How Communities Work in Crypto

Mark Lurie:

Welcome to WTF Crypto, where we peel back layers of the onion of the crypto universe to understand what's really going on, and how it affects you and your portfolio. I'm your host, Mark Lurie and as a caveat, nothing in this podcast is legal or investing advice.

Mark Lurie:

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Mark Lurie:

Today, we're trying a different episode format where we talk with key people on the shipyard team about their hot takes in some of the most important and interesting topics in crypto. Right now, we're talking about community in crypto with Ben Klein, Shipyard's head of community.

Ben Klein:

Hey Mark, really happy to be here. Thanks so much.

Mark Lurie:

So recently I did a little, very simple analysis of on chain metrics, and realized that the correlation between token market caps and Twitter followers is actually in many times tighter than the correlation between tokens and on chain metrics like volume. And that was really surprising to me.

Mark Lurie:

But on the other hand, not that surprising because people talked a lot about how much community matters in crypto, and it does matter. I think those correlations prove it. But it's a complicated issue. And it's a word that's thrown around, and it's unclear what that actually means.

Mark Lurie:

So I'm really eager to dig into what, that does mean both for Shipyard and for the broader crypto ecosystem. What do you think people think when they hear the word "community"?

Ben Klein:

So really this started with a stinger, right? You think I would know what community means being the head of community. But what do people think when they think about community? To me, it's a place where you go to feel safe, to ask questions, to learn. And it's that adage, "Show me who your friends are, and I'll show you who you are." It's where you go to fit in, to be with your people.

Mark Lurie:

That's a great point. And it's a good answer because it's on a high enough level of distraction that it captures the spirit of community. Well, without getting bogged down in the particulars, right? Which is community is Twitter, or community is Telegram, or community is Discord.

Mark Lurie:

So what are the various places that you see community happening in crypto? And what are the differences between the depth of interaction that happen in those different channels?

Ben Klein:

Well, in crypto [inaudible 00:03:00] large, I would say the main ones are Telegram, Discord, and Twitter. For Shipyard and for Clipper, without question, it is Discord and Twitter, with Discord being more important than Twitter.

Mark Lurie:

Interesting. Okay. And that's surprising because I think probably most people in the general public are very familiar with Twitter. But they're less familiar with Discord. Can you unpack what Discord is and how it's used in crypto?

Ben Klein:

So Discord is an online, real time messaging platform almost a message board. And for example in our channel, you join what's called a Discord server. And then within that server, there are a number of sub channels within categories. So we might have our internal category that has all the sub channels where we talk about what's going on with Clipper, with the dev team. And not everyone has access to that.

Ben Klein:

But then more importantly, there will be the general channels where there might be just your main general chat where people talk. There's the I need help channel. There's the memes channel where people post their jokes about Clipper, their illustrations. There's a tech help channel. And then specifically right now, and I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit more, is we're running in Adventure, which is a cross between a digital scavenger hunt and a Harry Potter Hogwarts house cup.

Ben Klein:

And people had to, within the Clipper community, they had to specifically sign up for this Adventure. And they go and have fun with us together. And we'll have many, many subcategories in the Adventure channel for each team, for each quest. And that might be invisible to the regular user. You might have need to have a certain role.

Ben Klein:

So Discord's a place people hang out. It's a place to give information, to chat, and to flex your flares in your certain roles to show your prestige within the community.

Mark Lurie:

Okay. So it's a cross between Slack where you have within company discussions, and a public message board like Reddit or something where you're communicating with the general public, and Twitter where messages are just flying back and forth. Interesting. Okay.

Ben Klein:

Yeah. It's probably most similar to Slack. But I've used a lot of these both professionally and recreationally. And Discord seems to be the best. It's easiest to pin information and find it if you need it. It's the most attractive. And the ability to assign roles to people, give people flare, give them the little badges on their shirt, it seems to be very popular.

Mark Lurie:

Interesting. So Discord is really where a lot of community happens in crypto, which is odd. Because in the last crypto cycle, in the 2017, 18 era, it all happened on Telegram. It didn't happen on Discord at all. And it's actually interesting that it's moved to Discord in this cycle.

Mark Lurie:

A lot of times I try to figure out why. And I'm really not sure of the answer. I guess part of the reason is you can create multiple channel. It's just richer. You can create multiple channels on multiple topics. Whereas in Telegram, it's a little bit noisy. It's not really meant for many to many. It's meant for one to many, or one to one, or small groups. Does that resonate with you?

Ben Klein:

I think that's true. I'm not a Telegram power user. I came into the crypto space after Telegram was popular. But because I joined Shipyard and needed to become a little bit more proficient with Telegram, I've explored a bit. And just that it's so noisy, once you've posted a message if you want to find it later, it could be buried a thousand deep, the inability to create lots of channels. It's just hard to navigate. Organization is much better in Discord.

Mark Lurie:

Makes sense. Okay. So earlier you mentioned that community is a place where people can feel safe. It's really interesting because you would think community would be something that would be important to brands and companies around, throughout the economy. But it seems uniquely relevant in crypto. And I struggle to understand why.

Mark Lurie:

Maybe part of the reason is that they just don't call it "community" outside of crypto. They call it "brand" or "brand loyalty." But it's actually very similar. Do you think that community and crypto is similar difficulty to communities in other sectors? Is it unique to crypto or not?

Ben Klein:

Well, certainly community is important everywhere. But I do think there are unique aspects to community within the crypto space. And when you talk about brand, if I wear a Nike shirt outward outside in IRL in the meat space, people know that I'm a Nike user.

Ben Klein:

But in the crypto space, at least right now, what does it mean to be in the crypto space? You're probably trading coins. So there's no real way to outwardly show what you're a part of expect except to join the community of people that also believe in the certain project that you're behind.

Ben Klein:

And I think that's also why community is so important here because this is a new space. A wise person at Shipyard says that sharp edges, it's easy to get hurt here. And so there's a lot of learning to be done and good and bad.

Ben Klein:

I think community can act as a proxy for that learning, right? If you hop into a big Discord server and it's got 30,000 people and everyone says, "This is a project I care about. This project's good believe me," you don't have to do your learning. You can... strength in numbers. So that's I would say not the strongest aspect of community, because you're just leming your way along.

Ben Klein:

But the positive aspect of hopping in a Discord server of 30,000 people believe in project, is that's where you get to do your learning. You ask questions. You are appointed to resources. And the infrastructure for crypto is it's not there yet. There's not the easiest place to go. If you guys said, "Where do I need to go to learn about crypto?" You get, talk to 10 people, have 10 different answers. There's no go to space. So you learn from your friends. You learn from people who have been there before.

Mark Lurie:

Because there aren't no authorities, community becomes increasingly important.

Ben Klein:

I agree with that.

Mark Lurie:

Interesting. When you said that, I was thinking a few things as well. So one is Discord actually wasn't created around crypto. It was created around gaming initially, right? And I know you have actually a little background in gaming. So it's funny, gaming also has a strong element of community that you don't always see in other industries.

Ben Klein:

That's true. So I'll give a little background here. I am a former lawyer. But I didn't get the head of community role at Shipyard because of my legal ability. I actually got it because on the side I was a community manager for a realtime strategy game called "Warcraft III." And I am the owner of the largest "Warcraft III" server. It's called the gym and it's where everyone... This is an old game. It takes a lot of skill. And it's not very newbie friendly, much like crypto has a lot of sharp edges.

Ben Klein:

And the reason I became popular is we marketed towards new and returning players that hadn't played in 10 years. And it was very much beginner friendly. This is where you go to learn about the game. And our Discord server became the spot to go to find tutorials, strategy guides, get people to watch your games and give you tips, find coaches, find practice partners of every single level. And that learning ability, and especially the emphasis on friendliness and the love of learning and not being toxic to new people who don't know things, is the reason I became so popular.

Ben Klein:

And I think that we're trying to do that in and rather successfully in the Clipper Discord as well. We come in, especially with the Adventure, which we haven't talked about yet. But I'm sure that we will. The purpose-

Mark Lurie:

Oh, we will.

Ben Klein:

The purpose of the Adventure is not only to entertain, but is also to educate and to bring people together, to learn about Clipper, about Shipyard and about all the projects in Web 3.0 And crypto.

Ben Klein:

And we have put a priority on making sure that people are friendly and welcoming to new people because we need that new blood to survive. It's true everywhere. And it's especially true here in crypto, where if you are unknown, if you're not in the space, there's a lot of preconceived notions about it, many of them negative.

Ben Klein:

So it's very easy to be turned out of the space. And it's very easy to learn misinformation. So to know that there's a place to go where people are positive, friendly and searching for truth and searching for learning, not so much searching to separate a fool from his dollar, you can feel safe. And you'll want to keep going back there.

Mark Lurie:

Well, that's interesting. So that's a philosophy on community management, right? So before we dig into the adventure, what do you think makes a good community? What do you think makes good community management? Philosophically, how do you think about it? And what makes bad community and bad community management?

Ben Klein:

Okay. So community management, we'll talk about it specifically with regard to Clipper. And I think the majority of the community management is done within the Discord server. Because that's where the majority of the discourse happens.

Ben Klein:

There's a number of things that you need. First of all is transparency because we have 32,000 people in our Discord server... Let me check that number right quick. It might be... Oh, pardon me, we have 39,000 almost 40,000 members-

Mark Lurie:

Nice.

Ben Klein:

Almost 40,000 members in our Discord server.

Mark Lurie:

Getting ready to pop the champagne at 40.

Ben Klein:

Right. Many of them are new, many of them don't know what's going on. And they want to know. They're going to be asking a lot of questions.

Ben Klein:

So and the transparency, this is a product and a project that we want them to rely on and believe in. So we need to have transparency on what we're doing, and be able to answer questions and not high things.

Ben Klein:

Along with that transparency hand in hand is just a giver of information. So the Discord server's where people come for information, and we need to be able to give it to them, which means that information needs to be organized appropriately and easy to access.

Ben Klein:

Now, it doesn't matter how well you organize and give out information. It doesn't matter how perfect it is. There will still be people who miss the signs. That just happens in a community of 40,000 people. There will be questions that are going to be asked over and over and over again.

Ben Klein:

So along with information and transparency is the ability to handhold, and the earnestness and ability to answer the thousandth question the same way that you would've answered the first question. Because you're getting the same answers over and over and over again. And that's okay because that means that there are new people coming in. There are people that don't understand things. And you have to look at every time you... Once you see the thousandth and first question, it should be just another rich opportunity to help someone along.

Ben Klein:

Now to do that, obviously it can't be done by one person. You need to have an active and friendly team that believes in the same priorities that the head of community does. And we do have that. And we have picked them from the community.

Ben Klein:

Not only is it the dev team who I think is wonderfully active in the Discord, answering questions especially the tech questions that I can't answer. But the community itself, people have been on Clipper, sailing with clipper for more than a year. They're able to answer questions. And we've plucked them up and elevated their status as captains and moderators and ambassadors within the community.

Ben Klein:

And I've often thought, because look, it's hard to answer that thousandth question over and over again. And so you wonder what level of automation can you put into a community just to make it easier.

Ben Klein:

But when it comes down to it, it needs to feel genuine. And I really do believe that there has to be that human touch. And it necessarily means many multiples of man hours, just hanging out in the Discord, watching channels, answering questions, and being ready to answer them quickly. You can't make people wait because they don't like that.

Mark Lurie:

One takeaway from that is that it's a lot of work. It takes a real investment of time and attention and hearts in order to make a community genuine. It's striking to me that when you do that, you can create these incredibly strong communities and incredibly strong loyalty and people helping each other. And it really helps a project, propel a project forward as a mutual movement. It's movement built building. Right?

Ben Klein:

I agree with that.

Mark Lurie:

And it's probably got a lot of similarities to political action and movement building in the real world. And it's hard work.

Mark Lurie:

And as I listen to you, I think, "Well, why don't other brands do that hard work?" And it's probably because two other reasons that come top of mind. One is they have other ways to market to users. So traditional companies can do things like Google advertising and Twitter advertising. That's not allowed in crypto. Google and Facebook ban crypto advertisements. And so you're stuck. You can't do this paid marketing which is a huge... All of Google and Facebook's revenue, and these are two of the largest companies in the world, all of it comes from advertising. And yet they don't allow crypto advertising.

Mark Lurie:

So crypto companies have, because this easy way out is not available to them, they are forced into this community building effort, which takes a lot of effort. But ultimately can leave you better off with a stronger community. And so in some ways, we're developing best practices that are going to help above and beyond crypto.

Ben Klein:

I agree with you on that. I also think it's very generous of you to say that the crypto we've been forced into building community because we have to. And I say generous because not every community is created equally. And I do think that Shipyard and Clipper put the thought and effort into building a community. You hired me to do this job. And I know there are community positions in crypto all over the place. But I would not say that every project puts the time, effort and value into a community, and it makes a difference.

Mark Lurie:

Yeah.

Ben Klein:

And you can tell. You can tell when you hop into a project and you're just, you're looked at as a wallet as opposed to an actual person.

Mark Lurie:

So Ben, one of the biggest initiatives we have in community is this Adventure. And you've started talking about it a bit. Can you tell us a little bit more about it, and the scale on which it's working?

Ben Klein:

So the most recent Adventure that we've started was about two weeks ago. It is "Clipper Venture Number Two, the Spirit of Clipper Codes." And I don't want to reveal too much, but our six ships with about 4,000 people per ship are traveling around the crypto world. And they have been called into Adventure bay by spirit captains. And they're currently being led around the island by at the whim and will of these spirit captains and figuring out what to do.

Ben Klein:

For instance, in this class in week two, they've had to solve a code, solve a riddle, which gave them a password which would unlock a quiz. And in that quiz, they're learning a lot about defi and leverage and Dows and the Clipper products. So they have to do their homework to even solve the quiz. And they're incentivized to finish the quiz because they get points for finishing their quiz and that gives points to their ship. And of course, everyone wants to be the first ship that makes it into Harbor.

Ben Klein:

We're getting a lot of positive reception to it. People are cheering on their own ships. They're tweeting at Clipper DEX with their illustrations about what they're imagining is going on with the narrative. And it's just been a really fun to hang out in the Discord and watch them try and solve the puzzles that we made for them.

Mark Lurie:

There's huge interest, huge involvement, I've been really impressed by the community and by everything you've done with these adventures. So thank you, Ben.

Ben Klein:

Well, I appreciate that. But I have to jump in and say, it's a team effort. And so much credit goes to the dev team. So you put this thing into motion, and it's the team that brings it together. And really the community, wouldn't happen without 22,000 people being so enthusiastic in Discord.

Ben Klein:

So look, I appreciate the kudos, but I can't take them. I got to pass it on.

Mark Lurie:

That's wise and the mark of a good leader. And Ben, what other musings or thoughts do you have for reflections about community that you'd like to share with us before we tie off?

Ben Klein:

Let's get highfaluting and philosophical about community. Because... And I'm probably older than a lot of the people in the crypto space, I'm 37. But as I've had discussion with my age peers, I often come to the conclusion that people my age, we have lost a lot of faith in our institutions, right?

Ben Klein:

We had September 11th in 2001, we've had all these econom... We've been through what? Three economic crises in the last 15 years about, the banking crisis, the bailouts. All these institutions that you believe in, they seem to be failing. Or the public's faith in their strength is lessening.

Ben Klein:

And that's what actually drew me to crypto, in that it seems like this is a real chance to redistribute wealth and power. And to give access to play the game in a way that not everyone has been able to have access to.

Ben Klein:

And crypto really does feel like this is a chance to give access to everyone. And it's a reason that I chose Shipyard, in fact. Because Shipyard's purpose and mission is to make free and fair markets for all. That's a real mission that I can get behind coming from public defense, where I'm really fighting for the little people. We're here to fight for the little people. So I bring that to crypto writ large, but specifically our community. I want to educate, I want entertain. I want people to learn.

Ben Klein:

But this is a real movement. Our community, as you said, not only are they our stakeholders, not only are they the company, but this is a movement. We're trying to bring equality and access to everyone. And that's not a light topic. I wouldn't leave a job keeping people out of jail to come build a community in crypto if I didn't believe it had equal import upon society.

Ben Klein:

So I hope that our community members... It's fun to, what's the term? To ape in on a project, right? And it can be very loose. But people are playing with their wallets. People get hurt in this space. So I think people do give it that appropriate weight and that appropriate seriousness. And I hope in the back of everyone's mind to this community that this is a real movement.

Ben Klein:

In your last podcast with Adam Miller about Dows, he talked about how he really believes in the transformative ability of Dows to change everything that we do. I hold that vision.

Ben Klein:

I think crypto is the future and the world's going to be changed because of it. And we have the opportunity to build the community that makes those changes. And so I appreciate that Shipyard does not take that lightly. We're going to equip people with the information, ability, purpose, vision, and mission to make the world a better place. And nothing short of that is good enough for me. So that's what I'm working toward.

Mark Lurie:

That's amazing. I could not think of a better person to lead Shipyards community. And I very much agree that people are what create change. And community is how you bring together people. And now is an important time to do that. So thank you, Ben, for joining us. And for all you do, really appreciate it.

Ben Klein:

Pleasure, Mark. So happy to be here, so happy to be a part of Shipyard and Clipper.

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