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We are witnessing a Cambrian explosion in the number of blockchain projects coming online. Per CoinDesk, we’ve already seen more ICOs in 2018 than in the entirety of 2017, which is 9x the number that launched the year before that. Now put yourself in the shoes of one of the 1637 projects listed on CoinMarketCap — how are you going to differentiate yourself?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this question lately. Sure, executing on your development roadmap or devising a clever go-to market strategy can go a long way towards setting yourself apart from other cryptocurrencies. But there is another strategy that is worth focusing on too— building your community.
I believe that building an exceptional community is paramount to becoming a winning cryptocurrency, and there is a playbook for doing so.
The Playbook
Step #1— Maximize your initial token distribution
There is no better way to organically build a community than to put tokens in the hands of as many users as possible when your project launches. Your early tokenholders usually become your biggest evangelists because they stand to make the most money from your project succeeding. They will also stick with you during times of uncertainty, which can be extremely valuable.
Last year it was relatively easy to maximize your token distribution. Projects like Tezos conducted large public ICOs that sold their tokens to anyone who wanted to participate. But today, this method of broad token distribution is infeasible given the amount of regulatory scrutiny on the space. As a result, many projects have conducted exclusionary token sales (e.g. accredited investors only) in order to be compliant.
This shouldn’t mean we give up on broad token distribution altogether, and in fact, there are still clever ways to maximize reach. For example, Proof of Work coins can do a Fair Launch —this is when a coin launches on a date without any supply issued (i.e. no presale allocation or premine) and allows anyone to begin mining. It’s also possible to conduct a fair and compliant token sale that leverages the latest in Equity Crowdfunding laws, which is something we’ve seen platforms like Republic begin to offer. I suspect we’ll see more projects employ these techniques in the future.
Step #2—Codify your project’s mission and values
If you’re going to convince free agents to join your community, you need to be able to explain to them why your project matters. Projects should establish their core mission and values and then publish it somewhere.
If you’re looking for an example of this, check out this blog post by Will Warren on the 0x mission and values.
Step #3—Cultivate productive online discussion
Community members should have a place to voice their opinions online and feel like they’re contributing to your project. However, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to online discussion because of two fundamental tensions:
Communication Style
Some people prefer Synchronous Communication (discussion that happens in real-time) while others prefer Asynchronous Communication (discussion that doesn’t happen in real-time).
Content
Some people prefer General Content (e.g. new partnerships or business development roadmap) while others prefer Technical Content (e.g. feature development or technical roadmap).
I’ve found the best projects tend to support multiple forums for discussion as opposed to trying to fit as many folks as possible into one chat or message board. One major benefit of this approach is that it allows technical discussion to occur unencumbered by distractions from casual users who sometimes just want to speculate on token price.
Here is an example of a discussion implementation that can meet the needs of a diverse crypto community:
Projects should ensure that all discussions stay on topic and are respectful. The easiest way to do this is to find passionate community members who are willing to be moderators for free. If that is not possible, projects should consider hiring moderators because it is worth the investment. Finally, founders and core team members should partake in discussions too, as opposed to simply letting the moderators and community managers handle everything.
Step #4—Provide support
Your most important community members are the developers building on top of your protocol, so make sure they’re happy by troubleshooting their technical problems. While it’s possible for members of the core team to help out with this type of work when your project is just getting off the ground, at some point it’s probably worth hiring a full-time developer relations person.
You may also want to hire an employee to handle regular customer support. At first glance this role might not seem necessary, but it’s actually a secret weapon in terms of a generating goodwill in your community. If you’re looking for a good example of this, head over to the Decred Slack and check out the #Support channel — the team does a nice job of helping their non-technical users with problems such as setting up a wallet or learning how to join a staking pool.
Step #5 — Set up a grant program
If you have a treasury, consider setting up a grant program that pays tokens for 3rd-party development of your protocol. This a great way to grow your ecosystem while aligning your core team and community even further. One of my favorite examples of a well-executed and transparent grant program is the Zcash Foundation. Each quarter it funds proposals created by community members that support both the mission and values of the Zcash Foundation.
Step #6—Support community-run organizations
Community-run organizations, which are usually created spontaneously when token holders want to go above and beyond in their support for a project, can be an excellent way to further the your mission as well.
One well-run community organization is the Tezos Commons Foundation. The TCF has done well over the past few months supporting meet-ups all over the world and generating grassroots support for the project in way that is complementary to the efforts of the Tezos Foundation.
Step #7—Spread the word
Teams should constantly be spreading the word about their project in order to acquire new community members. There is no better example of this than Vitalik Buterin, who “basically lives on an airplane” and travels to hundreds of events each year evangelizing Ethereum.
For other projects, it’s never too early to hit the pavement and begin spreading the word about your protocol. I’ve been encouraged by one of our portfolio protocols, Kadena, which always seems to find good opportunities to spread the word about what they’re building and how people can get involved in the ecosystem if they’re interested.
"The same tools that secure an investment bank’s $100 billion order book will now be available to a musician selling her music online." Will Martino (@_wjmartino_) of @kadena_io Join us on the world's first decentralized video platform @officialrizeapp this Friday 7/13 2pm ET pic.twitter.com/T1Q2wIwCPg
Finally, have fun. A small window into your team’s personality can go a long way towards making community members even more passionate about your project. Here’s Karl Floersch from the Ethereum Foundation showing off his creative side with freestyle rap (and make sure you don’t miss Vitalik clapping at the end!).
Closing Thoughts
Ultimately, building an exceptional crypto community is just as important as your technical roadmap and go-to market strategy. With this playbook, projects can put themselves in a position to acquire and retain more community members, which will pay dividends in the long run.
This article was originally published on the Token Daily blog (link).
Author’s note: Thanks for being a Provably Neutral reader! I haven’t posted in a while and wanted to provide a quick update. Instead of posting daily, I’m going to be publishing long-form blog posts a bit less regularly.
Today’s post is going to be short—I’m up in Boston right now for Blockchain Week and my schedule is jam-packed with meetings and events with early-stage founders, engineers, investors, and other folks in the space. If you’re here and would like to meet up, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Today Multicoin Capital finally published their analysis and valuation of EOS. I’m excited to read it and wanted to flag it for everyone—Kyle, Tushar and Myles are some of the most thoughtful investors we have in the space, and it’s clear they’ve thought a lot about how EOS fits into the broader landscape of crypto as a platform-grade censorship resistant smart contract platform that prioritizes high throughput, speed, and finality.
On Friday, EIP 1011 —the Ethereum Improvement Proposal for Hybrid Casper FFG — was published by Danny Ryan and Chih-Cheng Liang. You can read it here.
The spec is worth reading if you have some time, but if you’re feeling lazy, Trust Nodes (one of my favorite industry publications) summarized it here too.
I’ve been looking forward to Ethereum’s transition to a full Proof of Stake system for some time, so it’s exciting to hear that we’re only 3–4 months away from the first step of the transition happening.
Here were some of my biggest takeaways from the EIP:
1. Ethereum’s inflation rate is about to be reduced by 80%
In the new hybrid system that utilizes both Proof of Work and Proof of Stake, the PoW block reward will be .6 ETH and the PoS block reward will be ~0.22 ETH — this makes for a new effective block reward of .82 ETH , which constitutes an 80% reduction in network inflation. That’s a staggering drop in potential selling pressure from Ethereum miners.
To put this into perspective a bit more — once Hybrid Casper FFG is live, Bitcoin will have twice as much inflation as Ethereum (4% vs 2%) until its next block halvening in 2020.
2. The minimum deposit size for staking is roughly $1,000,000
The EIP specifies a minimum deposit of 1500 ETH (~$960,000 at the time I’m writing this) to participate in Casper network staking. That’s quite expensive and pours cold water on some of the rumors flying around that the minimum deposit was going to be considerably smaller. With that said, I fully expect to see smaller holders meaningfully participate in Casper staking via pools like 1protocol.
3. The incentives are strong to stake
The authors of the EIP estimate that 10M ETH will be deposited for staking, and in that case, stakers can expect to earn an annual interest rate of 5%:
Source: EIP 1011
If we continue on with the assumption that 10M ETH will be staked, that would give Ethereum holders two options once Casper goes live:
Option 1: Participate in staking and make +3% net annual return on your ETH (5% staking return minus 2% network inflation)
Option 2: Don’t participate in staking and make a -2% net annual return on your ETH (0% staking return minus 2% network inflation)
Given this dynamic, I fully expect some of the larger Ethereum holders (especially institutional investors who don’t like being diluted) to participate in staking as soon as it’s deemed safe for them to do so.
Today, Bitmain-owned mining pool AntPool announced that they are now burning 12% of their BCH transaction fees:
Their official announcement doesn’t really indicate why they’re undergoing such a drastic measure; instead, they’ve opted to give us a largely incomprehensible statement about the “forthcoming wave of innovation” for Bitcoin Cash.
So what’s going on here — why is AntPool reducing the total supply of BCH?
The Optimist
This is a massive signal of confidence by one of Bitcoin Cash’s biggest mining pools. By burning their tokens, AntPool is demonstrating its belief in Bitcoin Cash’s long-term viability. This should in turn improve overall BCH investor confidence as well.
The Pessimist
This is a desperate move to pump the price and shows that there is little organic demand for BCH. By burning some of their coins, AntPool is signaling that market demand for BCH is clearly not enough to meet its supply.
The Realist
Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s quickly crunch the numbers on how much money we’re talking about here. Here are the latest 24-hour mining stats for BCH:
(Source: bch.btc.com)
So, (15 blocks mined)*(.00609139 avg. tx fees per block)*(12% burn)*($1070 market price of BCH) means that AntPool has only burned $11.84 worth of BCH in the past 24 hours! Ultimately, this nothing more than a token signal of strength for Bitcoin Cash.
All things considered, I’m not sure there’s as much of a story here is we originally thought.