Web 3 Audience Stack

The web3 industry has a 0 to 1 problem. New networks take much longer to launch an MVP than new tech companies. Dapps struggle to grow their userbase as the user pool is much more limited than typical internet users.

Web3 blockchains and networks require substantial sunk costs to get to a minimum viable mainnet to establish the hardware network layer and a v1 software development environment. Most importantly, a new blockchain network needs participants to foster a growing ecosystem in order to get to their first users.

Establishing the Audience Stack

Like a blockchain network’s deployment stack, there is a corresponding audience stack. Each layer of the stack has a different audience with specific wants and needs. The audience stack is broken up into four key categories: partners, developers, end users, and liquidity providers.

• Partners: Infrastructure providers, including validators, wallets, RPC providers, oracles

  
  

• Developers: Builders, Entrepreneurs, Innovation Directors, Corporate developers

  
  

• End Users: Dapp users, DeFi participants, traders, memecoin creators, stakers, etc.

  
  

• Liquidity providers: Token whales, independent traders, institutional investors, market makers

  
  

These diverse audiences have a common interest - the network token. All participants must interact with, or use the token to fulfill their wants and needs.

Audience Stack

People need people

One audience group cannot succeed without the other, infrastructure providers need to run the blockchain software to secure the network, builders need a reliable network and RPC services to support their dapps, and users need to be able to use dapps and manage their digital assets on-chain.

Liquidity providers provide digital asset inventory to enable the influx of assets to and from applications. Inventory of assets supports a healthy trading environment, which enables more economic activity in terms of volume, velocity, and participation from the audience stack. With reliable liquidity, applications are able to onboard users at a web2 pace.

Ecosystem managers, foundations and early network founders must accept the comprehensive needs and interactions of participants. Simply put - growing a sustainable ecosystem relies on the success of those participating in it.

Alignment for Growth

The web3 industry suffers from “incentives as a solution” problem where mercenary participants cycle from network to network collecting incentives with limited to no loyalty. This market behavior leads to abandoned projects, short term liquidity, and inconsistent, non-reliable economies. Designing sustainable programs for each audience and attracting long term aligned participants is a challenge for blockchain networks.

Defining incentives based on success alignment comes down to the economics for each audience type and the future business value for their participation in the network. Attracting independent revenue focused businesses as well as high growth companies enables the network effect for an early ecosystem to propel towards sustainable growth.