
Standardizing Social Capital
A think piece about the practicalities of social networks and what they could enable if they were standardized and automated with new tech. Should this be on-chain though?Social capital is the value of an individual's interpersonal relationship network that enables society to function effectively. These networks and interactions have always been a convoluted system of the “who knows who”. Your social capital is the quality and quantity of your relationships, who you’re connected to and h...

How the gifting economy is boosted by permissionless tech
The gifting economy is huge and it’s been present in society since we could even call it a society. Under capitalism, it’s been blurred into the market economy where we exchange goods and services for money or other valuables. The average US household spends 3–4k on Christmas alone. This happened in parallel with local, interconnected communities turning into individualistic, globalized entities. We can turn this change to our advantage with the help of blockchain technology and adjacent infr...

Audience and Awareness Strategy at conferences - EthDenver
If I were in charge of your company's plan to get more people interested and into your product's gravity, to build an audience, here's what I would do to maximize EthDenver.1First, as soon as I landed I would buy a bag of small, travel-sized Vaseline tubs from CVS, slam my sticker on them, and share them with people while talking to them about my product. - useful, handy, kind, situation-aware, love it.2Things to take into consideration before making any further decisions:Pick ...
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Standardizing Social Capital
A think piece about the practicalities of social networks and what they could enable if they were standardized and automated with new tech. Should this be on-chain though?Social capital is the value of an individual's interpersonal relationship network that enables society to function effectively. These networks and interactions have always been a convoluted system of the “who knows who”. Your social capital is the quality and quantity of your relationships, who you’re connected to and h...

How the gifting economy is boosted by permissionless tech
The gifting economy is huge and it’s been present in society since we could even call it a society. Under capitalism, it’s been blurred into the market economy where we exchange goods and services for money or other valuables. The average US household spends 3–4k on Christmas alone. This happened in parallel with local, interconnected communities turning into individualistic, globalized entities. We can turn this change to our advantage with the help of blockchain technology and adjacent infr...

Audience and Awareness Strategy at conferences - EthDenver
If I were in charge of your company's plan to get more people interested and into your product's gravity, to build an audience, here's what I would do to maximize EthDenver.1First, as soon as I landed I would buy a bag of small, travel-sized Vaseline tubs from CVS, slam my sticker on them, and share them with people while talking to them about my product. - useful, handy, kind, situation-aware, love it.2Things to take into consideration before making any further decisions:Pick ...
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Compromised Discord servers, phishing attacks, NFT scams, DM harassment, spam in every channel. As you are building a web3 community you will encounter sybil attacks, security threats and malicious bots trying to take some advantage of you and your community.
Besides the obviously more dangerous aspects of getting scammed into giving up private keys to your wallet, personal information or compromising your whole server, we can collectively agree that we are all tired of taking 5 minutes every morning to block our scammer DMs, right?
I will introduce you to what you can expect from scammers, to the basics of security and what you can do today to protect yourself and your community better.
As much as our tech stack and expertise is evolving these security breaches still happen even in larger, well-established communities.
BAYC, one of the largest blue chip NFT communities, got exploited on Apr 1st by a hack that happened to a ticketing bot.
Moderators still have to make announcements like this on a regular basis - FWB is no exception,

We had one of these DM raids on our own server @guildxyz, before we shipped and started using Guild Guard (more on this later in the solutions section).

Bad actors are getting smarter. Some swindlers have well thought out operations to gain control over someone's Discord account and their whole identity there.
We gotta be smarter too. This is a real pain for operators, managers and the community as a whole.
Community security and individual privacy is too important, not to pay more attention to this.
It's all about protecting access to your information. Your identity, wallet holdings, social connections, personal data, and so much more.
Security is having undisturbed power over sharing your information so NO ONE can dig in it and extract it. Self sovereignty over identity, assets and community is a double edged sword.
If your security is compromised, there is no one to protect these and the aftermath of a breach can expose you or even make you lose control over your information. In this scenario your privacy is also gone.
Bummer
In a server, security can mean having tools and mods protecting from bad guys,
It is our duty as builders, more experienced crypto folks to educate the newbies and establish a safer environment for all.
The more tools we use, the more we increase our exposure to breaches. Pick your solutions, and use them with caution.
There are a few "good” bots and authentication systems that filter out malicious bots, such as:
Discord native settings See this guide by @Jon_HQ, @lukenamop & @grassy.eth→ here
Manually granting membership upon request Common with social DAOs, such as @FWB or @BoysClub. Newbies are required to fill out a form to gain access to the Discord server.
Captchas, there are more bots that can get through this than not
Phone number authentication like in the @IndiGG server
Server auditing services
But c'mon now, we are web3 native. Let's use more advanced tech that is available for us. I suggest we combine the above with wallet authentication and more sophisticated tech that is available for us in web3.
web2.5
Apply the following settings in your Discord. In any case, make sure to check permissions for each role within the server
Verification gate for newcomers: try Wick bot or Captcha Bot
Moderating spam: MEE6, Wick bot has these built in as well
web3
Implement Guild Guard for on-chain based extravaganza. By extravaganza I mean using Ethereum technology to keep out bots from Discord servers. Put everyone who doesn't have a role yet in an "empty" waiting room, so they can't access your server members or content. They only see the authentication flow which requires them to operate an EVM wallet. This way bots won't be able to DM your members with scams or post phishing links in the announcement channel.
Watch out for verifiable on chain credentials: PolygonID, Proof of Humanity, KYCDAO, Disco.xyz, Sismo.io, Proof of Personhood etc.These will eventually play a huge role in the way we access groups, prove our identities and participate in communities.
Users and consumers tend to not care about security too much until there is a problem. It is our responsibility as builders to find solutions that protect them and their information even from us, so data won't be as commodified as it has been in recent years.
I am not an expert, but I want to share knowledge I've gathered so far. If you have any Qs, feel free to reach out: @reka.eth
Big thanks to Evin, Nathan, Claude, D3v, Nasheq for oversight.
Compromised Discord servers, phishing attacks, NFT scams, DM harassment, spam in every channel. As you are building a web3 community you will encounter sybil attacks, security threats and malicious bots trying to take some advantage of you and your community.
Besides the obviously more dangerous aspects of getting scammed into giving up private keys to your wallet, personal information or compromising your whole server, we can collectively agree that we are all tired of taking 5 minutes every morning to block our scammer DMs, right?
I will introduce you to what you can expect from scammers, to the basics of security and what you can do today to protect yourself and your community better.
As much as our tech stack and expertise is evolving these security breaches still happen even in larger, well-established communities.
BAYC, one of the largest blue chip NFT communities, got exploited on Apr 1st by a hack that happened to a ticketing bot.
Moderators still have to make announcements like this on a regular basis - FWB is no exception,

We had one of these DM raids on our own server @guildxyz, before we shipped and started using Guild Guard (more on this later in the solutions section).

Bad actors are getting smarter. Some swindlers have well thought out operations to gain control over someone's Discord account and their whole identity there.
We gotta be smarter too. This is a real pain for operators, managers and the community as a whole.
Community security and individual privacy is too important, not to pay more attention to this.
It's all about protecting access to your information. Your identity, wallet holdings, social connections, personal data, and so much more.
Security is having undisturbed power over sharing your information so NO ONE can dig in it and extract it. Self sovereignty over identity, assets and community is a double edged sword.
If your security is compromised, there is no one to protect these and the aftermath of a breach can expose you or even make you lose control over your information. In this scenario your privacy is also gone.
Bummer
In a server, security can mean having tools and mods protecting from bad guys,
It is our duty as builders, more experienced crypto folks to educate the newbies and establish a safer environment for all.
The more tools we use, the more we increase our exposure to breaches. Pick your solutions, and use them with caution.
There are a few "good” bots and authentication systems that filter out malicious bots, such as:
Discord native settings See this guide by @Jon_HQ, @lukenamop & @grassy.eth→ here
Manually granting membership upon request Common with social DAOs, such as @FWB or @BoysClub. Newbies are required to fill out a form to gain access to the Discord server.
Captchas, there are more bots that can get through this than not
Phone number authentication like in the @IndiGG server
Server auditing services
But c'mon now, we are web3 native. Let's use more advanced tech that is available for us. I suggest we combine the above with wallet authentication and more sophisticated tech that is available for us in web3.
web2.5
Apply the following settings in your Discord. In any case, make sure to check permissions for each role within the server
Verification gate for newcomers: try Wick bot or Captcha Bot
Moderating spam: MEE6, Wick bot has these built in as well
web3
Implement Guild Guard for on-chain based extravaganza. By extravaganza I mean using Ethereum technology to keep out bots from Discord servers. Put everyone who doesn't have a role yet in an "empty" waiting room, so they can't access your server members or content. They only see the authentication flow which requires them to operate an EVM wallet. This way bots won't be able to DM your members with scams or post phishing links in the announcement channel.
Watch out for verifiable on chain credentials: PolygonID, Proof of Humanity, KYCDAO, Disco.xyz, Sismo.io, Proof of Personhood etc.These will eventually play a huge role in the way we access groups, prove our identities and participate in communities.
Users and consumers tend to not care about security too much until there is a problem. It is our responsibility as builders to find solutions that protect them and their information even from us, so data won't be as commodified as it has been in recent years.
I am not an expert, but I want to share knowledge I've gathered so far. If you have any Qs, feel free to reach out: @reka.eth
Big thanks to Evin, Nathan, Claude, D3v, Nasheq for oversight.
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