A fundamental analysis of (investing in) crypto projects should also include indicators for community strength. After all, a strong community means free user engagement, free bug testing, free marketing etc., and may also be an indicator of project (and price) appreciation. As some of you know, I like to research new and unknown crypto projects, which means a lot of shifting between slacks (among other chats). I noticed there are almost no overviews of the biggest/most active slacks and thought it would be worth a post/discussion.
Since a lot of projects make use of telegram, gitter, rocket.chat or comparable chats next to – or in substitute of - slack, this is not a fair representation of the sizes of communities in projects. It is however an indication of the size of communities of projects making use of (one of the most popular chats) Slack. A quick research on different slacks (that I know of) with a 1000+ total registered members showed the above picture (see figure 1). If a slack is missing with 1000+ registered members, please comment below and I will edit them in.
Results
First thing I noticed was the huge size of members in the Status slack. With IOTA as 2nd and LBRY as 3rd they form the top three with impressive slacksize numbers. Golem, Siacoin, Stratis and Pivx share a 4th place. After that we see a steady decline of members until around 3000, after which the decline slows down and slowly drains to 1000 members. Interesting to see is that a lot of projects are fairly new with lots of members, but it is one thing to build up a community, it is another to keep it and let it grow. Maybe I will do a follow up with a more in-depth analysis of the differences between the slacks. But I have a feeling some are missing, and I’m curious what you guys and gals think.
Ofcourse there are a lot of limitations to this data. For instance, what is the activity? A slack can have a large number of registered members but may not be active at all. Also, what is the quality of posts? Has it turned into a WE GO TO MOON party or is there serious development/testing talk? It could also be you had to be registered to slack to be able to take part of the ICO or there were other incentives to join. However, it may be a start of a better look into indicators of community strength in the cryptosphere.
How important is community (size) to your investment? What is your indication of community strength? Any really active or big slacks I missed? Let me know below, it is (imo) a highly interesting topic.
Edit: have some messages about forgetting ETC - my bad guys - and having some numbers slightly wrong (could also be due to members joining after snapshot). Probably forgot some more. Let me know!