Thinkin' about Web3 Social

A traveler is perched atop a rocky precipice, absorbed in self-reflection.

The man gazes into the void, contemplating infinite possibilities concealed beneath clouds.

The traveler’s path forward is uncertain, but he knows opportunity awaits.

Introduction

The relationship between creators and fans is ripe for innovation.

On legacy social media platforms, engagement is largely one-directional, depriving communities of the opportunity to develop meaningful connections.

However, Web3 presents a new paradigm for enhancing this relationship.

The Block Community is an experiment involving new models of onchain media distribution and community co-creation.

The end goal is to build an engaging community experience that is only possible in Web3.

Background

In March of 2022, I got my first job in crypto as an intern at The Block.

I was primarily responsible for making additional content from episodes of The Scoop, and since our episodes were audio-only at the time, this mostly took the form of threads on Twitter.

I spent my first year at The Block in this “intern” role before taking over as Producer in the depths of the bear market at the start of 2023.

One of the first changes I made was to begin capturing video.

After spending a year as an intern making additional content from full episodes of The Scoop, I knew transitioning to video would result in much more engaging clips for social media.

After all, who has time for long-form these days?

When I started producing full video episodes, I encountered a new problem.

After completing the edit for one episode, I often had to move directly to editing the next full episode to keep up with our release schedule.

I no longer had enough time to make additional content, and realized I needed help.

Hiring a new intern was the obvious solution, but when that person moved on, we would be right back in the same predicament.

Around this time, Variant’s Li Jin appeared as a guest on The Scoop and explained how in Web3, fans are the new creators.

As I listened to Li talk about this new paradigm and its possibilities, I realized it could be the solution I was looking for.

That’s when I decided to experiment with building a Web3 community.

Overview

The Block Community is an attempt to demonstrate the unique advantages of Web3 for both creators and fans.

Put differently, The Block Community is an exploration of the technology that The Block routinely reports on everyday.

If you are interested in exploring the cutting edge of consumer crypto and pioneering new methods of content co-creation and distribution, we invite you to join the experiment.

Platforms

The interoperability of Web3 platforms is a fundamental advantage over legacy social media platforms.

Whereas platforms like Patreon exist in isolation, the ownership properties inherent to Web3 allow relationships between creators and fans to be transported across platforms.

With this concept in mind, the The Block Community is working with the following platforms to bring this experience to life:

Pods — onchain media

  • Pods is a platform that gives creators and collectors a new way to publish, discover, and own media onchain.
  • Pods charges collectors a platform fee of 0.0007 ETH per edition, and creators receive a significant portion of this mint fee.
  • 90% of this revenue will be reinvested back into The Block Community in the form of prizes and bounties — more on this in a moment.

Coinvise — tokenized communities

  • Coinvise allows creators to create quests and build tokenized communities.
  • The Block Community is using Coinvise to mint our limited edition ‘Genesis Pass,’ which will be required to access certain features of The Block Community while it is in closed beta.
  • Minting is only available to whitelisted users, but there will be plenty of chances to secure your spot (including at the end of this article).

MadFi — content co-creation

  • MadFi offers a suite of tools to make the connection between creators and fans more dynamic.
  • I’m most excited about MadFi’s ‘content bounties,’ which are going to be a staple of The Block Community experience.
  • 25% of all Pods revenue will be converted to $BONSAI, which will be used to sponsor content co-creation bounties.

Jokerace — community proposals

  • Jokerace is a platform that allows communities to create and vote on proposals.
  • The Block Community will be using Jokerace for a variety of purposes including community feedback, content suggestions, and treasury management.
  • Our first contest is live now and open to everyone!

Orb — web3 community management

  • The Block Community’s Orb Club will be the central hub for community interactions.
  • In addition to staying up to date on all the latests episode releases, bounties, and contests, our Orb Club can also be thought of as a ‘Web3 water cooler’ for members of The Block Community to network with each other.

Bello — community insights

  • Bello is a data platform designed to deliver actionable insights from complex onchain data.
  • Initially, The Block Community will leverage Bello to screen wallets before adding them to the whitelist for The Block Community Genesis Pass.
  • We have additional plans involving Bello which will be revealed over time.

Stack — onchain loyalty programs

  • Stack enables anyone to create an onchain loyalty program so they can recognize and reward their relationships with fans.
  • Yes, we’re doing points.
  • No, we are not doing an airdrop.
  • My next article will focus specifically on our points program, including why I am bullish on our chances of designing a Web3 points program that doesn't suck.
  • Points will be redeemable for exclusive prizes, and 65% of all Pods mint revenue will be used for this purpose.

Early Results

We released our first onchain episode of The Scoop without much warning or fanfare, as we wanted to use this first episode to test the waters and obtain an initial data point.

Here’s what we discovered:

  • With over 3,000 mints, there is clearly an appetite in the market for onchain media publication.
  • Out of these early minters, only five creators participated in the corresponding bounty (shoutout to @jwgmn, @dankshard, @cearwylm, @jamesfinnerty, and @natem).
  • However, the incentives for participating in the first bounty were intentionally vague: get whitelisted to mint The Block Community Genesis Pass.
  • Now that we have bootstrapped our treasury and received a generous $BONSAI grant from the MadFi team, we are introducing financial incentives to bounty participation.

Get Involved

Our second onchain release is live now: https://pods.media/the-scoop/how-lens-network-is-leveraging-zksyncs-tech-to-achieve-mainstream-scale

We selected this conversation with Stani Kulechov, because Lens Protocol is the foundation of everything we have built at The Block Community, and he is one of the main visionaries behind the protocol.

If you mint the episode, make sure to also checkout the corresponding bounty on MadFi: https://madfi.xyz/bounties/66479d11456a9d991fc8697a

Bounty participation is your ticket to obtaining the whitelist for The Block Community Genesis Pass.

Plus, you will earn some $BONSAI.

Minting for The Block Community Genesis Pass concludes on July 1st, so make sure to secure your spot soon if you want to help define the future of our Web3 community.