# Panel Talk - Building Communities in Ethereum: Lessons from the Frontlines

- Channel: [ETHCluj Meetup](https://streameth.org/ethcluj-meetup)
- Date: 2025-10-09
- Duration: 48:36
- Topics: Communities in Ethereum, Ethereum communities, Ethereum for Everyone, ETHCluj
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-MBdIWvMuE_U
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBdIWvMuE_U

## Description

Strong Ethereum communities are built on trust, shared values, and hands on engagement. In this panel, experienced organizers Alina Latinina, Andrej Berlin, Cryptogallo, Vanina Ivanova & Zuzanna Jelska share hard won insights on fostering resilient, decentralized networks from balancing open participation with cultural cohesion to managing conflict. Learn proven strategies for onboarding newcomers, handling privacy concerns, leveraging digital tools, and measuring community health. Through real world successes and failures, you’ll discover how philosophical principles of decentralization translate into practical steps that sustain vibrant, long lasting Ethereum ecosystems.

## Transcript

So um there is a list of questions for the panel but uh I hope you don't mind if I freestyle it a little bit. So uh would you mind introducing yourselves like how how did you end up in community management the the hell of web 3? >> Uh hello thank you so much. Thank you for freestyling. I'm uh Andre. I've uh built a design firm an online native design firm kind of like a collective. So we don't have any contracts but we focus on interesting work. So like the community basically centers around if there's interesting work that needs to be done in regard to validating use cases or designing interfaces. Um then that's what we aggregate together or aggregate around and that was my basically starting point into the Ethereum community or the Ethereum ecosystem. >> Are you still doing that? >> Sorry. >> Are you still doing it? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay. Well, so my name is Zusanna. Currently, I work at Zer where we uh are focused more on B2B angle, but we help other projects build community through encouraging them to use their reputation scoring based on blockchain behavior. But I personally have been in crypto since like 2020 and been just freelancing marketing. So been in a lot of communities since then. Hi, I'm Vanina and I'm currently the uh head of marketing at Neon EVM. I got into crypto um 10 years ago by chance. Um and um you know came in for the coincidence and stayed for the vibes and the money. Um so so here I am. Uh at the beginning I used to be a marketing team of one. Um, and I used to handle everything on my own, including community management. And today, um, fortunately, I manage the community managers. So, I still have I still have a very clear view into communities. Um, and I hope I'm not going to disappoint with my participation on the panel. >> So, you're the community manager supreme. And I'm Marco also known as cryptogalo in web3 and I'm I don't know if I can say that I community manager of urb.it that is a community in Rome. Yeah, I I am because I didn't decide that >> the mother he he is the mother who runs the entire thing. >> Yeah, exactly. But uh I I've organized events uh for all my business career before in uh public institutions and for politics in Rome and then I jumped into crypto because a lot of my friends were in crypto. So I say oh that's cool and uh at the end the end I I I ended to organize events in um for for the urbit community like it roam or all the events that we organize and now I'm community manager. I don't know why but I am. So, you got into crypto with peer pressure and now you're a community manager by peer pressure. Yeah. >> What's next? Heroin. >> I don't know. Let's see. >> All right. So, the first question I think the most obvious one, how do you build a community? Because it's kind of like it's easy to join a community, but what does it take to build a community? >> Yeah, I can. I mean, yeah, I think building is an interesting thing. I see it more like as emergence from complexity science. if you have looked into it like how ants in colonies form um I think there's always something that people kind of aggregate around and then you just capture um the specific paths or like you you create paths for being able to do more of that. So like um it's not so much as like asking people to do things but rather like observing what are they interested in and providing the space for it. Um or like curation is an interesting example too when um our like gallerists curate what should come into an art gallery. It's like building out the space so people can be a better version of themselves. Um so that's at least my approach in terms of work like in in in deep work uh which is the design collective. uh it's mostly about just keeping people up to date with what's going on with what the larger scale observations are strategic observations and then kind of like providing opportunities for collaboration. So these things I would say are in my case the most prominent. >> Uh so I would say it's building a system in which users can be around one topic which interests all of them but also uh building it in a way which uh tells who is the most valuable contributor and that may vary between the projects. For example, renting protocol. We want someone who has the most money and can give it to others or is borrows the most and then repairs that. So we need to like figure out which are these specific things for each protocol and then build a system which intensifies it and yeah also create vibes and culture. >> Um I agree very much with the curation part. Um, but I think that this this comes at a slightly later stage. Uh, you kind of need to to drop people into your community and then give them a reason to stay. Um, in my career, I've always been a fan of the quick and dirty method, which is um big uh build build a funnel that is big enough. So attract a huge number of people um and then have the people of value stick around um so that you can build a self- sustainable system. So for example you can start by doing a an airdrop launching a token uh doing quests um and this way you attract a lot of people a bunch of people into your community who are just mercenaries. They're not there for the for the project that you're doing. They're not there for the technical conversations that you're going to have. Uh but you get them in, you get them through the door and then uh with good community management and with good uh conversation curation um you give people a reason to stick around and to stay and to start contributing to the community actively and contributing to the conversation and starting the conversation by themselves. uh for me it's like I I don't have like I don't have like the duty to organize a community like our community is a we can say that is a grassroot community coming from the interest of a bunch of people in Rome interested in like web three stuff. So for us it's like uh we started like with having a beer or eating something all together and then we scaled up doing like events and all these kind of things but it was like very I don't know it was not easy but it was like it happened from nowhere um because the the most important thing I think is that um you have you don't have to create a big community but you have to select a lot of the people that are really needed for that community because like for urb. One of our value is that we talk about web free not not crypto. So we don't want to on board people that only think about speculation tokens or things like that but we want to on board people only that are really passionate on on that uh on that topic. So it's like um yeah it's it's like we are more interested in people that can have a meaningful conversation with us uh talking about tech and uh what it's uh what does it mean and I think that's the but the most um the most um interesting way to on board people is with pizza and beer that that's actually that all that I said before cancel it and after that if you offer a free meal for the people they will jump in. >> So the the point of all of this is advocate to party. >> Yeah. But it's actually a very interesting point that you raise here. Um it's my personal observation that some of the most amazing communities um that I'm I'm in um are actually micro communities. They're not huge. You don't have like a bajillion of people in them. Uh it's just a select group of of people who are really really dedicated to a topic. The thing is though, the vanity metrics. We're all so stuck into VCs looking at community sizes and basically forcing us into uh into building those huge dormant communities. And that's that's one of the things that I personally struggle with, but it's part of the game. >> Unfortunately, it is. But then when you do have this bajillion people community, how the hell do you manage that without like straying away into, you know, this soulless, you know, discord chat? You don't you don't you don't need to manage them because most of them are dormant. They do not participate in the discussion. They don't really care about that. They're just there because you promised them something. You gave them, I don't know, as I said, you gave them an airdrop. You gave them a slice of pizza. there was there was a reason for them to join. They came, they got what they got in for, and then they were like, "Oh, yeah, screw it. I'm just going to mute that server and, you know, continue with my life." >> So, the bajillion comm community, like bajillion people communities just don't work. >> I I don't think they do. I don't think they do. >> Anyone here dares to disagree? Hot take. Let's go. It's like uh it's like that don't work if they are highly incentivized like which uh okay it's okay but also money it's important you we know uh if they are highly incentivized maybe they can work but when the incentivized stops the only the people that really care remain so yeah I think that um we used to u put on our decks and everything that we had like 800 people on discord that's nice But I think that is a then we understood that it was more meaningful to say that we have a 30 software developers freelancer that joined the community and I think that is more valuable than 800 people that maybe 600 of them don't show on discord day even more. >> Then you mentioned metrics and uh well I think this is where we need to address the the core question and before that you had something to say. No, you reached for the microphone. Nope. Okay. >> Okay. Fair enough. >> So, the the core question is what is a community? What does it mean to you? When you hear community, like what do you think? Because you said people are staying in the communities for incentives, but I don't think that's how communities should work. For me, a community is such a warm word. So, let's let's get the ground running on what is a community. >> Just big communities is incentivized. Small community are like >> then what do they run on? Hey everyone, give me three words on what do you assoc associate community with? >> Shared value and shared interest in in the project because you know at the end of the day in crypto we do not just market to people and users as we do in web two. We also market to people who are just in it for the idea and they just like to support us. So yeah, shared values and shared ideas. >> That's actually the same. >> Yeah, that's it. >> There you go. I would also just add to that kind of a vision same or a shared vision of the future. Um I think that a community becomes active and vibrant when there's progress towards something and that something is like based on values and a shared vision. >> So how is a community different from cults or religions? >> It's not. >> Okay. Another take from this panel. It's it's not that different from religions or cults. Here's your >> They are communities too. >> So how would you are there any parts of cult culture, religious culture that are not negative that you would like to implement in communities and web 3? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Like what >> the charming leader, the community builders. Yeah. The community builders and the moderators and the people who rally everybody up and are like, "Hey, this conversation has been dead for like I don't know 17 minutes. Let's revive it." Um, you need a charismatic person in in your discord or in your telegram to be there, act as a point of contact between your project and and your people. Um, provide them feedback, provide them information about the hype >> what's happening and yeah, exactly basically a cheerleader. The cheerleader who who is just there to be like think about that. I I don't know if you guys have have ever looked into and that's that's a very peculiar phenomenon. Uh, bingo online online bingo chat rooms. >> I know. I know. It's It's insane. >> Loving the segue. >> Before before joining crypto, I used to work in in gambling. So, um, I I have >> Wow. This is a >> It's very very similar, very similar. And uh I I I used to observe online bingo chat rooms where you would think that you know the usual the usual person that you would see there is just your you know your regular grandma exchanging uh grandchildren pictures and recipes and all of that. Surprisingly no surprisingly young men um who were either bored or lonely um and >> they were just looking for someone to talk to. >> They were just looking for somebody to talk to. And at the end of the day, when you look at the online bingo industry, people basically buy cards for the bingo game and they don't even open the cards. Like the cards are played automatically. And if you win something, it just gets credited to your account. But nobody really cares about that. People join in for the for the conversation. For the moderator, for the person who is there to be like, "Hey, what you watch on TV last night? Tell us about it. Share your lived experience." So crypto and web3 communities were created actually you know crypto was created because people just needed someone to talk to and have an excuse to it. >> If you if you examine some of the some of the most vibrant communities you would see that yes a bunch of the talk there is cryptoreated and project related but also there's a lot of like interpersonal communication going on and and if you see the the communities that are thriving these are the communities where people build friendships with each other. I mean if I know something I know by ETH is actually just a giant group of friends. >> Yeah, exactly. That this is like one of our most important like strengths but also is one of our I think is problems that we are a big big group of friends. I I think that's three or four people from the urbidity community. I know them from 15 years and a bunch of them from 10 years and the people that I met like from three years ago when we established the community I think that they are like my friends for a longer time and and also I completely agree with you because uh the people that we on boarded um we onboarded a lot of people from the first ETH Rome in 2023 and uh but uh they were not joining for they were joining of course for the prices and whatever. ever, but they stay for the community because they became our friends and uh we share with them a lot of interest about web three, how to what to do at the next hackathon, uh where the the ecosystem is going or whatever, but we also share a little bit of our personal life and we became friends. So, it's easier to easier to engage with them. But the thing is like it's it's it's difficult because if you are trying to on board more people if you create a close group of friends it's like it's difficult to engage with them because maybe there are a lot of um I don't know hidden things or or like some jokes around that maybe a a person outside of the community can't understand or maybe don't want to understand or whatever. So it's it's tricky. It's tricky. >> Yeah. I think also some of the communities in crypto don't have to revolve around projects necessarily like we have bara bodies which I identify with and we're just a girls in crypto and basically that's it but also we get some alpha or some incentives because of that. So yeah that's also how communities can work. Yeah, Barrett Batties is actually an excellent example of a community because it's just based on fun and being girly and you know and it's so powerful because once you're bear you're in it for life. >> Did you have anything else to say? No. >> What? >> All right. Um um uh well I have I I spaced out. I forgot the questions. But um I have a fun fact. Um what is the difference between cult and religion in the United States? Like what has to happen for a cult to actually become a religion? >> It's just a guess that probably you have like number of people signed up. >> No. Okay. It's much darker than that. >> It is it the legality of it like do you have to have like a group suicide to be classified as >> not group suicide. The leader has to die. >> Oh. >> So technically we don't know if Satoshi's alive or not. So we could consider, you know, uh crypto religion and maybe that, you know, less taxes. Huh. >> That that's actually fascinating and it's also making me reconsider my career aspiration of being a cult leader. Um >> so gambling, crypto, cults. >> I mean, I just need big pharma and like tobacco to, you know, to to secure my place to secure my place in the afterlife. Um but um I just wanted to to build upon what on on what Susanna said um because it's actually a very interesting thing. When I started out 10 years ago, the only communities that we had were the communities that were revolving around projects. That was it. Um and for for a very long time, that was the case. That was, you know, even if you had like a smaller niche community, it would be a group of friends talking about um something very niche and exchanging inside jokes. Um but lately I would say that in the couple the last couple of years I would say that there's a a boom of I don't even know how to classify them but like topic topic clusters um that um communities spring from like for example we have marketing cabals we have developer communities that are thriving we've got communities for designers uh UX researchers and yeah bear buddies uh I'm sure there are psychopath communities >> on privacy now it's a it is basically a cyber community. >> Yeah. >> Uh so when we say community I imagine so pizza in real life interactions. What do you feel like about online communities it's tough to integrate not integrate but like interact with them. Do you have any tips on how to interact online and make you know human presence more real? Maybe video calls or maybe some you know opening questions and stuff like that. Herb is not aligned. So >> I'm I'm sorry. I just I just feel like I'm I'm hogging the conversation. I apologize for that, but also I'm not sorry. So um I would say that uh giving flexibility is a is a very big thing. Like yeah, I'm all, you know, it's all fun and games to have like online calls and all that, but first of all, coordination is a Um second of all, it's very demanding. You've got people from different time zones. What I would say and what I like to do is when I join a new community, just scroll scroll up a little bit, see what people are talking about and just jump into the conversation, if you have something to contribute, of course, like if you don't have anything to say about it and and you're just there for, I don't know, for another reason, then just, you know, it's okay to not say something as well. Um, but yeah, just participate participate. Like my observation from marketing communities for example when I sit on a bunch of telegram groups and discord servers for marketers is that there's uh there's a lot of value that these communities provide uh even though they're online and they're async but there's a lot of value because I know that anytime I struggle with something I have a I hit a blocker I could jump in and be like hey guys I'm having this issue has anybody else struggled with that do you have a solution for that and usually a bunch of people would jump in and be like Hey, this is what I did when I had the same problem. Or you would just go in and be like, "Hey, I'm looking for a warm contact at this company." Or, "Has anybody seen a drop in their Twitter reach?" And then bum, there you go. You have a conversation all of a sudden. >> This also reminds me of the the fact that people love to argue online or prove that they're right. So, you can always use little clickbaits. A >> hot take is always a winning take. Let's be honest. Uh what I would add is to give community some things to do regardless of the time zone. So I really liked uh the thing that range did recently. So basically they launched a kind of mini game in which you were talking to a chat uh with a bot or not and you didn't know if it's B or really person and based on that um you got an airdrop on how many points you got but it was somehow innovative. So yeah, I like this. >> Was the bot asking questions or >> Yeah, you had like normal conversation and at the end after five minutes or so, you had to say was it a bot or was it a real person and the struggle to answer that was real? >> It's like a fullon touring test over there. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. But I feel like these kind of activities are something that keeps your project in mind of community members that they want to prove that they will be right this time. And bouncing back to online or not online communities. So um offline. So online if somebody is not aligning with your values or being a bit spammy or just annoying, you can always ban them from the community. What do you do when there's just this person that it's like they don't necessarily align, but they didn't do anything wrong. How do you handle the situation where you know you can you can't really tell them to leave but also you could but it would also cause this oh but why would you do that or you know but how do you handle navigate those conflicts >> again again I I just walk away I literally just walk away I like if somebody if somebody's like super annoying in a conversation I would tell them why I disagree with them and I would be like look I don't have anything else to contribute this conversation. So, I'm just going to make my exit now. Thank you very much. >> But it's your event. >> Even if it's an event though, like you don't have to like I like I I I get it there. There's a very thin line between um being radically honest with people and providing honest feedback and being an Um it's very very thin line and I know that from experience sadly but um sometimes you you just got to be honest and open with the people and be like hey look the values of this community the values that get us together in this room are this and this and this like we're all here because we think that Ethereum is for everyone right this is the whole point of like the the point of gathering us together at this event and if you're only here to on Ethereum and tell tell us how bad Ethereum is, then this is not your group of people. Read the room and maybe I don't know, leave. You can always invite people to leave. I don't know why we don't do that more often, but you can always do that. >> This is actually excellent. I don't I've never thought of that before. >> Anyone has experience with dowas here? I wanted to answer the >> the before question because it's like um that was a a good question that we had before opening our web three space a physical space that we now we have a hub in Rome a co-working space that's uh thanks to Akasha that is our sponsor is completely free to everyone to that wants to jump in so we say okay but what if there is someone that's coming only for like having a desk uh work from there and don't care about what we do or uh what we are doing or whatever and high state actually it's like it's going to be like I don't know organically but it's like if there is someone that's doesn't share his our values or maybe he's not interested what we are doing he will go away by himself uh just because why you have to go in a physical space where you don't have to talk with people because you don't share value it will go way and actually it happened. So it's I think it's uh it's very organically and of course if they are like shilling and talking about something we can kindly ask him to go away but it never happens. I hope that it will never happen but I think that is uh yeah it will happen by itself if if someone is not aligned. So I didn't get a very positive DA response over here. So we might not touch on that. But um what is the most unexpected thing that came out of running a community? It could be something positive. It could be something negative. It could be you know a fun life or death experience or just uh you know um um a wonderful connection you made. >> I think oh >> yeah I can start. It's not cryptoreated like directly but I met my fiance through community. Yes. So basically you met at E if meet up. So yeah >> that's what happens when you attend crypto event. Yeah. >> Glory guys. Everyone was very It's nice that it's a very positive experience. And uh by the way, so I met this guy a couple of weeks ago or a week a time as a concept anyways at some point and uh he had a deck of cards on him and he was showing magic tricks and uh I think that's an excellent way to bring people more into like engaging thing and uh do you have anything to me to say about that? Or maybe you will just he can pull out the deck of cards. >> Uh come on Saturday 28th at uh I think it's 10:00 a.m. or something uh as a talk. Um Yeah, I'll I'll show some magic too. But my thesis and how it relates to community is that uh specifically Ethereum or web 3 technology is uh very very unique in a sense that it can allow us to uh create very unique experiences that bind and com like restore our society by um supporting how we interact with each other. Uh and whether it's like through payments or through memorables. Oh sorry through like uh non-transferable tokens or um or encryption uh there's a lot of ways how that can uh shape our society in a constructive way uh which we have for the most part not done with technology. >> Where is the magic? >> I think it's the kind of I don't know if you I'm curious about your um experience. Uh to me it's kind of like this feeling of being part of a community that is connecting uh like historically. >> Sorry, >> magic space. >> No, I think like so historically magic is used to be a symbol for um controlling nature but as part of a community. So like everyone was involved in it. It was not just like hey here's a rabbit out of a hat or like here's a car trick. It was not this circle >> right back to your cult idea. Um but it was it was a very kind of like connecting experience uh in in in villages or like communities before even the emergence of society. And I think uh that sensation that we can have as part of a community that used to be very local and like relevant to a small village um can be scaled uh to a more global um feeling. I don't know how what do you think? I >> I agree with you. I agree with you completely because you know at the at the end of the day magic doesn't work on its own. You can't you can't do a magic trick for yourself by yourself, right? That doesn't it's the it's the community that needs to be there that you need the audience, the participants to be able to perform the magic trick. And I also agree that if we if we look back historically, it's always the the that sense of belonging and that need we are genetically and evolutionarily programmed to uh to look for that support system and to build that support system. It takes a village. Um, and it particularly takes a village in, you know, in today's day and age when we're all stuck behind a computer screen in our apartments and sometimes if you're lucky enough, a co-working space where you see other uh human beings on a daily basis, but maybe not every day. Um, and we're losing that sense of belonging. And at the end of the day, it's like, you know, the whole like humanity is going into that direction, but also it it brings us back and and it makes us want that that sense of Yeah. want that >> that uh sense of sense of belonging and and being a part of something bigger, something beyond yourself. So what's the weird lovely horrifying crazy thing that came out to you out of community management? >> Well, one of the things is that u similarly to what Susanna shared, I I met a group of wonderful wonderful women in crypto uh who are based in my city and uh we met at a conference and then we started uh a telegram chat and we now meet for brunch um every other week. Um, and that's amazing, you know, to have a to have this supportive group of women who understand your super niche jokes. Uh, because all of your other friends are like, "No, we we can't with you. We no." Um, the most surprising thing though, that kind of, you know, having meeting new people and establishing human connection, that's kind of expected. The unexpected thing is when you when you create a monster, when your community becomes sentient and it's out of your hands, it's uncontrollable. And it can go both ways. It can go in a very positive way. You can have create a community where you don't need to have mods anymore because people are selfmodderating and you know they're being nice to each other and keeping the conversation going. And sometimes it just goes the other way and you have to nuke a community because it has become so toxic that that's the only way. I've had to do that once. >> A community. Yeah, I was going to ask. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Spoken from experience. >> Literally again like one of the projects that I worked for um in 2017 I think we had a huge telegram community. It was ginormous and um people came in for the ICO and the you know and the the monitor like the financial opportunity and and when it didn't pan out exactly the way they expected like they they didn't become bajillionaires overnight. Um it it became ugly very very quickly. Uh and at one point it was unmanageable. We had six community managers I think running the chat and trying to control the chat 24/7. And at one point I was like, you know what, this is just not worthy. And um I don't know if you know that, but you can delete a telegram chat even if it's 40,000 people big or you know. So we did that and we literally we literally nuked the community. We said, "Hey, this is not working. This is your last day. Say your goodbyes because tomorrow this community does not exist anymore." And we killed it and we started fresh. And that was the best thing we ever did. I don't know. I just, you know, I I dropped the bomb by my left. Like, honestly, I just I just you you got to you got to like if you start caring about the reactions of the people and if you start caring about what they sing, what they say and what they think, >> it's not going to end well for you. You're going to leave lose your sleep o over that and that like crypto is toxic enough as it is. So, you just drop the bomb and and you leave and that's it. I want to hear about that story a bit later after the panel. Marco, what's the weirdest thing that came out to you from communities? >> Like uh I don't know, but the the weirdest part is like u last year we we changed like the direction of the community. Uh before it was like very grassroots and then we decided to scale so to do more events, engage with more sponsors. Okay. So we before that we we we have done only uh events that we we really care about uh like uh something uh we have um a lot of people that are working on bass. So we have done before some some workshop with bass people were really passionate about it. So we had like like our first uh gathering around a sponsor a sponsor event like a um afternoon of uh deep diving in a sponsor tech uh and a lot of people were talking about that okay and so I said oh this is going to be a mess because okay they are not giving a lot a lot of money they don't the expectation are not very high so let's see what is happen and then I say to a um a a community member Oh, can you handle the workshop of uh on this tech? And he handled the workshop. Uh they start they started to talk about this new tech. Uh they started to engaging about that and they started to contact the um the dev rares of this new protocol and uh saying oh you have this pug, you have this, you have that and also at the end of the day they were starting to think oh what what we can build on top this on top of this protocol. like I'm always amazed about um software developers really uh because I don't understand them uh but yeah I think that is the >> yeah actually uh but yeah that is the like the most like amazing thing because uh even though they they didn't like care about something in particular if they connect with tech and they started to think about that it like it grows like automatically they were not paid to do that they were not incentivized to do that they were only around the desk for 3 hours uh because they wanted to do and also because I offered them a lot of uh food of course. Uh but of but then the mother of >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Always with the pizza with you. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But but really really they started to give feedbacks. They started to to to do like the what what was the event means to do without like not pushing on that side. So that was like amaze me. >> That's lovely. And uh I think our time is uh Did you want to say something? Nope. >> Um I think our time is slowly wrapping up. So we still have a bit of time for some questions. Anybody have any questions from the audience? By the way, next time we should call this panel like community gossips, not management. Yeah. Like that is something that would be really cool. >> Community gossip community. >> Yes. just to share the gossip. Okay. So, let me just move a bit so I can see the questions. So, number one, when was the last time you had to manage conflict within your community and what happened there when when just suggesting somebody leaves maybe didn't work out that well? >> Let's hear some goss. just last week. Just last week, right now at Neon Neon EVM, we have an active boot camp for uh solutions developers and um one of the guys who's actually a really good developer, but he's not the first one in the leaderboard was complaining about the way we award points. >> What did you do? >> He was very unhappy because we allow people I mean you get points. Sorry, like I'm not trying to show but I just need to give you a little bit of context. Like you get points not just by you know submitting your assignments and your homework. um in the boot camp, but you also get points if you share on social, for example, and there's a cap on those points, but still you get points. And that guy didn't realize that you can get extra points by like sharing on social and shilling on Twitter and doing all that. So, he got really unhappy and he felt that he was cheated. Um so, it was a very productive uh discussion and um he was not happy because we refused to award him extra points. He did bring a lot of people to the boot camp though. So what we did is and I think this is actually happening right now maybe or it just finished. Um we just invited him to an AMA. We were like, "Hey, we appreciate what you're doing for the community. We want to highlight you to our community. We're going to have an AMA with you so that you can share about your experience, what you think about the boot camp, and like maybe encourage more people to join." And weirdly enough, that was sufficient for him to shut up and we didn't have to kick him out. >> That was good, but also it turned conflict into publicity because I mean, if conflict is already there, you might as well navigate it in public and bring some new people in or stir up some that will also probably bring new people in. >> I'm I'm going to be honest with you, this could go either way. This could go and and again, I'm here now, so I haven't checked with my team yet, so I don't know what happened at the AMA. Uh, but right after this panel, I'm either going to go into like uh firefighter mode and do damage control or I'll go get myself a drink to celebrate. >> That's the life of a community manager here. >> What about you guys? Any conflicts that you know you had to manage or navigate apart from the last one with the >> I haven't got really anything to share like from recent times. Okay, let me move on to the next question. Also, step away because I can hear the mics uh sinking up. Wait, I'm in the wrong position here. What should come first? A group of people with shared values vibing together or a project company trying to rally a group of people around their product. So, the chicken or the egg? Well, I would say that the most successful company uh are born within that group of people and then they just bring others who think the same. So when are we getting Orbe products? >> Oh bakery >> Pidia. That would be a good one. >> Yeah. So the the community would collapse. So maybe maybe both you or just experiment, you know, have fun with it. >> I think it co-evolves just like people like hanging out together, doing stuff and then yeah, what's the product? It's like that emerges from the community vibing together. >> But also, we're talking about communities as if they are something static. They're not. They're an evolving organism. you basically experiment and you you give it a try and you know if if something doesn't work out then scrape it and move on. If it does replicate it until it stops working so I would say that both both approaches could work. You can have a company or a project that builds a successful community and with that experimentation manages to keep that community vibrant or you can have a community of um boot campers who get together and come to you and they're like, "Hey, we don't want to submit individual homework. Can we do a group project?" And then we're like, "Yeah, go for it. Let's do that." >> And that's how the TV show community started. Let's look at the next question. Sorry. Looking back, what was the most effective moments that you experienced in successfully on boarding new users into your communities? >> I did a coin market cap air drop. Seriously though, like I needed I needed to boost up the community numbers because of uh our investors. They were unhappy with the number of community members and I just did an a coin market cap collab for an airdrop. brought in like 30,000 people to the 30,000 new people to the community. Did they add value to the community? No, of course not. Uh they were community members, but it did the trick. >> Yeah, I had similar experience with Telegram mini apps where you could just promote your project and you got like nice numbers there. Uh I want to quickly comment because we received a lot of good feedback on our onboarding. Um we have a documentation of how everything works. Um because a lot of centers around like you know designing products or like design processes, user research processes. So in the beginning of our uh collective as a kind of productive entity like as a as a firm we just wrote down how everything works and just explained it to people online. So the first thing would be they just go to our documentation and familiarize themselves with everything and uh the next step is basically finding an expert who is already doing the work and bodying up with them and working together and that was like kind of a seamless um onboarding that people really liked. Um if you want to check it out it's uh at uh deepwork.network and the very top there's like documentation or something. Um, it depends because we just created it over time. Like we always like bit by bit expanded it into what it is now. So it looks like a lot but it's actually like kind of just taking down notes of what people are asking and then you just like putting it into one place so that they know and then making sure that it's uh that's staged. >> Yeah. If anyone wants to build cool AI bots, here's a product idea >> for us was uh and it is actually also uh it Rome. So the the moments when we all gather around an event and all the people from Italy and outside Italy comes to us to gather with us, build with us and uh yeah so that is like the most effective uh the event that is most effective for on boarding new people and also strengthen the community. So, international events, international pizza events. >> Okay, >> I actually mentioned it in the talk that I just did. >> Nice. If you don't know, you have to come to it from 2025. >> Again, the best food promotion ever. >> Okay. How do you approach dev communities versus retail user communities? Definitely. Any best practices to share? Speaking of uh developers being a a cult of their own, >> uh I will I will tell a little bit about dev community because I don't know about retail user community. For dev community, you don't have to bother them. You don't tell you don't have to to speak with them. You don't you don't have you don't have to do anything. >> Don't look them in the eyes. >> No, don't do anything. If they do something, that's good. Uh if they if you try to to them to to do something that's not working actually. Uh so yeah this is my goal like my approach with them and uh I I I have this problem that I have manager of de community so I think a little bit I know that >> feed them too >> make sure they >> um I don't know if you know that meme with the two Barbies now kiss um something that I have noticed with our developer community is that again as you said they don't want to be you So you approach with caution. Don't bother them too much. Provide them with good documentation and let them do their thing. Um but sometimes some of them would face a problem that they don't know how to solve and then you know that somebody else on the community knows how to solve that or has the skill and then you just connect them. You you are the connector between them and this is where a good deell comes in. So that's what we do. >> Well, I guess we're out of questions. Anyone here wants to do some human interpersonal connection and ask a question from the audience? >> No question or you just calling for time. Yeah. Okay. >> Where would you go if you want? >> Sorry. >> Where would you go if you want? >> If you want an ETH community. >> Oh, like personally, where would we go? I think so for me. >> Yeah, I'm already in some memcoins which are like also kind of communities. >> No, I am weirdly enough I I am I am a curator of weird communities, an aicionado if you wish. I am currently sitting on a community of um women in crypto who knit and crochet. and we share patterns and we share pictures of the stuff incredibly ugly stuff that we knit uh on route uh to conferences but we're all very proud and supportive of each other. So if I were not on an Ethereum community that's where I would be and maybe something else like equally weird. I didn't really before started. So I think I will go back to my first job. >> Uh I don't know. I'm kind of unbiased. So it's more like wherever there's something that people are building that's cool or that I also agree with for the future. Uh I used to run an a magic community in Berlin. Uh well I feel like each person can participate in few communities at once and like uh I personally just go to the community where I trade currently. So I'm like swinging between uh yes so that's my take on that. >> That's lovely. And on that note we can wrap up. So give a big round of applause for our panelists over here.