All businesses and communities are vulnerable to drop offs in member engagement, contribution, and confidence. Token communities, given current game mechanics & immaturity of the sector as a whole, are especially vulnerable to the steepest declines.

If the EV of a token project looks stagnant, there is no real incentive for members to continue to be members. Contribution per member also diminishes as more projects compete for attention; the cost to acquire and retain members will rise, too.

• In web2, the value of a member is often calculated as a derivative of churn, i.e., length of their lifecycle. This metric may come married to engagement metadata (plus unit economics) and k-factor of referrals (likelihood to organically grow).
• In web3, membership frameworks are nascent and churn is not yet a mature measure. This leads to questions like: HODL = membership? What if I hold but am not active or if I'm engaged but don't have a token? Without frameworks we're left to solve leaky bucket problems in the dark.

Many crypto projects today mask retention problems with strategies that draw in new customers - more "curves" (i.e., new members) - through a series of drops or marketing bursts; a strategy that is difficult to sustain and scale.

On the other hand, well-managed memberships with programmatic incentive models are more likely to achieve flatter or even "smiling" curves over time.

To enable better outcomes (i.e., member lifecycle value) and ensure communities generate value for their projects in intended ways - we should introduce more rules to the game and give communities more economic levers to pull. To accomplish this in crypto, we must build new programmable standards and enabling infrastructure.

Therefore, Passage Protocol.