Community has been a buzzword within the decentralized finance (DeFi) realm for years, and we've seen how individual members of the community come together to make projects and products a success. In DeFi more than ever, we've seen how the community is empowered to make key decisions that can chart the course of a new roadmap or turn in events. This is a far cry from how most businesses and projects operate, where a centralized authority typically holds full authority, or shares that authority amongst a small closed group of team members, to make decisions on behalf of its users and supporters.
Web3 has undoubtedly created a new dimension of community participation as we know it, conferring key decision-making rights onto stakeholders, but what does community participation truly entail for the average community member?
In this article, we break down the various forms of community participation to highlight the vast potential DeFi has in fostering dynamic inclusion, and also to ensure community members are aware of the benefits they may be able to reap from high quality participation on platforms such as ApeX Pro:
Real Governance
In the world of web3, discussions of governance follow close behind mentions of communities — a collective of individuals gathered and devoted to the interests of a single project that are also stakeholders. What this means is that as token holders of said project, they are conferred with the authority to vote and have a say in critical decisions that affect the project's future. This includes its token economy, new programs, product offerings and even large directional changes with shifts in overall objectives.
Governance is based on the belief that any project should be governed, accelerated and contributed to by the community, and they should have fair and equivalent rights to voicing their opinions on decisions that will affect the project and its supporters on the whole. More importantly, after a decision has been made, the project fulfils its promises and is committed to the results of the vote.
It seems intuitive that projects follow through on their governance promises, but in fact, the recent controversy surrounding established projects and how they took action before voting results were out, threatened to undermine the legitimacy of web3 communities and projects across the industry. With that, we look at real governance that moves beyond the surface community narrative and fanfare, and acknowledge the vast improvements and codification of community participation that governance has brought about.
Revenue Sharing
As stakeholders who have given their support to projects — this support often represented by the number of native project tokens they hold — it only stands to reason that they are rewarded for it. This typically comes in the form of revenue sharing provisions such as with staking programs.
Staking Programs
Community members would take their tokens and stake them in provided staking pools to earn yield, and in recent months, we have evolved from simple yield calculations to real yield, which is profits calculated by taking into consideration the project's overall revenue. This means that yield is not solely based on token emissions or growth, but also the sustainability and health of the project at a macro-level.
As a result, the community is able to enjoy and reap the real benefits and rewards of the project's growth with minimal fear of inflated numbers or only short-term growth.
Liquidity Provision
Another form of rewards comes with liquidity pools, which function in a similar way to staking programs, but instead of staking, community members are incentivized to pool their assets and provide liquidity to the platform in exchange for a cut of the platform's trading fees.
Ecosystem Participation
Other activities that projects will reward traders for also include an important aspect — trading. On ApeX Pro and established decentralized exchanges (DEXs), community members' trading activity is typically rewarded with the distribution of tokens, or contributes to multipliers for increased rewards via staking or liquidity provision offerings. More diverse ways for each community participant to earn and squeeze the most out of their idle holdings.
Automatic Collaboration & Partnership Involvement
As the project grows in terms of collaboration and partnerships, community members are able to share in its ecosystem growth. The project is able to accrue value, and users are able to access new programs, products and offerings as the project continually tries to innovate and bring its users greater benefits. This could be with the technology or architecture of the underlying protocol, or introduction of cost-saving or profit-maximizing options while leveraging resources of other partner protocols as well.
Web3 is still a relatively unexplored and nascent industry — we have not yet dived into the full potential of web3 projects and products, along with governance models and community participation tracks. From what we have seen, however, the promises of web3 and decentralization continue to appeal to individuals and push them to truly be involved with web3 projects from start to end.
In the meantime, experience true community participation for yourselves with ApeX Pro. Check out our Staking Program and Trade-to-Earn incentive programs — and stay tuned for an exciting announcement coming soon.
Hint: It will allow more community members, traders and non-traders alike, to put their idle assets for better use and participate in revenue-sharing streams that have previously only been reserved for parties with big funds.
Head to our socials and let us know what you'd like to see on ApeX Pro to boost community participation next!