Layer 2 Stage | The Art of Community Building in Web3

Captions as YouTube publishes them, usually machine-generated, so product and people names can be misheard.

1. 0:04

   fantastic talk thank you all for that uh just to add to the topics that Joe had mentioned there's a bunch I was shocked even cannabis was fit into that talk uh really really cool stuff um potato I remembered don't worry don't worry I remembered so up next we have the art of community building in web 3 Community is obviously a huge aspect of web 3 so does my pleasure coming all the way from SE and also fun fact uh the

2. 0:36

   next moderator has started a dance group we have Erica Kang welcome to the stage Erica come all right thank you for the generous intro uh yeah and thank you panelists for joining me yeah so thank you so much for everybody for coming to this panel um and as you know ol just mentioned uh community building is the most important thing I think in web three and it's also very difficult to solve or t or just kind of Target coming new building and

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   just uh do a good job at it and so I would like to kind of go around and uh General intro but also kind of dive into some questions that we've been like facing uh throughout our journey in crypto so um for me I'm the moderator uh for this panel my name is Erica King I'm from crypto soul and I've been hosting middle Asia conference and E Soul um for five years now so I'm really happy to be here and let's do a quick intro to the panelists so do you want to ped do you

4. 1:54

   want to begin and say hi uh hi everybody thank you for being here my name is PED flip I'm a co- founder of tingle who's a Marketplace for secondhand goods and I'm not really a web three guy but we're going going to talk about that in this panel all right cool hey everyone I'm Malcolm Levy from refraction de thanks so much for being here uh refraction has over a thousand members mostly artists creators all around the world amazing hi um hi everyone my name is

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   Charles Wayne I'm the co-founder of Galaxy uh Galaxy is a platform for community building for for uh Brands to build their own loyalty program uh Quest um for their to engage with their community members awesome um hi my name is Maria great job for the reflection down in the community HQ drop by they have really cool arts installations my name is Maria I Le hack at Dev Hub last year 8,000 people hacked with me on year so I think that's that's my main thing

6. 2:54

   to frag about that's amazing uh I think we all come from different backgrounds and different experiences so I think you know the the topic itself the art you know of community building web 3 that can kind of incompass so many different experiences and lessons so um I mean I know it's really hard to Define community in general and also let alone web 3 Community but why don't we just kind of go around and just share our definitions of web 3 what does it mean

7. 3:23

   to you of web 3 community and how is it compared to you know web 2 for example and what you've kind of experienced you know throughout the years and just you know um why don't we kind of go around we don't need to answer questions but I just going of set a general question if if you're comfortable with it please you know go around and answer um do you want to start okay I may start so for me Community is like a group of people with

8. 3:47

   the same goal with the same purpose that gets together and do the best that they can in order to achieve that goal it can be whatever goal it is and that's why uh communities are so important in a web three Comm community and ID in the web too that's how I I I I came here it was a surprise for me because last year I was invited to newon and I knew nothing about web3 and I said that to the people that invited me I know nothing about web3 they said well but we have this group that's called blacks at web tree

9. 4:17

   and you know you're a local guy you're an activist and we can help us like because a lot of people from abroad want to come to Portugal they want to talk to you they want so so I went there I came to new yor con I fell in love with it I fell in love with the community the black at web 3 and so I became part of this community in into into an ecosystem that I did not belong so an year passed and I was more and more more and more

10. 4:40

    developing that and we at black at web 3 we like we we help each other doing whatever we can because there are so many projects so many different goals so many approaches and I was just like the connecting guy between Portugal and the web3 community and the blacket web3 so this year is that's why I'm here so somebody was in the organization and said you you should Google talk about Community because you really build us up

11. 5:05

    and you really help the people out and you help people out going to the web Summit and achieving their goals because I have a marketing and communication agent so I I move along in the Portuguese scheme and once again I said why am I doing that I know nothing about web three the same way I said did you in the Emil I cannot force this enough but I know one thing I to about community and the power that it has and

12. 5:28

    it's and it's mainly about purpose and how people try to do their best and achieve their best to main goals and to to to to do whatever they can in order to achieve that goals and that's for me is the main purpose of here that's great I mean for me I did I did I'm in community building for seven years now I still don't know what it means and so I cannot be an expert on it I think forever so I think it's a precious

13. 5:51

    moment that you experience that over the span of a year and it's you've been really bridging you know those two communities that's I think that's where the beauty really begins so thank you for sharing that thank you anybody else want to share yeah I can probably share so yeah my main thought throughout the last year was um okay we are the part of the community right so we are just talking on behalf of the community about the community so it's kind of meta but I

14. 6:15

    think I'll take it so I I think the main difference between web 3 and web 2 communities is that in web 2 people feel like clients needs to be served right in our community people are stakeholders they want to understand what's going on they want to influence what's going on so it's it's really hard when you don't have just one decision maker you have like hundreds of thousands of them and you have to listen you have to attend all of those Twitter spaces has been so exhausting for the last

15. 6:45

    year I kind of like it but I feel weird talking to my phone like that but and I'm really grateful for this opportunity to see our community in person at nearon because when I see you in person I realize okay this is not trolls this is like real people so we have an opportunity to connect to them especially here at hacker HQ we have a lot of amazing Builders at the hackaton so I'm I'm getting like the first you know the first line response what people are actually building what are they

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    dreaming about what their vision of the future web3 is and it's really inspiring so I would say if if I need to drive this whole some somehow community in web3 is so much easier and so much more joyful to connect with so yeah that's that's my point thank you for sharing amazing do you want yeah I mean for for me you know curating the first digital art festival for the Olympics doing underground music events different

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    spaces around the world um it was always like very interesting and kind of global but always like set in different places MH and then like with web 3 and building out refraction it's so interesting because you actually have kind of like these nodes around the world where everyone is like contributing what comes from their space their City their culture into like the larger discourse

18. 8:08

    and I think that's the thing that's so special about building community in web 3 is that you can really do it on a global level and that Community you know is one that all has input and in a perfect world around it that input really can come from all different places around the world mhm I mean just kind of add on to that like I I'm the shifi soul chapter lead for example and Chi communities everywhere it's like empowering women you know Founders in

19. 8:33

    the space I think it's a really cool initiative but you can't really conquer every single region right so I think having those nodes for every city is really cool and it gives you ownership as well you know I think it's really a cool structure to have totally awesome yeah yeah so uh well from our perspective in Galaxy we we help Brands we help uh uh web3 businesses adults to connect with their

20. 8:57

    their with their uh audience so uh from our perspective we have we also have a token our galaxy has its token gal token so we kind of like a differentiate it into two different perspective one is the product the users of the product the other one is the users uh maybe the the the the token holders um and we actually spend more efforts on um to be honest on the product level uh because um we want

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    to establish the community itself for us is you you have established a group of core users who can really support you uh on the new features on on on you know when there's a problem when there's issues and understanding the process uh working with our team uh on improving the product overall and improving the experience and co-build the product with us right so um we for us we have established for example a telegram group dedicated for for web marketers who are

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    you know marketers or Community Managers from all of these 3,900 companies using Galaxy uh they have a dedicate group um they share tips they they they they they they create some you know uh business opportunities um and then on the other hand we have a Discord which has uh 600,000 members uh they're mainly users uh from different all all over the world um um yeah just just uh give constantly giving us a good feedback on uh what to do on the product and also um what are

23. 10:35

    the strategies to play uh what what are the good campaigns to participate on Galaxy you it become an interest group but also helping us co-build the product I think that's a that's very important I think you touched upon a very important aspect is you have various channels that you have to communicate your with your community with right and also some communities have a token um so it really you have to maintain that as well so I think you have to basically targets so

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    many groups of people and regions and so I think web the community is very diverse in that sense and it's also complicated and hard to maintain so coming to the backl question where you know we say community is very important it's always the key and I we hear that all the time but it's really hard to I mean I I hear so many like obstacles in joining a web3 community and just I mean we're very binding I think we're very strong in our own philosophy and beliefs

25. 11:26

    but I think when you're entering you know uh you know there's an entry barrier for sure and can you kind of maybe from your own experience of joining a web3 company or maybe founding one can you kind of many pinpoint some of the challenges that you kind of saw or obstacles that you see when you're kind of joining for example like involving tokens or wallets you know all those things but yeah you want so as I told you I was brought to this community and my main difficulty

26. 11:51

    was to understand what was web three and what was all the environment because in Portugal is still new like it's recent in the world but in parle it's still new so I'm trying I'm trying to absorve all these new words that are coming to me not cryp ftech what is this I don't want to look a fool and and maybe that's some work that needs to be done but everybody in the community that I found that that I belong to was so approachable and so helpful in order to to make me feel like I belong there like it's okay if you

27. 12:22

    don't know you're going to learn it through the way so in my personal experience it was it was pretty easy but I I I want to I want to comment on something that Maria said I found very interesting the difference between web two and web and web 3 the the clientele that web two feels that that they are I I truly I TR I truly believe I can sign I can sign I think these are like the the main the main the main differences I find between the two communities because

28. 12:47

    I mainly work with people that that work in in web to and my platform only runs there and um yeah I don't I don't feel the sense of belonging the sense of this is bigger than us and we really want to thrive Maybe because it's it's it's a new community it's a new state um but I I really felt that different I really I really think it makes make me feel more more acceptable and more welcoming yeah I think the sense of belonging is definitely there and like the welcoming attitude and like entering but at the

29. 13:13

    same time the terminology is just really burdensome and just really um if people find it hard to learn and just have that basic entry right so that's thank you for sharing that yeah for us I mean one of the big limitations I think outside of just getting a wallet has at least in the early stages been you know getting admitted to a specific doubt or having enough eth or any other coin in general

30. 13:39

    to join a doubt right um so what we did when we opened up refraction is we had the token but we made it free based on Merit so if you're an artist Creator musician Etc we would give you the tokens to join um also Partnerships is so important so you know we partner with like tons of different folks around the ecosystem the group that helped build the space here for garum for instance

31. 14:03

    it's like very much a community effort all of those members receive tokens in refraction they all become part of the Dow um but we do this in a way where we control our supply in a sense but also in that way like have the community able to join MH um and the biggest thing we've found is there's always a lot of explaining along the way and a lot of trust right musician DJ Plus play around

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    the world all of a sudden they join refraction it's the first thing they've ever done web 3 it almost becomes a responsibility how do you actually make sure that these folks coming in are then going to come to something like nearon or come to different events around the world and take that in and learn more and get more involved right like you it becomes you're almost like it's almost like diplomacy in a way around like what is actually happening on the blockchain

33. 14:54

    what is it really compared to what maybe the media might be saying Etc that diplomacy that really kind of Catches Us it's it's a key word I think we all diplomats in that sense bridging across different cultures and I think also like you know persuading artists to join and make sure that it's a safe space to kind of like jump on and kind of make create their own art in that in our own space in web

34. 15:18

    3 I think that's also a persuasion and also a lot of talking interpretation as well and you know I think yeah you're doing a really important part yeah thank you yeah awesome yeah I think um in terms of the challenges or or the obstacles uh there is a trend um I think if we go back to two years ago I think the biggest challenge for all the web stre products are goto Market um everybody is trying to find

35. 15:45

    the best uh the best product Market fit for their own product either you're defy or Dow um and sometimes you know you you don't have a live product how do you really uh build your initial community that was the challenge the biggest challenge I would say for the past uh two years ago but now we see a trend that's shifting from that because now there's so many good uh Tool toolings uh or or platforms to help you uh go to market better right like Galaxy or other

36. 16:16

    questing platforms or um their their product hunt there there are lot of great great venues for you to get your first 100 Champion users easily um so go to market uh getting is getting easier and then now the major problem I think it's the retention of really the retention how do you keep your user continue to engag we still see a short lifespan of all the web stre products in general right every product uh you see them have a have a

37. 16:46

    good hype you know maybe uh since the day when they release their uh fund race announcement but uh uh quickly within a year or or even uh even even um less than a year you see um you you didn't hear you don't hear from them anymore right so the so the retention it's a I think it's the biggest challenge right now because now there are so many good products so many Innovations and the competition get really serious right now so how can you really build a web3

38. 17:17

    product that's not only to web3 Deion but also to all the audience that's a that's very important and keep them engaged um right that's the idea yeah that's a very good point that's my next question but we'll move on after sorry I will take a couple of minutes to talk about that before problem so I primarily work with developers so for retention is like yeah that's what I'm thinking when I wake up that was thinking we were

39. 17:42

    going to bed but uh in my opinion with with the community of developers in particular it's it's very important to empower them to do things as opposed to just you know consume things that we are doing for them so for example at near De hub we uh shipped a product called hackbox we productized everything that we know about hackaton so it's kind of a plug andplay out of the box solution for

40. 18:06

    the community to host their own Heaton we're doing a micr grand 10K to 15K in in the communi throughout the world so if you know how to build on near if you want to host your own heckadon this is what you do you take the boss and you just open it and and it's Plug and Play so we Empower people to do things and that way we not only improve retention we just kind of tell them not directly

41. 18:29

    because directly is techy but indirectly we say them your opinion and your vision and your approach and your expertise it matters so much for us and the community is actually built by people not not by a mastermind a community manager or something something who sits in the office somewhere in Lisbon not talking about me sorry so yeah let let the community do the thing and I think they will stick around yeah that's a very good point and you know providing all these tools and resources it's it's wonderful and but at

42. 19:02

    the same time the retention you know how to keep your company strong and keep it going sustainable you know and attractive basically and makes you want to kind of stay there I think it's also always a challenge and for me I think consistent is key um I've been doing this like seven years it's it's quite it's it's a long run investment and so um I would like to know if there's any like uh magic potion that you try you

43. 19:25

    know just what sure go-to strategy everyday things and Maria said you wake up every morning thinking about you know and same for me every time like 247 right um but just maybe some of the key elements that you kind of try to kind of pull into your community and just um try like regularly um can you share some of the little strategies that you try that you know makes it for us it's events events so we do you know different events or community building around the

44. 19:52

    world and when we're doing our events you know people come out um and and we find that the people who come that have never been it's their first time maybe even their first time to crypto um you know and really getting involved in like onchain culture and web 3 it's you know this time of like sharing but also realizing oh like this is like a new way but also it has all these things from the past Etc um and it gives a chance for the community to hang

45. 20:24

    out together MH you know to talk to meet IRL um to create work to you know make music to do all these things that like is very you know unique um and so for us like we find the events and then pushing those events further as well as what we call like creative programs so for instance like working on the project here you know um you know our main exhibition designer Craig Barrow came in from Berlin kayn Davies who um lives in Lisbon helped to

46. 20:56

    produce as well as like a team team of folks like on the ground in Lisbon and it's like super interesting learning from that and like building Community around that because it's almost like you're building a village in real time yeah no absolutely the integration between IRL and online communities and the engagement there is really important I think I mean I've been hosting like 60 50 like over 70 events like throughout the span of like several years and it's

47. 21:21

    been really rewarding and uh yeah so thank you for sharing that and uh who wants to go next well well um I think yeah just finish up the my previous topic um I think fundamentally it's important to really find your really really build a useful product that you know can satisfy uh your your customers's needs um not only emotionally right but also uh practically uh is it is a tool that is it a tool or is there a platform they

48. 21:54

    supposed to come here every day or every week or is it is a more like a you know you don't if you don't have a live product that's it it is in general uh fundamentally hard to keep them engaged right I think that's the that's one idea and secondly a lot of new protocol protocols they're trying is to start to create their own loyalty program which we uh found out it's actually quite

49. 22:19

    helpful you know uh especially when when you in the D5 spaces so many competitions um uh swap Dex um you you see similar protocols um and at this stage everybody is sharing the same liquidity everybody sharing the same you know uh slippage rate the experience are the same how do you make your product stand out one thing is the you UI the user experience the second thing is you know maybe a unique loyalty program you

50. 22:49

    can keep your community engaged uh right that's the that's our two cents amazing I can probably pick that up by saying there is no no magic potion I'm sorry to disappoint you it's just like like human relationship you are not a dollar for be liked by everyone right so some people will definitely dislike you but that's that's okay with developers I primarily again work with developers it's it's important

51. 23:13

    to keep them challenged so launch a new challenge every month so they could feel that they progressing they're learning they're building new thing and uh I would say also Dev Ro developer relations is really important and so we we were trying to find the perfect deal person right and we found out that uh however good of an engineer it is yeah I see some Smiles in the audience the person needs to be likable the first place they need to show up

52. 23:44

    they have have to have this enormous Charisma so people could just follow them you see it's it's an impersonation of new ecosystem you see the person you like the person okay I want to be like that I want to be with those people as opposed to you know some snobby and unpleasant people in ecosystem yeah so this is what we're building we're trying to decentralize Devo we're trying to again productize the knowledge of being a Devo of

53. 24:10

    developer marketing going to heon talking to people but it all comes to down to human to human interaction I think ah yes I would I would resume it all like listen and learn because when are develing some prod some strategy whatever you're trying to develop and you have this kind of Community Support andway giving Inception of what they think they are contributing so they are engaged to your to your brand they are

54. 24:32

    engaged to whatever is that you're doing and that you we always help with it and the when the product is out it it can never stop you have to do events like you said you have to do wons you have to keep on listening keep on making people being linked to whatever is that you're building and that is the better way to finalize something yeah thank you so much for sharing this is amazing I mean the topic itself is the art of community building and I think it's an art I think it's definitely a holistic art where you

55. 24:56

    build your own Community it's a a work of art and so final words I mean we have one minute but can we just like blast out our key takeaways from this panel if you want to build your own Community what would you like advise them to do maybe just like a few pointers um just going to go around just like shoot out I would say start small and start with what you know oh that's great I love that start small yes I I can agree to that because newor Community also

56. 25:23

    probably started with 15 people who were really really bullish about the technology and and actually near started as an AI startup it did some point it sh to blockchain community is still here so near is pretty likable and start small work with with what you have and at some point 10,000 people will attend your Twitter space I promise it's amazing um I think um we we everybody understand that you know the the space

57. 25:52

    is growing uh the community um uh uh projects projects are also building so um try to get uh capture all the new audience to the space to your product to your community as much as possible and then after that make sure you have a u a good program to keep them reengage uh engage with you with your product or or with your team amazing uh I would say focus on the people because sometimes for developers mainly you focus on product product product a product is always for somebody focus on a people

58. 26:25

    focus on what do the people want what can help listen to them it's all again listen listen listen listen learn learn learn focus on the people it'll be all right I think one-onone interactions really do scale up in a in a way eventually it'll scale up so I think I really agree with the IRL uh connections there but yeah I think we're done here but thank you so much for your insightful you know uh discussions but

59. 26:48

    let's give a round of applause thank you thank you great thank you so much for that talk y'all um just a nice analogy I like to use I think of communities in the current Internet are like New York City where you live 5T from someone but you see them as a stranger whereas communities in web 3 are almost like a rural town where you live so much more spread out and web 3 it's Global but you feel so much more connected so that's the analogy I use take it for what you

60. 27:28

    will um but we actually right now will have a quick break we actually will have food downstairs on the first floor at 12:30 but please come back for 1: p.m. here where we resume the talks thank you everyone