The majority of web3 products (DAO’s, NFT’s, AMM’s) rely on cultivating communities, yet few seldom preserve the populace required to ensure protocol longevity. Finding the secret “sauce” for achieving community cultivation and preservation has played an integral role in the success (or failure) of many startup DAO’s. So which characteristics are indicative of a communities long term success? A communities collective identity shapes various facets of the social dynamics within it (Ren, Kraut, and Kiesler 2007). However, the sheer volume of platforms make measuring the interplay between social dynamics and collective identity quite difficult. Research courtesy of Zhang, Hamilton, Danescu-Niculescu-Mizi reveals the differences in how various social phenomena manifest across communities, highlighting that structuring the multi-community landscape can lead to a better understanding of the systematic nature of this diversity. Identifying key drivers for cultivating collective identity will prove invaluable for the longevity of new Web3 products.
Engagement & Identity: A metric at the forefront of every community managers mind is user engagement. In quantifying user engagement and its interplay with identity, Zhang, Hamilton & Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil introduce a typology based on two key metrics: “how distinctive—or niche—a community’s interests are relative to other communities, and how dynamic—or volatile—these interests are over time”.
Distinctiveness: A community with a very distinctive identity will tend to have distinctive interests, expressed through specialised language.
Dynamicity: A highly dynamic community constantly shifts interests from one time window to another, and these temporal variations are reflected in its use of volatile language.
These two metrics form the axis for capturing the salience of a community’s identity and dynamics of its temporal evolution. Facilitating the measure of these two metrics is achieved through characterising linguistic variation across different communities (Tran and Ostendorf 2016; Eisenstein 2017). Language, as it turns out, is a prime indicator of how dynamic and distinctive a communities interests are. Recent findings (Tran and Ostendorf 2016; Eisenstein 2017, para. 10) reveal that a communities propensity to retain its users and its permeability to new members are directly correlated with the collective identity it fosters, reflected through linguistic variances.
Unsurprisingly, established members have an increased propensity to engage with the community’s specialised content, compared to newcomers. Interestingly though, is the finding that in more generalised communities, it is the outsiders who engage more with volatile content. Findings such as these facilitate community maintainers to cultivate better growth patterns that suit their specific community class.
The research suggests that the way new and existing users engage with a community depends strongly and systematically on the nature of the collective identity it fosters, in ways that are highly consequential to community maintainers ( Zhang, Hamilton & Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil). As it turns out, collective Identity matters, so much so, that a discord failing to cultivate a collective identity to which its members can assimilate, will inevitably face the detrimental effects of this failure in protocol longevity.
Does missing the mark on communal identity affect the bottom line? How does TVL, Market cap and liquidity respond to static or dynamic changes in a communities collective identity? Recent hype around NFT’s during early February certainly suggest these findings are relevant. In an ecosystem where point of difference is key to cultivating identity, how do NFT projects fair with narratives that are, in essence, a copy paste of projects past? (To illustrate this point, I Invite you to briefly look at the following NFT projects; Kaizen, Azuki and SoulZ) What becomes immediately apparent is that lack of individuality, that is, a point of difference between your communities collective identity and those of others, will inevitably cause detriment to your communities longevity.
This isn’t isolated to NFT communities, no, this is inherent to the entire web3 ecosystem. Examples of strong communities (where collective identity is immediately apparent, and equally, “individuality”) include Yearn and JonesDao. Yearn, a project that has been around for some time, is a perfect example of a communities collective identity contributing to the protocols longevity. One only needs to spend time in the Yearn discord to find the communities strong assimilation to anime, waifu’s and yields. This is further reflected in their dashboard theme choices, and the user engagement received from their community facing developer, Banteg.
Jones Dao, on the other hand, is a relatively new project and thus a perfect subject for observing the effects of strong communal assimilation in the early stages of growth. Immediately upon entry to the Jones Discord, one is greeted by a friendly community of Hat enjoyers. Jones has a name the collective community can assimilate too (a play on dow jones), memes with adequate individuality and craftsmanship, and linguistic variation that is both distinct and indicative of strong collective identity (Monroe, Colaresi, and Quinn 2008; Eisenstein 2017). A community’s identity derives from its members’ common interests and shared experiences (Ashmore, Deaux, and McLaughlin-Volpe 2004; Ritzer 2007) and Jones has demonstrated this point perfectly.
Collective identity matters
Distinct Language variances foster tighter communities
Niche communities may find it difficult to assimilate new entrants
Individuality in collective Identity is contingent on retention rates
A communities dynamicity (its ability to change over time) is positively correlated to user engagement.
The current distributed state of the internet calls for a method to systemically measure the effects of similarities and differences across online communities. Namely, analysing a communities collective identity through metrics such as distinctiveness and dynamicity, provide us adequate insight into how cultivating a collective identity for members to assimilate is of paramount importance. This investigation exposes how communities with distinctive and highly dynamic identities are more likely to retain their users. While niche communities also exhibit much larger acculturation gaps between existing users and newcomers, potentially hindering their ability to assimilate. Structuring the multi-DAO landscape can lead to a better understanding of the systematic nature of this diversity. Communities aiming for protocol longevity should not dismiss the importance of individuality in interests, language and content, in shaping the collective identity of its members.
So, what’s your communities collective identity?