The challenges of Web3 community management: the dilemma and breakthroughs of fairness and efficiency

Recently, a community launched a unique essay competition, with prizes including valuable medals and NFTs. The event established two selection mechanisms: the first place is determined by votes from senior community members, receiving a medal; the second and third places are decided based on social media engagement, receiving a base vehicle and hero NFT, respectively.

The original intention of this design is to avoid the drawbacks that simple lotteries may bring, such as a large number of prizes being monopolized by a few individuals. The first place adopts a representative system model, aiming to select true community contributors; while the second and third places use a mechanism similar to proof of stake, measuring based on social media influence.

However, this arrangement has sparked some controversy. New members have questioned the fairness of the activity, arguing that ordinary users without a large fan base find it difficult to succeed in social media interactions. This skepticism reflects people's expectations for "perfect fairness" in the Web3 world, but achieving absolute fairness and transparency in reality is fraught with challenges.

In fact, even the Ethereum Foundation, which is regarded as an industry benchmark, operates in a manner that is closer to traditional Web2 organizational structures. This indicates that the success of a project is not directly related to whether it fully adheres to Web3 principles. As political science research shows, the type of regime does not have a decisive impact on economic prosperity at certain stages of development.

For community management, implementing traditional community operation methods in a Web3 environment indeed faces many challenges. Web3 protects user identity privacy but also makes some routine operations such as voting and lotteries difficult to implement fairly. Additionally, the characteristic that one user can control multiple addresses further increases the complexity of management.

Regarding the allocation of voting rights, some question why only high-ranking members have voting rights. There is no standard answer to this question; similar to the "universal voting" systems of ancient Greece and Rome, it was actually limited to the citizens of the city-states. One possible improvement could be to assign different voting weights based on member levels, but this would require more complex technical support and additional human resources.

The road to Web3 community management is still long and requires continuous adjustments and balancing in practice. The current realistic goal is to strive for the acceptance of the majority of members, rather than pursuing complete satisfaction for everyone. A successful community needs participants to respect established rules, with winners maintaining humility and losers exercising patience. At the same time, when community consensus has not yet matured, management should act cautiously to avoid unnecessary controversies.

This discussion not only reflects the challenges faced by the Web3 community but also showcases the participants' pursuit of fairness and transparency. Despite the gap between ideals and reality, I believe that through continuous exploration and improvement, the Web3 community will ultimately find a development path that balances the interests of all parties.