Whether it is on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or any other social media handle, we all have witnessed in this era of internet/online communication, that there is an increasing number of online communities being formed. With the advent of the Internet, very few have envisaged the power of online communities. Today, the decentralization of economies and businesses has given an upper edge to the Blockchain!

The blockchain is simply a distributed community – a group of people following rules written in code, in a trustless environment where every participant is the owner of this code. No one can hamper or manipulate it. Since the technology is new and very few understand the nitty-gritty of Blockchain, some scammers are using Blockchain to their advantage by launching blockchain projects and running for initial coin offerings (ICOs) without even writing a single line of code. However, as this space is maturing, potentially ‘disruptive’ and innovative projects are surfacing on the top to thrive and rule out the scammers. Communities all across the world have realized the potential of this disruptive technology.

If we think at a personal level, we all are parts of different communities ourselves. You may be an Android/iOS fan, a Marvel/DC fan, a Messi/Ronaldo fan, and so on. Without giving much thought to it we can easily identify the role we, as individuals play, in the popularity of the things we follow. There is a reason why iOS fans are waiting in long queues on the first day to get their devices, despite them being incredibly expensive and there is a reason why movies like Avengers are often houseful during the first week they are released.

Space Marvel Announces Its Launch – a Time-Based NFT Game to Debut in Summer of 2022 – Blockchain News Site https://t.co/xy6B3oowbO

— caritau.info (@CaritauInfo) April 21, 2022

Also, read – Is Blockchain a Hoax For Corporate? Experts Opinion

Coming back to the Blockchain ecosystem, we can verify the same phenomena. Popular currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple do well because there are communities that are financially involved and care about the progress of these projects. Without a community, it becomes difficult for any blockchain project to thrive.

Moreover, due to the elimination of middlemen from the ecosystem, many processes and transactions will take place in a peer-to-peer manner. Thus, the role of community management in a project is even more important which makes it imperative for them to invest in Community Managers. The communities have to be nurtured with care because the success and failure of the project depend on it.

People coming into the Blockchain Industry from various other fields are often astonished to see how lively, cooperative and compassionate the communities can be. For Example, one surprising development in the Blockchain ecosystem is the concept of Decentralized Autonomous Applications. These are basically companies that run on code with little or no human interference in making decisions. There are smart contracts that help people to define the criteria to vote on a proposal. These votes automatically define the criteria for acceptance or rejection of the proposals. There is no official Board of Directors and perhaps with the fusion of Artificial Intelligence with Blockchain, they might not be required. This clearly shows that future developments will make the distribution of power more decentralized and the role of communities will be increasingly useful in the future.

Vitalik Buterin who is the founder of Ethereum convinced a guy to compensate him in bitcoins in exchange for writing articles on his blog. That was the moment he started realizing the importance of blockchain and its potentially disruptive cases in the whole financial world. Thus, the community of bloggers gave birth to the idea of ‘Ethereum’, the second-largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization and more than that, provides an open-source platform for the development of decentralized applications on the blockchain through smart contracts.

Cardano, a cryptocurrency is setting another model for communities. Cardano aims to solve three main problems- Scalability, Sustainability, and Interoperability. For solving the problem of sustainability, the Cardano blockchain sets up a treasury using a smart contract. The treasury gets a small percentage of every transaction happening on the blockchain. When a developer wants to make some changes to the blockchain, he/she submits a proposal, which is voted upon by the community. If the proposal is approved, the developer can be granted funds for the particular development he/she wants to undertake.

By solving the problem of Interoperability, Cardano aims to become the Internet of Blockchains which can be a huge step in bringing all the blockchain communities together.

The importance of communities also lies in the fact that many blockchain projects are open source. Thus, it is the developers’ community that helps in refining the code and the systems for a particular blockchain. It helps to bring the knowledge and expertise of a large number of developers under one project.

When talking about communities, charitable contributions come to my mind. On being requested by the founder of DonorsChoose.org, Chris Larsen, the co-founder of Ripple donated $29 million to the platform. DonorsChoose.org helps teachers post classroom to request and facilitate the donors to choose which project they want to donate to. Through this contribution, Ripple was able to find 35,000 classroom requests and support all schools across the United States.

As has always been said, any company or project is run by people. Communities are responsible for solving problems and pushing the human race forward to better and innovative technologies while also helping the societies grow. Owing to this fact, it is evident that communities are a crucial factor in the whole ecosystem of the blockchain.