The Dilemmas and Reflections of Community Building in Crypto Projects

Recently, many emerging cryptocurrency projects generally face the dilemma of breaking below par when their tokens are listed. To address this issue, some project teams have adopted strategies such as early control of chips and mandatory staking lock-ups, trying to create a better market performance in the early stages of token launch.

However, these practices reflect the project's misunderstanding of the community. They seem to equate the community with a potential source of selling pressure, believing that community members are the main reason for the price decline. This viewpoint raises a thought-provoking question: Why has the community that the project team carefully cultivated ultimately become a selling force rather than supporters?

In fact, many project teams lack an understanding of the essence of community building. Their motivation for establishing a community is often to meet the requirements for listing on exchanges or to increase the chances of being listed on higher-tier exchanges. As a result, the community is reduced to a string of cold numerical indicators, with project teams pursuing rapid growth in member count rather than quality.

A mature community growth model has already formed in the market, including the use of various task platforms, social media tools, and opinion leader matrices. These methods often attract a large number of users with appealing slogans such as "zero-threshold participation" and "airdrop rewards" to achieve the so-called "organic growth."

However, the drawbacks of this growth strategy are obvious. It mainly attracts "profit seekers" who pursue short-term gains, rather than genuine supporters who care about the project's development. If the only goal of the project is to go public quickly and exit, then this approach is indeed efficient and straightforward.

The fundamental reason why the community has become a selling pressure force rather than a support force lies in the project's initial positioning and growth strategy for the community. The project side seeks these users to beautify the data, while the main purpose of user participation is to obtain airdrop rewards by providing data and labor. Both parties are well aware that this relationship lacks substantial value, yet they maintain this superficial harmony for their respective purposes.

For the project parties, the tokens issued are essentially a form of debt, a cost paid to acquire user data, rather than true assets. Therefore, when the tokens are officially issued, these airdrops naturally convert into selling pressure.

This phenomenon reflects the deep-seated issues in community building within the current cryptocurrency industry. Project teams need to reassess the true value of the community and establish a community culture based on real value and long-term vision, rather than merely pursuing short-term data and superficial prosperity. Only in this way can a truly loyal community that supports the development of the project be cultivated, rather than just a temporary group gathered for airdrops.