Disclaimer: This article may contain some outdated information.
Supermoon Camp is an exclusive Web3 community made up of blockchain developers, creators, innovators, and enthusiasts with a mission to drive the mass adoption of the blockchain/Web3 industry across the world.
The theme of Supermoon is establishing Web3 inter-relationships both off the grid and on the chain. The team uses awareness camps where different crypto innovators stay together and get exposed to other innovators in the industry.
They raise awareness of emerging concepts and technologies combined with exciting and informative discussions and events.
OORT (previously Computecoin) and Supermoon share a goal: to drive the seamless transition of users and developers onto Web3 without adapting to the niche user experience design that traditional Web3 dApps entail.
The mass adoption of Web3 technology has been relatively slow because of the difficult learning curve that is gatekeeping many Web2 users who don’t come from technical backgrounds. Both Supermoon Camp and OORT want to make everybody’s transition from Web2 to Web3 as easy as possible by simplifying the seemingly complex Web3 world.
Hence, we will work together to enlighten, onboard, and support incoming developers in the decentralized Web3 space for the greater growth of the ecosystem.
💡 The transcript is almost entirely in its original form, but mildly edited for punctuation and readability only, and contains some of the intriguing issues discussed during the talks.Speakers:
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I always like to do an introduction first. Elena, thank you for being here. If anybody doesn’t know or who listens to this later, I’m Joseph. I work in the business development team. And allow me to introduce Elena.
Supermoon Camp has been making waves and setting a trend throughout the industry by producing some of the best networking events.
Elena, please introduce yourself and a warm welcome. I’m excited to kick this off.
Hello, everyone. Thank you, Joe, for this introduction. And Chris has just joined as well from a Supermoon Camp account.
So let me start with a quick background of Supermoon Camp. So, Supermoon started a year ago, and our initial project was our Summermoon Camp, where we are driven by a mission to start connecting VCs, founders, and entrepreneurs in the Web3 space and help them to build meaningful relationships. And we wanted to move beyond networking. Because, whenever you travel for a conference, lots of people just need to chat but don’t have a high level of conversation, and it doesn’t really resolve far into any future collaboration.
So, we wanted to change it with Supermoon Camp, providing an environment and ecosystem where people can continue the conversation and explore how they can collaborate and help each other. So when Supermoon Camp started, we were renting houses, mansions, and units, etc., and bringing a lot of our entrepreneurs and VCs under one roof during major crypto events.
Everyone needs accommodation, but we brought this accommodation to a different level where people are not only staying together, but we also are hosting different interviews and engage sessions together, to again bring bright minds to one place. And we also recently had our camp in collaboration with New York Protocol, where we united lots of builders from the Near ecosystem and it has proven to be working for different projects, for different communities, and for people with completely different backgrounds.
The result is the same; people building relationships and learning how they can help each other, and we’re really excited.
I think Elena, what you and the team are doing at Supermoon, is fantastic work and is exactly what is needed for the industry. As someone who has attended multiple Supermoon events, there is not a lack of networking in the room. If I wish to speak with the newer projects, they are there. If I wish to speak with an existing project, they’re there. If I wish to speak to a VC of a particular type, they are there — which is exactly what is needed for the industry to have these kinds of mixers or high-level synergistic sessions.
I know Chris joined with his Supermoon account. Chris, do you want to do an introduction as a part of the Supermoon team?
I’m a co-founder with Elena on Supermoon, and I’ve been in the crypto space since 2013.
I really valued decentralization which I think is why OORT has been such a powerful partner with us. We can get more into that later. But I just wanted to say thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Let’s have a great chat.
For sure. Thank you for introducing yourself there, Chris.
I know, Elena, you kind of dived into what exactly Supermoon is, and some of the problems you’re trying to solve. But as someone who just really tries to understand the higher level of how your brain operates or how you see problems and problem solved, when did you and Chris actually meet to decipher that, “hey, there is in fact an issue of networking within this industry, and Supermoon is going to be our solution to this problem”?
Oh, for sure. As a person who has been living at conferences, pre-pandemic, and as a person who started living at the conferences again, I definitely understood the problem. And I actually had the conversation with Chris a couple of months or like months before we started the Supermoon camp on different events and activities.
And I would say, like a week before we actually started, I was telling him how amazing it would be to bring the community with you, like if you’re traveling to, for example, Lisbon for an event or you’re traveling for an event to another location, how cool it would be to stay together? In this case, you are not just going alone to the event, but every time you’re going to a satellite event or to a conference, you also get to meet your community, and your community can introduce you to other connections.
So, in this case, you’re optimizing your time; you are meeting people who you want to meet, and you are not ending up just introducing yourself to a bunch of people, and then you don’t really remember who these people are. Our whole idea of networking and us traveling for professional events is to continue building in space and that’s why it is important for people to stay together and communicate closely.
That’s how we honestly were just discussing bringing the community together, it turned into an idea — building Supermoon Camp, and we were already starting to work on it, I would say a week later. Chris, maybe, you remember better.
Yeah. It started as wanting to bring like-minded people together with the same passion for building the same future. So we got started on it right away. We were quite ambitious. I think we may have bitten off more than we can chew in the beginning, but you know, they say if you shoot for the moon, you’ll end up among the stars. Yeah, we got started right away. And it’s a young company, but success has been really, really good in such a short time.
That’s great. And thank you for explaining that. I think it’s important for people who are either getting into the industry or are in the industry always to learn kind of how our minds operate at a higher level.
My next question to you both is going to be; you guys started from the ground and had to network from there, and this may resonate with people who are building smaller protocols and also are, perhaps, getting off the ground and getting started. You know, how did you guys actually do that? Execute that?
I love to hear your thoughts, really. You know, I assume you didn’t have direct contact with Near protocol immediately. If you did, then maybe, you know, maybe that was already in your back pocket. But how did you get to the point where you can speak with these higher-level protocols to build these events and kind of long-term relationships?
To be frank with you, we actually had an advantage. I’ve been involved in crypto since 2014. I do know lots of our big protocols from their very early stages. And I actually built a consulting company that actually designed choice marketing strategies for Near protocol. So, that’s why we had some advantage — we already had a community.
I know a lot of people who wanted to participate at the beginning. But even considering that, building a community is hard work. Even if you have all these people, of course, you will have to find the reason that unites them; you have to remember which project is looking for what and make sure you’re establishing meaningful connections. So, it is still challenging for every project.
But if you are trying to build a customer approach and you were actually having a conversation with every community member, then it becomes easier because you understand what they’re looking for, you understand what each project is going through and what they need at a certain stage. Then, you can connect them with the right people, and you can create an environment that is beneficial for them.
And I think Chris also has something to add here.
To add to Elena’s point, I think we both run different expertise and networks. I think it’s what makes our team so strong.
I had worked for Live Nation for about 12 years doing elite-level events. But that was honestly pre-pandemic. So going into where we are now, I was able to spray some of that expertise with Elena’s broad network in the crypto space. And it really set us in the right direction of where we needed to go.
That’s great! And thank you for sharing that.
I think that we can bring this conversation to the “building a community” aspect.
Elena, now you guys have an established following; there’s not one person that I don’t know that hasn’t been to a Supermoon event. Like I said, that mansion party in Texas was awesome — which I think is good recognition.
Why don’t we speak on the PFPs or NFT side of things? Is there any interest in incorporating this into the broader network that you guys are producing?
About community building, since we have a very diverse community that includes not only builders but also executives and VCs, it’s harder to find out a tool that every single person can use because if you have a community of developers and more technical founders, you can use Discord for community management, but CEs and many executives are not going to be using Discord.
I, for example, don’t use Discord groups. I simply don’t have time. I cannot keep up with Discord. So, it would be a very hard tool for us to utilize for the whole community. We’re still figuring out different ways how we can engage every single member and make sure that everyone stays updated, so we do use different channels.
And right now, when we’re talking about connecting people, and you mentioned we are organizing our events and several community members giving feedback, we became a platinum center for events in the crypto space that they really love and want to keep bringing up. But we’re trying to unite our people in one location.
So, our main focus on the community management right now, is to bring people into the one space, so they are not only following some updates on the newsletter or joining our Telegram chat or other means of communication, but they actually come into a physical occasion, because this is where their actual community gathers and communicates with each other.
We have a heavy focus on these offline events.
You highlighted another problem, which is if you consider the vast network that Supermoon has, how do you actually, you know, manage all the members? If we can stay on this for a minute here, you’re right. VCs aren’t going to be on Discord, and if you’re a founder, odds are that you’re not going to be able to sit in a Discord chat or Telegram chat all day and respond to messages. So, perhaps, Supermoon will build its in-house solution? Or Elena, how are you really juggling that? Is it a mix of emails, Twitter, and Telegram? But what does that actually look like?
Right now? It’s actually a mix. And just answering your previous question on NFTs. We do have them on the roadmap as our other memberships.
So, we are trying to build the best channel, and that’s why right now, we’re testing out different approaches. It’s mailing lists; it’s Twitter, it’s Telegram. We even had Discord, we didn’t really do any activities there yet, but we’re trying to see which channel works best for our community and for the majority of people in our community.
And we did have NFTs on our pipeline as unique memberships that give people access, not only to community tools or online community tools but obviously to all our client events and other products that comes from our partners and other network members to avoid trying to help our community, not only to connect but also to promote their personal brand and contribute into growth and the future establishment of our Web3 space to support decentralization and other important aspects of the space.
Right now, our memberships with entities are still in the pipeline, but we, unfortunately, cannot share more details because they are still a work in progress, and we do test out a lot of channels.
Community Management is hard work, and there is no certain answer on how you’re supposed to do it. Of course, it depends on your community and who is a part of your community.
I also want to say that we definitely encourage new ideas. So anybody listening who wants to join our Telegram and reach out to us. If you guys have any specific knowledge on how you think we can improve, we’re definitely open to hearing about it.
One thing we’ve thought about as a way to help manage the growing community is to add a volunteer road to membership where you can earn a wage and membership. A better solution for some as opposed to others.
That’s great. And I just want to roll it into here. A lot of our community members already know what OORT does and the solutions that we have built out but I just want to kind of highlight here; what we’re focusing on is building a hub for cloud infrastructure in the space, and that consists of three major components. One of those components is storage, and this is the one that we have built out a solution called OORT Storage.
This solution is actually very easy for developers to work with, or you can use a kind of web interface that supports a legacy, email, and password login. You can actually store your files or associate NFT data via the IPFS network to store the file and the metadata associated with that image in a distributed way.
So, why don’t we roll into what we see a partnership between OORT and Supermoon as? In my mind, it is obviously supporting the greater growth of the ecosystem and ensuring that we have these networking events, and bringing more to the table as a protocol and as people who are building within an industry.
Another potential collaboration is later down the road as we release more with the NFTs. Seeing you guys utilize us as a service, which I think is a huge way to have such an amazing contributor in the space actually helping us out in a way.
But Elena, why don’t you highlight the education and the networking opportunities that we can both bring to the table?
Of course. But first of all, just to give our background, when we’re talking about building a community. You can have people with completely diverse backgrounds, but what unites people together is a value that people have.
Our community believes in the future of decentralization, and that also brings up a partnership with OORT because we do share a lot of similar beliefs, we share similar values. We believe in decentralization. And we understand that sometimes it is really hard to be completely decentralized in a Web3 way, so we have to find a way actually to make our interface simplified.
We have to educate people on how to join the world of dApps, something easier for them to understand. It might be easy UX, just implementing from web app to space. But it is important to start moving towards our initial mission of building a decentralized world, and of course, decentralized storage is a huge part there.
So, I believe our collaboration with OORT can help to raise awareness and also explain it in simplified ways through something easy to understand for people. For example, decentralized storage; why is it important? and how can people store their data? and what their data actually means, what is data ownership? and other important data-related aspects that we can cover.
On top of that, we just want to emphasize that we do have similar values. That is a very important part for us when we decide on any collaboration and partnership, and we really appreciate all the support from the OORT team. We want to make sure that we also bring a lot of value, and we want to show you support from our side because it feels like family at this moment.
For sure. Chris, is there anything you wish to add?
I just want to add that it is definitely true that in present tech, the backbone is Tech Data Storage, and a lot of companies don’t have a solution right now or what to do with where they host things because anything you host could go against the special interest at some point in the future. You may have already invested millions of dollars, maybe even billions, and you don’t really have security. And so, as we move, people will naturally desire a decentralized system for their data storage. So, I really value you guys.
Hi Elena and Chris. It is Julia here. I’m gonna briefly take over and ask the next question. So what do you guys think will become the Web3 focus in the coming years of like 1 or 2 years, and how will it play a part in the future of decentralization?
I’ll just give a quick answer. I think the focus will be on attracting more builders and educating the regular person.
So, I completely agree, and I want to start with the idea that Web3 is not happening soon, and there are a few reasons for it.
I already briefly mentioned that generally, people outside of the crypto space don’t really care about decentralization. They don’t really care about their data privacy or data ownership because they don’t really understand the necessity and the concept. That’s why they are not going to be jumping on new decentralized solutions, and that’s why DeFi wasn’t a sector that drove such crazy adoption as NFTs, and NFTs, we’re talking about flipping JPEG that didn’t actually have a value but was entertaining — entertaining for people to explore. And that’s why moving forward, I’ve seen lots of projects starting to realize that pushing for complete and tech-heavy, Web3 applications is not gonna really result in anything.
So instead, projects have to take a few steps back and work on what I currently call Web 2.5. This involves using emerging technologies from a Web3 space and trying to combine them with our World of Web2, especially on the UX side, because lots of people don’t want to really learn new tools. They don’t want to really deal with crypto wallets or don’t really understand the concept, and it’s a lot of hard work, presumptive score.
NFT ticketing is a really good example here because people are not going to be downloading Metamask to buy a Broadway ticket. They are just not gonna deal with it. They are going to go to a theater and or other approaches to pay with cash at the spot rather than deal with MetaMask. That’s why we have to find a compromise between these two worlds to drive adoption and add to what Chris has mentioned, that education is an essential part. So, we have to educate people about onboarding to Web3, about benefits, and what they’re getting from the space.
But at the same time, projects have to find this compromise on an onboarding site. They need to make it as easy and simple for people as possible to join the world of Web3 and, for example, use Web3 applications. And partially, I think that no code applications are starting to take off because of that. Most people don’t have a technical background, but they want to participate and contribute and are going to create some entertaining applications, and they need easier tools to build these applications.
You have it for like website constructors in the world of Web2. You can easily build a website without any technical knowledge, but it wasn’t the case for Web3 applications. Now with the rise of no-code applications. I think it will start changing. But education is an essential part of us growing the Web3 industry.
Very well said. This actually very much co-aligns with OORT’s ideologies and what we’re trying to do. As we also observed that the majority of Web3 users have trouble using the decentralized applications on their own. And like you said, it’s very hard to imagine someone using Metamask to buy Broadway tickets, not to mention the extremely low promotion rate for paying users. And that’s why OORT is trying to become the Web3 data infrastructure that is aiming to help Web2 developers & users to transition better into the age of Web3 by offering the best of both worlds — the Web2 user experience and the Web3 benefits of decentralization, scalability, low latency and security.
Elena, since you mentioned that education is one of the most important parts of the future development of the Web3 age, what are some of the efforts or approaches that Supermoon Camp is currently taking in this direction?
Supermoon actually started to grow a lot, and we now have four subdivisions. Some of them launched, and some of them are to be launched very soon. So obviously, we have our Supermoon Camp, and that’s an initial vertical that we started with. It’s our vertical, where we’re organizing events and bringing communities from their different locations all over the world for meaningful relationship building in October in less than ten days, actually.
We are also officially launching Supermoon Station. Supermoon Station is our media vertical, where we’ll be covering interviews or different articles with unbiased materials about Web3 and crypto space to share different perspectives on important issues in the space, feature projects, and outstanding entrepreneurs who are building and facilitating to grow as an industry.
We also are about to launch the Supermoon Foundation. Unfortunately, we can’t share a timeline yet, but it’s coming sooner than we expected. So, our primary mission of the Foundation will be to support extremely early-stage founders at the idea stage and help them to get all necessary resources beyond just funding. We’ll be investing in the idea stage projects based on the idea, how measurable it is, how applicable it is to serious issues in the world and their long-term vision, and of course, the founding team and their qualifications.
We will help our entrepreneurs with our network and resources to make sure that we can assist them throughout the journey and increase their chances to succeed. And that aligns very closely with our Supermoon Academy, that is also on our roadmap and coming very soon. The primary mission of the Academy will be to educate people about Web3 decentralization and applications in the crypto space, and we will be focused not only on the general audience and our basic steps in the crypto space, but we also will be having sessions for entrepreneurs on how to build resilient and meaningful projects in the crypto space.
That will help our cohort at the foundation to get valuable knowledge and apply it during the building stage.
In addition, Elena and Chris shared their experiences in the industry, meeting different market situations and getting past them. They also related how Supermoon’s networking would, further down the road, impact 2nd and 3rd world countries.
As the conversation continued, both teams went over Supermoon’s upcoming camp, their features, especially funding, and how they’ve learned to put their differences aside and work as a team.Access the full conversation 👉 here 👈