Occasionally we’ll go deeper on Roll creators in a profile we call Humans of Social Money. This issue we’ll cover Nick Smith of $DSGN. This is an extension of The Social Money Times edition #2.
NS: The concept behind the Design community is to build a place where creatives can share knowledge, collaborate on projects, help others grow and earn DSGN in a variety of ways. We hope that in the future the DSGN token can become a medium of exchange for creative endeavors.
Our goal is to be as open as possible (everyone can claim a little bit of DSGN to get started) and over time, once the token is widely distributed the community will decide on its goals and future activities. We are trying to ensure the token has as much utility as possible and isn’t a speculative asset.
We have a variety of category channels where people can share their thoughts, ideas and inspirations and there are also sections for those who want to sell-their-time or things they’ve made. Members are rewarded for posting great content, providing help to others, giving feedback and suggestions etc. We also are rewarding members who share our social posts and bring new members to the community. (This will soon be limited to members who hold token balance of over 1000).
R: What’s your name/moniker?
NS: Nick Smith
R: How are you doing? What did you do yesterday?
NS: I’m great thanks! Yesterday morning started with a couple of meetings with new clients who I’ll be doing some branding and product design for. In the afternoon I dove into some concept research and did a little bit of admin. Then in the evening I cracked a beer and jumped on a couple of video calls with people from the social token space to discuss DSGN and some interesting events we are planning.
R: Tell us the story of DSGN, how did it start?
NS: The idea for some sort of crypto-native creative community had been floating around in my head for a few months but it wasn’t until quite recently that something clicked and DSGN started to take shape. There’s a lot of amazing creative communities scattered all over the internet and in Slack groups but I had noticed that there wasn’t really a place for creatives in the crypto space to hang out and share ideas except for in the channels of specific projects. Everyone likes to feel a sense of belonging and that’s what I felt was missing. There wasn’t much planning that went into the creation of DSGN to be honest. I got set up with the Roll team, started a Twitter account (I hadn’t used Twitter until a few months ago), created a Discord server with some emoji filled channel names and used Collab.land to organise some token-permissioned roles. I felt that the best community is an open community so set up a claim link for 100 DSGN tokens and started shouting from the rooftops.
R: What are some things that inspired you to create your own social money?
NS: It was a whole range of experiences really. When I first started exploring the crypto space I was fascinated by the idea of DAO’s and spent some time experimenting with the beta versions of Aragon and Colony but didn’t yet understand how a functioning DAO could work. I kept reading and learning and eventually stumbled across MetaCartel. I got in touch with @META_DREAMER and he was nice enough to show me the amazing ecosystem he was a part of and gave me a few tips on how I could get involved. I jumped into the Raid Guild and MetaGame Discords and was blown away at the level of activity and the way they had organised everything. Later down the track I had a video call with Alex Masmej about social tokens and he mentioned this new R.N.G community which was a few days old at that point and very mysterious. After getting some tokens and exploring the Discord I knew there was something special going on. I also came across the Friends with Benefits community after listening to The Defiant podcast and joined immediately. The diverse individuals that make up FWB really inspired me and was the tipping point for creating the Design community.
R: What are some things people are doing in the DSGN community (watching, talking about, listening to etc.)?
NS: People are sharing inspiring articles, useful resources and tools, entering competitions, sharing their work and NFT creations and participating in a range of bounties.
R: What’s the latest news in the DSGN community?
NS: The Design community recently collaborated with Soci3 to design the Soci3 Genesis NFT badge. Participants who held at least 200 $DSGN could access a token-protected Figma link created with DFAME and were rewarded based on their participation. We’re hoping to do more of these live community design sessions in the future.
R: What’s the coolest thing that happened in the DSGN community so far?
NS: The coolest thing has been community members sharing their creative works and providing feedback on others. It’s great seeing people actively participating and helping each other out where they can.
We also ran a scavenger hunt in which 4 fragments of a wallet key were scattered across the social channels of some people we admire. They were hidden pretty deep and one community member found them all in under 3 hours. That was pretty cool.
R: What can we expect from the DSGN community in the future?
NS: More community design sessions, more competitions, more collaborations with other communities and a few other secret projects in the works.
R: How do we join the DSGN community?
NS: Anyone can join the community and start participating straight away.
To access our Discord all you need to do is claim 100 $DSGN and follow the steps in the #get-started channel.
https://discord.gg/DRpeanPSEz
You can also follow us on Twitter @wearedsgn