"Communities thrive because of their contributors."

"people only contribute to communities if they trust that their time and energy are going to be put to good use."

"Over time as community members contribute, and are increasingly validated and rewarded for their work, they become increasingly more willing to increase their commitments to the community — whether time, effort, or resources."

"Underpinning these positive behaviour cycles is trust."

"People need to trust that… Their contributions are going to be put to good use The intentions behind the community are earnest The community is capable of achieving and making progress on its goals The people in the community share the same values as they do"

"Communities only become real when they achieve their first win. Enthusiasm is not enough to keep a community alive."

"Why this community? What do people want to achieve and how is the community going to help them do so?"

"By empowering those around you to have an influence on what matters and what is to be executed, you prove that the goals of the community matter."

"Real trust is only formed when you put the interests of others over your own."

"Why do really smart people fail to build communities? Unrealistic expectations of the process required to build a community Trying to copy what other existing communities are doing People want to play house more than they care about creating value"

"Player retention in gaming is everything."

"Despite this, publishers optimize for company profit at the cost of player value and well-being. They are able to do this due to their end-to-end ownership and control over the development, distribution, and management of games."

"Axie Infinity — which has a D0-D90retention rate of 40%."

"Typically, the teams behind Web 2.5 games look to build highly polished but closed ecosystems where the entire player experience is centrally controlled by a single organization."

"These projects consider themselves ‘game first’ and mostly still optimize for Web 2 growth metrics, arguably under the same value extractive mentality as those of legacy game publishers."

"Analogous with CeDeFi, these games look to build closed-loop, centrally-controlled ecosystems on top of inherently open and permissionless crypto networks."

"We believe that the Web 2.5 approach to building P2E ecosystems is not enough to prevent the value extraction of communities."

"This is because there would still be key reliance on a single coordinating party that owns the end-to-end development and management of the economy and end player experiences."

"Instead, we believe we need to treat P2E ecosystems as open source public goods where all aspects of the economy and surrounding play experiences are built out in the open."

"Instead of thinking about P2E as standalone games or ‘apps’, we believe P2E ecosystems are about building self-sustaining virtual nation state economies that community members can trust, collectively operate, own and build on top of."

"These economies are not only just places where community members play, but also worlds in which they have financial upside, ownership over revenue generating businesses & valuable digital assets, and defined jobs & responsibilities."

"Rather than pure user growth, we believe community-run P2E economies will optimize for functional governance, the ‘quality of life’ for their community members, ‘GDP’, and economic stability."

"By avoiding reliance on a single team, and by building out in the open, a game is able to scale the width of product insights and approach product development in a far more scientific and engineering-based manner."

"With players having greater control and mobility in the metaverse, we believe interoperability will be a core driver of cross-world distribution."

"We believe the opportunity cost of not building for interoperability will overshadow the net cost of doing so."

"Economic sustainability and growth occur when the value flowing into a system is greater than the value leaving it."

"For economies to be sustainable, the sinks need to take more of the token supply out of the economy than the faucets that bring the token into the system, otherwise, there will be natural downward price pressure as supply increases over time."

"By considering P2E economies as the economic and social base layers for an entire ecosystem of games, we believe that building a P2E ecosystem is less about game development and much more about worldbuilding, culture, and incentive design of the underlying economy."

"While we would agree that over the long term, well-designed games will engage and retain the biggest player bases, we don’t believe you need to necessarily launch a highly polished game from the start in order to be successful — but instead, a minimum viable game (MVG) that is enough to complete the economic value accrual loop."

"We believe by building out the full economic value accrual loop early, P2E ecosystems are able to build games in a much leaner and iterative fashion with much less upfront startup costs."

"Driven by our hands-on experience building token networks, we believe that the most successful and vibrant P2E ecosystems will prioritize community and culture first rather than game play."

"We believe getting worldbuilding, culture, and incentive design right is mission-critical for building a thriving P2E economy."

"We can expect that early user acquisition for P2E ecosystems will look more like skilled dungeon masters co-creating a D&D world with a community, especially when there is not yet a game ready or even one being built at that time."

"“Come for the culture, stay for the ownership.”"

"While the legacy metrics place an emphasis on “how many players does your game have”, we believe P2E ecosystems need to focus on “who are the players and contributors”."

"When designing the distribution of in-game assets and shared upside in the economy, gaming studios should look to ensure that the most valuable community members and contributors are rewarded for their relative work and commitment. When this contributor feedback loop is repeated, trust, loyalty, and fanaticism are developed."

"We believe P2E games should be careful about designing incentive structures that are based on gameplay alone."

"We believe that P2E economies should design their incentives to focus more on retaining missionaries and loyal community members as opposed to being used to drive pure user acquisition."

"Community building is the process of bringing together people for the purposes of achieving a set of shared goals and missions."

"[value alignment] Are they aligned with the values and overall mission of the community?"

"[track record] Do they have any past crypto community-building experience? Or if not, do they have the potential to become a great community operator?"

"[ability to execute] Can they execute and follow through?"

"Are they aligned with the values and overall mission of the community?"

"Do they have any past crypto community building experience? Or if not, do they have the potential to become a great community operator?"

"With that in mind, crypto is a land of failed communities, where more often than not, a candidate’s past job titles and experiences on paper are rarely representative of what they’ve actually accomplished."

"Understand the outcomes of the work produced at prior roles"

"Assess their level of direct influence on the outcomes produced"

"Mistaking influencers and audience builders for community builders"

"While audience building is part of community building, it is only one component of the whole process."

"Community is a long term process."

"In the context of token networks, if we purely build an audience we may end up with a large number of token holders that mostly remain passive, whereas if we directed focused towards building a community of active contributors, we end up with a decentralized contributor workforce that can govern and operate the network."

"In many cases, some of the best emerging community builders I’ve come across are often ones who’ve not had a lot of experience but are those who’ve been first hand witnesses to how real thriving communities form and emerge over time, usually as a community participant themselves."

"Find a part of the community that needs work, scope it out in terms of objectives, success metrics, timeline, and rough path of execution."

"When ramping up hiring for community building roles, be ready with several challenges, problems, or objectives for potential trial candidates to try to solve and execute on."

"Settle before exploring. Most projects try to grow fast before they’ve built a community with meaningful participation first. Make sure you take care of the needs and priorities of the current community before growing more aggressively. Without a community that can retain participation, further efforts to bring in new participants will be a wasted effort."

"The settlers (community management)"

"The explorers (community growth)"

"The town planners (community strategy)"

"What makes this community unique?"

"If you are currently building a community, try and ask community members:"

"Why are you here in this community? Why are you still here?"

"One of the best ways to understand how culture in communities start, emerge and form is to examine the cultures of existing communities in which you resonate with:"

"What kept the initial few community members together?"

"Community is not always about including everyone but a careful balance between curation and inclusion."

"Most people behind ‘Ethereum killers‘ don’t understand that Ethereum’s community culture is it’s defensive moat."

"People are drawn to missions, values, art, culture and humour. Building a community from the basis of better technology is an uphill battle."

"When starting new communities, you have an initial window of opportunity for this trust to be built before individuals start dis-engaging. Most communities fail here."

"Communities only become real when they achieve their first win."

"A lot of the time, this will look like asking your community what goals they want to achieve and executing upon it on their behalf."

"All communities start small. All big things start small."

"It is okay to be small."

"It’s about creating deep value."

"The process of building a community is one about trust and patience, something that is founded on strong ‘whys‘ and slowly manifested into reality through hard earned trust."

"it is grassroots community leadership and ownership that enables the long-term success of a token network."

"Ownership is not fostered through financial incentive design but rather through a long-term focus on community building"

"1. Creating opportunities for intrinsically motivated contributors to discover the community"

"Your goal here is to attract primarily intrinsically motivated community members as opposed to purely extrinsic reasons."

"Intrinsically motivated community members form strong communities and sustain their participation even when the monetary upside is uncertain."

"Extrinsically motivated community members form the basis for weak communities and drive away other, more intrinsically motivated participants."

"The biggest mistake projects make here is overly focusing their marketing around monetary incentives, such as token liquidity mining programs or price movements, which attracts the attention of mostly extrinsically driven participants."

"Instead, focus on creating awareness around what differentiates the community"

"2. Building a relationship with new community members to foster minimum viable contributors"

"The goal of minimum viable participation is to foster a relationship, from which further trust and engagement can be built."

"1. Community member self-signalling"

"One way to surface these individuals is to enable people to self signal their intentions."

"The key is making sure there are call-to-actions for the different community contributors you are aiming to attract."

"2. Relationship building and community member success"

"3. Directing community members to opportunities to participate"

"You want to think of monetary rewards as a means of acknowledging the value that a community member brings to the community as opposed to being the direct incentive to participate."

"3. Fostering community ownership"

"the reality is that only once community members have grown to become familiar with a community and invested enough of their time and energy, is it possible for them to grow an ownership mentality."

"Being able to foster this sense of ownership is key to retaining key community contributors and participants."