Mapping the Web3 Tooling Landscape for communities

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30 Jul 2024

Mapping the Web3 Tooling Landscape for communities

Web3 communities are critical in the decentralized technology landscape. They enable shared ownership, collaboration, and management of digital assets, driving key aspects such as adoption, governance, and innovation. Web3 communities are shaping their future by enhancing engagement and participation in decentralized applications as the Internet transitions towards a more user-centric platform. In this blog post, let’s explore the Web3 tooling landscape for your onchain communities!

Chief MarTech’s 2023 marketing technology landscape

Chief MarTech’s 2023 marketing technology landscape

The 2010s were a peak era for digital marketing, with advanced tools for ROI, revenue, and LTV. The MarTech sector grew from 150 companies in 2011 to 11,000 by 2023. However, regulatory changes such as GDPR, CCPA, and the end of third-party cookies disrupted established practices. The rise of Web3 introduced a community-focused and privacy-centric approach, with user interactions shifting to hard-to-track channels such as Discord, Telegram, and Reddit.

The Web3 Tooling Landscape for communities

In Web3, strong communities are crucial for success. Engaged members influence governance and serve as key advocates for projects. Their feedback shapes market positioning and project purpose, making it important to cultivate active, loyal followings for long-term success. With the rise of NFTs, social tokens, and DAO governance, Web3 teams increasingly view users as co-owners rather than just customers. This shift means users share in the responsibilities and benefits of a project's success.

While some Web2 tools can help foster early-stage Web3 communities, significant infrastructure gaps remain. There is a pressing need for innovative solutions to improve community analytics and contributor reward systems. Over 100 projects, including DAOs and NFT projects, are emerging to support these efforts. They help identify target users, launch on-chain communities, reward contributors, and track growth, addressing the challenges of building and maintaining vibrant Web3 communities.

Here’s an overview of the Web3 community tool ecosystem:

The Web3 tooling landscape for onchain communities

The Web3 tooling landscape for onchain communities

Treasury Management

The outstanding Web3 treasury management tools

The outstanding Web3 treasury management tools

Treasury management tools help Web3 communities safeguard and utilize their collective capital. Key players in this space—Gnosis Safe, Coinshift, and Juicebox—offer unique functionalities while ensuring secure fund transfers.

  • Gnosis Safe: Enables projects to require member approval for all transactions, enhancing security and governance of crypto wallets.

  • Coinshift: Built on Gnosis Safe, it provides a comprehensive treasury management solution with a unified dashboard for managing grants and contributor payouts.

  • Juicebox: A decentralized funding platform similar to GoFundMe or Kickstarter, enabling organizations to raise funds in crypto and distribute governance tokens easily.

Together, these platforms form a robust ecosystem that empowers Web3 communities to manage their treasuries effectively while ensuring security and transparency in financial operations.

DAO Creation & Management

The DAO Creation & Management tools have rapidly onboarded thousands of projects and users by offering low-cost, accessible solutions for community-governed initiatives. They are critical for empowering communities and driving decentralized decision-making.

The outstanding Web3 DAO creation & management tools

The outstanding Web3 DAO creation & management tools

Syndicate, Boardroom, and Aragon stand out due to their expansive features and intuitive UIs. Along with over ten other platforms, they have established a robust ecosystem that enables aspiring DAOs to efficiently formalize as on-chain collectives, facilitating rapid project deployment and community governance.

  • Syndicate: Automates the process of forming a Delaware LLC. Seamless onboarding via in-platform governance token distributions.

  • Boardroom: Similarly accessible onboarding process as Syndicate. Dashboard designed for individual-level DAO discovery.

  • Aragon: Breaks down its offering into distinct products, giving DAOs, more flexibility and saving them money. Aragon Govern, its most unique feature, simplifies DAO voting operations by auto-passing proposals unless challenged by a member. 

Community Engagement & Coordination

The outstanding Web3 community engagement & coordination tools

The outstanding Web3 community engagement & coordination tools

Community engagement and coordination tools in Web3 primarily rely on established Web2 platforms, facilitating discussions and member interaction through familiar interfaces. Additionally, new tools such as Collab.land are emerging to enhance engagement specifically within the Web3 ecosystem.

  • Discord: The main hub for Web3 projects, offering multi-channel functionality for organized discussions. Server admins can lock channels to maintain information integrity.

  • Twitter: Important for sharing updates and fostering grassroots conversations. Twitter Spaces allows for accessible voice-only meetings.

  • Telegram: Popular for its simple group chat interface, enabling fluid conversations among users.

  • Collab.land: A Web3-native tool for Discord and Telegram that automates membership and access based on token ownership.

Despite their benefits, these platforms face scrutiny. Discord can overwhelm users, making it hard to follow conversations and find past messages, especially on larger servers. Users also struggle with tracking engagement and content performance. Additionally, Discord servers are vulnerable to hacks, risking malicious link postings. On Twitter, algorithm-driven echo chambers and misinformation complicate reliable information sharing. Meanwhile, Telegram lacks advanced functionalities beyond basic communication. 

Collab.land addresses some of these challenges by providing a seamless way to verify membership and manage access, thus enhancing security and engagement. However, improving user experience and fostering sustained community engagement remains critical.

Community Governance

The outstanding Web3 community governance tools

The outstanding Web3 community governance tools

Community governance tools are a must for enabling organization-wide decision-making by allowing holders of assets such as NFTs or governance tokens to vote on proposals. Key players in this space include Snapshot and Tally, which facilitate proposal creation and voting while verifying token ownership. Both platforms also allow users to delegate their voting power to trusted peers.

However, Snapshot and Tally operate independently, requiring Web3 users to navigate multiple sites, which can deter newcomers. Additionally, community members often find it difficult to track upcoming votes due to a lack of mobile functionality and notifications, hindering participation and engagement. 

Analytics

The outstanding Web3 analytic tools

The outstanding Web3 analytic tools

The Web3 analytics tool landscape includes multiple platforms, each performing specific functions, but none providing a comprehensive suite for holistic, data-driven insights into community health. Current tools offer user-friendly interfaces for tracking token growth, NFT metrics, and DAO activities.

  • Nansen: Offers in-depth insights into NFT projects, including token holder data, volume, floor prices, and recent trades, mainly targeting investors.

  • Messari: Introduced Governor, a tool for DAOs to monitor voting proposals and governance token price movements.

  • Dune: Provides community-driven crypto analytics through customizable dashboards highlighting key project metrics and trends, such as DeFi liquidations.

Content Management & Distribution

The outstanding Web3 content management tools

The outstanding Web3 content management tools

The Web3 Content Management and Distribution landscape combines Web2 and Web3 tools, along with new consultants that help communities with marketing and content development. These tools enhance community engagement and facilitate the sharing of important updates.

  • Farcaster: A decentralized social network offering open, user-controlled content distribution and community building.

  • Mirror: Functions as a Web3-enabled Medium, allowing creators to publish content, sell NFTs, and launch crowdfunding initiatives. 

  • Lens Protocol: A Web3 protocol for social networking that lets users own their content and connections, enabling creators to build and monetize networks without centralization.

  • Substack: Popular among NFT, DAO, and DeFi leaders for creating newsletters that deliver content directly to followers.

This evolving ecosystem reflects a shift towards decentralized content management, enhancing creator-audience relationships and enabling innovative monetization strategies while addressing the complexities of Web3 engagement.

Contributor Rewards

The outstanding Web3 contributor reward tools

The outstanding Web3 contributor reward tools

Contributor rewards tools are critical for Web3 projects to incentivize community engagement by compensating members for specific actions or for holding assets. They enable mechanisms such as airdrops, whitelist spots, token distributions, and exclusive access, enhancing member investment in the project. 

Many Web3 communities reward members without third-party platforms by using Etherscan data to identify wallet addresses holding specific tokens. They then distribute NFTs or grant whitelist access based on these addresses. However, this manual process can be error-prone.

In this context, we will focus on several key tools: 

  • Coordinape: Facilitates decentralized peer-to-peer compensation, enabling community members to distribute tokens based on contributions, helping DAOs fairly allocate rewards.

  • Gitcoin: Supports open-source projects by funding developers through grants and bounties, incentivizing contributions with matched donations and rewards.

  • SourceCred: Measures and rewards project contributions through a credit-based system, aligning compensation with impact to recognize valuable work.

  • POAP: Issues NFT mementos to recognize event participation and milestones, serving as collectible badges to incentivize engagement.

Despite these advancements, a significant gap remains: no platform integrates Web2 (social media) and Web3 (onchain) data into a single dashboard, complicating even basic analytics. Trading-focused platforms still dominate the analytics landscape, highlighting the need for a new analytics stack designed for product teams and onchain builders. 

Unlock the potential of onchain data and enhance user experience with Formo

Unlock the potential of onchain data and enhance user experience with Formo

Formo helps teams understand onchain data to acquire and engage active users in web3. Its Wallet Data Platform (WDP) combines traditional customer data with onchain data to create a comprehensive user profile. Formo represents a significant advancement in how Web3 brands interact with their users on the decentralized web, offering tools that provide actionable insights for roadmap planning and marketing strategies.

The rise of diverse Web3 tools marks just the beginning. Today, nearly 200 projects are innovating in this space, with 71 startups raising over $600 million. As the blockchain ecosystem expands, the Web3 tooling landscape will continue to evolve, offering new opportunities for decentralized interaction and collaboration. Embracing these tools is key to building stronger, more inclusive, and more efficient communities. 

Sign up for Formo now to get Early Access!

Web3 communities are critical in the decentralized technology landscape. They enable shared ownership, collaboration, and management of digital assets, driving key aspects such as adoption, governance, and innovation. Web3 communities are shaping their future by enhancing engagement and participation in decentralized applications as the Internet transitions towards a more user-centric platform. In this blog post, let’s explore the Web3 tooling landscape for your onchain communities!

Chief MarTech’s 2023 marketing technology landscape

Chief MarTech’s 2023 marketing technology landscape

The 2010s were a peak era for digital marketing, with advanced tools for ROI, revenue, and LTV. The MarTech sector grew from 150 companies in 2011 to 11,000 by 2023. However, regulatory changes such as GDPR, CCPA, and the end of third-party cookies disrupted established practices. The rise of Web3 introduced a community-focused and privacy-centric approach, with user interactions shifting to hard-to-track channels such as Discord, Telegram, and Reddit.

The Web3 Tooling Landscape for communities

In Web3, strong communities are crucial for success. Engaged members influence governance and serve as key advocates for projects. Their feedback shapes market positioning and project purpose, making it important to cultivate active, loyal followings for long-term success. With the rise of NFTs, social tokens, and DAO governance, Web3 teams increasingly view users as co-owners rather than just customers. This shift means users share in the responsibilities and benefits of a project's success.

While some Web2 tools can help foster early-stage Web3 communities, significant infrastructure gaps remain. There is a pressing need for innovative solutions to improve community analytics and contributor reward systems. Over 100 projects, including DAOs and NFT projects, are emerging to support these efforts. They help identify target users, launch on-chain communities, reward contributors, and track growth, addressing the challenges of building and maintaining vibrant Web3 communities.

Here’s an overview of the Web3 community tool ecosystem:

The Web3 tooling landscape for onchain communities

The Web3 tooling landscape for onchain communities

Treasury Management

The outstanding Web3 treasury management tools

The outstanding Web3 treasury management tools

Treasury management tools help Web3 communities safeguard and utilize their collective capital. Key players in this space—Gnosis Safe, Coinshift, and Juicebox—offer unique functionalities while ensuring secure fund transfers.

  • Gnosis Safe: Enables projects to require member approval for all transactions, enhancing security and governance of crypto wallets.

  • Coinshift: Built on Gnosis Safe, it provides a comprehensive treasury management solution with a unified dashboard for managing grants and contributor payouts.

  • Juicebox: A decentralized funding platform similar to GoFundMe or Kickstarter, enabling organizations to raise funds in crypto and distribute governance tokens easily.

Together, these platforms form a robust ecosystem that empowers Web3 communities to manage their treasuries effectively while ensuring security and transparency in financial operations.

DAO Creation & Management

The DAO Creation & Management tools have rapidly onboarded thousands of projects and users by offering low-cost, accessible solutions for community-governed initiatives. They are critical for empowering communities and driving decentralized decision-making.

The outstanding Web3 DAO creation & management tools

The outstanding Web3 DAO creation & management tools

Syndicate, Boardroom, and Aragon stand out due to their expansive features and intuitive UIs. Along with over ten other platforms, they have established a robust ecosystem that enables aspiring DAOs to efficiently formalize as on-chain collectives, facilitating rapid project deployment and community governance.

  • Syndicate: Automates the process of forming a Delaware LLC. Seamless onboarding via in-platform governance token distributions.

  • Boardroom: Similarly accessible onboarding process as Syndicate. Dashboard designed for individual-level DAO discovery.

  • Aragon: Breaks down its offering into distinct products, giving DAOs, more flexibility and saving them money. Aragon Govern, its most unique feature, simplifies DAO voting operations by auto-passing proposals unless challenged by a member. 

Community Engagement & Coordination

The outstanding Web3 community engagement & coordination tools

The outstanding Web3 community engagement & coordination tools

Community engagement and coordination tools in Web3 primarily rely on established Web2 platforms, facilitating discussions and member interaction through familiar interfaces. Additionally, new tools such as Collab.land are emerging to enhance engagement specifically within the Web3 ecosystem.

  • Discord: The main hub for Web3 projects, offering multi-channel functionality for organized discussions. Server admins can lock channels to maintain information integrity.

  • Twitter: Important for sharing updates and fostering grassroots conversations. Twitter Spaces allows for accessible voice-only meetings.

  • Telegram: Popular for its simple group chat interface, enabling fluid conversations among users.

  • Collab.land: A Web3-native tool for Discord and Telegram that automates membership and access based on token ownership.

Despite their benefits, these platforms face scrutiny. Discord can overwhelm users, making it hard to follow conversations and find past messages, especially on larger servers. Users also struggle with tracking engagement and content performance. Additionally, Discord servers are vulnerable to hacks, risking malicious link postings. On Twitter, algorithm-driven echo chambers and misinformation complicate reliable information sharing. Meanwhile, Telegram lacks advanced functionalities beyond basic communication. 

Collab.land addresses some of these challenges by providing a seamless way to verify membership and manage access, thus enhancing security and engagement. However, improving user experience and fostering sustained community engagement remains critical.

Community Governance

The outstanding Web3 community governance tools

The outstanding Web3 community governance tools

Community governance tools are a must for enabling organization-wide decision-making by allowing holders of assets such as NFTs or governance tokens to vote on proposals. Key players in this space include Snapshot and Tally, which facilitate proposal creation and voting while verifying token ownership. Both platforms also allow users to delegate their voting power to trusted peers.

However, Snapshot and Tally operate independently, requiring Web3 users to navigate multiple sites, which can deter newcomers. Additionally, community members often find it difficult to track upcoming votes due to a lack of mobile functionality and notifications, hindering participation and engagement. 

Analytics

The outstanding Web3 analytic tools

The outstanding Web3 analytic tools

The Web3 analytics tool landscape includes multiple platforms, each performing specific functions, but none providing a comprehensive suite for holistic, data-driven insights into community health. Current tools offer user-friendly interfaces for tracking token growth, NFT metrics, and DAO activities.

  • Nansen: Offers in-depth insights into NFT projects, including token holder data, volume, floor prices, and recent trades, mainly targeting investors.

  • Messari: Introduced Governor, a tool for DAOs to monitor voting proposals and governance token price movements.

  • Dune: Provides community-driven crypto analytics through customizable dashboards highlighting key project metrics and trends, such as DeFi liquidations.

Content Management & Distribution

The outstanding Web3 content management tools

The outstanding Web3 content management tools

The Web3 Content Management and Distribution landscape combines Web2 and Web3 tools, along with new consultants that help communities with marketing and content development. These tools enhance community engagement and facilitate the sharing of important updates.

  • Farcaster: A decentralized social network offering open, user-controlled content distribution and community building.

  • Mirror: Functions as a Web3-enabled Medium, allowing creators to publish content, sell NFTs, and launch crowdfunding initiatives. 

  • Lens Protocol: A Web3 protocol for social networking that lets users own their content and connections, enabling creators to build and monetize networks without centralization.

  • Substack: Popular among NFT, DAO, and DeFi leaders for creating newsletters that deliver content directly to followers.

This evolving ecosystem reflects a shift towards decentralized content management, enhancing creator-audience relationships and enabling innovative monetization strategies while addressing the complexities of Web3 engagement.

Contributor Rewards

The outstanding Web3 contributor reward tools

The outstanding Web3 contributor reward tools

Contributor rewards tools are critical for Web3 projects to incentivize community engagement by compensating members for specific actions or for holding assets. They enable mechanisms such as airdrops, whitelist spots, token distributions, and exclusive access, enhancing member investment in the project. 

Many Web3 communities reward members without third-party platforms by using Etherscan data to identify wallet addresses holding specific tokens. They then distribute NFTs or grant whitelist access based on these addresses. However, this manual process can be error-prone.

In this context, we will focus on several key tools: 

  • Coordinape: Facilitates decentralized peer-to-peer compensation, enabling community members to distribute tokens based on contributions, helping DAOs fairly allocate rewards.

  • Gitcoin: Supports open-source projects by funding developers through grants and bounties, incentivizing contributions with matched donations and rewards.

  • SourceCred: Measures and rewards project contributions through a credit-based system, aligning compensation with impact to recognize valuable work.

  • POAP: Issues NFT mementos to recognize event participation and milestones, serving as collectible badges to incentivize engagement.

Despite these advancements, a significant gap remains: no platform integrates Web2 (social media) and Web3 (onchain) data into a single dashboard, complicating even basic analytics. Trading-focused platforms still dominate the analytics landscape, highlighting the need for a new analytics stack designed for product teams and onchain builders. 

Unlock the potential of onchain data and enhance user experience with Formo

Unlock the potential of onchain data and enhance user experience with Formo

Formo helps teams understand onchain data to acquire and engage active users in web3. Its Wallet Data Platform (WDP) combines traditional customer data with onchain data to create a comprehensive user profile. Formo represents a significant advancement in how Web3 brands interact with their users on the decentralized web, offering tools that provide actionable insights for roadmap planning and marketing strategies.

The rise of diverse Web3 tools marks just the beginning. Today, nearly 200 projects are innovating in this space, with 71 startups raising over $600 million. As the blockchain ecosystem expands, the Web3 tooling landscape will continue to evolve, offering new opportunities for decentralized interaction and collaboration. Embracing these tools is key to building stronger, more inclusive, and more efficient communities. 

Sign up for Formo now to get Early Access!

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