A group of individuals bound together by shared purpose, values, interests, practices, or place, who develop relationships and social structures to support collective action and mutual benefit.
Communities exist in many forms - from place-based neighborhoods, towns, and bioregions to interest-based associations, professional networks, and digital collectives. Regardless of their form, thriving communities are characterized by meaningful relationships, shared identity, and participatory processes that enable collective decision-making, resource stewardship, and mutual care.
Throughout history, communities have been fundamental to human flourishing, providing the social infrastructure through which people meet their needs, resolve conflicts, transmit knowledge across generations, and develop cultural practices. While community organizing has traditionally been rooted in physical place, digital tools and networks have expanded the possibilities for community formation and coordination across geographical boundaries.
Uses of “Community”
In the context of DAO networks and decentralized systems, “community” takes on several distinct but interconnected meanings, each highlighting different aspects of how groups organize, govern, and create value together.
Community as Identity and Culture
Communities establish shared identities, norms, and cultural practices that guide behavior and decision-making. This cultural layer provides the social infrastructure necessary for decentralized coordination.
In DAO to DAO cooperation, strong community identity is highlighted as a critical facilitator of cooperation: “these communities have a strong sense of identity and individuals who have deep relationships with one another - these are really important facilitators of cooperation.”
Community in Social Impact
In social impact contexts, communities are both beneficiaries and active participants in designing and implementing solutions. Reimagining Power emphasizes the importance of community-driven approaches that transfer power and resources to those directly affected by social challenges.
Community involvement ensures that solutions are contextually appropriate, culturally sensitive, and aligned with local needs and priorities. Web3 technologies can enhance this by enabling more direct community participation in decision-making and resource allocation through mechanisms like participatory grantmaking and community-owned funding pools.
Community in Web3
In the context of web3 and DAOs, a community is more than just a collection of users or stakeholders. It represents an active, engaged network of participants who contribute to, govern, and derive value from decentralized systems. Communities in this context are characterized by their agency, self-organization capabilities, and collective intelligence. They exist across multiple scales - from small collaborative teams to large constituency networks - and can evolve through different phases of development and engagement.
Unlike traditional user bases or audiences, web3 communities exercise direct influence over governance, resource allocation, and strategic direction through decentralized decision-making mechanisms. This fundamentally shifts power dynamics from centralized entities to distributed networks of stakeholders, enabling more equitable, transparent, and resilient systems.
Community as Network Coordinator
Communities can function as coordination mechanisms for autonomous teams and resource flows. In this context, a community provides the shared context, values, and communication channels necessary for decentralized entities to align their actions without centralized control.
The DAO Primitives framework describes how “purpose-aligned networks of small autonomous teams” can coordinate effectively through community-level agreements and shared infrastructure, creating systems that “outperform traditional organizations” while directing “performance towards building a better and more sustainable world.”
Community as Governance Constituency
In community-governance, “community” refers to the broad base of stakeholders who participate in governing a network’s overarching purpose and direction. This constituency-scale governance operates through deliberative mechanisms like conviction voting and makes long-term decisions about network direction and treasury allocation.
As described in Building DAOs as scalable networks, community governance “safeguards the purpose of the network” and includes a diverse set of stakeholders: “Cell contributors, founders, partners (sponsors, funders etc), as well as others that have a stake in the purpose of the network but may not be contributing directly to its operations.”
Community in Group Development
During the early Conversation Phase of group development, community serves as the foundation for exploration and idea generation. This phase is characterized by “open exploration and idea generation” where “all perspectives are valued” to establish a shared vision and understanding.
The community at this stage focuses on relationship building, creating trust and rapport among members that will be essential for effective collaboration in later stages of development.