Data and DeFi Communities

We're always trying to learn about all the interesting things happening in web3. To satiate our curiosity, we host a weekly-ish Twitter Spaces series called Coffee Conversations. What follows is a summary of the fourth episode.

For the fourth episode of Coffee Conversations, we hosted Zippy, a self-proclaimed exit liquidity philanthropist. They currently lead the ambassador programs at Ocean Protocol and 0vix Protocol, and are the co-founder of Lu, a blockchain community marketing agency.

Highlights

• Ocean Protocol provides a secure and trustworthy way to share datasets that could be used to train AI and ML models.

• 0vix Protocol provides liquidity for DeFi assets. They have a DEX and the OVX token that is used for protocol governance.

• Lu helps blockchain projects build and grow communities.

• In his experience of building data and DeFi communities, Zippy noticed that these communities are more lively than others because everyone is always sharing the latest alpha like yield generation or risk mitigation strategies with others.

• Membership badges, like what rep3 offers, are a great way to recognize and reward members non-financially.

• For some community members, recognition and appreciation holds more weight than monetary rewards. Participation and achievement badges are perfect for these members.

• For the others, it is a great way to build their on-chain reputation.

• rep3's dynamic membership badges open up a whole new world of community engagement workflows and strategies.

Transcript

This transcript is edited for brevity and clarity.

Infi: Hello, everyone! Welcome to the fourth episode of Coffee Conversations. Today we have with us Zippy, an ambassador for Ocean Protocol and 0vix Protocol. They also run a blockchain community marketing agency called Lu.

They have extensive experience building communities in DeFi. We will discuss community building in DeFi and data projects, specifically their experiences as part of two big communities in each space.

So Zippy, why don't you introduce yourself and give us a more in-depth introduction to Lu, Ocean, and 0vix?

Zippy: As an ambassador, I lead three programs, and the first and largest among them is the Ocean Protocol program. Ocean Protocol is a fascinating project that I'm sure many of you have heard about. It's part of the web3 ecosystem and aligns with the idea of exponential technologies, particularly AI and machine learning.

Now, you may wonder how AI and machine learning fit into the picture. Well, as you may know, the accuracy and effectiveness of an AI program largely depend on the quality and variety of the data sets used to train it. And this is where Ocean Protocol comes in.

Ocean Protocol provides a platform and marketplace for sharing data, which is essential for data scientists who work in AI. With the increasing importance of data privacy, it's crucial that data sharing is secure and trustworthy. And this is what Ocean Protocol aims to do.

As the saying goes, "information wants to be free," but it's not just about making information accessible for free. It's about sharing it widely. For many businesses, data is the core of their operations, and they need to be careful about who has access to it. That's where Ocean Protocol comes in.

They also have a compute data solution that you can use to anonymize your data, making it more standardized. You can encrypt your data on a blockchain with Ocean Protocol. And once you've done that, you can put it up for sale on the Ocean marketplace, where other interested parties can purchase it.

As you can see, Ocean Protocol is all about making data sharing more secure, accessible, and profitable for everyone. Ocean Protocol uses OCEAN tokens for transactions and has a thriving community of users. You can even get involved by curating data sets.

And as for 0vix, 0vix is a decentralized finance project that focuses on providing liquidity for assets in DeFi. It operates as a decentralized exchange where users can trade various assets, including crypto and stablecoins. 0vix has a governance token called OVX, which allows users to participate in the decision-making process for the platform.

Lastly, Lu, my community marketing agency, helps blockchain projects build and grow their communities. We work with projects to help them define their target audience, create engaging content, and run effective community-building campaigns. We aim to help projects grow and foster a strong and engaged community that can help drive their success.

That's a brief overview of what I do and what my agency does. I hope that gives you a good understanding of the different projects and communities I'm involved with.

Infi: It's really impressive to see how you are so deeply involved in the DeFi ecosystem.

When I think about DeFi communities, I can't help but notice that they seem more money-oriented than other social communities. For example, social communities might form and grow on a more idealistic level. In direct contrast to that, DeFi communities seem to mostly revolve around finance.

So, as someone who has experience growing a DeFi community, I'm curious, what do you think are some of the key differences between growing a DeFi community versus growing a community in a different space?

Zippy: Sure! To answer your question, growing a DeFi community is slightly different compared to growing a community in a different space.

One key difference, as you rightly pointed out, is that DeFi communities tend to focus more on money and generating yields. People come together to discuss strategies and help each other manage their risks. For example, suppose someone is using a certain platform like FTX to generate yield, and there are rumors that something is happening. In that case, community members will share their knowledge and help each other.

Another difference is that there's always a lot of innovation happening in the DeFi space, like the recent introduction of data DeFi, where people can use their data sets as NFTs for DeFi functions. So, it's always exciting to be part of a DeFi community and see what's new and what new strategies people are discovering.

Infi: Alright. Now I want to delve a little deeper into community building. Let's talk about membership badges. I think it's an interesting concept, and I would love to hear your thoughts on why you think these badges or something similar is necessary. And then, it would be great if you could tell us a little about how 0vix plans to utilize rep3 badges in their community.

Zippy: I love the whole package that rep3 is offering us to manage our community. The way it gives out NFTs to members is just amazing. What I really like about these NFTs though, is that they are dynamic in nature. So we have the option to promote or demote members based on their roles, responsibilities and results.

But later on, as our community expands, we might have other people who are given responsibility in certain areas. So we can promote them by changing their NFT memberships too.

In rep3, there are other features we really like that help solve engagement and incentive problems in communities. Not everyone is motivated by money; some want prestige, while others just want to show they're helping others. Fortunately, rep3 helps us target these people as well.

For example, we can give out badges for participating in weekly AMAs or for achievements within the program. This helps us manage things without incurring extra costs.

Infi: We're glad you're thinking of ways to make full use of our different features! When building the protocol, we kept asking ourselves, "what can we offer that would be useful for as many different communities as possible?", and we realized that rewards don't always have to be in the form of money.

There are other ways to make members feel valued, like recognizing them and enabling them to build their on-chain reputation. For instance, we heard about a designer who asks her clients to fill out the POAP drop form with feedback after a project is done, just so she could receive a POAP from the person or org. they did work for. So the need for this is already very much there.

Zippy: True. In fact, I just remembered another way we could reward people in our community. Our team operates with specific roles, for example our in-house degens search for high-yield strategies. They work with our risk managers to ensure everything is safe and sound.

Now as the degen pros research yields opportunities, they sometimes discover something valuable. We could selectively share these opportunities, this exclusive alpha, with members of our ambassador program, or even with members that are contributing regularly to the community. We're planning to use the rep3 badges we give to our members for such a purpose as well.

Infi: That makes a lot of sense. Every community involves its members differently, and there's a lot we all can learn from each other.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us today, Zippy. Our time is almost up, and it's been a pleasure having you here. How have you been feeling lately?

What's your take on the recent happenings with FTX? I'm still optimistic, but I hope you didn't lose any money.

Zippy: I actually lost quite a lot of money in FTX. That's where I had a lot of funds. So I managed to get some of it out, but I still took a massive loss. Something like eighteen cents on the dollar. I haven't got all of it yet, but I took a massive haircut.

Like for me, the gold standard exchanges were, you know, Binance, FTX, and Kraken. I had a lot of faith in SBF, and I loved what they were doing and I loved using FTX. It became my favorite exchange to trade on. So much so that I kept the Bitcoin I've had since 2013 on there.

But that's the thing, in this space, you take your licks, and there are plenty more opportunities to return stronger and better.

Infi: Well, I'm glad we share the same sentiment, and it's nice to see you taking it so positively. I think a lot of us can learn from that.

With that being said, it's time to end our conversation. It was lovely having you on today, Zippy. For those of you that joined late, in this episode, we hosted Upkar, a.k.a. Zippy from Ocean Protocol, 0vix Protocol, and Lu, to talk about building data and DeFi communities.

Zippy: Thank you very much. And for anyone interested in participating in either of these projects, you can see the links on my profile. Do check them out! I would love to see you there.

Infi: Awesome. Thank you once again for joining Zippy, and a big thank you to everyone who came and stayed the whole while. You've been a great audience. Check out the project in Zippy's bio, and that's about it. I'll see you guys next time! Till then, stay safe and work hard.

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