😍Web3 Community Etiquette

If you've been around Web3 for a month or two, you'll know that community is everything. The foundation of value in Web3 is community because the more people onboard, the less supply there is to go around, the higher prices are pushed.

And not gonna lie, that sounds like a Ponzi from the outside looking in.

But consider that this happens even in Web2 albeit at a more diluted level. Think more people wanting iPhones, chip shortage happens, price goes up.

At least in Web3, consistent delivery/quality results in value trending upwards instead of down (try selling your 1 year old iPhone). If you have been a strong supporter/believer of a project, you get to be rewarded for your conviction when you are able to sell a piece of the collection you've held. The author of this page has an iPhone 6, and it's worth close to nothing now.

We've established that size of community is important. Size of community is correlated with either it's utility (eg. alpha access/airdrops/free gifts/irl benefits) and quality (depth and breadth of relationships and network). For most ordinary members (not IRL whales or in positions of significant power), creating project-wide utility is out of scope, but helping with quality is within everyone's power.

So what is this "community" and what does being a good community member look like? How do you "support" a project in the "community" sense once you've decided to invest in the project?

On Twitter

Superficial as Twitter may be, it is one of the signals that investors use when looking from the outside in and it is best kept at that. So let's look at social dynamics that can happen on the Twitter platform from that perspective.

Follows

Again, as superficial as this may be, the number of followers is one of the metrics most outsiders use to gauge a project. Both project and members appreciate this for different reasons. TL;DR a real human following is always appreciated

1. Follow the project's page (turn notifications on if you're really into them)

2. Follow significant members of the project - you can usually find who these people are based on who the project follows/retweets and their PFPs

3. Participate in #XfollowX events posted by the project if this is something the project founders do

Retweets

Retweeting helps Twitter's algorithim know which posts might others be interested in. Retweeting your project's posts helps with the outreach based on topics that Twitter has classified the project into. This helps your project's tweets appear on Topic Recommendations for topics like NFTs or Investing and helps with awareness.

1. Retweet tweets from your project that you feel are insightful/helpful for outsiders to know

2. Retweet community posts that are wholesome and reflects community culture you endorse

Commenting

Reply your project via comments. This helps to build the engagement score for your project and reduce bot messages. Also reply people that you know whether it's a simple GM or GN or even questions and request for recommendations.

We are all here seeking alternate ways to connect with each other and as disconnected social media is, it can unlock further conversation in other channels like Discord where actual relationships can be built.

1. Comment on your project's posts to build engagement and increase signal/noise ratio from bots

2. Comment on frens' posts to build on quality of community

Welcomes

When some new members onboard, they might post their purchase on Twitter with something along the lines of "Did a thing...", "F**k it, got into...", "Welcome my first..." et cetera. Welcome these people via the comments! Bonus points for posting your own piece of the collection.

Welcomes help because people post on Twitter for validation at a primitive instinct level (P.S. it's never wrong to seek validation and these people simply prefer Twitter to express it) and frankly who doesn't like to be welcomed to a place they just stepped into? High engagements on new member posts are generally a positive signal for people on the outside looking in.

1. Welcome people to the project via comments

2. Post your purchases to signal to outsiders that there is demand

Posting IRL photos

Never ever (read that again) post pictures of IRL meetups unless you have explicit consent from everyone in the picture. In Web3, there is a culture of staying undoxxed. There are many reasons people choose to remain IRL anonymous so check with them before posting any pictures of them that could be recognised by people they want to avoid being recognised by.

A common practice on posting IRL photos is to mask faces with their NFT PFP or the project's logo

1. Going for an IRL Web3 meetup? Wear generic colours and common clothing

2. Check with everyone involved whether they are okay with being doxxed

3. Learn Photoshop (see https://www.photopea.com/) and cover their faces with their NFT PFP

Giveaway tagging

Please do not tag people you don't know or have just met in Discord or Telegram. It's not cool. Find your community, build your degen relationships, and then tag away.

1. Make Web3 frens, then tag them, not the other way around

2. Confirm with said Web3 frens they are okay with being tagged (if they tag you first it's all fair degen game)

Threading

Writing threads on Web3/crypto is probably the top tier of content you can make on Twitter. Writing threads demonstrates quality thinking in a platform that encourages quick posts with GIFs and few words. When project supporters write quality threads, it signals that its community is not superficial in a "wen moon?"/"wen sweep?" way.

1. Learn to write threads. It's an art

2. Write threads if you can

In chat groups

Chat groups are where quality relationships can actually be formed. This is usually Discord/Telegram depending on the project. As someone from the outside looking in, chat groups are where the quality of community can be accurately assessed.

GMs

Enter conversations with GM. Why GM? Because crypto and by extension Web3 is 24/7 and it's always someone's morning even if it's not yours.

Avoid FUD

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) can cause legitimate projects to fail. Do not enter a chat group and immediately ask about a concern without full context. Concerns and accountability are always valid, but different communities have different ways of expressing them. Some may be open to open discussion, some others may prefer a mod to handle it.

To express legitimate concerns about a project express that you have concern and ask who can you talk to (in most cases you may be approved to just post it and it won't be deleted). If no one replies or you get unsatisfactory answers, sometimes it's just better to leave the project. Find a better moon to die on.

Initiating DMs

It's a common expectation that no one DMs each other without a pre-agreement in a public channel. This culture exists because it's very easy to impersonate someone online and very few platforms make it easy to identify fakes.

When initiating a DM with someone, tag and ask them for permission in a public channel. Initiate the DM by accessing that person's profile from the same public channel (this is to protect yourself). If the person is a mod/admin, they will have roles/special permissions which you can use to identify them as legitimate. If the person is not a mod, be careful and verify that they are who they say they are.