A network does not have one audience. It has four, and none of them succeeds without the others.
The web3 industry has a nought-to-one problem. New networks take far longer to reach an MVP than new tech companies do, and dapps struggle to grow a userbase because the pool of available users is so much smaller than the ordinary internet.
Blockchains and networks carry substantial sunk costs before they reach a minimum viable mainnet: the hardware network layer, a first software development environment. But the harder requirement is participants. A new network needs an ecosystem before it can have users.
Like a network’s deployment stack, there is a corresponding audience stack. Each layer holds a different audience with its own wants and needs.
These audiences have one interest in common: the network token. Every participant has to interact with it, or use it, to get what they came for.
No layer succeeds alone. Infrastructure providers run the software that secures the network. Builders need a reliable network and RPC services to support their dapps. Users need working dapps and a way to manage assets on-chain.
Liquidity providers supply the digital asset inventory that lets assets move in and out of applications. That inventory sustains a healthy trading environment, which produces more economic activity across volume, velocity and participation. With reliable liquidity, applications can onboard users at something close to web2 pace.
Ecosystem managers, foundations and early founders have to accept the whole set of needs rather than the one in front of them. Growing a sustainable ecosystem depends on the success of the people already inside it.
The industry suffers from an incentives-as-a-solution problem. Mercenary participants cycle from network to network collecting rewards with no loyalty to any of them, which produces abandoned projects, short-term liquidity and economies nobody can rely on. Designing programs that attract long-term aligned participants is genuinely hard.
Defining incentives around alignment means starting from the economics of each audience and the future business value of their participation. Independent, revenue-focused businesses and high-growth companies are what let an early ecosystem reach a network effect rather than a spike.
The question worth asking before designing any program is what a participant still gets from being here in a year. Where there is a durable answer, it belongs at the center of the design. Where there is not, no incentive structure will hold the ecosystem together.
A short call is usually enough to know whether this is a fit. If it isn't, I'll say so and point you somewhere better.
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