Community-driven crypto projects are still thriving despite headwinds
The highly anticipated launch and airdrop of Arbitrum’s native governance token ARB took place on March 23, creating a buzz around the layer-2 protocol as hundreds of thousands of eligible users and DAOs sought to claim it. Overwhelming user demand caused the airdrop claim page to crash shortly after launch, displaying 404 and 429 errors for over an hour, Cointelegraph reported.
Since Arbitrum was one of the largest non-token blockchain projects, the hype surrounding the fall was expected. Yet it exemplifies how community-driven projects in space can still thrive, despite competitors, technical challenges, market downturns and regulatory uncertainty.
Arbitrum was not the first – and certainly will not be the last – project that mobilized a massive audience. In February, the token distribution of the layer-1 protocol Core DAO followed a similar commitment recipe, with 1.2 million tokens being sent to individual users. Even before the launch of the main network, the project had established in 2021 over 1.6 million Twitter followers and over 215,000 Discord members.
“From the start, community ownership and inclusion was a primary goal,” Core DAO contributor Brendon Sedo told Cointelegraph. “Transparency is another key to our community. Too many projects keep the curtain closed on their progress and development. We’ve made it a priority to distribute information across a variety of platforms.”
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Core’s blockchain runs on a combined Proof-of-Work and Delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism known as Satoshi Plus. The airdrop was conducted in partnership with the Satoshi app, an application that allows users to “mine” rewards within the app without requiring a payment or exclusive invite. According to Core, the app was critical in helping get tokens into the hands of the true users of the network, with 25% of the token supply dedicated to the partnership.
Community engagement is also key for Web3 games and metaverse platforms. Virtual world Aftermath Islands Metaverse is about to reach 4 million resource pack NFT generated in just 140 days after releasing its first monetization game, adding its last 1 million users in just 15 days, the company says.
“Our focus is not on the number of users, as our users are anonymously verified using our Proof of Humanity solutions where they can only have 1 account without duplicate accounts, fakes or bots. This effectively removes “eyeball” metrics and fake results , so we focus on what users are doing,” explained David Lucatch, CEO of Aftermath Islands.
The resource package NFTs represent real ownership of goods that can be traded or used in various ways within the platform as a personal item. Pack’s daily generation of real users is 60,000, the company claims.
Decentralization and community engagement have always been key aspects of crypto. Core DAO’s Sedo argues that project insiders and a lack of community ownership pose threats to the blockchain’s potential. “[…] chains had to make trade-offs between security, scalability and decentralization,” he explained, adding that “the classic blockchain trilemma gets a lot of time in the spotlight with too few solutions. Many chains and projects simply admit that to be scalable they have to sacrifice decentralization.”
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