Most community platforms that aspiring community leaders must choose from as infrastructure to grow and nurture communities are based around centralized tech. It's time we gave community leaders a decentralized platform option.
Without sacrificing all the good things that web 2.0 community platforms provide, we can redesign these platforms with decentralization in mind and web 3.0 features that enhance member and leader experience, add automation and coordination, and achieve levels of integrity, community empowerment, inclusivity, and safety that are currently lacking in the platforms community organizers have to choose from.
We do this with blockchain, decentralized storage, and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) concepts. These are the foundational components we need to build a truly next-generation community platform and user experience...
And the tools are available. NEAR Protocol provides a highly effective, scalable and usable layer 1 blockchain with native account capabilities, Textile.io provides tech that enables CRUD operations and facilitates storage and retrieval on IPFS to mimic the database schemas and storage mechanisms underlying existing community platforms, and Moloch DAOs provide a pathway for automated community interaction and decision making.
Combining these tools gives us the building blocks we can use to build a robust and effective decentralized community platform that community leaders can rely on to grow and coordinate the activities of their organizations.