What Did Monad and Mad Lads Get Right About Community-Driven Growth?
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What Did Monad and Mad Lads Get Right About Community-Driven Growth?
Let the community become the owner of the meme.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Zolo, TechFlow
On July 20, the first Mandarin-speaking community meetup for Monad concluded successfully.
Everyone says Monad has a great community and excels at meme culture—but how exactly did they achieve this? What lessons can we learn?
During this rare opportunity to co-work and learn alongside the Monad community, I finally had the chance to deeply participate and experience it firsthand.
Community is crucial for nearly every Web3 project. Based on my observations and experiences, here are some insights that might help those building communities. Feedback and criticism are welcome.
A community needs a core value (value), not just casual chatter for engagement
On the surface, we see lots of purple pepe frogs, the so-called Purple Alliance, various animals, etc. But from Monad’s perspective, the focus has always been on building value.
During the event, Sung Mo (Monad APAC Lead) shared a diagram:
—> Create value through communication;
—> Value overflows to create broader impact;
—> Impact attracts more value;
Creating a continuous cycle ♻️ of value generation
So what exactly is this "value"? In my view, the best translation is "core ethos".
"Bring More Value" means bringing inmore people who share the same core ethos but have different skills, languages, and identities.
New members inherit the core values while enriching and diversifying them.
For example, evolving from a single project's purple theme 💜 into the Purple Alliance;
From a single Pepe frog to a vibrant ecosystem of creatures.
What is Monad’s “core ethos”?
I’m sorry—I don’t have an answer. If I had to guess, it might simply be the community itself.
People with diverse backgrounds and different “animals” all belong to the same community. While this sounds simple, Monad actually made it real—turning it into a spirit that subtly influences more community members.
Let me give another strong example of brand and community building: Mad Lads.
Mad Lads’ core ethos is adventure/pioneering. Based on this, they launched the Roster program, funding enthusiasts of extreme sports.
Not everyone can become an extreme sports enthusiast, but the community deeply understands the spirit of “adventure,” consistently contributing content aligned with this core ethos, thereby attracting more users.
At a recent Mad Lads community gathering in Hong Kong, when members mentioned a 100-kilometer hiking event, everyone felt: This is very Mad Lads.
Compared to merely boosting activity through casual chatting, defining and conveying your core ethos is far more important.
How does Monad communicate its ethos? The following sections offer some clues.
Evolution of Memes: Letting the Community Own the Meme
Memes bring more “attention” to a blockchain and help projects go viral. Aside from user-driven “meme tokens,” many projects now try to create their own “meme content.”
I believe the reason Monad’s memes succeeded is because: they let the community own the meme.
In fact, Monad’s meme culture evolved over time:
It started with a simple purple Pepe 🐸;
Then the community created a custom purple mascot (not sure what it was exactly🤷♀️);
Then came a whole zoo of various animals🦒.
And each piece of community-created content was adopted into official communications. Community contributions were recognized.
Monad even has a Meme Library on Telegram to collect and showcase community-created memes.
Suddenly, one day, a new evolution occurred.
When a community member uploaded a meme, they gave it a name: “moladak.” That name quickly became official, followed by others like Chog and Moyaki.
Each meme now has its own name, House, and even volunteers managing their Twitter accounts.
The memes now have owners.
At this event, we brought members of Monad House offline, reuniting them with the wider community.
These memes originated from the community and now belong to the community. Content creation, operation, and iteration are entirely managed by the community.
The official team only supports, integrates, and amplifies community efforts.
Recently, Monad House welcomed a new member: Moncock🐓. The community has begun forming factions based on different Houses, unlocking new gameplay dynamics.
Empower the Community: True Community Self-Governance
Autonomy isn't limited to memes—on many community-related matters, the community holds real decision-making power, enabling true self-governance.
During the preparation for this event, I had frequent collaboration opportunities with the Monad team and Mandarin-speaking community members. Normally, such events would be led and confirmed by the project team, but in this case, the community was the true owner.
Three key takeaways from this experience:
1- Community Ownership and Sense of Belonging
In most discussions, the team handed decision-making power to the community—for instance, venue setup, T-shirt design, etc.
Before the event, everything—from promoting the event to hosting AMAs—was handled entirely by the community.
The official team supported and fully trusted the community.
2- Proactively Seeking Help and Fostering Participation
For the community, collective achievement > individual achievement. No matter how deeply each member participates, the feeling of involvement itself is what matters most.
3- Nominations and Self-Governance Within the Community
When talking with community members offline, you often hear the phrase "who nominated whom."
Most Discord communities assign roles to members, but in the Monad community, beyond that, advancement requires nominations from more experienced members. And as nominators, while getting to know each nominee better, they also mobilize new members to make genuine contributions.
For example, you’ll find community members creating music for Monad, or developing mini-games to educate others about Monad.
Finally, some small but meaningful details:
I remember when SungMo first met Jiu Ge and Sophia—he already knew a lot about these community members;
Every community member arriving at the venue felt an instant connection, as if meeting long-lost friends;
Some received handmade gifts from members in other countries;
To enrich the event, many community members voluntarily brought extra merch to share.
One final point—I previously surveyed many people, asking from a third-party perspective why they think the Monad community works so well?
Beyond memes, most mentioned that Keone himself is extremely down-to-earth and approachable. He’s also one of the few founders willing to sacrifice his own image 😂
After all, beyond being a founder, Keone is just another regular community member.
An incredible journey. Thank you to Monad for trusting TechFlow, and gratitude to Kadd, Jiu Ge, Sophia, Dream, and many others.
Nads love nads 💜
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