When building a protocol, a club , a media or any project that requires to leverage your community onchain, there are many informal rules and criteria to follow.

Everyone can elaborate their own list but some of these rules are similar to almost everybody in the space.

While enumerating them, I noted 10 relevant patterns that I think are relevant for all of us.

I called them the 10 onchain commandments.

1. Remixing

The first of the list is remixing.

Remixing means to give the possibility to your followers to create on top of your content, product or experience.

This concept isn’t an outcome of onchain cultures, with the massive adoption of social media, the tools given to digital users created a new behavior.

Trends are now rapidly changing and evolving and users are the ones deciding on which trend to adopt and how.

Tiktok is a nice example of this digital behavior, communities and content creators are always looking for new dances or editing styles to share, new songs to adopt as a trend and this behavior obviously impacted the way artists produce music nowadays.

Coming back to web3, onchain communities, CC0 or NFT collections like Nouns, Milady, Opepen just to list a few developed even more this concept of remixing by integrating it into their business models or community culture.

Remixing is a way for your supporters to get creative through what they love at the moment, which is your content.

It gives them the ability to feel more related to your mission and values, to a project, a community and they don’t just consume anymore.

They experiment.

So remixing is not just a marketing tactic, it became one of the core values of onchain cultures.

And it is part of human behaviors since a long time, as Lavoisier once said:

"Nothing is lost, nothing is created: Everything is transformed.”

2. Memetic

The second onchain commandment is that you need to be memetic.

It is quite obvious that memes became a basic mean of communication in the digital spaces.

They can be used to express any sort of emotions and they even feel sometimes more effective than words.

To be memetic perfectly follow our first commandment because at the end of the day, to create a meme you need to remix something else, even if it is just by taking a screenshot.

Also it is not just your content that needs to be memetic.

It is the whole identity and external perception of your brand.

From the logo to the communication tone, everything can be integrated into a meme.

Because what is memetic is what resonates with everybody.

What makes everyone thing about the same thing at the same time and express the same emotion.

You can’t be memetic on purpose, but you can share emotions with your community.

So you don’t need to be funny or else, you just need to be emotive.

3. Onboarding

At the opposite of Web2, we don’t just need to onboard our users into our CRM or into our app.

In the onchain world, onboarding means joining.

( You can look at it as if it was a cult lol )

We onboard our members into a completely new technology, a new way of behaving, a new family, a new universe.

Depending on the people you target, maybe you will spend less energy at this stage but you will still need to onboard them into your community.

Our industry is new and moves at a really fast pace so it is also really quick to lose new members or users.

When the medium used is still not adopted massively or your community is just one a thousand in the space, every new member need to be considered or it can result in an easy FUD.

So what do I mean by onboarding ?

Just put yourself in the shoes of your next members when building.

But above all, not just the next hundreds members.

Be ready for the thousands that will become and be flexible.

Because when building onchain, to be scalable is a must.

And being scalable means to be able to reciprocate the same process without adding too much ressources.

4. Resonant

Although you don’t have to be aggressive to your potentiel members in your communication style, you still need to take into consideration those that will not necessarily be in your community.

Because we are in a small space where most of us are supportive about each other and your messages can inspire other communities to innovate on top of it through partnership or else.

That’s what being resonant means:

To be able to make your message relevant to everybody in the space, even when you already have an established community.

This commandment is not supposed to be hard to follow for builders because we build in order to solve or bring something new to what we are all experimenting in this space.

So by taking into consideration common issues, we can easily resonate with all those who share the same thoughts.

5. Collectable

To be collectable is a fundamental of onchain cultures since it is intrinsic to the technology we use.

The possibility to make our contents “ownable” onchain add to the user’s experience an incomparable value.

It also brings more incentives to onchain experiences and it became a necessary when interacting in the web3 space.

We can illustrate it as a proof of participation, a proof of ownership, a sign of appartenance and much more.

We’re still witnessing new experiments around this process but one thing is sure, to be collectable is to be closer to your supporters.

One nice example is the recent TWL (The World Largest) genesis drop through an animated video with collectable scenes that the viewers could mint by capturing the frames they want.

More than 20 thousands NFTs have been collected in less than 24 hours and the team has been able to provide a seamless and fun minting experience to users through one video.

6. Scalable

I already talked about being scalable in the onboarding commandment but i think it needs to be part of our list because it is a big concern for everybody in the industry from investors to users.

For the simple reason that we are looking for projects that will strive in the future and won’t die because they were being too optimistic.

Being scalable for me does not just concern the actual potential users.

It is being ready to onboard the next wave of users and enthusiasts when the time will come, or even be the magnet of this next wave.

This means that when building, the focus should be expanded to a larger range of target and we should put our efforts into trying to anticipate the future limits users may face.

With the new technologies that we have into our hands today, to think about the non-crypto friendly users should not be a second matter.

7. Rewarding

Onchain technologies give us so much opportunities and I’m thrilled to see several projects set new fundamentals into the space.

Since onchain users are also owners, why not reward them for using ?

Zora perfectly answered this question with their protocol rewards system which shares a part of mint fees with creators, referrers and now first minters.

Other platforms as Alienzone or Rabbithole through their new Quest Referrals explored this idea of rewarding users and community members for their onchain transactions.

Rewards through transactions or referrals still have a bright future in our space and with the development of new technologies as ERC4337, it is just a matter of time before it becomes a requirement.

8. Simple but Relatable

One thing in common with the branding of all successful brands onchain is the simplicity but uniqueness of their logo and digital identity.

Taking Base for example, the first think we think about their identity is the color Blue.

A color that can be assimilated and appropriated in so many ways but stays yet distinguishable !

Our second example will be Zora, a Zorb.

A sphere that can be remixed infinitely but still stays unique by its shape.

And the list is long, think about it.

This commandment is not a mandatory but it proves that we don’t have to do much to be relatable and remixing.

The simpler you are identifiable, the easier it is to be creative around your Identity.

9. Free or Cheap

Obviously this commandment became more relevant because we’re in a bear market right now.

But if we want mass adoption, we need to build business models that don’t depends on high pricing systems.

Putting the cost of entry the cheapest possible gives more probability for people to try our products and not just be attracted by speculation.

A study published by Forbes recently created some noises are the fact that “95% of NFTs are dead”.

If we look closely, I think we need to specify that we are not talking about NFTs technology here, 95% of speculative NFTs are dead*.

The technology is still being improved every day and creators are able to bring value in many ways into their products even by putting them for free.

As it is well explained in this article of Danica Swanson, the value is not anymore in the price but it resides in the work you are putting onchain as an artist, content creators or builder.

Projects that are not able to remain valuable while being free or offering free products will not last long into this bear.

And this new reality may also affect the way new onchain consumers behave in the next run.

We need to be able to provide more than speculation and it goes by offering free experiences.

10. Sponsored by a larger entity

We got to a stage where OGs already built strong fundamentals to be innovative and develop new experiences.

I believe that the next wave of builders should look for the toolkits that fit them the most and exploit them.

The best way to build something valuable is not by reciprocating something that is already working but by building on top of it.

It goes by selecting a relevant layer or platform, integrating an established community and building connections with ambassadors and other builders.

The only way to prove the relevance of being decentralized is by using our strength and involve each one who shares our vision.

Big actors need to be open to innovation and incentivize their community members to not just consume but contribute.

Base successfully did it through their onchain summer grants and Zora by removing the requirement to have Ethereum for gas fees when creating onchain.

Even tho we got here thanks to new technologies, I believe in a world where established communities play a big role into becoming hubs for new experiences, economies and adoption.

Give me your opinion about these 10 commandments on twitter !