Beyond the Code: Community as the Cornerstone of Blockchain Success
How User and Developer Engagement Fuels Blockchain Expansion
Without ecosystem activity, crypto projects die.
While a blockchain’s technological capacity comes first, user and developer activity is essential to the long term success of the project.
As more people use and develop on the blockchain, it creates a flywheel that leads to further growth and adoption.
To grow an onchain ecosystem, one must:
Meet the technical specifications that make a blockchain attractive. It must be interoperable, scalable, secure, and easy to build on.
Once the technical specifications are met, the blockchain must be able to attract users and developers. Community is a powerful way to grow an ecosystem.
Coinbase’s Base as an illustration
Coinbase launched its Ethereum Layer 2, Base. Built by Coinbase, the L2 meets the technical capabilities required by an L2.
But, to encourage ecosystem adoption, Coinbase ran community events like the Onchain Summer Web3 Festival. Fostering ecosystem awareness through community events helped to facilitate adoption and builder activity.
For example, friend.tech is built on Base. Friend.tech exploded in popularity in August 2023, contributing to an increase of Base’s daily active users and fees.
This begs the question — how does an L2 ensure that the next Friend.tech is built on it and not a competing L2?
From my experience building Taptive, I’ve learned how important a robust community is to the success of a project. A thriving user and developer community will connect builders, inspire new activity, and ensure that the next big project is built on the network.
Building a strong ecosystem
My guiding principle to building a strong ecosystem: add value to the community. The harsh reality of an ecosystem/community is that people will only spend time in a community if they are receiving value.
I've learned that a great way to add value to a community is to help members achieve their personal goals. Along this line, we’ve found at Taptive that social and education programs are engaging and help members achieve their personal goals — they add value to the community.
Crypto projects rely on user and developer activity. Technical capability is nonnegotiable. But once the technical foundation is met, the blockchain must create a user and developer adoption flywheel fueled by community.