ROO co-founder Jackbinswitch understands that, to create a movement, you must have a group of people in your corner who share values, principles, and the belief that their voice can affect change. It also helps if those people are having a good time.
“If we’re serious about decentralizing money, if we’re serious about Bitcoin’s value proposition at the deeper levels, then we need to be, you know, serious about community,” says Jack.
What Does ROO Represent?
When building the ROO coin project and its community, one of the main questions on Jack’s mind was, “Can a meme coin be more than a meme coin?”
Instead of a vehicle built on the premise of getting lucky and getting rich, Jack and fellow ROO co-founder wondered whether a “meme coin” could instead be the digital manifestation of an idea, and immutable proof of membership in a growing community on top of a MemeFi movement.
That community, the ROO Mob, is a growing circle of Bitcoin-native artists, developers, and innovative crypto minds who share the ethos of experimentation. Still early on in its journey, this community is committing to thinking outside the box when it comes to the idea of what Bitcoin can be, and how it can play a part in the daily lives of ordinary people. The let’s-just-try-it approach is already beginning to yield fascinating results.
“To me, the token represents, especially with ROO, the actual experience. So, ROO is almost like the ticket to the experience,” says Jack. “We want to take crypto and find ways to make fun games, make things that support the health of the ROO token overall through the long term… How do you get longevity out of that?”
For the team behind ROO, the token itself is just one of the first elements of a much larger overall project that leverages the collaborative and enterprising nature of the larger Bitcoin community. Eventually, ROO will be synonymous with meaningful product development and commerce in the age of Web3, and might one day even become a household name if Jack, Ian, and the rest of the ROO Mob have their say.
ROO’s Growth: DMT Mints and More
From the beginning, ROO has collaborated closely with Stacks, a Bitcoin layer 2 token and platform upon which developers can build dApps and larger ecosystem projects that use bitcoin as their secure base layer. Jack is a self-described Stacks OG, and one of ROO’s earliest forays into building out its community via experimentation with new crypto experiences is Stacks Invaders, a generative art project which utilizes the innovative Digital Matter Theory (DMT) on the Stacks blockchain. This approach, which has been explored on Bitcoin for a while, provides a more secure, immutable, and decentralized way of managing digital art.
Through DMT, all elements are generated and saved on-chain rather than being hosted externally using IPFS. This makes the project not only the first block generative art on Stacks but also introduces a new NFT standard, highlighting the potential of the Stacks blockchain in supporting innovative and technologically advanced NFT projects.
“It’s cool to actually take something and be the first to bring it to a chain, always, but what’s cooler than that, when you already get the attention of other people in the space who are like, ‘cool, let’s build this out, let’s see where this is going, let’s explore this, see what’s up, and then let’s make a SIP about it,” says Jack.
Stacks Invaders is a community-built and maintained project integrated into ROO’s greater roadmap. It exists as a proof of concept of sorts, and as another opportunity for ROO’s community members to be directly involved with the token’s development and experimentation centered around innovation. Jack and Ian plan to expand even further with JOEY, ROO’s upcoming DeFi component, in the future.
The entire ROO movement is moving at an impressive pace, with Stacks Invaders minted out after its 40-day run – Jack says it would have minted out on the first day had it not been a DMT mint – and JOEY’s development taking center stage at ROO HQ.
Building Communities on Stacks with ROO
So, can a meme coin be more than a meme coin?
For the ROO Mob, absolutely. It can be a passport, a ticket to ride, and an opportunity to be part of a community that might just end up building the next great innovative product in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
And ROO is just one of the many communities on the Stacks ecosystem looking to make DeFi and crypto more accessible for Bitcoin users. Over the years, these communities are taking on a bigger and bigger role in onboarding more users to the Stacks ecosystem and the wider Bitcoin landscape.
