Best Practices for Decentralized Communities!

Based on the cultural practices we’ve been developing plus your personal experiences, what’s the best advice you would give to someone starting a decentralized community?

We kicked off the last Soft Gov call with this question, and here are some of the answers we got from @Tamara, @santigs, @Juankbell, @natesuits, @durgadas, @Griff, @ZeptimusQ, @sem, @mateodaza, @metaverde ⚡

• Find out what is that you are uniquely driven towards!

• Similar to starting a company or any initiative with partners, it’s important to have people you work well with and have a shared vision.

• Make sure everyone shares a similar language (way of communicating).

• Build trust!

• Intentionally pick which platforms are gonna host the community based on their features.

• Have clear paths to participation

• Promote thought diversity

• Build a foundation of beliefs and values that you all can operate around and grow incrementally over time.

• Have a few stewards to initiate the process with time and dedication to create a welcoming environment and an initial set of values.

• Transparency all the way!

• Impact Hours helps everyone to see who’s contributing despite personal or work differences.

• Clear alignment between the values and the goals of the organization. Everyone should feel united within the same goals

• Everyone is equal and looks after each other, if they are doing good or bad.

• Reading governing the commons is a really good practice. The 8 principles make you realize the importance of things that are hard to put in an equation.

• “Simply following profit maximization in a CPR will be the exact strategy to destroy it”

• Look for long term strategy rather than short term profit.

• Look into Emma Goldman. If you want to be a part of a collective, you should ask yourself why you are here.

• Work with each other instead of denying each other.

• The humanness of the Commons feels special from here because in some way we are more connected with each other, like a group of friends.

• Have objectives and social agreements.

• Nourish a learning environment, we are here learning together and building something that has meaning!

• Understand roles and the social dynamics of the group to not fall into the Tyranny of Structurelessness

• Build a culture of gratitude, this is fckn awesome!

• Have nested ecosystems and give people the agency to lead working groups and initiatives.

• Starting off small and closed. There is the desire of radical inclusivity, but when you actually start a decentralized economy, it’s important to curate the people who are value aligned. Maybe everyone can get in at some point, but not as whales to start.

• Make it warm! Encourage, be grateful and incentivize even small tasks, they will give other the courage to take bigger steps.

• Establish a clear narrative and the parameters of what you are doing.

• Keep everything open source!

• Have meetings where everyone can see and jump in like on Discord.

• Radical transparency is part of the universe. You have to include the people that would disrupt your thing to figure out how to not let them disrupt it.

💡 What are your thoughts? Please drop other advices to this list! 🙌