INTRODUCTION #2: How To Join The NFT Community
Mr. Fox breaks down the necessary profiles and accounts to begin your own involvement in the NFT world.
Hello all and welcome back to another email. I hope everybody is doing well.
Over the last few days we have had a surge in new subscribers - welcome all. As is such, I thought it would be fitting to continue the introduction series. In the first episode of the introduction, which you can find here, we discussed picking a crypto exchange and setting up your wallet (don’t forget to read the update to that episode, here). Today, we will go over some of the apps you should acquaint yourself with so you can start your own journey in NFTs.
If you already have a Twitter and Discord account set up, and don’t have issues finding servers or NFT accounts to follow, feel free to skip this email.
The NFT world, more than anything else, lives and dies by its community. A project can be built brilliantly but it will never get off the ground if it has a toxic group of supporters because nobody wants to buy into a legion of nastiness.
On the other hand, a project that perhaps isn’t the most innovative can survive and potentially thrive into the future if it has a loyal following.
Why is this the case?
It all comes down to size (get your head out of the gutter). Seriously though. There are few NFT projects with a supply of over 10 000. If you added the total number of relevant and/or significant NFTs in the market together, I bet it would be somewhere around 1 million (this is a generous estimate, and it’s likely closer to 500 000). Compare this to the 454 million Amazon shares in circulation that are traded on the stock market every single day and you can see how early we truly are.
And because the market is still so small, the number of people in it is also small. All of the big NFT “influencers” are easily contactable if you really wanted to reach out to them, and there is a great sense of familiarity between everybody. For example, the biggest NFT influencer, Beanie, holds a Twitter Spaces every Monday where anybody can join and speak. We’re still so early.
Ok, so the market and number of people in the market are small. What’s the point?
The point is that when markets and projects are small and cheap, it doesn’t take too many people to move them a significant amount. This is why community matters right now, and matters a lot. All it takes is one group of people to really like a project or product for it to take off.
A community can be deemed positive and strong if it a) has a lot of members, or b) has a strong reputation and values communication and kindness. Not many projects have both. If they do, they’re likely already extremely expensive. If they’re not, buy in quickly.
Ok, Mr. Fox. All of this community stuff sounds good in theory, but can there really be entire online communities with real structure? How does it all work?
Yes, there can be and are. And it all goes down on two apps - Twitter and Discord. This is how you set your accounts up and start getting involved.
The first thing you want to do is create a Twitter account. Do not use your real name or pictures. Crazy, right? There are few people in the NFT world who use their real name and even fewer that have ever shared an image of themselves. Everything is pseudonymous. Create a fake name and even personality if you so choose. Perhaps it is a character in a movie you like, a unique nickname you have in the real world, or something entirely original.
Use my Twitter as an example:
I used the name Mr. Fox online well before I ever even got my Ape. Your profile picture can be of anything, but if you don’t own a digital avatar, movie characters or art always work best.
But what’s more important than how your profile is setup is the people you follow. That is the crux of today’s newsletter. I’m not recommending you to download Twitter to start building a personal brand, I’m doing it so you can start watching all of things I write to you about in real-time. Twitter is where the marketing, critical thinking, open debate, and big announcements of the NFT world take place.
Ok, Mr. Fox. I want to start building my own dependency in the NFT world so I’m not just relying on your newsletter. I’ve setup my account, now who should I follow?
Great question. Lucky for you, I have created a List that you can follow that contains all of the best NFT accounts in the space. You can find it here. Just press follow on the top of that page and you will get all of those accounts directly into your feed. Of course, follow me too @f4ntast1cmrf0x. Send me a DM so I know you came from the newsletter and I will follow you back.
Once you grow accustomed to the app and the list, you can begin branching out to following some other accounts. Slowly but surely you will begin to find your own corner of the NFT Twitter world.
Ok, so Twitter is setup, what’s next?
DISCORD
If Twitter is where the NFT community comes together as a whole, Discord is where projects and communities go to discuss amongst themselves.
Think about it like this. Twitter is the cafeteria where all the students (one big community together) eat, Discord is like the classrooms where the students split back up into their specific groups (communities/projects).
For those that are not familiar with Discord, it simply a group messaging app. Similar to WhatsApp where you have various different group chats, Discord has the same. The difference here is that Discord is group-chat focused, with direct messaging on the side, whereas WhatsApp focuses on both.
I keep hearing about Discord, Mr. Fox, why is it so big?
Discord’s success comes from its customizability. A Discord is no regular group chat. Every Discord group is known as a ‘server’. Once you’re in the server, there are different channels setup to discuss different things. Imagine you set up a group chat with your friends, and within the group chat you had different sections (‘channels’) where you talk about different things. You would have a planning channel setup to discuss going out, a photos channel specifically to share group photos into, and a general channel where you talk about everything else. This is Discord.
Here is an example of what my Discord looks like right now:
Don’t worry about what is being said in the chat. Let me walk you through what you’re looking at. The furthest left is a column that has all of the different servers I am a part of. The white tab beside the skull at the top shows that I am currently looking through the Bored Ape Yacht Club server. The next column in shows all of the different channels in the Bored Ape Yacht Club server, get it?
Ok, Mr. Fox, I understand how Discord works. How do I setup an account and join some servers?
First you will need to download the app. After you do so, create an account. Make sure you use the same username and profile picture as your Twitter account! This way people start building familiarity with you cross platform.
Once you’ve finished setting up your account, you will need to join some servers. How? Go to Twitter and search for some projects either through my NFT list that you should now be following or on your own through the Search tab. Once you get to the profile of the project, like the Bored Ape Yacht Club for example, go to their bio. Every project will always have the link to their Discord here. Join a few servers, spend some time for each, and you’ll be well on your way to finding your area of the NFT world.
Alright, Mr. Fox. I understand what Discord is and how to use it, but let’s really get back to the point, how do I know what is and isn’t a good community?
The answer: spend some time figuring it out. It’s very easy to see how big the community is depending on the number of people in the Discord, how frequent people are sending each other messages, how many followers the project has on Twitter, etc.
What is not so easy to tell is the quality of this community. Are they nice people? Do they care about the project long-term? Do they act in the best interest of the NFT community as a whole? These are all things you’ll be able to tell after spending some time in their Discord server. Notice how they welcome you and the positivity to which they speak to each other with. You should be able to pick up pretty quickly what the community is like.
Today wasn’t the most exciting email, but it was one of the most important. The responsibility is on you to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime chance of building generational wealth.
If you learned something new, that makes me happy. Please send the newsletter to anybody you feel would also like to learn about this emerging space, and subscribe if you want to receive this newsletter in your inbox. Perhaps you have a friend that is a real hard-worker, or another who is looking for a change of pace. There is nowhere better in the world they can be than in NFTs.
And down the Rabbit Hole we continue.
Mr. Fox.