General Stanley McChrystal wrote a bestselling book called Team of Teams, which talks about the shift in the way war was being waged over the last century.

He shared stories about how the traditional, hierarchical military style of the US broke down when they engaged with the agile, decentralized style of the Taliban.

In order to combat the Taliban, they had to adapt, and started forming “teams of teams.”

The same can be said about communities.

Over the last century, we went from dealing with civic neighborhood communities to virtual (online) communities, to now "Web3" / mixed reality ones.

That same 'agile', 'decentralized' ethos that General McChrystal experienced and adopted, is now the norm for online communities and even professional [remote] teams.

However, many groups and companies still operate in the traditional style. They were forced to learn the “new way” of working after Covid pushed many to work-from-home.

Much of the human psychology is the same, but the 'locations' (whether physical or virtual) have changed, and the technologies have shifted behaviors.

Even though human psychology remains the same, technology influences behavior.

As a result, with the introduction of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and now NFTs/Web3, many online interactions are becoming transactionalized.

Micropayments, the real “killer app” of Bitcoin, makes it possible for all data packets to be turned into micro-transactions that cost less than a cent. Although the wider crypto ecosystem is yet to take full advantage of this, it’s something that is subtly influencing communities who are indeed starting to leverage it.

An example of this can be seen with the on-chain social media network Twetch. Led by a savvy team of unconventional marketing pros, they’ve been able to implement blockchain technology in a way that enables users to earn simply for engaging on their social media network.

But by doing so, it has also influenced certain types of behavior: trolling, earning, and owning.

There’s a feature called a troll box that allows a user to set a price on ‘trolls’ for commenting or engaging on your posts. This means that, if they want to engage with you, they’ll have to pay you. So the last laugh is on them.

In our Web2 world, we typically earn by paying for a good or service. In a micropayments ecosystem, you can be “paid” to simply engage or interact with others. Seamlessly. This, however, is a positive and a negative. The positive is that you can earn something. The negative is that you may engage less because you’re thinking more about how much you’re spending. To play Devil’s Advocate on the latter statement, however, thinking more about what you write online might be a good thing. Why? Because we see how much spit it out on the web without giving much thought. Taking a moment to think about what you want to publish, because there’s a cost associated, forces you to think things through a bit more.

The idea of “owning your own data” comes with the ability to post your content on-chain (at least in theory). Since you essentially pay to publish, you get to own that piece of data. As opposed to the current Web 2.0 model, whereby platforms and other service providers sell your data in order to “pay” to keep everything running that you think is “free.” Micropayments offer a way to pay for your own hosting, but in very small, negligible amounts. Because micropayments are so small, over time, you start forgetting that you’re “paying” anything at all. And that’s eventually the aim → pay for your own data, but make it negligible so you go back to previous ways of engaging online, without worrying about who owns your data (or not).

Micropayments may seem to turn everything into transactional relationships. But, if you look at all engagement as a systems-thinker or even economist, they are all technically transactions anyway. The ‘cost’ is just non-financial. Micropayments make these financial, but for the benefit of improved data ownership, accountability, and scale.

It’s known that transactional relationships can be risky in building healthy cultures, so it’s important to ensure that micropayments do indeed become negligible. Something that just happens in the background, but can be used if needed. If the payment aspect is front and center within social environments, it puts the focus on transactional-type relationships (what we see in many crypto and NFT groups), and less on meaningful relationships.

Transactional communities are ones where people only engage with each other when they need something, as opposed to moving beyond. If you’ve experienced this, you’ll know how soulless it can feel.

There are of course certain type of situations in real-life where this is perfectly acceptable - like paying a waitress for a meal at a diner on your way to some new city. You don’t really need to build a relationship or “sense of community” with that person. It’s fine to know nothing about each other.

But if you’re looking to build a fanbase, a branded community, etc., then it becomes more vital to move beyond transactional relationships.

All the above items are what will influence the responsibilities of community professionals in the future. As communities start to grow or scale, they will naturally need to be broken down into sub-communities. The role then of the community professional will be in managing the overall ecosystem (the “meta-community”), just like General McChrystal had to adapt to a “team of teams” approach. But for future meta-community builders, it will be a “community of communities.” Same thinking, different scale.

What do you think? Does this meta-community concept make sense? Do you think it applies to the evolution we’re seeing in Web3 and the metaverse?