Original author: Thomas Issa

Original translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

Getting users in the cryptocurrency field now is like the earliest humans hunting in the depths of the ice age spanning thousands of years: their tools are simple and the prey is dormant. Early humans wandered on the tundra, knowing little about their prey, and ultimately there were only two outcomes: successful capture or death from hunger and frostbite.

For consumer-grade cryptocurrency products, the story of acquiring customers is the same: either acquire users or perish.

2021 and 2022 mark a period when startups can combine fundraising announcements with subsequent NFT or token airdrops to attract and retain early users; this strategy has been successfully executed by many markets, analysis tools, games, and Web 3 infrastructure, enabling them to gain early momentum based solely on the performance of token projects on the market. Whether it is the NFT pass of the digital and physical market Americana, which soared to 0.25 eth after its release, or the once-promising NFT market Looksrare, which distributed 12% of its total token supply and attracted customers from OpenSea. Both attracted consumer attention in a short period of time, but in the long run, their user bases have been volatile.

The mistakes of these two projects are by no means the biggest mistakes in the cryptocurrency field, but the core issue of these dynamics lies in the over-reliance on token and NFT issuance as long-term customer acquisition and retention mechanisms, especially in unfavorable macro environments, further inhibiting the value-extraction nature of these designs.

To address the shortcomings of acquiring many consumers, cryptocurrency companies and funds have been investing in products that have the "best loyalty". Projects have flocked to "earn as you participate" platforms, with market leaders Galxe, Layer 3, and Zealy being the methods for acquiring, retaining, and instilling customer "loyalty".

These platforms are interesting in terms of top-of-funnel growth metrics, but they are only temporary solutions and marketing supports that have little impact on the long-term growth and continuous customer acquisition of protocols or projects. These platforms mostly focus on social vanity metrics, encouraging users to follow or join the community on social media. The rewards mechanisms are negligible (only a small amount of economic benefits, almost no social or reputational benefits). The disconnect between pursuit and consumers exacerbates the ability to track future on-chain transactions, meaning that customers cannot calculate the lifetime value of their potential customers.

Now, there is no doubt that we are rapidly moving towards a future where everything is tokenized. Network participants are inherently greedy and obsessed with financialization, and this dynamic is fueled by blockchain technology.

Just as we tokenized, we will "communitize." This means that for every commonality among humans, we have the opportunity to share this commonality in the digital native community through the exchange of programmable assets.

No matter the music we listen to, the items we purchase, or the schools we attend, we can now make these experiences immutable on the blockchain and share them within the spirit of online communities. We are seeing this trend flourishing in the luxury goods market, as NFTs serve as companions to physical products, creating a closer bond between buyers. Recently, LV solidified this future by issuing their soul-bound NFTs, which not only provide physical products but, more importantly, offer unparalleled community access to like-minded consumers. Shifting the focus from tradability to consumption fundamentally redefines communities, creating unique groups that are "inextricably linked" with their consumers.

As Shayon Sengupta puts it, cryptocurrency is inherently social technology, and I would go even further to say that it is super-social, a form of tribalism. As cryptocurrency participants, we are all part of tribes, with each tribe stemming from commonalities among its members. As a community, we heed warnings and advice from peers. Typically, we do not take action without the consent or endorsement of the group.

To disregard the group is to disregard the spirit of cryptocurrency consumption.

Crypto-native use cases like Mirror's "Subscribe to Mint," POAP's "Attend to Mint," and IYK's "Interact to Mint" bring us closer to forming NFT communities through actions, preferences, dislikes, and desires. Startups in digital fashion and luxury fashion have already established minting based on exchange as the future of their industries. Thanks to platforms like Medallion, we will be able to join communities of our favorite artists or collect experiences with future stars on Mercury. All of this lays a crucial foundation for the mainstreaming of digital-native communities in our lives.

With the advancements attributed to Web 3, it will be possible to extract information about user purchases and endorsements, the products and brands they support, the places they have visited, the blogs they have read, and even the sports teams they root for. Web 3 enables value capture, something that is not achievable in the current distribution monopoly system. In the new media model, a user's value is assessed based on the absolute value they bring and rewarded through mechanisms like revenue sharing and rebates.

These elements align with a future driven by a new paradigm called "Community-as-a-Service" (CaaS). Simply put, CaaS can be understood as accessing a specific group with a value high enough to be considered a marketable product. By delving deeper into the concept of communities, their trends, and their unique role in cryptocurrency, we can build a future where enhancing organic visibility, providing low-cost feedback and insights, boosting brand credibility, and executing targeted advertising campaigns become more affordable.

Customers' future revolves around monetization through cryptocurrency-driven communities, providing motivation for consumers through simplifying and enhancing value creation. In Web 2 social consumption, the community onboarding process is simple and often detached from the brand itself. With Web 3, the consumer experience shifts from a simple "buy now" to a more inclusive "access acquisition," representing the fundamental form of CaaS principles, with the most powerful distribution platforms coming from these NFT-supporting communities. Cryptocurrency enables a value capture mechanism that allows communities to own, control, and track their influence. These dynamics will ultimately have a strong impact on brands, projects, and protocols, establishing CaaS dynamics as the future of customer acquisition in every consumer-facing vertical.

CaaS Transformation

This striking argument is that Web 3.0 and blockchain technology will usher in an era of enhanced advertiser control, fairness, and decentralization. However, without a system to facilitate value creation and fair distribution among all value contributors, we cannot maximize this underlying premise. The CaaS monetization model is the first step in building community-supported NFT infrastructure, which has already expanded the field.

Once consensus is established, this trend will be driven by platforms that can aggregate communities, infer data based on chain activity, and identify areas of value enhancement that communities need to be rewarded for. Builders will be inspired by community aggregation tools like De.ID, contribution tracking platforms like OrangeDAO's Grove, or efficient advertising networks like Wildfire that connect brands to Discord communities.

While this concept is novel and has not yet been directly applied to product or protocol design, builders will productize these trend products that have already supported customer acquisition dynamics, and we will see communities monetizing their social and technological influence, ultimately enhancing customer acquisition and validating CaaS business cases.