Community Builders Program Check in - Week 3

Park Feierbach
11 min read
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Hello everyone! Namada is a little over three weeks into the Namada Community Builder Program - so here's a little update on what I'd like to see either more or less of, and some fine-tuning I think would benefit Community Builders. With this in mind, I'm going to go over the following in this post: 1. Review the Namada Community Builder program structure 2. What Namada expects of those who are a part of the Community Builder Program (since, surprisingly {or maybe unsurprisingly}, reading th

Hello everyone!

Namada is a little over three weeks into the Namada Community Builder Program - so here's a little update on what I'd like to see either more or less of, and some fine-tuning I think would benefit Community Builders. With this in mind, I'm going to go over the following in this post:

  1. Review the Namada Community Builder program structure
  2. What Namada expects of those who are a part of the Community Builder Program (since, surprisingly {or maybe unsurprisingly}, reading the docs doesn't make this clear enough - I can take that in stride as Namada works to improve what it has so far!)
  3. Some fine-tuning that I think can be done with what Namada is seeing so far.
  4. Going over some principles that have to do with what the project can lead to, in the long term, and how I think the work going into the program so far can lead to this outcome.
  5. Projects that I think understand these principles.

Before anything else, there are a few terms to define:

  • Stewards (Stewards) - a group of individuals associated with the project who converged in such a way to found the protocol and bring into the current stage. (For now, Stewards describes ‘early community Stewards’ as mentioned in the Community Builder Handbook.)
  • Community Builders (CBs) - Those who applied to the Community Builder Programme with the aim of becoming long-term members.

Reviewing the Namada Community Program Structure (and its next steps)

To date, most of the Stewards on Namada have either been people who were previously involved in the project (some of whom wrote the base code) or those who came here through discovery and clear commitment. This process has meant that while Namada aims to find truly passionate people, this approach is also quite slow - and that Namada has had to wait for people to come to the network to bubble up through commitment to the work.

As network launch approaches, Stewards have worked to iterate - since Namada prides itself on credibility, Namada is willing to be very direct about when approaches are experiments, and starting this community has been no different. There's a fine balance between finding high-quality people and avoiding airdrop farmers (sorry y'all, Namada just doesn't need your help here), while still increasing attention to the utility of the network - meaning that there has to be some sort of acceleration in the immediate term met against the desires of the network in the long term. The Community Builder aims to build community, hence 'Community Builder' - but building community is hard!

The Community Builder's program is structured to seek out those who are most aligned with the Namada vision and who will bring their passion to the forefront. Namada holds the belief that Community can mean those who want to see X protocol persist deep into the future through advocacy of the protocol's implications. In theory, the token's value will reflect this, which is why we don't focus on that as any sort of metric.

Selection process

This meant that Stewards had to find a way to sample a maximal attentive population - those who are already aware of Namada - to find those who mirror the ideological drive of current Stewards and contributors to the Namada.

The approach that Stewards are taking for selection (for now) is to:

  1. Sample a large population of those who are aware of Namada
  2. Filter down to those who demonstrated a higher degree of attention by meeting application requirements
  3. Launch the program with an initial trial period through a Community Builder RPGF Round
  4. Use this RPGF round, coupled with community voting, to refine those who have made it through these filters to a committed population of Community Builders who want to be associated with the project in the long term.
  5. Once the first voting period has concluded, remaining CBs will be initiated into different working groups that are needed by Namada based on individual specialties.

Out of the initially sampled set (a number that exceeds the ~50k followers that Namada has on X), Stewards ended up with close to 10k applications (!). This was filtered down to 2000 applicants who met initial heuristic selection requirements, and then finally down to the ~250 Community Builders who received the role in the discord. 

From here, this final amount will be further filtered down to a population of Community Builders who demonstrate a particularly high degree of commitment based on a complex rubric in addition to the votes received by the community, and the rest who did not meet a standard will be pruned out of the set. This could mean that at the end of the first RPGF round, Stewards will prune out as many as 200 of the initial Community Builder Program, leaving 50 CBs across function areas. The reason for doing this is that Namada wants to filter down a manageable and committed population of Community Builders, rather than selecting from the outset.

What meaningful contributions can mean for the future of Namada

(aka: do you know how to follow instructions, anon?)

As I mentioned above - the idea behind the Community Builders is that those who remain in the CB program after the voting period will very likely go on to have more significant roles in the community.

The implications of this are important. The point of Namada is that it maintains its place as a public good in the long term. Seeding and finding a community of people who fully understand the protocol and its implications means finding a group of people who will work on all aspects of maintaining the protocol in the long term, with the intention that this work is supported by the community for the value that it provides.

The work that goes into building a community is never straightforward - other communities are either fully supported by the teams that helped start the protocol, or dissolve into a community of people who are fully focused on price-action and the value of the underlying token. It's the goal of the Namada network not to end up this way - we want this protocol to persist as long as it is relevant that a portal is needed between public and private worlds, and a community that is centered around this aim is what will ensure this persistence.

Fine-tuning contributions

With the above in mind- the majority of contributions that Stewards have seen so far have been... somewhat low-effort. This is somewhat to be expected - the program does ask contributors that they read the docs - and those that have are clearly following the guidelines in trying to create contributions that are seen as helpful to the outcome, which is leading to the best results, while those who don't will clearly be filtered out in the long run.

It's been mentioned in the forums here and there - but low-effort contributions as community members (especially those that use very obvious ChatGPT, which we heavily discourage the use of) will be awarded according to this level of effort and their impact, and these metrics are to be measured both on a collective and a selective basis.

(A quick note here: Stewards won't impose standards on the ways that the Community Builders themselves will evaluate one another's contributions the same way we will for Stewards - as a result there is the assumption that there will be some cabal-like behavior in the way that CBs allocate their votes. In general, this is fine. In my opinion, it's very difficult to design perfect systems, and I'd rather Namada work toward a good system than try to design one from the outset only to encounter the reality that we are not meeting an unrealistic-yet-hoped-for expectation.)

On the other hand, there are a number of CBs who have been putting in a substantial effort and creating material I think aligns well with the hope to build out a better future for Namada, both through understanding what we as Stewards are looking for and in the quality of the work that is being done. This bodes well.

What to expect over the next couple of weeks leading up to the closure of the program:

Hopefully, as a result of this post, it will be slightly more clear what it is that Namada is looking for out of contributions.

Over the next few weeks, Community Builders can expect to be educated by the Coordinape team on how to use their platform to participate in voting on contributions. Competition between CBs should heat up as people continue to try to make bigger and better contributions.

What Namada expects out of Community Builders

There are two high-level things that Namada is looking for in contributions.

  • A commitment to quality, self-education, collaboration, and accuracy
  • A clear willingness to think critically about how to contribute, and to be creative in the ways they do so.

The specifics can be found in the docs here.

Community Builder projects that understand CB principles very well:

With all of this said, here are a few projects (and individuals) in the CB program that are doing a great job of showing their worth by creating meaningful resources and contributing to awareness of Namada. These are just a few that I’ve seen, 

For concrete outcomes, there are the following focus areas that CBs are able to contribute to (this is outlined in the docs, but it's here for you to see as well, just to reiterate!):

Community Management and Outreach

  • What I’ve been seeing 
    • I’ve seen some people plan meetups, both online and in person (though the latter… I don’t know if I trust that this has actually happened - it will be great if/when there is evidence that it has!
    • Answering other people’s questions about Namada on Discord / Telegram(s) / Twitter (s/o to users like u/!xela and u/NickShakel, both of whom I have seen jumping about in other people's contributions to help out.
  • What I haven’t been seeing
    • I want to see more collaboration, and a higher frequency of events! It would be fantastic to see more people coordinating with others to ensure that their materials are accurate, and that there was more documenting of the work done here.

Examples

  •  Indonesian Language Telegram Voicechat call - u/CaptainClogs, u/maragung and many others
Fantastic effort here, an voicechat call to answer questions from a 116 member community on what Namada is - I’ve been told there will be a review of this effort in the near future so we can find out everything that was discussed, but the effort alone to hold an inclusive event about Namada and how it works is fantastic!
  • Community Development - Encouraging the creation of Language Channels in the Discord / Changing the Discord / Educational Content Creation - u/WhiteRose, u/alex, u/Trouvaille, u/CryptoDruide, u/Thuseven and many others
This initiative is ongoing and being drafted, but as it is built out, it will be a formidable tool for educating the community on Namada and why the network will have a much wider impact.

Content Creation and Amplification

  • What I have been seeing:
    • Creating content doesn't mean creating images that have taglines that have been repeated over and over again - this suits user conversion to some degree, but it doesn't necessarily demonstrate a deep understanding of the protocol that we seek in a CB.
    • Also important to see people make the effort to come up with meaningful ways to amplify the content that is created. Good content that isn't seen by anyone doesn’t necessarily lead to spreading the Vision of Namada.
  • What I haven't been seeing:
    • I want to encourage so much more collaboration in the creation of media - it's been good to see this from a few CBs, but a strong marker of successful community will be when it's clear that people are differentiating into key focus areas and are working together on projects.

Examples

I particularly like this one because I think it reflects a strong desire to be useful to the Namada community - it’s straightforward, summarizes well (and none of it looks like it was made with AI)
  • Translation Database - [URL not shared for coord sake]  - started by u/kelpie (who is a long-standing moderator of the Namada discord!)
While it’s difficult to verify that all of these articles weren’t just Google-translated into other languages, it’s great to see that expanding the reach of Namada is not something that requires a substantial amount of effort, and putting together this resource in order to expand the reach of Namada media is a substantial effort. Once this table is filled out, this will be a formidable resource to learn about Namada
  • Blogposts - X Post - by u/ZeroKn0wledge
Loved this one - the CB clearly understands both the subject matter and its implications. No notes.
  • Informational Video - Unlocking the MASP/CC - u/Purple_Money and u/!xela
Though this isn't finished yet - seeing this kind of collaboration is really heartening and shows me that we're headed in the right direction with the community members that we have.

Development and Technical Contribution

  • What I’ve been seeing 
    • There's already a longstanding tradition of technical community members assisting one another, but this has really ticked up as Namada has approached mainnet - with CBs stepping in to ensure that information is accurate and people are being helped in ways that are concrete and continuous.
  • What I haven't been seeing
    • I haven't seen enough people collating resources and ensuring that while they are accessible to people, everyone in the community knows about them. This is a crucial step to ensuring that we're resilient against all influx of different users who will very likely soon be in the server after mainnet.

Examples

This effort hits two requirements of those who contribute as Community Builders: I. Expanding the reach of Namada to other communities by writing in a different language II. Writing clear support information that can be re-used as a resource
CryptoSJ.net have been longstanding members of the community, with Msobh showing up constantly in testnet channels to the aid of other community members and going further. This is exemplary of being someone who wants to ensure that the community is one that continues to grow.
  • Technical Support (and MUCH more) - u/DanielMandragora, u/sirouk | Tududes
This should go without saying, but nevertheless should be said - these two community members were by default added to the Community Builder’s program based on a longstanding history of contribution in various forms - providing technical support, writing scripts, answering questions for others, even showing up to digital events and speaking on Namada’s behalf based on the knowledge they hold.

Wrapping out and looking forward

Hopefully, some of these examples steer us in the direction of even more meaningful community contributions, with many of the users mentioned here (and many more not mentioned who are a part of the CB program) going on to lead Namada into the future.

As we look into the future beyond Namada's mainnet, it's a given that we're going to need the foundations of a community focused on Privacy as a Public Good banding together to ensure that this rings true.

This far, it seems like we're off to a pretty strong start.