Crypto Assets Are All About Communities With Ideologies
Every new platform that comes around in tech has its unique qualities relative to what was possible before that platform, and they also inspire new behavior for end-users that also was not seen prior to that platform paradigm shift. An overview of all the previous platforms:
The biggest behavior shift we’re seeing in web3 is the materialization of tight-knit, online communities, where owning a crypto asset, either ERC-20 or ERC-721 token, is the minimum commitment necessary to be part of the club.
Bitcoin was the first driver of such online behavior. The bitcoin community stood for ideologies and a general thesis for the club that united people, and to be part of this community, all one had to do was buy BTC to have something in common with everyone else in this club. It became “cool” for many to be part of such a club.
Ethereum was similar in the sense that it spread new ideologies of a user-owned web and financial ecosystem. It is very much a social club (or in other words, a developer community) as it is a protocol technology.
In the web2 internet landscape, there were many applications that allowed us to connect to a generalized social graph of everyone we know — such as your friends on Facebook or who you follow on Instagram. However, the missing behavior piece that web3 is solving for is how it unites people on the web more effectively by aligning people via ideologies, messaging, ideals — and the crypto assets and wallets are tools for alignment. It is more a means of defining our identity to represent what we stand for and who we are.
The explosive behavior in crypto is that when you combine crypto assets with publicly stated ideologies, you get these j-curve growth communities that naturally just grow virally on their own.
Crypto is very much so about story-telling, narrative crafting and making compelling cases for clubs that people want to be part of.
This is in sharp contrast to web2 SaaS that was competitive on product features and go-to-market. With crypto clubs, what matters mostly is:
- What ideology you stand for
- Who is in the club and why is it compelling enough for me to want to fomo into it
In many ways, the most successful crypto projects stood for something that everyone felt like they could be part of.
People want to be part of something, and web3 is the outlet for them to finally find inclusion in more ideological, tight-knit communities on the web. This wasn’t a behavior that was possible in web2, because liquid and volatile assets of value are the perfect way to create an entry barrier and incentive to join communities.
While there are innovative applications and infrastructure in crypto, the biggest explosive growth communities did both: technology and an ideology to unite people. Almost, like a religion. Or a cult.
Web2 is how everyone connected with people they knew in the real world. Web3 is how people will connect via ideologies and narratives they mutually believe in. Web3 fills the void of finally have the most tight-knit social clubs on the web.
IMPORTANT: With this thesis in mind, I have a new stealth project currently underway. I will be announcing it in April, but all CNFT holders will get an airdrop for the token. https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/communifty
I also gave a presentation about crypto cults recently to some students, feel free to find the slides from the talk here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-MG6W-2NZFzk4xNaD7i1Vv29J0KfF4yE3VpNGB9v90o/edit#slide=id.p
