Have you ever had ideas and thoughts so intense about something you’re obsessed with that you get excited and euphoric and overwhelmed and you can’t sleep?

It is my strong belief that once ENS launches Namechain it will be of utmost importance for all of us ENS contributors and supporters to work as hard as ever on cultivating the builder ecosystem and culture there.

ENS as a protocol and an onchain identity primitive already has everything builders need to enable self-sovereign digital identity and a thriving ecosystem of identity-related apps.

Furthermore, it is composable enough to ensure seamless integration with complementary technologies, allowing devs to experiment, innovate, and push boundaries of what’s possible even more.

I expect a big surge in identity-focused apps, protocols, and tools to pop up on Namechain bringing the vision of self-sovereign digital identity closer to reality. But I don’t like leaving things to chance and betting on belief that they’ll come organically.

But there’s one essential prerequisite for this transformation: ATTRACTING AND RETAINING BUILDERS.

We need to ask ourselves some fundamental questions:

- What brings people to certain ecosystems?
- What motivates them to build there?
- Most importantly, what inspires them to STAY?

As an active ENS ecosystem participant, Service Provider, and aspiring steward, but also a ZKsync delegate focused on creating their builder ecosystem, I’ve spent considerable time exploring these questions.

The answers lie in a combination of key things:

1. Clear Vision and Mission

- Mission and Vision statement: what are we building towards and why?
- Sense of purpose: being part of something bigger / revolutionary, and solving real-world problems.
- Value alignment: decentralization, open-source ethos, censorship-resistance, etc. (this is ecosystem-specific)

2. Technical excellence

- Tooling: High-quality tools, SDKs, APIs, docs, and integrations - making the development experience a joyful ride
- Reliable infrastructure: secure, stable, low downtime, predictable performance
- Innovations: unique features, thoughtful design architecture, modular and composable, allowing creative expression through code.

3. Financial incentives

- Funding: grants, hackathons, incubation programs, fellowships, etc.
- Contributions: through bug bounties, plugins store, milestone-based funding to encourage engagement, etc.
- Innovative programs: Service Provider program, Retro grants, etc.

4. Governance

- Skin in the game: Give most dedicated builders and contributors governance rights or influence over the development direction / roadmap.
- Predictable governance: stable, fair, transparent, inclusive, non-radical, just and welcoming to others.

5. Community and culture (it’s all about the people!)

- A thriving builder culture: establishing a mission-driven collective!
- Supportive and open communities: easy access to help, mentorship, collaboration, etc.
- Recognition and celebration: celebrating each other's success and highlighting achievements and major wins (new products, partnerships, etc.)
- Mission alignment: ecosystems that embody the values developers care about are more likely to retain dedicated builders

6. Access to users

- Established user base: builders prefer chains that have established user bases for their applications to thrive.
- Network effects: ecosystems with flagship "killer" apps often attract developers who want to build complementary or synergistic solutions.
- No users on chain/protocol = no one builds there = extremely hard to solve cold-start problem.

7. Marketing and branding

- Coolness factor: chains like Base have managed to make themselves feel culturally aligned with builders, promoting themselves as “the place to build”.
- Prominent Advocates and Evangelists: devs often follow where influential figures, teams, and companies are building.

By addressing these areas strategically, we can ensure that Namechain not only attracts builders but also inspires them to stay.

It's 2am and this is what keeps me up at night. So I thought I'd share it with you.

I wish I could also share how much of a personal challenge I take it upon myself to crack the code of building the most vibrant ecosystems in the projects I deeply care about.

But, we’ll get there anon. One step at a time.

GN.

🫡