🤖 AI Summary
This study investigates how economic transactions in Web3 foster social relationships, shared narratives, and collective identities rather than merely functioning as digital asset markets. By integrating on-chain transaction data with off-chain social media activity and combining network analysis with discourse analysis, the research empirically examines over one hundred NFT communities, establishing a novel linkage between their structural characteristics and cultural dynamics. Findings reveal that communities centered on holding behaviors exhibit high cohesion and sustained cultural engagement, whereas those driven primarily by speculation tend toward fragmentation and lack social embeddedness. The work proposes a scalable socio-technical analytical framework to identify patterns of inclusion, exclusion, and representational imbalance within Web3 ecosystems, offering a new paradigm for understanding the evolution of decentralized communities.
📝 Abstract
This paper examines Web3 ecosystems not merely as markets for digital assets, but as networked social spaces where economic transactions give rise to enduring social ties, shared narratives, and collective identities. Leveraging large-scale data mining of fused on-chain blockchain transactions and off-chain social media activity, we analyze over one hundred NFT collections to uncover how different forms of participation structure community formation in decentralized environments. Using network analysis, we identify distinct ecosystem roles, such as long-term holders, active traders, and short-term speculators, and demonstrate how each produces markedly different network topologies, levels of cohesion, and pathways for influence. We complement this structural analysis with discourse analysis of social media engagement, revealing how narrative production, visibility, and sustained interaction persist even as transactional activity declines. Our findings show that communities centered on holding behavior evolve from transactional networks into socially embedded ecosystems characterized by dense ties, decentralized influence, and ongoing cultural participation, while trader- and speculator-dominated networks remain fragmented and transactional. By linking network structure with discursive dynamics, this study provides a sociotechnical framework for understanding how value, identity, and inequality are negotiated in Web3 spaces. The approach offers a scalable method for detecting patterns of inclusion, exclusion, and representational imbalance, advancing network-based research on digital communities beyond purely economic or technical accounts.