What kind of Community is Mitosis trying to build?

Building and engaging members in a community is easily one of the most complex tasks any team can face. Today, I’d like to share some thoughts on how the Mitosis team has been approaching this, and the impressive success they’ve had in growing and involving their community.

I don’t take part in the main community votes, which are reserved for the Senseis, but after contributing for quite some time, I’ve come to understand how things operate behind the scenes.

So in this article, I want to highlight the many positive aspects I’ve observed within the Mitosis community and how decisions are consistently made through a participatory process.

At the same time, I want to share some thoughts and concerns from the perspective of someone who isn’t part of the inner circle.

Shall we dive into this journey together?
This is one of those pieces I’m truly excited to write, and it’s an honor to take you behind the scenes of the Mitosis community.

The Mitosis Manifesto

First, you need to understand the manifesto behind Mitosis, something that truly inspired me to get more involved once I actually stopped to pay attention.

The crypto market is full of traps for retail investors. Market manipulation, PvP dynamics, shady deals between protocols and whales... something always ends up crushing the dreams of less experienced investors who aren’t used to this kind of game.

Meanwhile, this model privileges whales... large capital holders who can strike opaque deals with protocols desperate for TVL to bootstrap liquidity and attract more depositors.

The manifesto behind Mitosis was created precisely as a counter to this kind of market behavior.

It's about offering retail investors, the “small fish”, a place where they can join forces and access the same privileged yields that big players receive for providing liquidity to protocols.

The core idea of this community is simple:
Alone, we’re easy targets. But together, we can be competitive, with a safe harbor for our assets and access to the best yields in DeFi.

On Community Participation

From a community management standpoint, Mitosis operates like a true DAO, one of the few in crypto with actual decentralized governance that works.

I genuinely believe it's one of the most democratic governance systems I’ve seen in crypto.

I’m constantly amazed by what the team and the community have been able to build together. It’s a real social experiment in crypto.

Some examples:

➢ EOL (Mitosis Expedition Campaign) is a vault that allocates deposited funds into protocols selected through community governance.

➢ In the community, roles are granted via Sensei elections (community representatives). A Sensei nominates someone, and the others must approve it before the role is given.

➢ There are several working groups formed by the team and community members, each with its own objective. I’m part of some of them and can attest: contributors truly help shape the protocol’s future. While there is some level of team centralization (which I believe is necessary), community members play an active role in Mitosis’ growth.

➢ Every incentive campaign, like Mitofy and the Ideathon, goes through a democratic decision process, where the voting model (Senseis, open community, or hybrid between team and community) is decided transparently. You can literally see decentralized decision-making in action.

➢ Even with Morse NFT, you can observe this alignment: decisions about the NFT collection are being passed to the holders. Every new partnership is voted on via Snapshot, and at this very moment, a vote is underway to elect a President, a kind of ambassador who acts as a bridge between team and community, helping everyone move forward in sync.

Even in a brilliant model, not everything is perfect…

Even though I’m writing this to highlight what I see as an amazing social experiment in crypto, a protocol that’s truly trying to build with and for its community, not everything is rainbows and sunshine.

In my opinion (and I could be wrong), governance seems to be slowly drifting toward functioning like a third-world political party...

Too much goes unnoticed. Regional cliques promote only their own, and many promotions seem driven more by friendships and favors than actual merit.

The solution? Honestly… I don’t know.

Maybe more active leadership from the core team, guiding the community’s collective body and reinforcing merit over favoritism, could help.

In a social experiment like this, I think power rotation and hierarchical mobility are essential. Everyone should feel like they can climb the ladder, and that merit will always matter more than favors.

Otherwise, the dream of a democratic system could slowly turn into a kind of aristocracy... and if that happens, a lot of people might abandon ship.

That’s my two cents in this Sunday article.