How World of Women Built a Community That Survived Every Crypto Winter

Most NFT projects from 2021 are empty Discords today. World of Women is still here.

In the very first episode of Behind the Community, aartoo's Aaron sat down with Eco, the head of community at World of Women, to find out what it actually takes to build a community that outlasts the hype cycle. They covered the origins of WoW, what kept holders around through the FTX collapse and the NFT winter, what community managers can learn from four years of showing up every day, and what the WoW team is building next.

Eco joined World of Women on day two of the mint in 2021. He is still here. That staying power is the whole story.

Table of contents

1. Who is Eco and what is World of Women?
2. How WoW built its early community before the celebrities arrived
3. What kept the WoW community alive through crypto winter
4. The number one thing community managers get wrong
5. The WoW universe: events, IP, and the Monopoly partnership
6. Going global: local meetups as a retention strategy
7. How aartoo changed the WoW community team's workflow
8. AI and the future of the WoW project
9. Frequently asked questions

Who is Eco and what is World of Women?

Eco is the head of community at World of Women, one of the three NFT blue chips from the 2021 cycle that has maintained an active, engaged community through multiple market downturns. He joined on day two of the mint and has been part of the community ever since, recently taking on the lead community role as part of a new team that has been active for approximately four months.

World of Women launched in 2021 with a mission to empower women in the Web3 space. That mission was not a marketing layer added after the fact. It was the original reason for the project's existence and, as Eco explains, it is the reason a lot of people are still there today.

The project has since expanded into a wider universe of collections, brand partnerships including a Monopoly collaboration with Hasbro, and live events at major crypto conferences. A new leadership team is now in place and building what comes next.

"WoW always had and started with the mission to empower women in the space. That was the big motto back in the day and still is to this point."

Eco, Head of Community, World of Women

How WoW built its early community before the celebrities arrived

WoW's early community strength came from first-mover advantage, a strong focus on supporting artists through weekly community voting and rewards, and a mission that resonated with people on a level that went beyond speculation. The celebrity wave, Reese Witherspoon, Eva Longoria, Justin Bieber, came after the foundation was already in place.

Eco was clear on the timeline. When people talk about WoW and celebrity adoption in the same breath, they often assume the celebrities drove the early community. They did not. The community was already building organically by the time high-profile names arrived.

What drove early growth was a weekly artist program where community members could submit original artwork, the community voted, and winners were rewarded with NFTs distributed to holders alongside a small ETH payment. This was a direct, participatory loop that gave regular members a reason to keep showing up and contributing.

First-mover advantage played a role too. WoW was one of the first three projects of its kind, alongside CryptoPunks and BAYC, and being early means being part of the conversation before the market gets saturated.

When celebrities did arrive, they came because they resonated with the mission. Reese Witherspoon specifically saw the dual IP opportunity: using WoW NFTs within her book club brand. That kind of authentic alignment is very different from paid celebrity promotion.

What kept the WoW community alive through crypto winter

The people who stayed through the 2022 and 2023 downturn were the ones who came for the right reasons: community, art, mission. Not profit. When the floor dropped and the headlines turned negative, the flippers left. What remained was a core group of people who had made friends, resonated with the WoW vision, and had nowhere else to go in their everyday lives to talk about Web3.

This is one of the most honest and transferable insights in the episode. Eco described his own situation: not a single person in his family holds crypto or cares about NFTs. The WoW community is where he goes to talk about the things he cares about. That kind of social need does not disappear when the floor drops.

Eco also noted a broader trend: many of his old Twitter followers from the peak of the NFT cycle have not posted since 2022 or 2023. They were there for the moment, not the mission. The people still active in WoW are the ones who were there for something else.

This is a useful lens for any community manager trying to evaluate the health of their community. How many of your members are there because they want to be part of something versus how many are there because the price was going up? aartoo's community pulse widget helps answer that question by surfacing sentiment trends over time.

The number one thing community managers get wrong

The most common mistake community managers and project founders make is not showing up. Blue-chip floor prices and impressive metrics mean nothing if the team disappears from the Discord. Being present every day, replying to people, running simple activations, and giving members a sense that there is life in the project is the foundation everything else is built on.

Eco's advice here was direct and practical. He described exactly what the new WoW team is doing to reactivate the community: being in Discord and Telegram every day, talking to people, running mini-games, giving attention to as many members as possible.

Simple activations, a trivia game, a giveaway, a voice space, do not have to be elaborate to signal that the project is alive. Members are watching for signs of activity. When they see it, they come back. When they do not see it, they find somewhere else to be.

This is also where the excuse of a small team falls apart. You do not need ten moderators to show up consistently. You need a system, the right tools to stay on top of what your community is saying, and the discipline to be present. aartoo handles the data layer. Eco's advice handles the human layer.

The WoW universe: events, IP, and the Monopoly partnership

World of Women has expanded beyond its original NFT collection into a wider creative universe that includes new collections, brand partnerships, and live event activations. The Hasbro Monopoly collaboration is one of the most concrete examples of NFT IP being used in a mainstream consumer product. The Token2049 event activation, a wellness space offering massages and hydration in the middle of conference week, became one of the most talked-about experiences at the event.

The Monopoly partnership deserves more attention than it typically gets. A physical board game with WoW dual IP, sold commercially through Hasbro, is a genuinely unusual achievement for an NFT project and a strong signal of where IP-based community projects can go when they are built on a real mission rather than a floor price.

The Token2049 event strategy was equally interesting. Rather than throwing another loud party with DJs, the WoW team created a calm wellness space. Massages, hydration, greenery. In the middle of a week where everyone is sprinting between panels and side events, that became a destination. aartoo's own founder Sarah attended and called it one of the best experiences of the conference.

Incoming: monthly global community meetups, sponsored by WoW, designed to bring local holders together in cities around the world. Eco described this as a priority for the new team, picking up a tradition from WoW's earlier years and making it bigger.

Going global: local meetups as a retention strategy

Monthly sponsored community meetups in cities around the world, where local WoW holders can gather without needing to attend a major conference, are one of the most underused retention tools in Web3. WoW is bringing this back as a structured programme. Small, local, and human is often more effective than large, global, and branded.

This is a theme that came up in multiple episodes of Behind the Community. Anna Westfall at Uniswap said the same thing: the 30-person intimate dinner beats the 500-person conference side event every time. When the group is small enough that you can talk to everyone, the connection formed is qualitatively different.

For WoW, the global meetup model also solves a practical problem. The community is worldwide. Most holders will never attend a major crypto conference. Bringing the community to them rather than waiting for them to come to the conference is a retention move that respects where people actually live.

aartoo's cross-language and cross-platform capabilities support this model directly. A community running local Telegram groups in ten cities can monitor sentiment and activity across all of them from one dashboard.

How aartoo changed the WoW community team's workflow

The WoW community team started using aartoo after Christie, a team member, flagged it based on prior experience with the platform. Two weeks in, aartoo had become a daily tool for the entire community team: tracking key topics across the Discord, managing handoffs between time zones from Australia and New Zealand to the US, monitoring for scam links, and generating the weekly reports shared with the WoW executive team.

The time zone use case is worth highlighting. The WoW team operates across Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Without a structured way to hand off community context at the end of each shift, important conversations get missed and the incoming moderator has no idea what tone the day has set.

aartoo solves that by giving both the outgoing and incoming team member a complete picture of what was discussed, what the sentiment was, and what needs attention. No more scrolling back through hundreds of messages to catch up. Open the dashboard, read the summary, get to work.

The executive reporting dimension is also significant. Community managers who want to demonstrate their value to leadership need data. aartoo generates that data in a format that is useful for a weekly report without the community manager having to manually compile it.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Eco from World of Women?

Eco is the head of community at World of Women. He joined the project on day two of the mint in 2021, has been part of the community through every market cycle since, and recently took on the lead community role as part of WoW's new team. He also runs his own project and has three years of experience as a founder.

What is World of Women?

World of Women is one of the original NFT blue chips from the 2021 cycle. Founded with a mission to empower women in Web3, it has maintained an active community through multiple downturns and expanded into new collections, brand partnerships including a Monopoly collaboration with Hasbro, and a global live event presence.

Why has World of Women survived when most NFT projects did not?

The community was built around a genuine mission rather than speculation. The people who stayed through the 2022 and 2023 downturn were there for the art, the friendships, and the vision, not the floor price. When the price fell, they had no reason to leave because the thing they valued most was still there.

What is the WoW Monopoly game?

A physical Monopoly board game produced in partnership with Hasbro that features World of Women dual IP. It is a commercially available product and one of the clearest examples of an NFT project successfully extending its IP into mainstream consumer goods.

How does the WoW team use aartoo?

aartoo is used daily by the WoW community team to track key topics in Discord, manage time zone handoffs between international team members, monitor for scam activity, and generate weekly data reports for the executive team. The team had been using it for two weeks at the time of recording and described the impact as immediate.

What is Behind the Community?

Behind the Community is aartoo's interview series exploring how the world's best online communities are built and managed. Episode 1 features Eco from World of Women, covering NFT community building, survival through market downturns, and practical advice for community managers at any stage.

Wrapping up

Eco's story is a useful corrective to the way most people think about NFT project longevity. The projects that survived are not the ones that had the best art or the biggest celebrity endorsements. They are the ones that had a mission people believed in and a team that kept showing up.

The WoW community has people in it who have not seen the floor price move in years and are still there. Not because they are waiting for a recovery, but because they made friends, they love the art, and they have nowhere else in their lives to talk about the things WoW introduced them to.

That is what good community building looks like. And it is available to any project willing to do the unglamorous work of being present every single day.