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Understanding the importance of strong communities can go a long way in helping new and existing teams to secure long-term success for their projects. A strong community can be beneficial to a project far beyond what one would expect. A great community attracts more believers, which increases a project’s chances of long-term survival. Especially in the case of cryptocurrency startups, supporters of the project have skin in the game, and the community can unleash the powerful network effects that scale a project.    

Unless and until prospective users decide to become a part of a project’s community, and, most importantly, to feel like a part of a community, the blockchain projects cannot expect to get any significant backing from these users, either in terms of raising funds or user adoption for the products or services being built. A good community development plan must avoid making new users feel that a blockchain product is doing them a favor, but rather, to make them feel that they are becoming valuable members of its community.  

People need skin in the game, providing incentives to stick around and help a project grow; a well-developed community plan is crucial in giving them that common purpose. By taking the approach of building communities, projects, and companies can create loyal followers, creating long-term user bases who, in turn, help to get their products and services out there. Communities have helped to crowdfund projects that they believe in, crowdsourced ideas and developments that made it to products, and developed authentic relationships that go beyond the boundaries of one specific cryptocurrency, token, or project.   

There are numerous examples in the industry of projects and exchanges taking a community-first approach to development, product offerings, and general day-to-day operations. Many projects have taken more innovative approaches to building their profiles within the blockchain community outside the boundaries of social media. Surprisingly, for an industry built on the backs of deep technology, blockchain projects have relied heavily on word-of-mouth recognition, both to attract top developers, but also by being recommended and supported by community members.     

A strong community is heavily involved in testing products and decides on project development directions as far as future areas of applications. In a vibrant ecosystem, community members have an active role in the project’s development: They will be reviewing products and offering their insights, and also point out market trends and things to change.   

This emphasis on building communities has led to the establishment of cryptocurrency-focused social networks like Bitfinex Pulse, and has led to Reddit communities for almost all projects within the industry. Collaborating with other projects offers an opportunity to build something of greater value to users than the sum of its parts, with the added advantage of cross-pollination among communities from different projects. It is entirely feasible to build sustainable competitive advantages through building highly motivated communities of users that are invested in a project’s success.