Let’s say we are developing a community-driven media franchise.
The most impactful members of a community are called fans.
A community of fans is called a fandom.
The history of fandom is volatile. The bigger a property, the stronger the reactions on governance decisions, even small ones. There are numerous properties that flourished by embracing their fans’ input, and even more who’ve suffered their wrath upon ignoring their suggestions.
Fans can be Co-creators.
And what does that mean, to give ownership to fans, to let them take part in the decision making process of their beloved properties, to decide on the future of their favorite franchise?
Web2 may have shown us the power of community engagement, but in Web3, we are witnessing the rise of community ownership.
This is all about the disruptive nature of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, and how they change the relationship between fans and franchise property holders.
DAOs are horizontal organizations ran by culture, consensus, transparency and collaboration.
It means the community needs to be built up around that sense of ownership.
An initial core team creates the foundation for development, and takes the first steps in building community around a project.
That community attracts a small number of casual contributors, and this contribution grows to community-driven working groups, tackling specific areas of a project that require collaboration.
These contributors are rewarded for their output, and as the community grows even further, more working groups can be created, each with their own budgets and operational goals, as proposed and elected by holders of the governance token, fans themselves.
Example: Sue loves skateboard designs, she also specializes in 3D animation, and she is a fan of the art project Nifty Boards, featuring custom skateboard decks as digital assets. As a member of the Nifty Boards community, Sue signals her abilities through interaction in their social channels. When the Nifty Boards DAO votes on development for a spin off game using the existing assets, Sue is able to join a workgroup to co-create the animations, receiving rewards and governance tokens for her output. Since she was already personally invested in the project itself as a member of the community, her contributions can be more meaningful than an outside third party receiving the same compensation. Now Sue was compensated for engaging with a project in her line of interest and will be able to use her governance tokens to create new proposals and vote in the decision making process of the overall project.
Through that method, the most engaged members of the community are directly crafting the future of their beloved properties, while providing their own talents to the betterment of an organization.
That should also boost the broadening of operations featuring original content such as new games, media products, merchandising and other derivatives from the project’s intellectual property.
That intellectual property can also be tied to the digital assets created through game mechanics and collected by the players, and reward their appearances in franchised properties to asset holders.
Example: Joe owns a Captain Sara Sky NFT, and through its ownership contract, he receives participation fees from the profits of any property created that features that character. If the Cyberskies community votes to create a book including that character, Joe will receive financial proceeds from book sales. The book itself could be linked to Joe’s Captain Sara Sky NFT, through a smart contract that automatically grants royalties to the original asset’s holder upon each sale.
Do you think this is feasible or just too crazy?
What if I told you a similar structure was already happening with multiple digital asset based projects, including the most notorious one in the NFT scene?
By the way, this is actually the framework for the Cyberskies community, so if you would be interested in co-creating a web3 franchise with an amazing team, let us know.
