This past week I fell down a rabbit hole. This has become a habit; I find some new tech that excites me, I follow the developers and enthusiasts on Twitter, and I hop into their Discord. I read their documentation and I do my best to immerse myself in the community. Sometimes I meet some interesting people and learn something new from them.
Recently I discovered Dune Analytics, a powerful SQL tool for querying on-chain data for protocols like Ethereum. The platform is clean and easy to use, and a great community has formed within their Discord server centered around enhancing the offering. Dune brings a level of transparency and openness to crypto data that people in the space are pining for. Also, my substack shares its namesake and feels so in-theme with their product that I’m nervous people might suspect I work for them (I don’t).
As I stumbled down this rabbit hole, I discovered some amazing dashboards with detailed analyses, like this one by @danner_eth that compares NFT projects, not by their sales data, but by their wallet distribution:
I connected with the creator, and we became fast friends (you can check out more of his Dune dashboards here). That’s another thing about this space that I’ve become enthralled with: connecting with super-talented individuals building incredible things on the internet, without ever having met them in person. Digital interconnectedness will continue to bring great minds together and advance technology in ever compounding ways. The internet allows for collaboration on a scale never before seen, and right now much of it is happening on Discord.
Taking it a step further, I decided to get involved with one of these NFT communities that I was reading about. An NFT, most commonly represented as ERC-721 tokens on the Ethereum mainnet, is an item, image, GIF, or anything else that has a digital address that verifies ownership. The implications of NFTs are massive but the space is filled with grifters and celebrities looking to get rich quick, an obviously common externality of the crypto space that gives fodder to criticism.
Trying to avoid this, I wanted to find an NFT project that was focused on community rather than making a quick buck. This is easier said than done, because any successful NFT project will likely be profitable for its early movers. That said, it’s clear that there are certain projects looking to inspire a following around their creation that goes beyond just seeking value.
It didn’t take long for me to stumble upon the Wicked Craniums, an NFT project of 10,762 unique skeletal-like images. You need to own one in order to join their Discord server called “the Cradle”, and since this project is more nascent than the Cryptopunks you might have seen on Twitter or in Times Square, buying a Wicked Cranium seemed a more reasonable option for this adventure. Thus, behold:
My very own Wicked Cranium, #2496. I’m not too sure of his rarity, but he wears a cowboy hat and has a little penguin sticking out of his frocket and I liked that.
After purchasing it, I was eligible to join the Wicked Cranium Discord server and began to poke around some of their channels. I knew immediately that I had found what I was looking for; a community of like-minded and enthusiastic individuals who not only enjoyed the artistry of their property but also leveraged them as avatars in the Discord server (or, more optimistically, for their journeys into the Metaverse).
This is a use-case of NFTs I had not previously considered. As the Metaverse continues to evolve, you’ll be able to use whatever NFTs you own as your avatar, a digital representation of yourself and your values. Hence why choosing the right avatar is important, as the community behind it may also come to represent something about you.
After a few days in their Discord, I can confidently report that the Wicked Cranium community is thriving. They’re organizing community events, writing backstories behind each of their craniums to further evolve the project, building tools to analyze metrics as well as ways to rate each other’s craniums. Since I had arrived after my foray into Dune Analytics, I engaged with some folks eager to connect on metrics, and the talent I encountered was inspiring. After a while, I jumped into one of their Discord channels called #poker-nights, and entered a community-organized tournament. I ended up getting a little lucky:
Throughout this adventure, I made some fascinating connections with all types of people: data nerds, NFT purists, and blockchain engineers, but also regular people who just want to find some feeling of community. Obviously not all projects are like this, but I’ve been amazed at the openness and willingness to collaborate among this group.
This is just one example of Discord enabling that openness, but it can be seen all over the place. You can join the Eth R&D Discord server and observe some of the smartest people in crypto building the very upgrades to Ethereum that everyone is talking about, all out in the open. You could give thoughtful suggestions or even open a pull request yourself to take part in the effort (but you should probably learn how to code a smart contract first). The mere fact that the most brilliant blockchain engineers in the world are communicating openly on product development for the world to see is incredible. It’s something that benefits everybody and speaks to the true spirit of decentralization that these projects are borne from.
The past few months I’ve spent a lot of time following smart people on Twitter, which is a great place for learning. But the future is being built on Discord, and its open nature will likely have a positive impact on how products are developed going forward in ways that are hard to quantify.
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Disclosure: I own assets mentioned in this article. This is not investment advice.