🌊 Seasons

This article gives an explanation of what Seasons are, and how they function in the context of FWB. It also gives a summaries of FWB's last four Seasons, highlighting key points and decisions made for each Season.

What Are Seasons?

FWB moved to a quarterly season model in 2021. This decision was largely inspired by Simon de la Rouviere's writings on tokenomics in social communities.

In this model, the calendar year is divided up into four "Seasons". A Season is a period of time in which new governance processes, reward mechanics, and the entry price to join FWB can be remain fixed.

Dividing the year into Seasons provides clear on-ramps and off-ramps for experimentation. The Seasons model allows the community to experiment with various governance mechanisms to reward members' participation. Each season various governance processes and reward mechanics are tried, with some being continued into the next Season, and some discarded in favor of new processes and mechanics.

Another benefit of using the Seasons model is that it allows FWB to rapidly experiment with community mechanics and processes, while mitigating the risk incurring years of legacy technical debt from structural decisions made in the past.

The hope is that Seasons will better engage community members and reward top contributors with additional benefits—the first step towards rewarding active participation and creating a more engaged community. Typically each season features an increased token threshold, requiring members to earn (or buy) more $FWB to stay up to date with new discussions and features.

Current Season

⚡Season 4

October 1st — December 31st 2021

Tokens required to enter: 75 $FWB

POAP: SZN4 badge TBD

Announcement Post: FWB Season Four: Locally Grown (Mirror)

For Season 4, FWB introduced implementation of FWB Local: a new token threshold that will allow community members holding 5 $FWB or more to participate in FWB Cities and FWB Events. The primary token threshold remained at 75 $FWB.

Season History

Season 1 ⚡️ Season 2 ⚡️ Season 3

📍 Season 3

July 9th — September 30th 2021

Tokens required to enter: 75 $FWB

POAP: SZN3 badge

Announcement Post: FWB Season Three: Creative Cooperation (Mirror)

Link to Snapshot Proposal

Season Three aimed to center around stronger cooperation among our members to achieve real world value.

Four major teams of contributors were established to coordinate project efforts:

Teams of contributors will coordinate and be incentivized through collaboration and production, managed by team leads across four major teams: Editorial, Product, Membership and Treasury.

For Season 3, the community voted (via Snapshot Jun 27) to raise the $FWB token threshold to 75 $FWB, which will go into effect on July 9th, 6pm PST.

The rationale by the community was to heighten intentionality among members, increase skin in the game, and to prune out inactive community members. The token threshold grace period lasted until July 9th at 6pm PST.

While the last two Seasons featured a 5 FWB increase, Season 3's 15 FWB increase aimed to create an active push for members to engage with a team of their choice.

While the FWB Discord would now require 75 $FWB to participate, other FWB experiences such as FWB Events, the FWB Digest, and City Guides would remain at varying $FWB token tiers.

SourceCred was again deployed to allow members to earn FWB for contributing to the Discord. A number of new stat tracking tools for server activity were implemented to bolster the data going to SourceCred.

A POAP badge was again designed for Season 3 members, this time by artist, designer, and creative Eric Hu, claiming it would also grant the user the SZN3 role in the Discord.

Season Three demonstrated what a community could accomplish when it has ownership and builds products together, some highlights included:

Works In Progress, our Editorial Platform.
Gatekeeper, our Web3 ticketing software for FWB events.
Pulse, a real-time dashboard of our DAO’s treasury and activity.
Gallery, FWB’s auction platform and NFT gallery.
Inaugural FWB Hackathon. Winners can be viewed here.
Featured press from Resident Advisor, Zora Zine and Business Insider.
IRL token-gated parties in Miami, Paris and NYC.
Coffee Time chats with featured guests including Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, Danny Cole & Creature World, Matthew Ball, and PussyRiot.ETH

📍 Season 2

April 1st — June 31st 2021

Tokens required to enter: 60 $FWB

POAP: SZN2 badge (Open Sea)

Announcement Post: FWB Season Two— Slow New Friends (Medium)

Season Two ran from April 1st to June 31st 2021. It followed hot on the heels of the successful Season One, and saw the Discord waiting list grow to nearly 3,000 members — up 8x from Season One.

The lead up to Season Two was made more difficult by the Roll 'hot-wallet' hack in March 2021, which led to the creation of the FWB Pro token. Going forward the $FWB Pro token would replace $FWB Classic and become the new token required to gain access to the FWB community.

Given the chaotic events resulting from the hack in the lead up to season 2, the community itself became the main priority. Season Two theme focused on strengthening existing relationships while accelerating new ones — protecting the intrinsic value to amplify the extrinsic influence. Season Two was also focused on building the infrastructure needed to keep the community going as it expanded.

Again, the minimum number of tokens required to retain the FWB in Discord was increased, this time from 55 $FWB Pro to 60 $FWB Pro.

One of the biggest changes introduced in Season 2 was the introduction of the community-driven Host Committee, a group responsible for reviewing all new member applications. Holding the FWB threshold (60 $FWB Pro) would no longer grant automatic entrance into all of FWB’s private Discord channels. Instead, all members that hold 60 $FWB will be granted into a set of General Admission channels, from which they could apply for access into the FWB community.

A POAP badge was again designed for Season 2 members. Claiming it granted the user the SZN2 role in the Discord.

During Season 2 Friends with Benefits executed a Treasury Diversification proposal to the tune of $700k from leading funds in web3.

Using these funds, the DAO hired full time and part time operators, creatives, and product leads from within the community to more ambitiously expand the FWB roadmap that will extend far beyond a Discord.

Here’s a quick list of what’s transpired:

Governance vote to execute the Treasury Diversification proposal and a WHALE token swap.
On-chain budget allocations using Parcel and Llama
FWB Digest – a community curated email newsletter and roundup of what went down in the Discord.
Coffee Time chats with Tycho, Bomani X, and Lady PheOnix to Mike Demerais, BT, and Tess Henley.
FWB City Guide to index Miami’s best restaurants, retail, and experiences through the eyes of FWB.
First IRL event experience, taking over private club space at BTC Miami and throwing a proper token-gated rager with Yves Tumor, Jubilee, and Nick Leon available only for $FWB token holders.

📍 Season 1

January 1st — March 31st 2021

Tokens required to enter: 55 $FWB

POAP: SZN1 Badge (opensea)

Announcement Post: n/a

Season One ran from January to March 31st 2021. This was the first time the minimum number of tokens required to retain the FWB in Discord was increased, from 50 $FWB to 55 $FWB.

In response to this increase, the community specified that the final week of 2020 would act as a 'pre-season' and included drops and campaigns (interacting with promotional Tweets and tracked via Unite) that allowed members to earn the additional 5 $FWB required to retain their role.

The belief was that the additional 5 $FWB was a small enough change to encourage members to top up with minimal expenditures if they wished to remain in the private channels. A free channel was opened up for those who don’t meet the Season One threshold.

SourceCred was introduced to keep track of contributions and used as a metric to identify top contributors.

A POAP badge was designed for Season 1 members, claiming it would also grant the user the SZN1 role in the Discord.

Benefits of Season 1

Season One featured a number of added benefits to $FWB holdings, including:

🔖 Substack Sampler Pack - 100 $FWB Requirement

A shared Substack channel offering access to the industry’s best newsletters directly to FWB members. Starting with Season One, members would need to hold 100 FWB to continue access to the #substack-preview channels. The #substack-channel would stay at 55 $FWB to see ongoing conversations channels.

☕ Coffee Time V2 - 55 $FWB Requirement

Each Wednesday, FWB hosted a featured panel or fireside chat from an expert or experts in a specific domain. This panel was be moderated by Derek Taylor from the FWB staff and allowed members to learn from and ask questions about their industry and experience. All those who attend Coffee Time stood to earn $FWB for their continued participation!

🐇 JammSession Access - 55 $FWB Requirement

All members with the minimum amount of FWB required to access the group will now have access to Brian Flynn’s JammSession posts on the intersection of creators and crypto. This is a web3 newsletter built on Outpost, meaning that readers must connect their wallet and verify they hold at least 55 $FWB (or 1000 $JAMM) in order to access the content.

💌 Coupon Codes - 55 $FWB Requirement

FWB members received access to exclusive coupons shared within the group. These coupons ranged from discounts on plug-ins to products, goods and services all with some direct connection to FWB or a topic in the channel.

🔑 FWB Opportunities - 55 $FWB Requirement

A new #opportunities channel was established to allow teams to post open requests for hires to a highly selective group of individuals with a pre-vetted amount of knowledge and capabilities.