#333: Lindy Communities

There is a term that I was introduced to as I spent more time in crypto and web3: Lindy.

What does it mean to be Lindy and what is the Lindy effect?

The Lindy effect is a theorized phenomenon by which the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things, like a technology or an idea, is proportional to their current age. Thus, the Lindy effect proposes the longer a period something has survived to exist or be used in the present, the longer its remaining life expectancy. Longevity implies a resistance to change, obsolescence, or competition, and greater odds of continued existence into the future.

What are some examples of the Lindy effect?

Traditional Art: Famous art pieces from centuries past, such as the Mona Lisa, have not only remained relevant but become cultural artifacts. Incidents of theft and vandalism have only made it more Lindy.

Digital Art: Digital art is seeing its own Lindy effect take hold, with artists like XCOPY having their art recently resold for $520k, and Beeple continuing his everydays streak, releasing new kinetic sculpture pieces, and having solo museum shows.

CryptoPunks, launched in 2017 is considered to be the first PFP NFT collection and holds the position as the most valuable PFP NFT collection.

Gold: The figurative and literal gold standard for what society considers as a store of value. Pretty Lindy considering gold was a medium of exchange as far back as thousands of years ago in Egypt.

Bitcoin: Often described as digital gold, Bitcoin has survived countless proclamations of its death and is flirting with all-time highs. On a separate note, it’s fun to see the ‘man on the street’ asking strangers whether they’d want $100 or 1 Bitcoin. Bitcoin and blockchain as a technology and asset may be Lindy, but the comprehension of its value and unit bias aren’t quite there yet depending on who you talk to.

Religion: The OG Lindy community that’s been around for thousands of years. Depending on how you define it, religion has expanded or been replaced by other types of communities and beliefs such as politics.

Subreddits: These topic-focused communities of Reddit have grown into some of the largest online communities, with r/funny (64M), r/AskReddit (49M), r/gaming (44M) leading the way.

Web3/NFT/Crypto communities: And finally, we have the topic of today’s piece. I’ll focus on NFT communities since I have a few examples of how they’re becoming Lindy. The points apply more broadly though.

Before diving further into the concept around Lindy communities, it’s helpful to provide a few examples of community initiatives that recently caught my eye.

Pudgy Penguins recently announced a partnership with CD Castellón, a football club that competes in Spain’s 2nd division. The partnership will feature select Pudgy Penguins and Lil Pudgys on the team’s uniforms.

Holders that want a chance at having their Pudgy featured on the uniforms had to mint The Winning Strike created by FroggyCyborg, a prominent community member and holder who has created a ton of Pudgy Pengiuns-themed art for the community.

Additionally, a football jersey-themed PFP edit was available for community members to rock and support CD Castellón, and it doesn’t hurt that the team won their first match that debuted the Penguins.

Project Legends is a creative effort from Cyclo, a Doodles community member. Cyclo provides personalized PFP assets to prominent Doodles community members as a way for them that help elevate their personal brand and as a nod to their contributions to the Doodles community.

Azuki continues to develop its anime content flywheel and recently introduced a new character, Mizuki. Although the character development is primarily driven by the team, it also involves the community in different ways. For Mizuki specifically, the team introduced an art contest sponsored by an Arbitrum grant.

How did it work?

• Artists had 2 weeks to create and submit Mizuki-themed artwork

• The Azuki team selected the top 15 artworks uploaded to Azuki’s Zora account for free mints

• The community ‘votes’ by minting the art on Zora, with each unique wallet holding the artwork counting as one vote

• Zora creator rewards generated from the mints go to the artist

Over 6,000 editions of the artworks were minted by the end of the contest, making it a win for the artists ($ARB contest rewards, Zora creator rewards, and awareness of their work), the community (collecting high-quality art), and Azuki (building character lore and community involvement).

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TPan, this is BS. You’re comparing NFT brands and communities that are 3 years old against art that is centuries old and gold. NFT communities aren’t Lindy at all.

Let’s go through some of these counterpoints because they’re certainly valid.

This is a fair point considering how many ‘communities’ in crypto, NFTs, and memecoins have fizzled out. That said, these communities have survived their own ‘Bitcoin is dead’ moments:

• Pudgy Penguins (January 2022): Leadership issues

• Doodles (March 2023): Growing pains from NFT project to IP franchise

• Azuki (May 2022, June 2023): Zagabond rug FUD, Azuki Elementals mint extracting $40 million from the community

Most communities haven’t and wouldn’t survive these crises and yet these three have, creating a stronger and more resilient community foundation. Ironically, these short-term all hands on deck emergencies are long-term beneficial when it comes to building community and making them more Lindy.

With their near-death experiences in the rearview, each of these communities and their respective teams continue to rack up W’s:

• Pudgy Penguins (this week): Launched Polar Challenge arcade game in the US

• Doodles (last week): Released music video for ‘Doodleverse (Draw Me Closer) ft. Pharrell, Swae Lee, Lil Yachty and premiered Dullsville and the Doodleverse last month

• Azuki (last month): Purchased the anime.com domain

Yes, and it’s more than that. Assuming these brands are still in their adolescent phase at best, they’re exactly that — adolescents. They’re still figuring out who they are (they have a good idea though), their brains (roadmap) aren’t fully developed or realized, and they’re dealing with ever-evolving friend groups and relationships (solidifying their long-term community).

This is where the concept of the Lindy community comes in. Just like in our lives, these are the ride-or-die friends and the relatives that support you through the good and the bad. And we see this in the small sample of examples that I provided above.

The Lindiness of these communities is increased through blockchain:

• Pudgy x CD Castellón: Mint artwork (made by a Pudgy community member) for a chance to feature your Pudgy Penguin on the football kit. PS: The team owner is also a Pudgy holder.

• Project Legends: A community member initiative rewarding 10x community members for their efforts with additional PFP assets based on a digital identity they verifiably own.

• Azuki Mizuki art contest: Creating new monetization opportunities for community creators

This may seem like stretch, but imagine how many new IP brands are able to create communities with this level of involvement and diehard fandom in their 3rd year?

Going back to the Lindy definition, an important trait is that the thing is non-perishable, meaning this description pertains to ideas or technologies, not people. And communities are all about people.

An important concept in blockchain is progressive decentralization, where a founding team initially holds significant control over a project and transitions to a distributed governance model over time.

Communities have parallel characteristics, initially relying on the founding team to steer the ship end-to-end. As the community becomes more established, various community-led efforts appear, such as Project Legends, Orange Cap Games, and The Bean Gazette.

The individuals in a community may ‘perish’, but the community consisting of hundreds, thousands, and eventually (hopefully) millions itself doesn’t, ultimately making it Lindy.

The Lindy effect can’t be defined deterministically, nor does having Lindy community guarantee success. However, the art and science of community building can incorporate some of these traits to increase their chances of it.

On top of that, the unique mechanics blockchain and NFTs provides allow for these Lindiness attributes to accelerate for communities and the respective IP and ideas that they are a part of.

See you Thursday!