These visual indicators can help save time when vetting projects

This post is comprised of one, two threads that were made on Twitter. Thus, the format might read a little different than a post made as a blog first.

Quick alpha regarding community. Take a look at the top left corner of Discord.

Boosts

There’s no boosts here next to the server name

If there isn’t a photo and the server has not been boosted, there’s a good chance that the community might not be that active.

An image in the corner can be a good sign, but the better signal is the number of boosts that have been allocated to a given Discord server.

@WoodiesNFT has a very nice photo and 23 boosts (amazing, but more on this later)!

This image and the progress bar can be turned off, so you’ll want to pay attention to the rupee-looking like icon to the left of the server name. If you hover over it, you can see the level and number of boosts.

This server has 19 boosts!

Because each boost costs real money ($4.99) paid every month, this signal is a little different from the number of members that a given Discord may have.

Boosts are akin to a philanthropist donating funds to an artist to allow them to focus on their work. Supporters do not have to boost, but in doing so are putting their money where their mouth is, so to speak.

Although boosting makes a user standout with a special badge, sometimes there are benefits to boosting, like earning presale. Very generally, boosting happens because someone really believes in a project.

For that matter, I look at boosts the following way:

• 1: No vote of confidence from the community yet. Most likely boosted by the project owner
• 2–6: Developing community. Some believers
• 7–13: Active community. Mild belief in project. Server banner is unlocked
• 14+: Vibrant community. Strong belief in project
• 50+: Super strong, active, and tight-nit community
• 150+: Boosts are probably being gamed (ie. presale spot for boosting). Be on alert.

Good Morning Cafe is a robust community, like their coffee!

Stickers and Emojis

Like most modern chat platforms out there, sending emojis and GIFs is almost as synonymous to texting as the phrase “gm” is to NFT’s.

After looking at over 100 Discord channels, I’ve also found that the most active have a large number and variety of both stickers and emojis.

As a quick primer, stickers are the happy medium between sometimes clunky GIFs and occasionally message-lacking emojis. Stickers, are also coincidentally sized between the two (smaller than a GIF, but larger than an emoji).

Both stickers and emojis can be customized/added to Discord servers by admin, which adds a level of curation to the mix. This is important as there are a finite number of allocated slots for stickers and emojis.

So, how can these stickers and emojis be used to determine community engagement? Go to a Discord server you’re in and click this flappy button.

It’s flappy to see you.

This button will bring up the sticker modal. It will default to “frequently used stickers,” but if you scroll on the left, you can click the corresponding server image and see what stickers are available.

There’s a somewhat similar concept going on to boosts here, where different levels/number of boosts equates to potential stickers that there can be.

• Level 0 = No custom stickers available
• Level 1 = 15 total custom sticker slots
• Level 2 = 30 total custom sticker slots
• Level 3 = 60 total custom sticker slots

If you find that a server doesn’t have any custom stickers available, it most likely means that the project team hasn’t invested in boosting the server. The project probably will not have a lot of community members engaging with one another.

Where things get better is if you start seeing stickers.

There isn’t really a metric here for number of stickers used and how active a community is. The important thing is that there are stickers.

Anecdotally, there is a noticeable difference between servers with a handful of stickers and those on the 30–60 end of the spectrum.

Most of the time, if sticker slots are not being used, it’s because the emojis do a great job at conveying the feelings that members have.

Due to the default number of emojis set at 50 and going on up to 250 for a well-boosted server, it can be hard to determine if extra emojis are being used at first glance.

Many servers don’t even use up their initial 50 allocation, which makes looking at emojis still a signal but a little harder to use.

Discord servers with less activity tend to have, not only fewer emojis, but emojis that mostly express the same sentiment. It can be hard for members to express “WAGMI” if all the emojis are basically different colored squares, for example.

Lower activity servers also tend to share similar emojis to other servers in terms of look.

People love Pepe

On the other hand, @ToyBoogers knocks it out of the park. Not only do they have an engaged community, but they also have invested and taken the time to enhance the experience for their members with these amazing emojis.

Designing unique emojis is such a nice touch!

If you want to dive deeper into a server’s culture, take a look at the difference between designs. If you’re looking at sticker or emojis and wondering what is going on, there may be some internal meme involved.

Often, a highly engaged server will have their own set of memes. Almost all of @exquisiteland’s emoji set is a series of memes from the game itself, for instance.

Best not to get on the gorblin’s bad side.

I hope this helps determine what’s going on with a Discord server more easily during due diligence. There are always going to be servers that break these conventions, of course, but these are general signals I’ve uncovered.

If you’ve enjoyed this, feel free to follow me @cryptomoogle. As always, let me know your thoughts!