The power of Discord — why Discord should be your most powerful ally when it comes to investing in projects

Ask yourself this, when the market becomes volatile, and or calamity ensues how are the projects that you’re invested in doing in terms of staying true to their respective course the one they originally embarked on? Are they capitulating towards the hysteria and fear or are they putting their nose down and building? These are the questions we all should be cognizant of as investors in the space.

I believe when liquidity starts to dry up and volume/activity in NFTs reach new lows is when the good projects shine and the bad projects will stick out like sore thumbs. Side note, always remember this, any project can look good in a Bull Run. Trust me on that. Now, on the flip slide, when liquidity does start to dry up one will notice two things: good projects led by competent founders will keep building and bad projects with inexperienced founders will crumble due to newfound panic and frustration. So, where should one go in order to gauge sentiment when it comes to projects? Well, to me, that answer is simple. It is Discord.

Shhh…can you hear that?

To me, Discord is the equivalent of a living and breathing organism. And, in my humble opinion the pulse of a project is predicated by the engagement within its respective discord. Is the ongoing engagement within the channels of the project toxic? Or is it full of positivity and real insight? But wait there is a caveat, and that is, just because a project has a discord full of positive comments and everyone seems to be on cloud 9 that doesn’t equate to real positivity either. You, as an investor, have to be able to separate genuine positivity and sincere engagement from faux positivity aka “A bunch of people drinking the Kool-Aid”. Being able to distinguish between faux positivity and real positivity, I believe, is an actual skill set. Like any skill set, it must be reinforced, through two things. The first thing is what I call “Discord Surfing”. “Discord Surfing” is the equivalent of just browsing. Now, layer “Discord Surfing” with the second thing and that is Emotional Intelligence. When you combine the two what you will find is, effectively, you have a new skill set. I have been discords where people are drinking the “Kool-Aid” and it’s so obvious. What’s a clear telltale sign? The signs for me are two- fold: First, you will notice a lack of accountability with respect to the founders and the broad team, and second, there is this apprehension lurking amongst the members with respect to critiquing those very founders and team, due to, the fear of being called out for spreading “FUD”.

Now lets do a deeper dive into toxic discords and what that means exactly

In continuation regarding the point made above, Toxic discord communities for me, are those, in which chatter is constantly around floor price. You will see individuals constantly asking founders or mods “wen is the floor going to moon”. Ergo, they will propose ideas and suggestions that will create a “temporarily high floor price”, however, be aware, those ideas bring no inherent value. What makes rhetoric around “floor price” so dangerous is that those same people forget as fast a floor rises is as fast as it shall fall. I find this concept analogous to the notion of decay rate related to the half-life of a radioisotope. Basically the faster the decay rate the shorter the half life will be. The slower the decay rate the longer the half life will be. Decay Rate = Floor Price and Half Life = Project’s Life. Ultimately, from my experience, the tactics or suggestions to look out for in a toxic discord are the following:

• Hire influencers to create hype
• Use the project’s treasury funds to acquire whatever is laying at floor
• Ask other people to DELIST IMMEDIATELY

Now, let me just speak on that last bullet. When I see members in discord asking other members to delist I immediately start to cringe. Why? Well, it is because they are trying to do two things: Lower Listings (in terms of sheer quantity) and create a faux high floor price. Delisting is a trap, a trap, which the inexperienced prospective NFT investor may fall into. Now why is it a trap? Well, because delisting creates the illusion of a strong community. The illusion is that the reason there are such a limited number of NFTs for sale is because the rest of the community thinks the project is primed to take off. So yes, always have your guard up.

Soooo….What’s a positive discord?

Now, what does a positive discord look like? Well, in my opinion, I think a positive discord is one that is created around an ethos that fosters building a community that supports founders in a very collaborative way. That, to me, is a positive discord. I believe, as investors we need to have a seismic change regarding our thought process with regards to what role we play in terms of the success pertaining to the projects we are invested in. I believe the first thing we need to do is to look at investing into a project as a joint investment ( a partnership if you will). Community members need to be there for their founders by working in unison rather than just sitting on their hands and expecting founders to just deliver value. The capital we invest in a project is just one part of the “success formula”. When we invest into a project, we need to think of ourselves as a partners now. What can we do as a collective whole to create engagement across mediums to showcase the strength of the community we are a part of. This is what we need to start asking ourselves. We need to start collaborating with the founders of the projects we are in. This is because, at the end of the day, all of this is just a circle. Take a look at this breakdown below:

Strong community creates engagement => Engagement keeps founders and the general team excited => Excitement fosters creativity => Creativity yields new products => New products create hype and real value => Hype and real value create fomo => Fomo creates demand for the project. This cycle helps to create, what I believe, is a successful project.

Final Thoughts

I will wrap up with this. Use your discord to its full ability and remember we are all working together to build the next great thing. We are partners. Lastly, I want to give a shoutout to all the founders who are putting their blood sweat and tears into their projects. In addition the founders, to the mods without you all holding down the fort discord would simply be anarchy.

-CryptoPapi