Friends with Benefits: Where crypto meets culture w/ Alex Zhang

On this episode of The Ledger Podcast, host Mo Sayed welcomes Alex Zhang, self-described “Mayor of FWB,” to explore Friends With Benefits (FWB) – a unique project where crypto intersects with culture. 

The episode unpacks FWB as a token-gated social DAO, its structure as a digital city, and its innovative approach to community ownership and collaboration, offering a concrete example of Web3 club memberships.

“Wow… the internet is fun again”. – Alex Zhang

Key Highlights:

Friends With Benefits: A Token-Gated Digital City

Alex Zhang introduces FWB as a social token that unites individuals at the intersection of crypto and culture. The fundamental difference of FWB is the requirement to “hold a ERC20 token that trades on decentralized exchanges and has a liquid value to participate. 

This core mechanism drives an experiment: Does owning a piece of the house or does owning a piece of the platform make you a better contributor or a better community member?

FWB envisions itself as a digital city, with Zhang’s role as Mayor being to facilitate and coordinate the over 2000 members that are like citizens building incredible projects and tools and artworks and experiences within this digital home.

FWB is like a bustling city where the residents aren’t just consumers of culture, but actively own a piece of it, contributing to its vibrant growth and ensuring that its value flows back to the creators, rather than being gentrified away.

Understanding DAOs: Community with a Shared Bank Account

A DAO structure ensures ultimate transparency around community use of funds, allowing any member to see and look into all of FWB’s on-chain transaction history and actions taken.

“The easiest way that I like to think about a DAO is, it’s a community with a shared bank account”. – Alex Zhang

Beyond finances, a DAO is a group of humans working together and coordinating in a non-hierarchical structure and a much more networked leadership structure. 

The Genesis of FWB: A Vision for Cultural Ownership

Zhang’s first DAO experience was a novel and steep yet quick learning curve, leading to an “aha moment” where crypto clicked as an underlying infrastructure that can be applied to everything.

His community crowdfunding experience showed him Web2 lacked tools for large-scale coordination and capital pooling. Alex Zhang joined FWB for its community, seeing its token-gated Discord as pivotal. 

Zhang and FWB founder Trevor saw the project as a way to combat gentrification in cultural spaces, giving early creators ownership to prevent them from being “priced out” of what they helped build.

The Digital City’s Evolution: Neighborhoods and Governance

FWB aims to establish a framework for community-driven building, rather than a top-down approach. Zhang likens his role to gardening, nurturing neighborhoods with their own governance and tools. 

FWB envisions a network of interconnected and interdependent neighborhoods” linked by the FWB token. A proposal review team guides ideas for new structures, which are then voted on by the community, supported by bi-weekly town halls. FWB operates as a representative democracy, with groups electing leaders to make decisions.

Onboarding Creatives to Crypto: Bridging the Gap

“The next 500 million users of crypto are going to come from culture,” – Alex Zhang 

He highlights the need for technological and linguistic improvements, advocating for clearer branding to make the ecosystem less “foreign and technical.”

FWB uses a ‘hand-holding’ onboarding process, recognizing the significant hurdle for newcomers, especially with concepts like the seed phrase, that can be complex for people. Their copilots program trains community members to onboard others, teaching them cold storage setup and wallet connection to Discord. 

FWB also collaborates with partners like Ledger to develop educational materials and workshops to incrementally raise awareness.

Scaling FWB: Accessibility Through Tiered Access

Zhang is addressing the “social token paradox” within FWB, where the high entrance fee excludes many creatives. Their strategy is to evolve the FWB token into a diverse ecosystem of different access points.

This is likened to a city where you pay a premium to have higher access to culture. 

Getting Involved in DAOs: Beyond Technical Expertise

“Just pick a DAO that you really resonate with and just start contributing”. – Alex Zhang 

He notes that pathways are not always clear, suggesting individuals identify who is in a hiring position, reach out, say hello and make themselves stand out by sharing ideas and doing homework.

One doesn’t need to be a technical expert to work in DAOs or crypto. There’s a high demand for community-focused project managers skilled in communication and group coordination, bridging culture with crypto and Web2 with Web3. These roles help leaders scale and drive projects.

Watch the episode here: 

Reading List

Learn more about these topics mentioned in the episode:

• Are Community Tokens The New Club Memberships?
• What are social tokens?
• What Is Token Gating?
• What is a DAO?