One peculiarity of the decentralized economy is that it creates an avenue for people to be part of something big. As a matter of fact, most decentralized projects are community-driven; hence the reason their success depends largely on adoption, and community-level performance.
In a decentralized economy, participants want to not only feel important, but to also become an integral part of the project at all levels. Often this is achieved through the acquisition of a project’s native currency, which in most cases makes participants eligible to participate in the decision-making processes of a project.
However, there is more to the role of community members in a project than participating in the decision-making process. In other cases, community members are responsible for integral activities such as block generation, validation, and finality, among others.
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While this is applicable to most decentralized projects, the narrative is no different for Vuele, a decentralized protocol for streaming and collecting exclusive, limited edition, feature-length films, alongside other NFT collectables. We shared details about the fundamentals of the project in a previous publication, which you can read here.
Advantages of the Decentralized Economy
Picking things up from where we left off, Cameron Chell, Executive Chairman of Currency Work, and co-head of Vuele, further discussed the role of the community during an exclusive chat (insert YouTube link to the interview) with DailyCoin.
According to him, making people feel like they are part of a community is highly important, both to the project, and to the decentralized economy as a whole. In his words, the biggest thing about business today, and a notable advantage of the decentralized economy, is that it’s not really about cutting up the pie, so much as it is about the size of the pie increasing.
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In other words, Chell implies that decentralization works to increase the overall size of the pie, and even more so, makes it possible through unhindered access to the community.
In comparison, Chell noted that the decentralized business model works “counterintuitively to the traditional, or old business methodology, where you’re trying to dominate a particular space.” In the same vein, if people lose interest in collaborating, or perhaps stop feeling like part of the community, then they might as well turn against the project.
“Because it's decentralized and because everybody has such incredible access to the content now. If you don't get the network effect of as many people as possible being interested in collaborating, and feeling [like they are] a part of that community, then that community will turn against you very, very quickly,”
Chell explained.
When it comes to domination, Chell cited Facebook and Google as examples, claiming that it was simpler for certain businesses to do so because the chances were that, the earlier and faster you were able to adopt, the bigger and more dominating you became. Sadly, it has become extremely difficult for other entities with similar to identical goals to succeed in the same space.
On the other hand, a decentralized economy works in opposition to this; technically, every decentralized application has equal access to the global network of users, and regardless of whether they are operating in the same space, they can easily thrive side-by-side. This further underlines that no one project can truly dominate a space for a long period of time.
“In today's world, you know, if you're holding a dominant position for a decade, that's incredible, but because it's really a matter of only being hanging onto those for a year or two before some other new technology or new user experience, you know., Because you've got so many minds able to contribute in the decentralized economy, right,”
Chell noted.
Community Destroys Monopoly
There is no better truth of the decentralized economy than the fact that it eliminates the possibilities of monopolization.
According to Chell, it is very important to ensure that community members are put in a dominant position, and not the development team. The reason for this, in Chell’s words, is due to the fact that “user contributions to a project destroys any form of monopolies.”
“What's really important from a business standpoint, is to ensure that you are community-based and have a decentralized position, so that what's dominating is not you or your team, but the community,”
Chell emphasized.
That said, Chell concluded by stating that the size a project’s community has room to grow to will determine whether it can achieve a dominant position or not; more so, without exhibiting any trait of monopoly.
On The Flipside
- Because the economy is decentralized, with several open-source projects, people can decide to switch between several projects with similar solutions; hence, retaining users over a long period of time becomes more difficult, and may not be possible.
- The success of a decentralized project is based solely on the community itself, and not how technically efficient a project, or the solution it provides is.
Why You Should Care?
Unlike Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, the new generation web is community-driven, the result being that end-users have more power and authority than developers. Ultimately, in such a scenario the importance of community involvement in any and every project cannot be overstated.
Watch the full interview here:
