tpc baby

Author: pi0neerpat

how-to-build-token-centric-community.md

@@ -1,19 +1,53 @@
-# How to build a token-centric community
+# Practical Guide for Building a Token Powered Community
 
-Good reasons for building a token-centric community:
+There are plenty of good reasons for building a community around a token:
 
-- DAOs for giving grants
-- DAOs for doing work
-- Tokens for Defi protocols
-- An altruistic cause you think others also
-- Artist or Content-Creator with a following
+- DAOs for giving grants or doing work
+- Open-source technology development and governance
+- Altruistic causes and public goods
+- Content creators and artists with followers
 
-Bad reasons for building a token-centric community:
+And plenty of bad reasons as well:
 
 - Making money or influencing token prices
 - A poorly researched idea.
 - Harm or put-down others
 
+My goal here is to walk through what setting up a community should look like. These are my experiences both as an active participant in several crypto communities, and an observer of dozens more.
+
+# What is a Token Powered Community
+
+A **Token Powered Community** (TPC) is a broad term to describe any group of people using a cryptocurrency token to accomplish their goals. The primary purpose of the token is usually to compensate community members for their efforts in achieving the goals.
+
+The more valuable the token is, the more "buying-power" it affords, and this means the TPC can accomplish more. Thus a secondary goal always exists to increasing the value of the token, and ensure the sustainability of the TPC.
+
+> Tokens align incentives among different people to create a sustainable organization focused on a common set of goals.
+
+# How Does a TPC Work?
+
+A TPC can maintain a central treasury of tokens, and/or benefit from a virtual treasury. A **central treasury** is like tokens in a DAO's piggy bank, which can be paid out directly to contributors for doing work.
+
+But a **virtual treasury** doesn't actually exist anywhere. Confused? If TPC members individually own the token, and the value of the token increases as a result of the TPC's efforts, then all members benefit just like if they were paid from a central treasury. This is a "rising tide lifts all ships" scenario.
+
+The concept of the virtual treasury means TPCs, just by existing, create incentives for members to contribute. It is the source of the never-ending "buzz" of a community, and keeps things moving even when there might not be a price tag for a particular task. The virtual treasury injects a healthy dose of positive moral into every conversation about the TPC.
+
+# Examples of TPCs
+
+The Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is the best example of a TPC. Here are some examples:
+
+- [MetaCartel](https://www.metacartel.org/) has distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars in the form of grants to support community projects. As new members join, the DAO's treasury grows from membership fees.
+- [Raid Guild](https://raidguild.org/) has completed hundreds of projects as a tech development studio. As projects are completed, a portion of earnings are put back into the treasury.
+
+A TPC can also form around projects with governance or utility tokens. These are usually curated by the project team's themselves, but this isn't always the case. Here are some examples:
+
+- [$UNI](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/uni) tokens for Uniswap protocol are used to pay for making improvements to the product.
+- [$RAC](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/rac) tokens are used by electronic artist Rac to curate his Discord server.
+- [$UDT](https://unlock-protocol.com/blog/unlock-tokens-launched) token is used by Unlock Protocol to allow holders to claim discounts on their purchases, and provides financial rewards for stakeholders.
+
+# Prerequisites
+
+Before you begin your journey to create a TPC, you must determine where you'd like to start from.
+
 ## Purpose
 
 Do not be extractive. No one will want to participate if they feel they are being taken advantage of. In order to success, your community must have a clear purpose that people can get behind.
@@ -24,9 +58,16 @@ Identify a small Power Squad so you can
 
 ## Incentives
 
-# Practical Steps
+This is where the token comes in! Here are your options:
+
+- Use tokens from existing projects
+- Create a DAO using [DaoHaus](https://daohaus.club/). The shares can serve as your token.
+- Hire the [Raid Guild](https://raidguild.org/) to design and launch a custom token.
+- Create one yourself. There are some great resources for learning Ethereum development at [EthHole.com](https://ethhole.com/learning)
 
-# From 0-10 Members
+# From 0 to 10 Members - Establish your Foundation
+
+Let's get started!
 
 ## Platform
 
@@ -36,15 +77,27 @@ The key elements are:
 
 1.  Keep things simple and concise. Rambling conversations on 100 different channels is not helpful.
 2.  Organize topics with clear names. Rather than name a channel "inner-chambers", instead use something like "DAO-members". This prevents newcomers from being overwhelmed with jargon.
-3.  Have outlets for being social and hanging out. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Consider making a Category just for gaming, random topics, memes, and listening to music with [groovy bot](https://groovy.bot/).
+3.  Create outlets for being social and hanging out. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Consider making a Category just for gaming, random topics, memes, and listening to music with [groovy bot](https://groovy.bot/).
 
 ![]('./hangout-channels.png')
 
 ## Core Contributors
 
+While its tempting to immediately open your community up to everyone, this will not be healthy or sustainable until you've established a strong foundation.
+
+**Don't announce your community anywhere. Instead, recruit core contributors who already identify with your purpose.**
+
+This is a delicate time, so don't be too harsh if you find the initial members you invited don't see eye-to-eye with your intentions. When in doubt, broaden your community's purpose and values to establish a good foundation. You can always narrow focus and be specific later, after you've found a solution that fits everyone's needs/goals.
+
+And some people just might not be a good fit, which is perfectly fine. Allow them hang out anyways. Who knows, they might jump back in one day.
+
+> The "@contributors" role is a great way to signal who has been showing up, and doing work. Hand these out as much as possible, they'll be very useful later!
+
+Starting now, until you've reached 100 users, every channel should be publicly viewable. All discussions should "in the open", and you should encourage lots of brainstorming.
+
 ## Social bonds
 
-The third element in the above list is very important. Communities find strength when they discover mutually shared values, beyond the prescribed goals. If a small cohort from your community discover they all enjoy listening to Taylor Swift, a social bond will form. These bonds cannot be created artificially, so you must provide space for them to occur organically.
+Communities find strength when they discover mutually shared values, beyond the community-prescribed goals. If a small cohort discovers they share a love for Taylor Swift, a social bond will form. These bonds cannot be created artificially, so you must provide space for them to occur organically.
 
 > Your community is only as strong the bonds between its members.
 
@@ -56,42 +109,51 @@ You'll begin to see common interests develop, and your members will start to ask
 
 ## Doin' Work
 
-Time to get our hands dirty. Make couple
+At this point, you have a rough idea of your community's purpose. Your members also may have identified some common interests outside of the community, and shared some laughs along the way.
+
+Now its time to cash-in on the social-credit you've generated.
+
+To do this, you'll need to recruit someone to the role of **Facilitator**. This person is responsible for making sure deadlines are set, and decisions get made by those deadlines. The most basic example of this is to schedule a meeting to finalize the community's Mission Statement.
+
+Facilitators are successful when they gather casual conversations during the week, and turn them into action items at the weekly meeting.
 
 ![]('./work-channels.png')
 
-# From 10-100 Members
+All your conversation so far can take place in the general chat and voice channels.
+
+# From 10 to 100 Members - Open the Door
 
-## Opening the Doors to the Public
+Boom, you've determined your community's focus, and are ready to start opening things up. New members will join with a clear understanding of what you want to accomplish.
 
-Awesome! You're ready to open your community up to outsiders. You've already laid a strong foundation, and new members joining will be able to tell.
+Before you open the door completely, here are a few things you need to complete:
 
-Before you start advertising yourself, you should already have identified your "core-contributors". AND you should already have a handful of work-specific channels created.
+## Enable "Community" Mode
 
-Before you open your doors to the public, here are a few things you need to complete:
+[Enable Your Community Server](https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360047132851-Enabling-Your-Community-Server) in your server's settings. This mandatory step is the "easy-button" for ensuring you have the correct settings for explicit content-filters, security/safety, and notifications.
 
-- [Enable Your Community Server](https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360047132851-Enabling-Your-Community-Server)(_mandatory_) in your server's settings. This is the easy-button for ensuring you have the correct settings fro explicit content-filters, security/safety, and notifications. It also enables a couple other features which will come in handy.
-- Create a welcome screen
+During this process, you'll be prompted to create a **Custom Welcome Screen**. This is where you can briefly explain the community's purpose/values, and where to find the rules (explained in the next sections).
 
-### Set up a Code of Conduct
+## Set up a Code of Conduct
 
 If you want to attract a diverse membership (and you do), then you must do your part to fight discrimination. One of the core requirements for doing so is to adopt and abide by a Code of Conduct.
 
 > This is your signal to the world that you're not a gaggle of immature fuckboys.
 
 The open-source software community already has a great Code of Conduct. You can read, understand, and use ours from [contributor-covenant.org](http://contributor-covenant.org/).
 
-p.s. If you skip this step, probably no one will tell you, because they think your community is close-minded. Don't foster a close-minded community. I'm telling you now, so you have no excuse.
+p.s. If you skip this step, no one will probably tell you, because they think your community is close-minded. Don't foster a close-minded community. I'm telling you now, so you have no excuse.
 
 ### Define the Rules
 
-These don't have to be complicated. Get the easy stuff out of the way towards the top: "No spamming or shilling, unless its directly related to the community". Keep it simple enough that your members actually read it.
+These don't have to be complicated. Get the easy stuff out of the way at the top - "No spamming or shilling, unless its directly related to the community". Keep it simple enough that your members actually read it.
 
-Your goal here is "self-policing". The better your members understand the rules, the less work moderating you have to do.
+Your goal here is to encourage "self-moderation". The better your members understand the rules, the less work moderating you have to do.
 
 ![]('./hey-admin-this-guy-sucks.png')
 
-# From 100 Members and beyond
+# 100 Members and Beyond - Management and Structure
+
+Superb work making it this far. If you laid the foundation right, getting from 10 to 100 members should have gone pretty quickly. Now is time to start locking things down a bit. We don't want everyone to have access to everything. This is where you can start using roles to prevent access to certain elements.
 
 ## Permissions
 
@@ -111,7 +173,7 @@ I already mentioned how groovy-bot can help connect members. Another bot
 
 Its time to open up a few channels in other languages. Even if you can't understand whats happening, or help moderate, your community members will be very excited to chat with fellow native speakers. And since everyone knows the rules by now, you can have more confidence that the channel will be self-moderated.
 
-Here's a good list to start with:
+Here's a good list to start with. Each should be typed in it's native language.
 
 - français
 - deutsch