Web3's Immutable Flywheel - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2023

you know um token is is really the best event in the crypto space that I have ever attended which is why I come back every single year and I come back every single year because every time I return to a token event either as an attendee or as a speaker an exhibitor I always learn something new one year in human years is like I don't know how many years in crypto years and we always learn something new I always learn a new piece of technology I need I learned a new jogger and I learn a new way to trade I learn a new thing that market makers are doing there's so many new technical things that I learned every time I come to a token event but if you ask me and there's one thing that I wish I could learn a little bit more on is about community Mike novogratz the CEO and founder of Galaxy digital set value is not in a technology value is a social construct and to me that actually means that value is in the community and not more in the technology but let me have a few minutes to share more with you why I say so now before I show the next slide I just want to have a show of hands just one very quick question if you are making money right now in your portfolio just please raise your hands even if it's like 0.1 percent yeah okay so nobody's raised their hands clearly because we're now in the longest bear Market ever this bear Market if you don't know already has lasted over 500 Days and there are three cycles of the most recent bear markets that has that we have been through and the question that I really ask myself almost every single day and I discuss with my friends is despite three bear Cycles what have we actually learned what have we actually learned in this three cycles and especially now in the longer cycle we have improved technology we have made change cheaper and quicker but what else what else have we actually learned from this cycle so I like to ask myself these questions as I go through stages in my life and I started similar to many of you here in this space in a trade fire space that was when I was young and naive enough to actually put on a suit so I lived in Dubai for a couple of years I did a lot of Consulting work I did a lot of Islamic Finance structuring but there were a lot of Consultants like me there back at the back in those days so I asked myself what was the True Value that I was giving to my clients why are they paying me why are you not paying a competitor and the answer that I got for myself wasn't because of my regulatory knowledge it wasn't because of the Islamic Finance knowledge it was really because I had the connections that they needed to be connected to and I was willing to share them so that was my value when I was living there in the Middle East then when I moved back to Singapore I started an events company we've run over 3 000 events since then it's over a decade then but when we first started we were tiny and there are hundreds if not thousands of event companies in Singapore same direction I asked myself what is the real value that we give to our clients why are they paying us instead of our competitors the thousands of them out there in the same country and the answer I got was because we found a way to create events that allowed our clients and their participants to connect like what we're doing here at token and to build very strong very genuine relationships that was the value that I gave to my clients in the event space now two and a half years three years ago I started a play to earn Guild in the XC Infinity space with my co-founder Wesley and same thing there were a few hundred guilds and not thousands of guilds even during those days especially during those played running boom days and I asked myself and my partner what's the value that we give who are we giving this value to are we giving value to ourselves to the investors to the industry where is the value that we're providing and the answer that we gave to ourselves was the value we gave was to the scholars who were playing for us in our Guild and the value was impact we made their lives better we gave them an opportunity to earn money to take care of themselves and also to take care of their family so if you don't know by now this question of where does value come from is a very very important question to me in everything that I do now I asked this question and apply it to the web 3 space remember three bear Cycles longest best cycle ever what have we learned and I thought why don't we go back to this principle and ask where is the value actually in this web 3 space regardless of what we are doing here regardless of how we are contributing to this new industry and I've come up with three immutable truths of the web 3 space and the first truth that I've come up with is that both product and going to Market is important technical ability marketing Community Building ability they're both equally important conferences like this tend to make us feel that the technological aspect is super important and it's really all there is it is not but they are both equally important there's one truth that I've come up with and the second truth is that tokens especially if you're running a token project or you actually own tokens I think the truth is tokens are actually worthless I mean what's the fundamentals behind the token the value of a token the value is not in the technology the value is a social construct that means if you believe this token has value I believe this token has value therefore this token has value now if tokens have values because it is a social construct then the third truth must be true in a web 3 space Money Follows community projects that generate value have learned the trick behind building long-lasting communities they've learned how to build communities they've learned how to retain and engage with their communities in order for them to expand now these examples here are obviously nfts examples that many of us would be very familiar with and I think yeah sure you know energy project clearly it's all about community so it must be really easy for an nft project to build and expand their community so the question then I asked myself was is that potentially a framework that non-nft projects can apply when starting a web 3 project or a business in a web free space is that potentially a framework that can help us expand and engage with our community in order to create value in what we do and this is what I've put together I put together a four stage framework I call it the community flywheel and it's actually quite simple to understand the four stages are collaborate on collaboration in the collaboration stage what you should do what we should be doing is we should be finding organizations we should be finding other projects that are targeting the same group of people the same community that we are targeting and find ways to collaborate with them such that there is a symbiotic relationship so that we both grow that's step number one step number two is to incentivize your community incentivized incentivization takes place on two stages the first stage is to incentivize them to join your community we're all incentive driven creatures you are here you're sitting at this event or you're attending this event because it's something that you want I'm on stage speaking because there's something that I want there is always something in it for all of us we are driven by incentives therefore incentives are important to bring or to expand and to engage with your community now the third stage in this framework is engage engagement if anything is definitely the most important quadrant of this fly View and the reason is because we have seen so many web3 projects and businesses attempt to build communities in the shortest possible time shortest possible way by employing kol's influencers PR agencies but they never learn how to engage with their community so basically all that money would have gone down the drain so engagement is extremely important and lastly once we have built the base of collaboration incentivization and engagement then expansion has to be in the plans we must learn how to encourage our existing Community to help us expand the place that they are in now I've brought to you some examples today to cover this framework so hopefully it helps you understand what I put together a little bit better the first example that I brought is BNB chain this applies to many other chains that you are familiar with or your favorite chain that is not BMV chain but my point is that BNB chain is very good at collaborating with organizations that a very similar level as them and who are targeting a very similar group of people similar group of customers similar group of users as them for example a couple of years ago BNB chain collaborated with Google Cloud because Google cloud is arguably one of the biggest if not the biggest cloud hosting infrastructure company in the world BNB chain obviously belongs to the largest Exchange in the world the avicien is also heavily involved in pancake Swap and The Business of a decks is obviously collaboration without collaboration if projects don't list on a decks there is no business so the point here is to identify who you should collaborate with if you have said and whether or not you have similar communities that you're targeting before finding out a way to work together and build up this symbiotic relationship so that you both get a win-win scenario and a second example that I brought for collaboration is immutable X IMX so I was at the dinner the other day just two days ago and Robbie was there so we were all having a conversation with Russell Robbie the founder and CEO of IMX which is chatting and he wasn't interested in any conversation that was going on honestly we were just there and it was the chatting was had a drink in his hand that's it but suddenly there was this guy who joined the conversation and said he was uh he was building a game five project he hasn't really launched yet it's been a game five project is interested in talking to a chain immediately his eyes Robbie's eyes lit up immediately he was interested in that conversation because he had only one metric in mind his one metric for collaboration he was very clear who he wanted to collaborate with our games immutable X is interested in games because there's a single the single most important metric that gives them their project value now moving on to incentivize I don't know a bigger platform in the world that allows you to incentivize your users whether they are new or existing users with nfts without knowing any code then this project called Galax so Galax has a booth here we work with them a lot not because we've known them for a while but also because they really provide a seamless way for any project to create nft campaigns this allows you to reward your users reward your new visitors reward people to follow your Twitter account for example and sky is the limit they are a technology platform they are the hardware that allows projects like us to build our communities and in terms of incentivization another project that you may or may not have heard of that's trending on crypto crypto Twitter right now is dbank so dbank in a nutshell basically allows you to do a lot of on-chain research on Wallets on organizations or maybe on some individuals but my point here putting dbank as an example is that they have a very strong incentive scheme they focus a lot of their marketing of their community outreach on the leaderboard that they have they're not even saying what's the point of being on the leaderboard other than getting some basic rewards but the whole community in the dbank space is just saying that topping the leaderboard is going to let them qualify for potential air drops that's not even true or is it when nobody knows but people are just incentivized to perform actions and give you the time and their attention when there is potentially something that attracts them to create an incentivization scheme within your project within your company in order to attract not only new users but to ensure that your existing users stay the third part of the community fly view is engagement yeah I know I said I was trying to find examples that are not nft projects in order to show you that this community fly view works but I love Patrick penguins I cannot think of a project other than Pudgies that has created the most engaging campaigns whether they are online whether they are on chain or whether they are offline whether they are toys whether they are plushies or they're in the arcades or in the carnivals pudgy is everywhere the paji brand the paji IP is all over the place in a good way they're trying to engage with their holders and non-holders as well by using the IP and applying it all over the world this doesn't take rocket science but their focus Lucas focus is on engaging with their existing holders as well as the new people who don't know their brand and finally the fourth part of the flywheel is expand in my humble opinion I think nobody runs better affiliate campaigns and referral campaigns in the web 3 space than exchanges I think we can take a leaf off the book of any exchange any centralized exchange especially when they're running referral programs or they're running trading competitions when they list tokens they have certain expectations from their projects to bring them new users these are amazing terms that they have created that helps these exchanges expand now if you forgot any of the six examples that I brought you here today and you want to take one picture of this framework this is the picture that you should take the community flywheel is really very simple to apply and anybody can do it for any project in this space follow these four steps find a collaboration partner incentivize your users engage and expand with them and hopefully you will be able to take your community somewhere and I would really like to stay in touch when you do that because I want to know how you apply this community fly with you how you apply this framework I want to see the results let's exchange some tips on Telegram and I'll see you at the next Bull Run thanks very much