In the short time I have been in the crypto space, one of the things that stood out to me is the importance of communities. These communities can be a set of users of a protocol, a group of contributors to a DAO, or just a collective of people vibing around, ready to be tapped for certain causes. Given the open-source nature of crypto native products and services, communities are one of the highly valued moats and differentiators of any protocol or organization. Similar protocols can have different trajectories depending on its community of users (Uniswap and Sushiwap). By the very nature of their varying missions, each DAO is different based on the type of contributors it attracts (RaidGuild vs MetricsDAO). A community of NFT (non-fungible token) collectors can be different depending on the ethos and status projected by the NFT (Cryptopunks vs Nouns).

How do NFTs fit into the aspect of community? Outside of their financial nature, NFTs are an on-chain signal regarding a certain quality of a user. Some of these signals can be of status (Bored Apes), belief (Poolys), and wealth (Uniswap LP Positions). NFTs holders can be tapped by particular protocols and organizations depending on what these NFTs signal. With this, NFTs offer a way to bootstrap communities. These communities can then be incentivized towards being users of a protocol, be driven towards supporting different causes, or be readily tapped to become contributors to a DAO.

Formally introduced by Mirror last May 25, 2022, Writing NFTs are interesting in particular because they are explicit in what they are signaling, which is about the central idea of the written piece. These NFTs are digital collectible versions of the writings published on Mirror. Hosted on Optimism, a Layer 2 Ethereum scaling solution, these can be minted virtually without any transaction costs. For writers, this presents a way for them to truly own and showcase their ideas. For collectors, this provides a unique way for them to show their support around an idea or cause. Currently in the primary market, over 70% of these collectors own just one distinct Writing NFT. The rest have at least two.

By now, you’ve probably heard about cryptocurrencies. The word crypto seems inescapable: it creeps up in dinner conversations with friends, when complaining about the seemingly never-ending inflation, and in podcasts you listen to every day. 

A quick search on Google Trends for the word “crypto” yields the following result. We can see the interest in crypto truly exploded in the past two years.

One day, your interest hits a tipping point and you can't take the FOMO anymore. You roll up your sleeves and decide to figure out what exactly crypto is 😤. Except, you find yourself both very excited 🤩 and very lost 😞. 

Hey there! My name is Andrew Hong, one of many analysts in the web3 data space. I’ve spoken ad nauseam about the benefits of everything being open source in web3, especially how it affects everything about how data is analyzed and built upon.

I’ve thought a lot about how to best continue to bring data education into this space, following up on the 30-day OurNetwork Learn program from October 2021. After playing with a few formats, I’ve decided to slowly build a talented collective of web3 data individuals who are really committed to learning, building, and teaching in this space.

Web3 Data Degens is focused on making data literacy, skills, and community accessible to everyone. This means being open about everything:

• expert guides on leveraging tools like Dune Analytics
• live-streamed sessions that break down protocols from nothing (with all the frustrations and debugging included)
• practice questions with solutions that’ll help you prepare for any web3 data job
• the storytelling of our own journeys in our own words