The difference between having community members versus subscribers is an incredibly important, and equally nuanced, aspect of Web3. Lacking a shared understanding across an organization of the subtle difference between the two can result in strategy execution which is disjointed. To help aid with understanding this terrain and navigating the journey to community development, we offer this model: Community and Subscription.

If you would like to use the IP from this model, please contact us first. You can support our efforts by buying an NFT of it as a license for its use by clicking the link below, and then continue reading for more information on the model:

https://mirror.xyz/communitytheory.eth/editions/0x3990c47B89F987A6FDCEF3b348B694aB77c391DF/0

Every community contains elements of being a subscription, but not all subscriptions have elements of being a community. People inherently understand this, but being able to annunciate the concept is key to developing a coherent roadmap that does not conflate the two. The last variable is personality. The personality of a subscriber is unimportant, but as the organization moves closer to being a community, the importance of personality increases.

The correlation of the importance of personality to profit-based communities can also be identified. As personality becomes more important a community either denies or dissuades entrance to ‘others.’ There is maximal profitability at one point of this spectrum, which is reminiscent of the concept of ‘exclusive,’ but at the far end an over-emphasis of personality can increase the opportunity-cost to an unsustainable level. At the far end of this spectrum we can think of groups such as faith-based organizations and other non-profits.

In purely values-based communities transactional relationships are tertiary to the overall cause of the group. The extraction of value that does not specifically fund the cause is oftentimes antithetical to the social contract of the community members. This explains why most people would be upset if snacks at a little league event were surcharged at the same rate as a restaurant with profits being directed anywhere other than to trophies and jerseys.

So, how do Web3 initiatives determine the way forward? Does everyone attempt to build cohesive communities that ride the edge of exclusiveness and opportunity-cost?

No.

Each Web3 initiative has their own journey within this model, but awareness of the spectral range of community and subscription is key to a coherent long-term strategy. In our next release we will discuss the Diamond Model of Community Theory and how it can help your organization understand the inherent strengths and weaknesses of your specific Web3 journey.