The common compliant I have seen from NFTs consumers is that the community is dead and its because of Discord.

However, if your community lacks engagement and purpose, even the best platform can't prevent its decline.

Discord isn’t the reason why your community is a ghost town. It doesn’t matter if you use telegram, instagram, Reddit or whatever is out there.

Every community online typically goes through a cycle. With each of them approaching a different stage during it. Knowing what stage the community is in will help you prepare for the problems better and especially if it is in the middle of transitioning. The cycle isn’t always linear for every community but this is what I notice with my experience managing them since I was 10.

Typically there is four stages.

Inception - Establishment - Maturity - Mitosis or Revival

Inception is the beginning of the community. Where a group of people bond over a niche interest. It always starts out small and where the foundation of the culture would develop. There are many issues that can occur and while I can't name every single one. There are ways to solve the most common ones I seen

Lack of engagement is the bane of many. It is hard to find ways to attract active members and even harder to attract the right ones but this is the easiest problem to solve out of them all.

Create engaging content and activities
Personally reach out to potential members
Offer incentives for early participation

Some community have the opposite issue where they're experiencing a high growth but it is unstructured. You deal with them by enforcing some guidelines and clearly define the value, make sure that security is properly put in place but most importantly retain retention by welcoming others and creating a desire to want to connect. You might get overwhelmed by a influx of people coming through the door but spending the time with as many people as you can will make it so your community will stay.

I would like to emphasized that during this stage you should focus be on maintaining momentum. Without consistent engagement, the community risks stagnation and failing to reach the next stage: establishment. This phase is critical as it involves solidifying the community's identity and creating structures that support sustained interaction.

To maintain momentum, continue fostering engaging discussions, regular events, and opportunities for members to contribute meaningfully. Encourage leadership roles within the community to distribute responsibilities and keep activity levels high. Recognize and celebrate milestones to keep morale and motivation up.

For instance, the metav3rse community managed to sustain its growth by constantly introducing new initiatives, educational content, and interactive projects that kept members enthusiastic and involved. You came in knowing that when you contribute it would pay off. People managed to get jobs and became the leader in the community and develop skills that they wouldn't have done so if the structure wasn't there to ensure them.

The metav3rse community is also a great example of how to solve the rapid growth issue. It grew so rapidly in the beginning because everyone had a common interest in crypto and NFTs. They were at the right time and place where the pandemic was setting and the news of crypto was spreading like wildfire.

The culture was centered around growing and learning to use the NFTs to improve oneself. By be it using it in a way to make creating art more viable or creating ownership and dividing it equally. This shared enthusiasm fostered a strong sense of unity and collaboration, which attracted more members eager to explore and innovate within the space.

Roberto and Quinn who are the founders quickly turn the chaos into a calm structure and by doing so, they successfully navigated from inception to establishment, ensuring long-term viability and setting a strong foundation for future stages

Signs of the establishment stage and issues that could rise

After enough growth communities typically transition into the establishment stage. This is typically define by some core characteristics and members dynamics

Solidification of community identity and culture
Development of consistent processes and routines
Establishment of a stable member base
Transition from early adopters to a broader member base
Emergence of regular contributors and potential leaders
Balancing retention of existing members with attraction of new ones

As online communities evolve, they often face challenges such as inconsistent participation and the need to adapt to changing member needs. Inconsistent participation can lead to stagnation, making it difficult to maintain momentum and engagement. This issue can arise from a variety of factors, including members losing interest or moving on to other commitments.

To combat this is where the leaders you chose come into play. Community leaders must continually introduce fresh, engaging content and activities to keep members involved which is common sense but above all they must be flexible.

As the community grows and its demographic changes, the initial needs and interests of its members will shift. It is bound to happen and if you aren't careful this is what lead to the downfall of communities including metav3rse.

In the case of online communities especially, founders often have the most significant impact in shaping the culture, direction, and overall success. Their vision and leadership establish the foundation upon which the community builds. However, when a severe disagreement arises between founders, it can reverberate through the entire community, leading to lasting consequences.

Roberto and Quinn's inability to adapt—not just to the community's needs but also amidst their disagreements—caused a rift that the community couldn't bridge. Their conflict led to confusion and division among members, causing engagement to plummet. As factions formed within the community, many members grew dissatisfied and chose to leave, seeking new spaces where they felt their evolving interests and needs would be better addressed.

This didn’t just reduce the member count; it fragmented the unity and identity that had been meticulously built, ultimately resulting in the community's decline and driving members away to form new, separate communities more aligned with their values and goals.

The solution is simple: just get feedback from the members. Engaging with your community directly allows you to understand their needs, preferences, and concerns. This crucial insight helps you tailor activities, content, and initiatives that resonate with them, thereby fostering a more vibrant and active community. Instead of guessing, ask your members what they want and make adjustments based on their responses. This approach ensures that your community remains relevant, engaged, and aligned with its members’ evolving interests.

Below is a way to do so

From here if your community is genuinely strong is when you transition to a mature community

Signs of the maturity stage and issues that could rise

A mature community typically has a stable membership base with consistent retention rates and a steady influx of new members. This is what many would consider the peak of online community.

Engagement becomes self-sustaining, with members initiating discussions and activities without prompting from community managers.
The leadership structure evolves, often with a clear hierarchy or distributed model, and formalized processes for transitions.
There's a robust content ecosystem, with a rich archive of community-generated content and established curation systems.
The community develops a strong sense of identity, with established traditions and shared language.
External recognition increases, with the community often seen as an authority in its niche.
Processes become scalable, able to handle growth and sudden influxes of new members.

A thriving online community often has measurable impacts that can be tracked through various clear metrics. These include engagement rates, member retention, content creation, and participation in events, all of which provide insights into the community's health.

Engagement rates, such as the number of active members and frequency of interactions, indicate how involved and interested the community is. Retention rates help gauge satisfaction and ongoing interest, while the volume and quality of user-generated content reflect the community’s vibrancy and value generation.

You may think that this is the best stage of the community but there are a lot of issues they have.

A lack of diverse viewpoints can create an echo chamber within a community, leading to its eventual demise. When all members share similar perspectives and dissenting opinions are not welcomed or encouraged, the community becomes insular and resistant to new ideas.

This stifles innovation, discourages critical thinking, and limits meaningful discussions. Over time the remaining homogeneous group tends to reinforce each other's beliefs without challenge, causing stagnation. Without fresh perspectives to invigorate conversation and drive evolution, the community's engagement dwindles, ultimately leading to its decline.

As online communities grow and evolve, one significant challenge is the difficulty of consistently producing fresh, engaging content. Without new and captivating material, member interest wanes, leading to reduced participation and a stagnant atmosphere

This is when you should consider creating smaller sub-groups which end up being highly effective. These groups allow members to connect more deeply over specific topics, fostering a sense of belonging and purpose. Additionally, hosting smaller, more intimate events alongside larger ones can enhance personal interactions and strengthen community bonds.

It's crucial to align activities and content with the community's core purpose while implementing these changes gradually. Make sure to be accompanied by feedback loops from the community to ensure a smooth transition. Leaders can maintain relevance and foster deeper connections among members.

This process not only helps in maintaining the momentum but also strengthens the community's resilience against stagnation

Which leads to the final stage of the cycle. Mitosis or revival

Before I talk about it I want to clarify some things.

Mitosis isn't a bad thing and revival isn't always good

There seems to be a stereotype that when you reach this stage of the cycle. You are either destined for failure by having your community split or by reaching the status quo by becoming a new place.

Nothing is ever that black and white. There are times when Mitosis is actually quite beneficial. The best example would be spirit dao from the Azuki community.

Spirit DAO emerged as a vibrant sub-community, focusing on collaborative projects such as their partnership with Pixelmon and niche interests that reinvigorated the broader Azuki community by providing fresh avenues for engagement and innovation. They're living proof at how a sub group can be the de-facto.

During a period of intense FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt), Spirit DAO played a crucial role in saving the Azuki community. By improving communication and maintaining the overall community identity, they were able to reinforce a sense of unity and purpose among members. Spirit DAO emerged as more then just a sub-community within Azuki. They ended up as one of the strongest groups and pillar in the space. Their approach not only strengthened the bonds within the community but also reinvigorated it, transforming the decline into a period of revitalization and growth.

Revival can paradoxically lead to a more destructive downfall, as seen with the Little Lemon Friends NFT community. When an online community attempts a revival, it often generates temporary excitement and engagement. However, without addressing underlying issues, this resurgence can quickly collapse, leading to greater disappointment and fragmentation.

The initial boost creates heightened expectations and emotional investment, making the subsequent failure more painful and disillusioning for the members. In the case of Lemon Friends NFT, the revival brought a short-lived spike in activity but eventually faltered due to persistent structural weaknesses and lack of sustained leadership.

This second collapse not only left the community fractured but also deepened the sense of loss and distrust among its members, amplifying the negative impact compared to the original decline.

The biggest issue though with why all communities are dying or even dead is Information Fragmentation.

Platform Ambassadors, a Unified Tagging System, and developing custom APIs if necessary to facilitate data sharing between platforms can effectively solve the issue of information fragmentation within online communities.

Platform Ambassadors act as dedicated guidance, ensuring consistent communication and engagement across various platforms by understanding community needs and fostering connections.

A Unified Tagging System standardizes content categorization, making it easier for members to find and engage with relevant information regardless of where it is posted. Developing custom APIs further enhances seamless data transfer and integration between different platforms, ensuring that updates, discussions, and resources are synchronized and accessible.

You see there are many problems I haven't even talked about and many more solutions I haven't even touch but there is a common theme in the solutions amongst it all.

Communication and value. That's all you really need to know to prevent your community from disappearing. So next time when you think why your community is having issue.

Look at the cycle its in but most importantly pay attention to your communication.

Thank you for reading! I hope this was somewhat helpful if you manage a online community!

The Pulse of Online Communities: Navigating the Lifecycle