Let's talk about the word "community" in crypto. It's become one of the most overused and meaningless terms in the entire industry.
For 99% of projects, "community" is a synonym for "potential buyers of our token." It's the people in the Discord who spam rocket emojis. It's the anonymous accounts on Twitter who raid polls and yell "WAGMI." Their job is to be loud, to generate hype, and, when the time comes, to provide the exit liquidity for insiders and venture capitalists.
This is a community of consumption. Their primary function is to consume the product (the token) and the marketing. It’s a crowd, an audience. And while it can be powerful for generating short-term momentum, it has very little substance.
I want to propose a different kind of community, one that I believe is the only kind that can build lasting, generational value. I call it a "community of production."
A community of production is defined not by what it consumes, but by what it actively contributes to the core function of the network. The members are not just fans; they are participants in the work.
This is the lens through which you should view the Pyth network. Its "community," in the most meaningful sense, is not the collection of people trading the $PYTH token. The real community is the federation of over 100 data publishers.
Think about it. This group includes the world's largest exchanges, the most sophisticated high-frequency trading firms, and the most important market makers. They are not passive token holders. They are the active, hourly, by-the-second producers of the network's only product: high-fidelity financial data.
This is a community bound not by memes, but by aligned economic and reputational incentives. Their own core businesses depend on fair and orderly markets, so they are incentivized to provide accurate data. They are direct stakeholders in the success of the network because its growth increases the value and utility of the data they are providing. They are the factory workers, the engineers, and the quality control managers of the data economy.
This concept extends to the token holders who participate in the staking mechanism. In Pyth's model, you don't just stake to a generic pool. You actively stake your tokens on specific data publishers you believe are the most reliable. In doing so, you are no longer just a passive investor. You become a curator, a risk analyst, and a co-producer of the network's security. You are doing a job.
This is the fundamental difference. A community of consumption is fragile. It's loyal only as long as the price goes up. A community of production is resilient. It's bound together by shared work, shared incentives, and the creation of tangible value.
So, the next time a project brags to you about the size of their Discord or their follower count on X, ask yourself a simple question: What does this community actually do?
Do they produce anything of value? Or are they just the crowd that's been gathered to watch the show?
The projects with real, lasting power are the ones that can successfully build and coordinate a community of producers. The rest are just building a very loud and expensive fan club.
Stop looking for the biggest crowd. Start looking for the best crew. @Pyth Network #PythRoadmap $PYTH
