TOA’s path to Web3
tl;dr: Crypto/Web3 is nitrogen for builders, communities and learning. Today we announce that TOA goes Web3! Next to newly launched Crypto Klubs, a TOA Klub NFT and a new TOA Crypto Podcast, we will take the actual Klub platform on-chain.
Be part of our open learning journey to find out what Web3 can mean for you and your organisation. And join our growing team to build the future of learning and community — together.
Pandemic B̶a̶b̶y̶ Pivot
Given that TOA’s core product involved 20,000+ people rubbing shoulders at our annual festival, the pandemic forced us to rethink how we deliver value to our community.
Having launched the Klub platform a few months ago, we are now 100% virtual. Our multi-week programs support founders, creators, operators and investors on their path forward. Our first Klub cohort (Pre/Seed Founders 01) graduated two weeks ago and we were thrilled with the level of member engagement and to get the best NPS score we have ever received.
Our own path as an organisation has taken a turn. We are doubling down on our virtual Klub community and believe that Web3 will play a central role in scaling not only our own platform but communities & learning in general.
Making the Internet weird again
Web3 has many compelling narratives. There is the promise of trustless security, data sovereignty, digital property rights and permissionless composability. Which translates to: transparency, freedom, openness & accessibility. Thought leaders such as Chris Dixon or Chris Burniske do an excellent job translating these promises and their underlying technical “primitives” into tangible benefits for everyday users and society at large. Our podcast with Lasse Clausen is also a good intro!
In short: Web3 liberates data, users and builders to reimagine the way we interact with one another.
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During the early crypto talks at TOA conferences, the benefits of blockchain technology still lived in Theoryland, the lingo to describe them often academic in nature. Fast forward to today and we see DeFi, NFTs and DAOs hit the mainstream. Crypto has started to shape our culture: shared values (transparency), beliefs (decentralisation), myths (satoshi), symbols (punks, apes & squiggles) and routines (“gm”) make up a new cultural fabric.
Everyone’s journey into Web3 is different. The moment the bug truly caught me, the day I went from intellectual curiosity to a feeling that the internet will forever change, was the day I connected my wallet to a dApp. The theory became hands-on practical. Now I can use my wallet to buy and lend out assets, mint NFTs, “play to earn”, get access to specialised communities or vote in DAO governance. (Don’t worry if these abbreviations don’t mean anything to you today. We are coming to the rescue, see below!)
Yes, the first steps of onboarding are still bumpy. But once I had my first wallet in place the user experience became the most seamless I ever had. With the click of a button I could take my data anywhere I chose to browse to. This data interoperability paired with the open source nature of Web3 products is leveling the playing field to…. … play!
It is hard to stay on top of all the creativity and innovation that is being unleashed in the space every single day. And while there can be a feeling of overwhelming firehose input, the journey is above all inspiring and fun.
TOA & Crypto
Crypto has been part of TOA’s programming since 2013 when Gavin Wood presented a new paradigm for open innovation at our Berlin edition. Ethereum launched later that summer and the rest is history. Our first crypto satellite event featuring a rising star named Bitcoin also took place that year.
From 2016–2018, blockchain and crypto became the most ubiquitous themes at our conferences (measured by the number of talks per theme) and we ran our first dedicated TOA Blockchain Conference. When ICOs took center stage we began to entertain the idea of tokenizing our festival to get our community involved with real skin in the game and to find a way to better align the interests of all participants of TOA. So in 2017 we started a crypto podcast series exploring the path of an ICO for us as an organisation. While the thought experiment was intellectually stimulating, the application of a token for a physical product such as our conference did not make sense at the time. Crypto winter came and we went back to making TOA the best tech conference in the world.
TOA Klub goes Web3
We recently launched our first Crypto Klubs to support people transitioning into this exciting space. We do not want to stop at running crypto cohorts, however.
Our team is committed to bringing Klub “on chain”, using as many Web3 primitives as sensible in order to best align the incentives of all Klub community members.
Our first completed Klub cohort has shown us that the majority of the value at Klub derives from its members. Our team at TOA may currently provide the platform, curate the program and build out the community but the value comes from its members. When analysing the messages that were exchanged in our dedicated Klub chat, we were thrilled to see that the vast majority of messages were exchanged as DMs between members. After all, Klub is a network of individuals looking to learn from one another. Klub members even self-organised an IRL meetup in Berlin that people travelled to. It reminded me of the 100+ TOA satellite events that would be self-organized by the community every year during our flagship festival. Similarly, Klub is a platform where value is created by the community.
Spoiler alert: In contrast to Web2, Web3 allows for community members to not only participate in the creation of the platform itself but also share the value generated. Different primitives allow for platforms to provide baked-in incentives to reward members for the value they provide to the community.
“Web3 offers a set of tools that can align incentives in ways that allow groups to tap into their communal genius.”
We are committed to taking Klub all the way to Web3 and we are doing it in the way TOA has always done things since the day we became the first crowdsourced and crowdfunded festival in 2012: openly and collaboratively.
Join us on this journey as we are launching the TOA Klub NFT and are openly exploring the role of social (utility) tokens, NFTs and DAOs for our path forward. Many of our questions may arise for your organisation, too. Next to sharing our learnings in this Newsletter, we are launching a TOA Crypto podcast series to disseminate what has already been learned by others.
Our mission has always been to help people and organizations become futureproof. Web3 will allow for our mission to scale beyond what we thought was possible in 2012.
Apply for membership in Klub here.
Vamos!
Feedback, questions, thoughts to share? Write us at crypto@toa.berlin.
Shout-out to projects such as Roll , Collab.land, Snapshot & Gnosis who are paving the way for decentralized communities to flourish.
