How Jowe Built the Most Vibrant L1 Discord in Years

Some community managers keep their Discord ticking along. Jowe from Fogo built something people actually want to hang out in.

In Episode 5 of Behind the Community, aartoo's Aaron sat down with Jowe, the community lead at Fogo, to talk about what separates genuinely great community management from the average. They covered gamification systems, founder-led engagement, how Fogo's no-gas UX changes the conversation, and why Jowe thinks aartoo has made his day-to-day workflow dramatically more efficient.

If you run a Web3 community and you're trying to move beyond price chat and lurkers, this one's for you.

Table of contents

1. Who is Jowe and what is Fogo?
2. What makes a great community manager?
3. Founder-led community: the Fogo approach
4. How Fogo's no-gas UX unlocks community engagement
5. Gamification: from Fire Starter to Gigablazer
6. Activity vs progress: how to spot real contributors
7. AI in community management
8. How aartoo changed Jowe's workflow
9. Frequently asked questions

Who is Jowe and what is Fogo?

Jowe has been in crypto since 2017, came up as a trader with a professional background in cyber security, and now runs community full-time for Fogo, a purpose-built SVM Layer 1 blockchain built for trading and finance.

Fogo is Solana-compatible, making migration straightforward for existing SVM builders. The team claims 40ms block times, putting it in contention for the fastest blockchain currently live. For builders in gaming and DeFi, that speed combined with a no-gas model creates an experience that genuinely feels like web2.

Jowe joined Aaron on Behind the Community fresh off a week at ETH Denver, where the aartoo team also recorded their first-ever live episode with Dovu.

"I've been in the space just doing the same thing and this is what I'm doing for Fogo."

Jowe, Community Lead at Fogo

What makes a great community manager?

The best community managers combine genuine relationship-building with a selfless mindset: less about broadcasting the product, more about listening, retaining people, and feeding real feedback back to the core team.

Jowe's take on the role is refreshingly honest. He says the personality has to match the job. You cannot fake the desire to connect with people. In his words, the community manager sits in the middle between the core team and the community, and that position only works if you're actually paying attention to both sides.

Aaron echoed this from his own background, having started as a community manager before moving into product management. The irony, as he pointed out, is that CMOs and CEOs obsess over customer-centric product teams while overlooking the fact that the community manager has the most direct, real-time access to how customers actually feel.

Key traits Jowe highlighted:

• Openness to building real relationships, not just transactional ones
• Selflessness in prioritising the community's needs over personal or brand ego
• Observation turning what you hear into actionable insight for the product team
• Retention focus not just onboarding but keeping people around long term

Founder-led community: the Fogo approach

Fogo's co-founder Rob actively DMs Jowe, engages directly with community members, and treats community feedback as a genuine input into product direction. That level of founder involvement is rare and, according to Jowe, is a significant driver of community trust and retention.

Most early-stage L1 projects have founders who are either invisible in the community or only appear for announcements. Fogo's approach is different. Rob reaches out to Jowe when something surfaces on Twitter. He has real conversations with regular community members. He is, as Jowe put it, "very dialed in."

Jowe also pointed out that this isn't accidental. He has actively advised Rob to communicate directly with members. That advisory relationship between community manager and founder is another thing you don't often see, and it makes the whole operation more coherent.

When members feel empowered and heard, they stick around. That applies in any relationship, and Fogo is proving it applies in Web3 community too.

How Fogo's no-gas UX unlocks community engagement

Fogo's no-gas model, powered by Fogo Sessions, lets users sign in once and execute thousands of on-chain transactions without re-signing or paying gas fees. App developers sponsor the minimal transaction costs, making the entire experience free for end users and creating a genuinely web2-quality on-chain interaction.

This matters enormously for community managers. One of the most common friction points in getting community members to actually use a blockchain product is the gas approval flow. Every time a user has to stop, approve a transaction, and check they have enough tokens to cover fees, you lose someone.

Fogo Sessions removes that entirely. Users sign once. They set a session duration: a day, 72 hours, or a week. Most default to a week. After that, the blockchain behaves like a fast web2 app.

For builders in gaming and DeFi specifically, this is a significant unlock. It allows for:

1. Thousands of micro-transactions without interrupting the user experience
2. 40ms block times that make interactions feel instant
3. A paymaster system that Fogo uses to whitelist apps and sponsors their gas costs

Jowe confirmed that convincing app developers to participate in this model has not been a hard sell. The transaction costs are low enough that sponsoring them is a reasonable trade for onboarding real on-chain users.

Gamification: from Fire Starter to Gigablazer

Fogo's Discord uses a tiered role progression system starting at Fire Starter, moving through Smoke and Ember, and culminating at Gigablazer. Combined with off-platform tracking on X and a rewards system, this gamification layer drives consistent engagement and community identity in a way that goes well beyond most L1 discords.

Jowe credits this gamification architecture as one of the biggest contributors to Fogo's unusually active community. When someone joins the Discord, they are not just another member. They are a Fire Starter with somewhere to go.

The system rewards contribution both inside and outside Discord. If someone is creating great content on X, Fogo sees it and the role tracking system picks it up. Members get rewarded even if they are not active in the Discord daily.

What makes this work is not just the hierarchy. It is the relationship underneath it. Jowe actively DMs members who are producing good content and coaches them. He described four or five people who started with under a thousand Twitter followers while contributing to Fogo and grew to five or six thousand, some even getting sponsored or badged by Polymarket. That is real, tangible career impact driven by community participation.

Jowe also teased that a new special role is coming post-TGE, shared exclusively with the aartoo audience. No further details yet, but he described it as a "really good idea" he is implementing shortly.

Activity vs progress: how to spot real contributors

The distinction between genuine contributors and farmers is not about farming itself but about intent. Jowe's approach is to identify potential in imperfect content, reach out directly, and develop that person over time rather than dismissing them for not being polished from day one.

This is one of the more nuanced takes in the episode. Jowe does not frame farming as inherently bad. His view is that if someone is bringing value and plans to stick around, getting rewarded for that is completely reasonable. The issue is disingenuousness: showing up, collecting an airdrop, and disappearing.

In practice, identifying real contributors comes down to pattern recognition. Jowe looks at content quality with potential rather than current polish. He reaches out to people in DMs. He coaches them. The X profile review sessions he used to run weekly and plans to bring back are a good example: direct, public feedback on community members' profiles that people found genuinely valuable.

For community managers watching, aartoo's role performance widget helps here. You can filter by role, see who has gone quiet, spot who is climbing, and intervene early before someone fully disengages.

AI in community management

Jowe's position is clear: AI will not replace community managers because the role fundamentally requires human connection. What it will do is automate repetitive tasks, give community managers better information faster, and unlock non-technical community members to build real applications.

Jowe mentioned something striking here. Approximately 10 to 15 people in the Fogo community with zero engineering background have built working apps using AI. That is a shift in what community participation can look like, and it points toward a future where engaged members become contributors in entirely new ways.

The aartoo view on this aligns directly. AI handles the time syncs, the manual moderation patterns, the data aggregation. Community managers get that time back and spend it on the human work that actually drives retention and culture.

How aartoo changed Jowe's workflow

Jowe uses aartoo daily to get a bird's-eye view of community health, surface concerns before they escalate, track role holder engagement, and measure whether events and campaigns are landing. He described it as essential to his current workflow and significantly harder to do without.

A few specific use cases Jowe called out:

1. Morning check-in -- 10 minutes with a coffee, reviewing the community pulse to see what happened overnight
2. Concern triage -- spotting issues early through the chat box and jumping in before things escalate
3. Role holder monitoring -- tracking whether Gigablazers and other key roles are staying active, and re-engaging anyone showing signs of dropping off
4. Event measurement -- using aartoo data to assess whether activities are generating genuine engagement or just noise

Jowe has been using aartoo since around August, well before Fogo's TGE. Watching the product evolve over that period has given him a front-row seat to how aartoo's feature set has developed. His summary: "It has evolved tremendously and I'm sure it's going to continue."

Frequently asked questions

What is Fogo?

Fogo is a purpose-built SVM Layer 1 blockchain optimised for trading and finance. It is Solana-compatible, targets 40ms block times, and runs a no-gas model for end users through its Fogo Sessions and paymaster infrastructure.

What is Fogo Sessions?

Fogo Sessions is a one-time signing mechanism that allows users to authorise a session lasting up to a week. Within that session, users can execute thousands of on-chain transactions without re-signing or paying gas fees. App developers sponsor the minimal transaction costs via a paymaster system.

How does Fogo's gamification system work?

New Discord members start as Fire Starters and progress through Smoke and Ember roles before reaching Gigablazer status. Contribution is tracked across Discord and X, and rewards are distributed based on activity quality rather than volume alone.

How does Jowe use aartoo as a community manager?

aartoo gives Jowe a daily overview of community health through the community pulse widget, lets him track role holder activity, surface concerns early, and measure event performance. He has used it since August and describes it as central to his workflow.

What is Jowe's view on AI and community management?

Jowe believes AI will make community managers more efficient rather than replacing them. The human connection at the core of the role cannot be automated. What AI does well is removing tedious manual tasks and freeing up time for higher-value work.

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 5 features Jowe from Fogo talking gamification, founder-led engagement, and day-to-day community management at scale.

Wrapping up

Jowe is a good example of what community management looks like when it is taken seriously. A gamification system with real progression, a founder who actually talks to members, a no-gas UX that removes friction at the product level, and a daily workflow built around real data rather than gut feel.

The Fogo Discord has channels for the gym, food, and everything else that has nothing to do with blockchains. That is not random. It is deliberate. It is the byproduct of building a place people actually want to be, not just a channel where announcements get posted.