Author: Chao Wang, encryption KOL; Translator: Blockingxiaozou
Currently, a trust crisis is sweeping the NFT market. A friend asked me some questions about trust mechanisms within the community.
In the world of Web3, when we discuss trust, we encounter two main scenarios.
First, protocol-based projects achieve trust by deploying code, which is the concept of “trustless” that we know. Taking Bitcoin as an example: people do not need to trust Satoshi Nakamoto as a person, only the integrity of the Bitcoin code. Similarly, if someone is concerned about the security of Uniswap, they do not need to trust founder Hayden Adam, only Uniswap’s own code. This trust comes from a technical consensus that supports the basic values of the encrypted world.
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Secondly, community-based projects create trust by aligning common values and goals. Although these projects are community-centered, there is usually a central initiator or executor who will oversee the progress of the project for a considerable period of time. In this case, trust comes from common values and goals, and the community must reach a consensus on common values and believe that the executor (whether it is an individual, group or company) is also committed to achieving these values. It is important to understand that the impact of technology is limited, and there are many areas that technology cannot regulate. In this case, if the executor is willing, there are always ways to bypass the constraints. This is where Web3 technology can play a role, that is, to assist teams in coordination and ownership changes, rather than strictly controlling all aspects of the project. Multiplayer games have also become a mainstream narrative in Web3, although this does not conform to the original concept of encryption technology.
Obviously, the above situations are two extremes of a vast world; the world is indeed complex, and there are many gray areas in between. There are a large number of innovators working hard to achieve more mature autonomy through technology, so that community-based projects can also have higher trust in technology.
However, to this day, community-based projects still heavily rely on values to reach consensus. If individuals or teams try to establish a complex mechanism to gain community trust, it indicates that they did not reach a broad consensus on social values from the beginning. In my opinion, for a community-based project, this is obviously a precursor to failure.
Let’s go back to discussing NFT projects, especially PFP NFT projects. Do these projects really have a consensus on value? It seems unlikely. Most NFT projects attract investment by telling an attractive story, and the main purpose of most community participants is to make money. The common goal seems to be to find the next buyer, and there is no real consensus on values. Has the technical layer introduced consensus? As it is only a collection of on-chain/off-chain images, and even lacks multisignature accounts owned by the community, there is almost no technical consensus.
Although such projects may maintain a delicate balance of trust for a period of time, and may even show strong consensus features to attract more participants, this balance is very fragile and easily broken. The fate of community-based projects is not decided by the project initiators, but by the community itself. The community is not a production line product-the community needs to mature and develop organically with its own cultural concepts.
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