The need for connection and community is primal, as fundamental as the need for air, water, and food - Dean Ornish

If it weren’t for the community support, Tron wouldn't survive the Alibaba partnership fiasco and whitepaper plagiarism, EOS wouldn’t raise $4 billion USD, Ethereum wouldn’t survive the DAO story, Ripple wouldn't have survived the Coinbase listing and centralization debates and not even Bitcoin would be still around.

Hope you have all heard of Metcalfe’s law. As per the Metcalfe’s law, the effect of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2). This concept can be applied to the Blockchain project as well. The more and more members join the project, the more will be the economic value. Not only as a scale of economic value the community will also come forward to support the project during the time of a crisis and protect its reputation from outside elements. (eg XVG hack, WTC twitter fiasco etc).

One more advantage of having an active community is they will be the best and cheapest marketing a project can have. Whenever new investors enter the market, these positive vibes and community trust can influence them to invest in your project.

The initial phase of the community building happens during the ICO phase. A generic strategy majority of ICO’s deploy is to run a bounty or airdrops campaign, asking users to be a part of their social media channels for a small reward. Once community presence increases, good hype starts to build around the project. A good hype will increase investors interest, which in turn will ensure more capital flow to the project.

Once the ICO sale concludes, a majority of the projects start to ignore the community. Since the majority of the community members are there for rewards, they don't have any loyalty. Once the promised rewards are delivered, they also gradually move away searching for new pastures.

But there are some projects who keep on building community even after the ICO phase is over. They listen to community opinions, keeps on building and engaging them. In course of time, these communities turn to one of the most vocal and loyal support of the project spreading positive vibes in the blockchain world, thereby bringing in more economic value to the project.

The most active communities currently in the blockchain world are communities of EOS, Tron, Aelf, Ripple, XEM etc.

Let's have a look into one of the most vibrant communities in the Blockchain world, ”The Aelf Community”

Based in Singapore, Aelf is a customizable operating system (OS) specifically for blockchains that aims to become the new internet infrastructure to support the next generation of digital businesses. Aelf was founded by Ma Haobo, an experienced Blockchain system developer and a member of the Chinese Institute of Electronics’ Blockchain experts committee. Zhou Shouji, founding partner of FGB Capital, and J. Michael Arrington, founder and CEO of TechCrunch support the team as members of their advisory board. Aelf is ranked as the #70 most valuable cryptocurrency and has a circulating market cap of $ 91million.

Community matrix of Aelf

Within one year of its existence, Aelf has built a very strong community. So far, it has got 93,200 twitter followers, Its official Reddit is subscribed by 25,737 members and Youtube Channel is subscribed by 19,172 users. Adding various Telegram groups, Aelf telegram community got 516,000 members.

Aelf boasts one of the most active and engaging Telegram Community in the Blockchain world. In order to keep the telegram community engaged Aelf frequently introduces trivia and various other forms of Contest rewarding the most active members.

Community engagement -The aelf way

One of the most important elements of Aelf community engagement is the Aelf (ELF) Candy Program. Unlike bounties that run for a short period, Aelf bounty unique from others is the sheer length. The bounty will be running for a 3-year period and the tasks designed are so simple that anyone has the opportunity to earn tokens. As of today, there are over 902,642 users in the candy program representing 15,913 cites which are spread over 218 countries.

Another engagement strategy is the frequent “AMA” session hosted by the top management of Aelf. This helps the community to gain first-hand information regarding the progress of the project as well helps the management to understand the expectations of the community.

One more tool deployed successfully by the Aelf team is the frequent contest it runs for the community members. The contest includes various activities like designing an attractive infographic, online quizzes, writing slogans, creative photographs, designing graphics etc

Some of the competition poster attached

Get together, Get together and more Get together

While most of the blockchain project host one or two community get together in a year, Aelf conducts get together around the world in a more frequent manner. Aelf has conducted meet-ups in all major cities and countries it has a strong community presence. Locations include Singapore, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam etc

Apart from these regular events, Aelf has conducted a mega event in Singapore to celebrate its 1st anniversary. The meet-up was attended by most of the Top names from the Aelf Team which includes Mr Zhuling Chen who provided the community with a snapshot of the past 1-year journey.

Conclusion

A happy and supportive community isn’t just good business, it’s really essential for the long-term survival of any project. Since cryptos are based on a future promise, their value derives mainly from the community that supports and trust in its vision. I can confidently say that Aelf has successfully built one of the most loyal and vibrant communities in the blockchain world.