Crypto has always had an accessibility problem.
It goes without saying that this stuff is difficult to use. It’s one thing to buy some Ethereum on Coinbase, it’s another to actually step beyond that walled garden into the world of decentralized applications, where you won’t find any guardrails to help you along the way. You’ll need an unhosted wallet (which you control rather than a third party), for starters, along with an intimate knowledge of token swaps (what’s “slippage” all about?) and plenty of cash on hand for the network’s exorbitant fees.
This feature is part of Crypto 2022: Culture Week.
But the challenge of actually navigating these systems is almost secondary to the issue of cultural accessibility.
The dominant culture of crypto in 2021 is, to quote the writer Max Read, “unbelievably alienating” to a large subsection of the population. Today, the conversation has more to do with NFTs and Ethereum than the Bitcoin- and privacy-centric values of the Silk Road era. And the constant evangelizing that’s become par for the course in this emergent space – those utopian promises of a more democratic internet – can feel grating to the uninitiated. It doesn’t help that the oh-so-lovable Mark Zuckerberg is now closely linked to the idea of the “metaverse,” or that the dominant aesthetic around non-fungible tokens (think: the cartoonish grotesquerie of Bored Ape Yacht Club and its derivatives) has become something of a joke outside of crypto.
This has made it increasingly difficult to bridge the gap between crypto people and non-crypto people (you might hear them referred to as “normies,” in a nod to the 4chan lexicon). Mainstream adoption is happening, little by little, but “getting into crypto” can still feel like learning a second language. Communities of rabid, like-minded early adopters are everywhere. What sort of people might be drawn to a more sober approach?
This is one of the animating questions behind Friends With Benefits, a kind of crypto-backed social club and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that’s like a crypto-backed social club. Over the past year the community has evolved from a small group chat into a burgeoning media empire, with around 2,000 members and eight full-time staffers.
It’s still also a group chat, but its ambit is much broader: FWB is a music discovery platform, an online publication, a startup incubator and a kind of Bloomberg terminal for crypto investors. It’s setting up community hubs in major cities across the globe; it throws parties with Yves Tumor and Erykah Badu. And maybe most crucially, it raised $10 million in financing from the powerhouse venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, cementing its position as one of today’s most powerful online crypto communities.
Also, it’ll cost you anywhere between $5,000 and $10,000 to join.
A victim of its success?
Seventy-five of the group’s home-brewed crypto tokens ($FWB) gets you access to the main attraction: the group’s sprawling, multifarious Discord server, with dedicated chat rooms for everything from memes and new music to the intricacies of crypto trading. One $FWB token currently costs about $77, but the price is constantly fluctuating. It was $95 earlier this week and around $150 in late October.
There’s also a formal application process for membership. Before you buy the tokens you’ll need to be approved by a committee of current members. Hundreds of these applications come in every day.
Read more: Matt Leising – From DOH! to DAO: The Rise of Decentralized Organizations
“Core in our principles and our values is that crypto should be the least interesting thing about you,” said Alex Zhang, who quit his day job this summer to become the official “Mayor” of Friends With Benefits (he manages the day-to-day operations of the community).
That’s reflected in the diversity of channels in the Discord. There’s one called “selfies-n-fits,” where members strategize about how to snag designer clothing online, and another called “parenting,” where people just chat about their kids. In the city-specific channels, people organize community events and share intel on their favorite local spots. A “learning” section hosts channels dedicated to crypto taxes, the metaverse and more general Web 3 tutorials for an audience with a range of crypto and non-crypto backgrounds. (FWB gave me access through a tokenless “press pass” role on Discord – I’m not a stakeholder.)
But FWB isn’t “$5,000+ or bust.” The group’s token-gating system works in tiers. One $FWB gets you access to the group’s newsletter but nothing else. Five $FWB gets you access to a global network of token-gated parties, which have quickly developed their own cachet in the NFT space.
For its party timed to the NFT.NYC conference in early November, the group brought out Caroline Polachek, the Russian art collective Pussy Riot (with whom they’ve collaborated on NFT drops) and…
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