Mum, I joined a coven...
Mum, I joined a coven...
On crypto, community and navigating the weird wilds of web3
I’ve always been fascinated by the way the breadcrumbs of our life experiences can end up manifesting into something tangible, almost inevitable, and yet no amount of intentional action could have determined the outcome. It is almost as if it’s fated, and yet at the same time, you have to be listening to what the threads of your interests and actions are telling you.
Lately, I’ve been mulling over a few specific breadcrumbs as I have watched them collide in the most delicious, yet unexpected, way in the present moment as the promise of web3 unfurls around us. In isolation, these crumbs are a lot less interesting, banal even, and yet together they have become markers that reinforce how magical and serendipitous life really is.
“For anyone with a computer, modem and so-called browser software, the place to be in 1995 is the World Wide Web, a section of the Internet overflowing with sights and sounds.”
Site-Seeing on the World Wide Web, The New York Times, January 1995
I was 11 years old in 1995, the year the internet as we know it really came alive to the public. This was a time when the total number of websites was around 23,500. My use of the world wide web in these early years was focused around exactly three things: ICQ, doing quizzes on a ‘play-to-earn’ type trivia site called Riddler.com (anyone who knows me in person will understand this is very on-brand), and scrolling Netscape Navigator for sites about witchcraft, the occult and general mystical themes. While my tween self is dying at this admission, I’m a Piscean child of the 90’s - maybe I was born with it, maybe Sabrina, Buffy and The Craft were to blame.
Fast-forward to 2002 and my first year at university, where I’d chosen journalism as a sub-minor. I couldn’t shake the feeling that aspiring to the traditional media and journalism pathways just wasn’t going to cut it in the life-time of my career, and a syllabus that didn’t include blogging, new media and the early signs of the social web just wasn’t it. I doubled down on my creative writing classes instead.
It’s a chilly November night in New York City in 2011, and I’m in an office just down the street from Eataly for a sharing economy startup’s community event. Here I meet a young David Spinks, one of Zaarly’s first community managers, when community mainly meant throwing a good party. At the time, I was building a community of passionate sharing economy advocates around the world (which also largely meant events and meetups), but getting to know David would become a pivotal moment in how I understood both my tradeable skills, my career direction and the impending zeitgeist of ‘community’ as a business and strategic superpower. But neither of us knew that yet.
In February 2014, I flew into San Francisco to speak on the line-up of the very first CMX Summit, David’s labour of love which, along with CMX the organisation, would become a real turning point in how ‘community’ was perceived as a discipline, and a secret weapon of the most successful organisations around the world.
The city: Berlin. The date: October 2015. The scene: an edgy unconference called GETD - all focused on the emerging ‘decentralized web’ - hosted at an equally edgy coworking house in Neukölln called the Agora Collective. One of the most memorable presentations that weekend was by Bruce Pon from Ascribe - a project ‘proposing' a solution for artists to control intellectual property by constituting a new “ownership layer“ to the existing structure of the internet’. Cool idea, I thought. But how could that ever penetrate far enough to get mass adoption..?
GETD 2015 - Can you spot me? The hot, wet NFT Summer (or Winter, depending on your hemisphere) of 2021 - all of a sudden, things were taking off and I watched from the sidelines trying to figure out how to dip my toe into what was more akin to surging rapids than gentle river. Which collections were legitimate, how to place value on what mostly felt like various cartoon animals with weird motifs adorning their faces and bodies, how do I even get my Ethereum where it needs to be to transact… the overwhelm was real. With things moving so fast, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to make sense of it. After crushing on World of Women (obvs), buying a Crypto Chick (good decision) and a Krazy Koala (It’s for my kids…), I came across Dame’s tweet:
NFTs, community, the season of the witch. Dots were connected, a spell was cast, and I haven’t turned back.
And now for the actual reason for this article…
Over the last few months, Crypto Coven has become one of the most fascinating, meaningful and literally magical collections - of all time, IMHO. But to call it just an NFT collection is to sell it short, as the magic is really in the community that has evolved around it. In a time where collections are built on hype (that in nine out of ten cases will not be able to sustain), sacrificed in a pump-and-dump, or simply run out of steam through an ill-thought-out or unoriginal ‘roadmap’ for how the project will retain or build value in the long-term - Crypto Coven’s path has been truly unique.
As a proud early community member (a First Witch, as the lore goes), I have been asked many times what was the catalyst for Crypto Coven’s ascent, and have observed astonishment when I explain the genuine nature of the organic community growth. I have been so spoiled by this early experience with Crypto Coven that I am often shocked at how many collections and communities try to launch and grow using the same stale PR101 tactics and strategies. I knew it was the right project for me to get involved in from the get-go (see: 1990’s web search history) , but I want to explore the absolute masterclass in community-building that has been so critical to its success. And to do that I’m going to bring back my friend David Spinks.
Since launching CMX Hub in 2014, David has spent the last eight years educating and convening community strategists all around the world - equipping them with the tools and frameworks that enable them to be successful in building highly engaged communities. What began as a month-long ‘community MBA’ eventually evolved into his first book, Business of Belonging, which he published last year. In the book, Spinks outlines a social psychology theory known as the ‘sense of community theory’, which explains a sense of community as ‘a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together.’ The theory outlines four key pillars that are foundational to building a strong community, and the lessons for all modern community builders (read: web3) are rich in every layer. Crypto Coven intuitively touches them all.
‘Membership’ as a feeling of belonging
The first pillar, Membership, defines how someone knows that they’re in - or, in fact, out - of a community. For most NFT projects, this has directly translated to ownership of the asset itself, or some form of token that pays your way into the community. The problem here is that the bar is immediately high, and requires a whole bunch of other conditions to be true to enable it (enough disposable income to buy your way in, networks and connection that enable privileged or early access, literacy in web3 transactions and tools etc etc).
For Crypto Coven, the intention was clear from the beginning - this community was open and accessible for anyone who shared their values (more on that later), and who appreciated the art and the lore. Even more intentionally, the community was framed to be welcoming to total novices in the NFT space - people who as yet had no Ethereum, who didn’t know their wallets from their smart contracts from their gas prices. As it was said early on by one of the High Witches (the name bestowed upon the project’s creatrixes), ‘We’re doing this for the first time too.’
So many little decisions went into establishing this message from the get-go - from the gifting of witches to first-time NFT buyers (preferencing those from under-represented backgrounds) to the optimisation of the smart contract to keep the 'minting’ as affordable and financially accessible as possible for those dipping their toe in for the first time. The perceived lack of boundaries to joining the Coven, along with the genuine sense of emotional safety fostered from the beginning has stayed as strong now that the community has grown into the thousands.
For me, however, the sense of belonging was fostered through the invitation extended by the High Witches in the early days of the project to actually be involved in the creation of the visual and written aesthetic of the collection.
This invitation had a two-fold benefit. 1 - the project could be guided toward the imagery and styles that resonated most with their early community and set the tone for what’s to come, and 2 - the project’s creators could use the opportunity to reinforce what elements of the mood board contributions aligned with the visions they themselves had for the project.
Let it be known - I am not a Pinner. The challenge to create a mood board was about the most daunting thing you could request of me, yet I found myself googling phrases, searching for a particular visual aesthetic on Pinterest that represented my view of witch lore and (nerve-wrackingly) made a contribution. It paid off.
There it is - hard-coded into the DNA of the project, and one of many community contributions that shaped what people now see as the Crypto Coven. My biggest disappointment to date is that I don’t have a witch with this headpiece in my collection! (I’m patient - you don’t hunt for witches, the witches find you.) With these opportunities to make a personal investment into the creation of the project, and enabling people to truly identify with what they see in the collection has built a culture of membership that is almost fanatical (except that is definitely not our vibe). While only a small group of people actively contributed to that early stage of the project, the culture of shared ownership has blossomed with every new Coven member welcomed, and Twitter has been over-run with witches as people display their symbols of involvement proudly. (See the recent ‘web2 v web3’ meme, which was kicked off by a fellow Coven member and featured witches heavily).
Influence is a two-way street
In many ways, with the idea of a Coven being central to the project, people haven’t so much ‘bought into’ but rather actively created what it is today. The influence the community has over its members (which is core to the second pillar of community theory) is no more evident than in one of the cardinal rules of the Discord server - ‘Lore, not floor’. A critical part of anyone’s onboarding journey is to understand that the witches of the Coven aren’t there to hype up and profit from the project - they are there to actively contribute to the value it holds and creates. You will find any mention of the price of the NFTs gently but clearly hushed by moderators and general community members alike.
This ethos of patience, authenticity and sustained interest in the project was built in from as early as the pre-launch community mint, which rationed the number of witches able to be minted by any one wallet to three, and any influencer marketing focused on bringing in new people to web3 through thoughtful giveaways. Rather than employ tactics that would mean the collection sold out in minutes, the High Witches chose to do the opposite, resulting in the collection being held by a large number of people who were genuinely there to HODL, not flip.
To me, this also speaks to another core aspect of a strong community, and a principle that is embedded within the idea of influence - trust. This trust is both in the creators of the project and the intention with which they set about creating it, and in the wider community who act as guardians for the values and ethos of the project. In earlier versions of the CMX community strategy theory developed by David and this team, the Community Engagement Cycle was the bridge between identification and participation, and there are many examples of how pivotal this has been in the evolving lore of Crypto Coven. (It’s been superseded by the ‘Social Identity Cycle’ but I still think acknowledging the specific role of trust is key.)
The most definitive example of this trust-building occurred in the first days of the community mint, where there was an error in the contract that resulted in it needing to be voided and redeployed. Around 130 First Witches had already minted by then (myself included), only to be told that their witches would be erased, and another version would repopulate in its place. Generally, this would be the stuff of nightmares in new NFT projects, as people wait for the rug to be pulled, and for FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) to take over. Instead, the High Witches turned it into a magical experience for their earliest adopters, and created a chapter of the Crypto Coven lore they could have never anticipated. Enter The Curse of the Void Witch. For these early adopters and supporters of the Coven, their void witch was replaced with a vessel containing their crystalised souls… (honestly, the wordsmithery on this project is a 10/10 thanks to High Witch Keridwen’s mastery). A disaster turned into a defining moment for the community, and a cementing of the trust between the project architects and their true fans.
There are countless other examples of this two-way dynamic of trust and influence every day in the discord, from the way both designated Mods and community members alike set the tone for engagement and conversation, to the energy in the barter-a-witch channel where people ignore conventions of ‘rarity’ to swap witch-for-witch based on what truly resonates, not the value a market would dictate. It’s also clear in the delightful spin-off projects that have emerged within the community to extend the Crypto Coven into the most unusual places - from the Library of Coven and Web3 resources that every witch needs, to the Weird Wilds Detective Agency which hunts for lost witches, to community-wide masterclasses on wallet and crypto security, to discussions of the best night cream in the Enchantress channel on the Discord. These initiatives drive the participation of community at large, as people see themselves reflected in the space, whatever that self chooses to be. It’s one of the hardest things to generate in community, but the Coven generates it in spades.
The Fulfillment of Needs
Let’s be honest. It’s why we’re all here. Every day we wake up we are searching for belonging and connection, and the weird wilds of web3 have given us more power to define what that is than ever before. It’s about self-expression, self-determination and being rewarded in-kind for what you contribute and create. The third pillar of the sense of community theory - integration and the fulfillment of needs - is the fuel that keeps the flywheel spinning - that when we join a community, it’s all we expect and more.
In the world of web3, many projects view the token or the NFT as the reward or the ‘fulfillment’, which is why so many feel like hollow derivatives of what has come before. Instead, Crypto Coven was an invitation to tap into your inner witch archetype and be rewarded for bringing your whole weird self to the community. People are included, encouraged and supported in a way that makes the most beautiful things happen. Fan fiction, custom art, random gifting of witches from community members to those who have been priced out and even operatic soundbaths on a Friday evening - all gifts offered up by the community to fulfil their need for creative expression, and in turn reward the community for their support - no NFT needed. While the witches are there badges of self-expression to those who feel so inclined, the true community ethos is that witches can not be owned, but are there to be appreciated by all.
The Emotional Connection of a Coven
The final pillar of the sense of community theory speaks to a shared emotional connection amongst its members. Of course, this shared connection is layered in every previous pillar, but I want to talk about the concept of witches themselves as the connective tissue of this project.
In an earlier interview about Crypto Coven (which is absolutely worth a read), the High Witches were asked the why behind their choice of avatar. Designing a collection of witches was highly intentional as they aimed to create a sub-culture and safe space in web3 for people who were attracted by what was, at the time, a *completely* different aesthetic to the normal PFP projects.
“As avatars, witches have agency, power. They shape the world as they move through it, are mysterious and strange. They defy traditional expectations. A witch is not defined by their relationship to, or appeal for, anyone else. They are individuals with influence over any narrative they touch, not objects to be observed and sold. Witches create. They perform magic. A coven of witches implies a bond—a group working together with more power than an individual.”
High Witch Nyx interviewed on Dirt Substack
Back to my earlier point, this project is about identifying with an inner witch archetype that, in and of itself, has agency and power. One thing the High Witches did to facilitate this was to create a Divination based on Buzzfeed quizzes of yesteryear, so community members could explore the archetypes and see which ones resonated most. Through this, smaller sub-communities emerged based around shared interests and passions, and new projects were spawned.
At a micro level, the bonds are strong; at a macro level this becomes a community for life. Nowhere is this more evident than on Opensea, where of the 9,800 witches currently in existence, only 990 are actively on the market (and some for prices that are more ironic than through an actual desire to sell. See: 24 witches at 666ETH or more…) And those 130 vessels containing void witch souls? You’d be lucky to get one of the 15 available.
This shared emotional connection is most important to attain, and most impossible to manufacture. Following Crypto Coven’s community building playbook will at least have you on the right path.
But wait, there’s more…
The hardest thing about writing this post was containing it to the few examples I’ve shared about why this is a project in a class of its own, that will be hard to match for years to come. Even more phenomenally, there is so much more to come and to be created in the Weird Wilds of the High Witches’ imaginations, and of the dreams of those Coven members who will play a key role.
I could have talked about the way the High Witches optimised the smart contract to minimise gas prices in a way that had never really been done before. The way they took inspiration from Fenty Beauty in planning their colour palettes, body and facial features for the project so that a wider and more diverse range of community members could find their way to the Coven. The masterful wordsmithery behind the project and the way they combined it with an AI generator to create powerful, unique and often hilarious names and articulations for each and every witch. The unique star sign combinations that give each witch further depth and personality. The collaborative art and design process between the High Witches to merge different styles into the singular aesthetic for the project. There is so much to explore and so much to appreciate depending on your interests, but the above is my offering of admiration and gratitude to a truly community-centric, creatively inspiring and genuinely exciting project that will shape the Weird Wilds of Web3 in both powerful and subtle ways.
Because that is the Way of the Witch.
PS. If, like me, you can’t get enough of the Coven, I highly recommend checking out this podcast episode conversation with the High Witches. It’s an absolute joy.
Also, check out the art on the beautiful Crypto Coven website or Opensea, follow the High Witches @Xuannu, @Alethia, @Aradia, @Keridwen and @Nyx on Twitter for more incredible threads on their process of developing the project, and join the Crypto Coven Discord to see what all the fuss is about.