[REDACTED] 2024 | In Crypto Community Is Your Only Moat

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1. 0:05

   hi everybody um so nice to be here hi I am Natasha Hoskins I am one of the co-founders of boy club boy club is one part Community one part media business we talk about emerging technology in the context of culture through podcasts and newsletters and events and a lot of other fun stuff um we love near so we're excited to be here today um I have a great panel and I'm excited to talk about community so today's session is titled in crypto Community is your only

2. 0:36

   Moote so we're going to be talking a little bit about um that idea we're going to be discussing whether we think that is true um there's so much discussion about Community it's a big you know often a buzz word it can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people this conference I think there's been a lot of conversation that is more geared towards code than community so I think it'll be a nice sort of reset for us um to discuss okay so I think

3. 1:02

   starting with some intros would be great do you want to take it off thank you Natasha uh my name is Adam wosy I have Community for overclock Labs the creators of the aash network um very briefly aash network is a open- source decentralized Marketplace for cloud compute so CPUs gpus um can all be borrowed from or rented from Individual users instead of having to go to like AWS or Google Cloud um so if you have some spare capacity put it on AOS and then uh people who need access to those

4. 1:33

   resources can go on to aash and gain access uh generally at a much lower cost and um in a decentralized manner so that's me great thank you guys um good to be on the panel with you today I'm Tim Stingin from Zurich Switzerland and I'm the co-founder and CEO of T4 Capital uh what we do is we invest in altcoins so we're in investment Boutique uh helping the Swiss uh crfi guys to to to jump in into the space not an easy job I imagine Swiss

5. 2:04

   Swiss trafi getting into crypto is a very specific kind of dude yeah it's a year-long process um we've started very early by educating them first so in the beginning we were a research company and educational company we made like um a lot of sort of a Netflix miniseries for private Banks oh wow and external asset managers so their relationship managers could get more familiar with the topic and then you get a second meeting once you have your foot into the door it's

6. 2:36

   all about it's also a community actually they're just a bit more shy and reserved and you have to gain their trust first but within every Community you have to they have to accept you and once you're in uh you just have to be authentic but I think this what what we're going to talk about now how Community establish and how you can feed on it you have to take care of your community whatever it is if it's more Tech orientated people

7. 3:00

   or investor people they all have their different kind of lens on yeah I um I really appreciate that and I think that leads nicely into my main idea of what community is is very much centered around my experience at BO Club it's very much about like individual people knowing each other talking to each other hanging out at events or online in Discord um and but the more that I talk to people I

8. 3:25

   realized that that definition of community can mean a lot of things to a lot of people very fluid I think um word and especially in crypto when it can um have a lot of sort of financial implications for a lot of communities that impacts the way that people think about it so would love for you both to sort of Define in a few sentences what you think Community is and then if you could bring to life that idea in a very

9. 3:49

   tangible example that would be great yeah for sure so um I actually feel like I'm stealing this uh definition from uh community of community managers called cmx I don't know if you guys are familiar with them um they've been around for a long time I've picked up a lot of my kind of professional Community Building prowess from this organization and they Define community as uh basically a community isn't a community until it can self-organize and manage

10. 4:19

    itself so for me what I kind of do day in and day out at a Kos and in previous roles managing Community was look for ways to enable community members to start to do their own thing um because ultimately the organization that you're a part of the community you're trying to build is going to outgrow what me or a team of community professionals that I manage or work with can do so I'm actively looking for ways to make the community sticky um once it's sticky

11. 4:51

    then I start working with individual community members to say what are the things that you would like to do inside of the community and looking for ways to enable them um I don't like to push things on individuals because the moment you start saying well there's a new requirement if you want to be in this community you have to do this um you're going to be like well why would I do

12. 5:08

    that I'm an employee now and that's not fun as just a community person ultimately you have to make sure your community is fun to be a part of because you're not going to want to be a part of it um so for me I go back to the cmx kind of definition where unless you find ways to help your community create models to do things on their own um you're really not building anything that

13. 5:31

    is going to be sustainable long term and a good example of that is at AOS um we have a kind of an ambassador program called the AOS insiders it's a community of around 50 individuals around the world all doing kind of different things from non-technical to technical individuals and um one of our community members who's not technical uh really loved the zely platform um for folks that aren't familiar with zely it's similar to Galaxy it's kind of like a

14. 5:55

    kind of a quests you know thing where it's like sign up to Twitter and get a point point in kind of gamifying community building um and Z is like another one of those kind of tools and he presented his case saying hey you know I would like some resources to start building a zely community and I didn't have the bandwidth to do it and I'm the only Community person at AOS so I was said hey go for it yeah um he created The Proposal um put it out

15. 6:20

    online for a governance vote he got resources from our community pool and now it's been running for the past you know 6 12 months and he's brought on new Developers brought on new community members and that's all self-organized like I really wasn't involved in any of that so finding ways to like enable individuals that are interested in kind of participating um and giving them the tools to kind of go for it um that's I

16. 6:43

    would say the most important thing Tim I want to get to you but one question that I have for you is do you think that um like a financial incentive is required for people to have that motivation and to do the work even though it's fun and even though they're opting into it there's like a fine line and Razor's Edge I think between doing something for the Love of the Game and doing it

17. 7:06

    because there's some incentive and I'm curious what you think about that yeah for sure uh I've been doing Community Management community building for a decade now I know I look like I'm 21 um but I've been doing it for a while and when I started to do like Ambassador programs back in the day in previous roles the first thing I was doing was incentivizing through financial reward and that just pulled in the wrong people

18. 7:30

    yeah so I started creating and I learned from my mistakes so like at aosh when people join our insiders program kind of our community ambassador program I fill out an application make sure that it checks out I set up an interview with them we chat I tell them it's volunteer everything is optional there are no requirements But ultimately you can make the community what you want to make it yourself but it's just getting involved and being engaged so I don't like to

19. 7:53

    start off with financial reward or financial gain um I look for individuals who are organically doing things that can be beneficial to aosh and then finding ways to um support those individual efforts um sometimes through swag sometimes through you know Financial rewards but I do not recommend anyone starts off with financial gain um look for people that are contributing organically and then creating a

20. 8:19

    framework around how you can support what they're doing and rewarding accordingly nice um okay Tim could you define what your idea of definition or of community is and then maybe bring that to life yes so I also like um I landed part of my response also from people I trust and I I talked to some of our community members as well or one of our analysts who analyzes Community which we're talking later what are the metrics to look at but uh I would say

21. 8:48

    there's three very important things uh one is something that you've mentioned but the first one I'd start with is like-mindedness I think a community needs like-mindedness because as he said said everything is voluntarily in a way uh people should not be forced in but voluntarily pulled into the community and what I see a common denominator that a lot of powerful communities share is

22. 9:12

    not in a mean way but in a in a chokey way like in a meme way a a a common enemy like for example what we crypto guys or especially the techies uh among you what what what you like is to have this common enemy which in that sense is Big Tech or can be Wall Street for example if I talk to defi communities their common enemy and this is this this PO is dis like-mindedness is they don't like Wall Street and they want to build something decentralized with Akash I think the common denominator is get away

23. 9:44

    from AWS right do it decentral do it in a more inclusive meaningful way so that's the one thing like-mindedness the the second thing is what you tapped in already it's authenticity people should be in the community because because they like what the community stands for and not for financial incentivization so people uh I try not to stick my head too strong into communities because they know I'm an investor and as an investor you always have to be careful because it's not that

24. 10:14

    you're not welcomed in communities but of course and that's honest because I represent portfolios of clients so my main interest is that the price of the token goes up but get me right this should not be the main reason why people get into crypto it should because they believe in a project and its future and capabilities to transform a market so I'm an outside observant um so it has to be authentic so it should not have too many people like me into the community and the third

25. 10:47

    point is um what I hear a lot in powerful like uh inspirational speeches where they say uh you need a very strong why because if a community has this very strong why the how is easy so um for examp if you look at Elon Musk he has a very strong why when he um built something when he bought Twitter and made X out of it the why is very clear if we as Humanity lose Free Speech then

26. 11:16

    uh we have a big problem so about so the why is we we need a communication platform where Free Speech can be maintained and that why is so powerful that I believe that he will attract the right people very strong talents that work for X now we got an Elon stand on our hands yes and there's so many community members joining X I mean the the usage of of X has never been as high as as of today so I think what the

27. 11:43

    community there stands for is a very strong why and also near stands for a very strong why and that's user owned AI um so yeah those are the three things nice um I love those so you're an investor you're thinking about tokens and communities all the time um could you talk a little bit about how you're analyzing those communities and what you look for red flags green flags things

28. 12:07

    that you see that are unique to specific communities that make you compelled to get involved as an investor yeah of course so there's a I would say our approach is twofold one is purely quantitative where we look at data um this is very powerful in the sense that we don't have to believe what projects tell us we can look into into the data if it's true like if you look at wallet usages if you look at Twitter followers

29. 12:34

    or whatever sorts of metrics but it's just half of the picture uh the other side is more emotional where you have to feel into the community which um you do by attending conferences like this one where you can see especially if you go on those if you visit conferences year over year yeah you can sense if the community is growing so I mean it sounds very obvious but what a community needs

30. 12:58

    over time is to grow and to M to sustain because especially in a world of crypto where I see a lot a potential of a zero sum game at the end where you have X amount of communities attracting the followers from each other and you you really have to have a unique community and that uniqueness we look at by the factors I mentioned in the beginning those three factors are very important but also Community has to be adaptive and patient so when it comes to to

31. 13:30

    adaptiveness uh near is a very good example today AI has is the most important Talk of the Town and near knows how to adapt to that of course near is in a lucky position because the founders are like native AI people that also got into blockchain very early on so they know Best of Both Worlds which positions them very well I think as an ecosystem but yeah what the community also needs is patience so if you want to learn what patience is as a crypto

32. 14:02

    holder you need to talk to someone from the cardano ecosystem um because those are the ones that have to be patient the most and maybe it plays out for them but there are really community members like the cardano people for example for me it's striking when I talk to them even if for years not much is happening um they're still very much into this community so high conviction is also important to

33. 14:26

    maintain a the beliefs within a Community because once in a community you you you sense that the core belief starts to fade away we're such a fast um moving environment that communities can dismantle within days one thing that you said I'm curious for you to expand on um do you think that crypto is a zero some game is that what you were saying that there's going to be like one one chain

34. 14:51

    One winner is that what you were speaking to or did I misunderstand that point I would say you have X amount of users MH in crypto and you have an x amount of communities and platforms where those users can be distributed to MH um I believe as IIA said yesterday I believe in not in a zero sum game but eventually in protocols that are unique and are contributing to the as a whole right yeah so I do believe that

35. 15:23

    every um long sustaining project which are a few so I think there will be maybe two to 3% out there of the projects right now in 5 to 10 years wow and but two to three percentage that remain and actually build a part of the puzzle for the greater picture um they will benefit and it's not in that sense a zero sum game but in between like a consolidation com yeah you will see a consol consolidation for sure I believe it's going to be similar to big Tech I mean when we saw the internet bubble there

36. 15:55

    were so many companies trying to build something on the Internet and we have this um blockchain AI movement since years going on and so many people have already tried to tap into it some are very successful some are starting now in this very second so you will always have these Market movements I think that's just what free markets is all about especially in a decentralized world um yeah I I can I can definitely

37. 16:19

    see that I want to Pivot to community and decentralization because I think uh it's a big part of something that I think a lot about with community and I'm sure you Adam are thinking about as well where the core values the thing that brings a lot of people to the crypto Community as a whole is these deep conviction around the belief of decentralization and a common enemy and a way uh and a conviction around that that is a better future a more distributed internet um and that's a beautiful future it's something I'm

38. 16:50

    really compelled by but balancing that against um building an actual brand building something that has a clear identity can be really challenging those two things can sort of be in conflict with one another often times and so I'm curious how you guys are approaching that what your experience has been in sort of balancing the values of decentral decentralization and wanting to see like actual real people take

39. 17:14

    ideas and do the thing um while still protecting the values of your brand individually I'm curious how you appr that yeah for sure so I feel like I'm in a fairly fortunate position at overclock Labs um because AOS is fully open source it's we're essentially just another voice in the opinion buckets of what people want AOS to become um we Sherpa a lot of it of course but ultimately it's a community effort to make aosh work without I I say without what we've built

40. 17:48

    on the community side there would be aosh wouldn't be at the level it is today um and I would say a leader in the deepin space um so for us what's that would agree I like this guy nice nice um so one of the things that we're doing at AOS is we have um I mentioned one of the community programs the Insiders program these are Community ambassadors around the world that contribute to the akos ecosystem um they can pitch things they want to do but they can also contribute

41. 18:15

    to Frameworks that I've kind of developed to push AOS forward um from hosting events in their region to um Business Development um opportunities working with clients um working with users trying to get them onto Kos helping them handholding them all the way from not knowing anything to fully onboarded um to uh Community Support um so all these things that are really beneficial to the ecosystem but we also have these groups called special interest groups and working groups um it's actually we kind of took uh kubernetes model they've done this with

42. 18:46

    their open source Community where we've set up all these different um groups around you know client ecosystem Community um uh provider Network validators and we have monthly calls where we invite the community in to say like what do we want to focus on this month and then people raise their hand say I want to get involved or how can I contribute so really it is a community effort at a cost to kind of move it forward um so I feel like we are essentially a DA but we're not a DA so

43. 19:17

    that's kind of a nice place to be in yeah um so yeah I think that's kind of how we work it um that that makes a lot of sense I think one of you mind if I ask him a question for something he previously said um when you said there's no rules of entering into your community isn't there a threat that you have people in your community that are I wouldn't say not qualified but detrimental detrimental to it yeah so um it's something we're very you know

44. 19:46

    cognizant of um so with our special interest groups that I mentioned that is something that it's public anyone can join right now if you just go to os. network you can check out all the different groups you can contribute to and get involved in so we keep an eye on like people that are trying to like game the system because people can put out anyone can put out a governance proposal to get funds from the community pool yeah um to do things but that has to go

45. 20:09

    through a governance vote and if the community doesn't vote for it they're not going to get funded so Community does a lot of like the governing which is also nice on the Insiders program the ambassador program that I kind of manage um it is a vetting process you know people put in application I review the application I'm like this person seems legit I'll set up a 30-minute interview call with them from there actually introduce them to an OG like Community member and say hey set up a call get to know these guys and if everything checks

46. 20:34

    out we bring them in because it is optional volunteers if somebody would be in and luckily it hasn't happened that is like detrimental to the community I can easily say you're sorry you're not being very fun you're out of here um and luckily that hasn't happened yet but we do have these guard rails in place and on top of that we also have Community guidelines like in our Discord like don't do this you can do this so we do have you know a framework around kind of

47. 20:59

    um rules of the road but um but yeah I mean anyone can join everyone here should join so um I want to talk a little bit about the premise that was set forward in this uh discussion around sort of community being the only moat that there's token fueled opportunism this idea I think that people discuss a lot in crypto of like missionaries versus mercenaries and I'm would love to hear from both of you how

48. 21:28

    you balance those things you as you evaluate them you as you nurture a community and are in the this industry I think it's a necessary evil of crypto I mean maybe evil is too strong of a world word but it's it's a necessary part it's a differentiator from all these other um Innovations and so how are you guys thinking about that and how often does it come up for you in I'm sure in conversations every day for you and I wonder how often you guys are thinking about it yeah I mean I can start and

49. 21:59

    maybe give you again sort of a different perspective because um what we're we represent client interests and their interest is to invest into a new technology in a way they feel comfortable with and the clients I'm facing um the first step is or the first barrier is to make them understand what blockchain and AI is all about because they haven't used it most of their our client Bas is is 40 and up and most of our relationship managers that represent

50. 22:30

    other clients in the end have clients 60 70 and up so just the first thing is to educate them right and then of course as an investor and now that's investor perspective again but without a token price and a token price that would go up um a lot of the capital that starts with VC but then on the floating Market um with buyers and sellers or if this trading wouldn't happen I mean if there wouldn't be Traders people that incentivized for Price gains and stuff then nothing in here would be possible

51. 23:03

    right number has to go up so it's it's as it's as you said it's like it has to be in a balance right um what we do uh we have one fund spe spe specifically focused on web free gaming and gaming is a good example of where you can ruin games with too much blockchain features um especially if if you have have a game which is not fun to play of course it will not succeed but there are actually good titles who overstress the focus on

52. 23:37

    tokenomics or whatsoever and they annoy the community a lot because Community Gamers and that's I hope it doesn't change are in for the games right and not for profits it's nice to have Smart contract based tournaments if you're good you can monetize your skills I do believe that should exist in the world so Gamers not just by ea uh by um um advertisement and but they have an own

53. 24:03

    other form of monetization through gaming through nfts so in-game assets they own which they can sell later on I think there it's it's a balance of those two blockchain is a very powerful tool but uh it should be a backend tool for people's um gaming Journey or whatever industry it is it should be a backen tool that um makes your experience better but it shouldn't be like uh stress on toomics or incentivization mechanisms

54. 24:33

    yeah and I can go I think we're running up on time so very quickly um we don't ignore retail know I'm watching that um we don't ignore retail but we're enabling other community members to engage with the retail audience because ultimately if AOS isn't growing through Network usage deployments new providers on the network um then there it's there's no point in retail being interested in us yeah so I focus on

55. 24:58

    developers that are interested in actually deploying onto the AOS Network and that essentially appeases the retail audience which is essentially managed by other community members so that's kind of how we approach it nice well thank you so much give it I give a hand to our um panelist here thank you everybody