HederaStarter and Hedera, a Vision for Future Growth
By: Co-Founder Conor
This article is an excerpt from our manifesto which will be published later down the road, so be on the lookout for the full document. This article explains our team’s mindset as we approach Hedera and the community and how we intend to serve the overall growth of the network and the people building on it.
HederaStarter is intended to far exceed the archetypes of launchpads. Hedera is a unique DLT, and therefore a typical dApp that simply launches tokens onto a standard smart contract platform simply will not do. HederaStarter has been designed specifically to break the mould in terms of both pure technical features, as well as the mindset guiding the team which will form the culture of the coming Hedera Hashgraph ecosystem.
Culture is the name of the game. Ethereum has an ossified culture. Avalanche, Fantom, Cardano, and Solana all have their own cultures at various stages of growth and solidification, but cultures nonetheless. Hedera’s own culture is in its infancy and while the network has been around for a while, having smart contracts allows the community to develop and deploy any type of dApp they want is what truly empowers platform cultures to blossom. Freedom of expression has already arrived on the network with the advent of NFTs. While we are in the initial stages where people mimic popular projects on other platforms (punks and animal-based projects etc.), as the network progresses and people grow more comfortable with experimentation, we will begin to see true Hedera-flavoured innovation within the NFT space.
One of HederaStarter’s primary goals is to inspire a culture that is unique and differs sharply from its smart contract peers. Those peers are based on blockchain technology, while Hedera is not. Hedera has set the precedent on the technical side, developing a network capable of onboarding modern industry, and, in our opinion, it must be set on the human side of the equation. As a launchpad, our function is to incubate, accelerate and launch projects. This is a very logical procession of events, however, the humanity of the incubated teams, the community of HederaStarter, and the Hedera Network itself will bleed into this process to ensure that the resulting dApps being launched are not simple material functionaries. We believe that our ethos should be that of integrity and authenticity. Strong character values must be impressed into every project that proceeds through the HederaStarter dApp. This is imperative as they begin their journey within the Hedera ecosystem and ecosystems beyond, in order to spread a culture that is identifiably Hedera based. We, as a launchpad, must embody the values best suited to the expansion of Hedera both within the cryptocurrency ecosystem as well as within the wider global community. Hedera continues to do amazing work onboarding real, brick and mortar companies into the DLT space. We fully intend to emulate this in regards to dApps and the people they serve; crypto and non-crypto native.
Nearly everyone within the industry is well acquainted with the omnipresent goal of mass-market adoption. Companies spend hundreds of millions on various forms of advertising and acquisitions to continually expand their respective user bases. While purchasing stadiums or advertising a company’s name on the back of sports jerseys certainly brings awareness to the brand, it misses out on the growing problem of modernity; culture, and more uniquely the human need for acceptance and belonging. Sports teams and their fans are a great example of this important facet of the human experience. While some fans have never played for the team or played the sport itself, they gather in the hundreds of thousands with their fellow fans to cheer on their teams in competitions. The teams and fans generate a culture unique to their own community and this creates a social gravity of sorts that attracts people to the group. This attraction exponentially brings in more people who want to participate, much in the way “gossiping about gossip” functions. The group’s continued growth in both members, avenues of expression, strength of the internal culture, and dynamics then act as a fly-wheel that reinforces the basic human emotion of belonging The industry has already begun to taste this with the aforementioned NFT communities forming around Crypto Punks and Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, DAOs, are the next evolution within the industry of the trend towards group formation. NFTs and their communities were the obvious paths of least resistance to the DAO innovation and the industry began to see DAOs borne out of NFT communities. These organizations, by nature of the members all holding NFTs from a collection, are able to participate as a larger unit within the crypto ecosystem. They can begin pooling and combining resources into monolithic economic units. This gives the DAO members access to features and privileges they have likely never had access to prior. These unique innovations are possible due to the art, culture, and values presented by the creation of NFTs leading to the attraction and collection of like-minded individuals. The progenitor NFT DAOs paved the way for many other similar projects, such as investment-focused DAOs. Here, users are collectively pooling resources, investing into protocols as a singular agent, then developing their own independent cultures as members continue to interact and cooperate creating the unified communities we see.
We believe that DAOs as well as the decentralized communities play a vital role in the space. This is because of the values that they embody and their ability to cultivate and propagate them. Hedera is having to compete against its EVM-based peers and other smart contract platforms in the space. To truly define Hedera’s uniqueness, it will need to distinguish itself both in the purely material aspect of the network’s superiority and also in the domain of the human experience (creating unified and powerful communities). Ethereum continues to dominate the entirety of the space. It is cost-prohibitive for widespread adoption yet people still utilize the chain to the point where it is still number one even when its competitors provide faster, cheaper and more secure transactions. Hedera’s technology is superior to Ethereum’s, but, to truly attract an audience, and one that isn’t fickle, Hedera will need to place significant emphasis on the continued development and refinement of a uniquely Hedera culture. HederaStarter’s own culture of integrity and authenticity falls in line with the Hedera Foundation, the Hedera Network and is something that we intend to impress heavily on every single project that passes through our launchpad in addition to our community member stakeholders. HederaStarter’s flagship feature is the HDAO and our members will be at the forefront of spearheading the dissemination of Hedera’s culture. This will ensure that every launched dApp understands that ideal and works in support of Hedera’s vision. Every member of HederaStarter is aligned to grow the Hedera Hashgraph ecosystem.
Thank you everyone for reading. Be Well. — Co-Founder Conor
About HederaStarter:
HederaStarter aims to become the leading launchpad platform on the Hedera Hashgraph Network. Run by a team of highly-experienced builders capable of funding and launching projects that will be designed to serve both the users of the Hedera ecosystem and help expand the ecosystem as a whole. The team’s primary goal is to ensure that they build with integrity. HederaStarter wants to build authentic relationships with all the teams and projects they launch and more importantly build healthy relationships with the Hedera community. It serves them at the end of the day and HederaStarter success is Hedera community success.
