better is it a culture question is it a technology question um any answer is yeah accepted i'll jump on that one you know me the vr guy here miami love to make people more immersed in virtual reality so whether it's you know you're at home on a computer or if you have a vr headset or if you come down to miami a lot of the events that i go to i always make sure that i have my vr headset there to make sure that people are more immersed in this space especially to like see nfts not just on their phone and scrolling through but to be able to walk around like an art gallery and be able to see nfts be able to purchase an nft um just educating them on that space um when i first started with my vr worlds i actually built like an educational facility in my world where you could walk around and like learn about bitcoin and cryptocurrency just by like walking through a museum in a sense so making it contextual um and like making it almost like is it going away you're saying yeah in a sense imagine if you had a physical gallery or museum to educate people but without needing to actually build a physical gallery just put a headset on their head or have them go to the application on their computer and they can still get that same experience they could still you know be immersed in the community and talk to other people and and actually like hang out and i i love when i come to my world and there's already people there hanging out talking about crypto yeah i think that making things more human readable um more human relatable is what's going to help folks honestly get onboarded i still think that there's like a huge um gap in folks being able to become onboarded due to the high gas fees and so forth and then trying to break down the different layer two solutions gets you really far off into the weeds of folks who are especially are like not really you know keen with tech terminologies and so forth so i try to use things that are like human you know relatable like sneakers and that's where sneaker credit came from last year when i you know started the embarking upon the path of introducing folks to nfts and the idea that you know people collect things that they don't even wear like sneakers and they use them as collectibles and financial assets and turn that into a way they can collect and trade also um you know get into the the idea of this digital asset and then now i'm doing a similar thing with music right because these are some of the things that folks are used to collecting they're used to being able to interact with on a more like human social way and i think that you know ultimately like being able to um integrate like creative technology such as non-functional tokens within different marketplaces such as like video gaming but also in other areas like music and um video and also with digital collectibles like sneakers okay all right so then a question to everyone before we kind of move on to the last little bit into a bit of a ideation session how do we get more network participants um whether d5 or l1 or otherwise to create an equitable space for those without enough time capital or capacity um given some of the strategies that we've and and uh comments that we've had so far i have one but i'll show you go ahead no no go ahead no i think that there needs to be a dedicated treasury pool or like a grant pool um to help folks from underrepresented communities and backgrounds who like can't afford to like purchase their first you know gas for their first collectible or um there should be some type of way we can limit you know the amount of um initial investment for just participating in some of these networks because you know due to the systemic like um redlining of certain folks from um capital markets they just don't have like access to be able to participate and i think that's ultimately why we're not seeing as much user adoption it's because like the uh the insurmountable amount of like capital it takes to like even onboard nfts right now is like really really you know it's immense and then i'll say that it's really helpful when you're uh when people in your community are getting connected with like politicians in the space so real big shout out to my friends erica gemma and scott for getting connected with mayor francis suarez and making sure that he's aware a lot of people know that miami is now looking to be the crypto city of the world uh and then on top of that just hosting really amazing events trying to make sure that it's it's you know uh accessible to everyone so not throwing a hundred thousand dollar events but throwing events that are for free and have sponsors and having people come in get little goodie bags you know get nfts and and learning about the space so with that i give i got to give a shout out to bit miami um bit basel is doing a lot of amazing things and and they're they're they're making it so that way anybody that's in miami or that comes to miami can come to a crypto event have a good time get fully immersed in the community and want to learn more and grow with this community yeah small free events totally agree i feel those do so much like legwork yeah i feel like it's really important to make sure that the educational benefits from all these events but also the incentives align um so you know to have a diverse community i'm sure that the incentives that those community members are looking for are going to be diverse as well and so ensuring that anyone that comes to the event so first of all the excessive the barriers to entry to the event are low like everyone's been saying but ensuring that when someone comes to that they're learning something hopefully and that they're they're gaining something for themselves and i think that's how you get people to come back to your events um because they're not just coming you know and getting what everyone's getting maybe they're getting something that they really wanted from the event they're learning something up from the event and then the next time they come they can build upon that knowledge and then hopefully they can start teaching others and the community starts to grow uh for everyone that's able to come in yeah i completely agree um i think like the most important thing when you think about um making um traders into network participants is to the first thing is to make sure they own your token because if they don't people will pay attention to their bags and once you get someone to start paying attention to a project they'll automatically start going down the rabbit hole and as they go down the rabbit hole uh it's an opportunity to get them to start using the product instead of just shilling uh prices so once they um start digging in like they can either be a validator on a layer one and start earning like um money or they can like there's so much people can do but like they don't know they can do that until like they start digging in and they have incentive to dig in so a lot of this problem is like layer one token distribution like it's not very uh well distributed to a lot of different diverse communities so like it's very hard for them to like have money to pay for pay for gas views and it's like very hard for like certain communities to get started so like distribution like does matter a lot on the layer one side and it because it it's access basically i think there's a lot of great points brought up we have a little bit of time left so let's just do a quick ideation session until our time is cut um so how do you build a system let's just you know open ideas with off-the-shelf parts or existing product ideas where community builders are incentivized to continue caring about individual network participants are there ways that could make it more equitable that can also help fund public goods that's important to respective communities so using off-the-shelf parts yeah i actually wanted to to double down on um like the cultural question i think that a lot of the tools and frameworks that are being um introduced are you know coming in from a more um like financial market perspective and also like um not necessarily like taking in consideration that you know certain barriers to entry exist actually to keep folks from being able to enter and like find out ways in which you can implement strategies like you know apis as a service like with api three um and helping folks to um you know disseminate information about blockchain as a service like what i'm doing with trap chain which is essentially educating people on how to you know start up their own tool chains and their own side chains in order to like you know skip around these high gas fees on ethereum definitely free culture is hugely important for network participants yeah and i'll have to like you know pull off of what shinju was saying again about like the distribu distribution of layer one tokens i think that's a huge um i guess issue that has been in this in this space for a really long time where you know someone new comes into a new network i mean you know in the past you were only thinking about ethereum but now i mean there's chains all over the place and but still i think if you don't hold the bags for a certain chain it's really hard to really get involved and start going down that rabbit hole so ensuring that i think from the very get-go to have a foundation where um you know a community starting with maybe a grant like people have you know uh i think cash was saying uh having a grant program and i'll show personally you know create base uh i'm near the near system where they try and distribute as many layer one tokens as many different guilds as possible and i think that helps each guild become its own little community that gets to distribute tokens into as many you know hands as possible so that those individuals can start going down their own rabbit holes so i think any way in which you can start off where like layer one tokens are in the hands of individuals which they can then build something on top of is going to be a good starting place did anyone want to add to that no i totally agree i really would like to double down on the fact that i think that a lot of the value of you know scientific research and mathematicians and you know folks who contributed to this space that come from underrepresented backgrounds um we really have like the support and financial support economic support specifically from within the the community itself with the frameworks and tools that are needed for building i think there needs to be you know an extended amount of like scholarships and grants in order to help facilitate the educational process because right now i'm just taking upon this mantle of you know throwing people down the rabbit hole of smart contract development for nfts and different marketplaces and it's something i'm doing to move the space forward because i think that in order for it to move forward people need to know about it and how to actually use the tools and the frameworks and ultimately we need some type of like you know financial economic system with you know a um maybe upgraded game theory i think the game theory is outdated and it's gone off of a old model with like economic hitman and i think that ultimately in order to grant more user adoption and bring more people into the space we need a new um game theory for token economics i fully agree with that i think people are very stuck in existing frameworks of game theory when you know it is just that it's just theory so we have 30 seconds left i'm going to go around the table and everyone give a chance to show chloe oh i'll just still uh create bass uh it's a guild on mirror where if you're an artist who wants to get into some experimentation from whatever community that you're in as diverse as it can be we're here to support you with finances with uh whatever else you might need so come into the create-based group and learn more about that dash i'm going to shield trap chain um it's a personal pet project of mine i'm building um so you can email me beats at trap chain it's spelled t r a p c h a dot i n dot i n stands for internet internet of blockchain so we're planning on building out um sidechains for cosmos polkadot um and any other um sidechain or other evm based um blockchain but it's mostly for black music black music artists and folks who are in nfc space shenzhou uh dystopia labs we have another conference coming up uh on march 4th it's 100 free uh stop by rome uh definitely gonna shout out uh and uh show the other half uh at the btc queen on uh on twitter as well as my home um and guys just come check out some of the virtual reality events if you haven't been in vr if you have a mac or pc come check out alt space and look for blockchain universe we have a lot of fun talking about crypto all the time oh one last shield um check out a drop i'm doing at the end of this uh month through um universal contemporary it's going to be on super rare we're going to drop a bunch of really dope sneaker collectibles cool looking forward to it can't wait every month i do a small free um talk around youtube check my twitter thank you very much thank you so much for hosting hey john hey how are you i'm good awesome job loved it you guys have fun yeah thank you yeah this is good um this is really good almost getting i don't know if anyone knew this but i was getting kicked out of the room i booked it for 11 to 11 30 and then someone and i locked the door and then someone like like oh i haven't booked for 11 30 when i'm like live oh no so go away yeah there's enough rooms there's other rooms like not a big deal well thanks everyone perfect thank you so much john as well thanks jay for putting this together you guys uh thanks to simona all right