We need a new direction for social spaces online.

Online communities are the lifeblood of the internet. They’re these ecosystems built by deeply engaged and committed individuals.

But people who create and moderate online communities have a thankless and unrewarding job.

The incentives are misaligned: the community grows and their responsibilities grow, but they’re still not getting paid.

With Towns, you can own your community, control read/write access, and you can solicit contributions in a way that’s front and center.

Let’s say you have an events production company in the music space. You’re in NYC and you host live events. Right now, you’re communicating in groupchats or maybe on a larger social comms platform. But there’s no way for you to charge for your services or gate your community membership. Maybe discord doesn’t like what you’re doing and stops hosting your community. You’re at the whim of an intermediary company instead of owning your community and its value outright.

With Towns, you can mint a Town, invite members in, charge a fee for your services, and set up smart contracts for how community members are rewarded for their roles. Let’s be honest, being a moderator can be time consuming and it’s basically a thankless job. In Towns, you can compensate moderators for their role in helping the community flourish.

As your community grows, its value grows. Community membership is transferable, so you can even sell your membership at any point.

Spaces on the internet should be accessible, but that doesn’t mean everything should be free. Because we know what “free” really means. It means you’re getting taxed by ads, your data is getting sold to the highest bidder, and your privacy and platforms are controlled by the whims of large tech firms.

Towns is the antidote. It’s a refreshing blend of web3 tech and old school internet community engagement and participation. Kind of like if discord and slack had a baby that was built on crypto rails.

At the end of the day, it’s about creating community that counts.

Next week, we’re gonna talk about building trust in communities and the River protocol Towns is based on.

c’ya.