
The Web3 Trilemma and Crypto Communities Growth
The blockchain trilemma is an issue many people in Web3 are familiar with. It’s a trade-off between three competing factors: scalability, security, and decentralization.
It’s easy for people to think this relates only to blockchains themselves. However, this trilemma reappears in all aspects of Web3.
If you take any project, its success depends upon its scalability. It isn’t easy to maintain the resources needed to keep a project on track without a growing base of users.
Likewise, many projects have gained traction only to face security vulnerabilities. These can be losing access to wallets or discovering that the artwork for the NFTs is plagiarized from someone else.
Even when the first two are taken care of, the ability for a project to gain real traction is when it becomes decentralized. Without significant community involvement, the project depends on the team’s constant energy, which can limit its growth.
The challenge is balancing all these areas, especially how to devote sufficient time and resources to each of them. They also depend on the project team’s skills to do this effectively.
Often, at the beginning of a project’s life, the team’s focus is on scalability. They see the limited resources and traction they have as stifling their growth. If only they had more resources and Web3 influencers would take notice of them.
A classic example is the meteoric rise of the Bored Apes Yacht Club. If only every project could muster a tenth of that support, they’d be hugely successful.
Scalability requires scaffolding, which is often overlooked. What happens if your followers 10x overnight, and you go from 1,000 users to 10,000?
Many think of the additional revenue but need to remember the extra voices. Just as the project now has ten times the amount of money coming in, it also has ten times the number of complaints, issues, and ideas.
What happens when those voices don’t feel heard? What happens to the project’s reputation if, instead of being a loyal community, it becomes tired and unhappy with the lack of attention it’s receiving from the team?
With every growth phase come more problems and issues. These are either opportunities to improve the project or pitfalls that can lead to its downfall.
It can be as simple as running a reward campaign and not rewarding people adequately or on time. Logistics matter, especially when it comes to people.
That’s why Zesh is streamlining the process of all aspects of growth and engagement for projects. With easy-to-use tools that integrate within a single suite, we aim to solve the problems projects have in all areas of growth.
Zesh can’t do everything for you, but it can make your life easier.