Hey, thank you for all the questions. These are all valid points and there is a lot to be said about all this.
- NEAR Chill&Shill is a very special space, different to most twitter spaces out there, in fact, it is so unique it is almost impossible to understand it, without being there, so I will have to give a lot of context here. This is mostly due to the fact that NEAR ecosystem is in such unique position. We have a family-like community of people, who were introduced to NEAR by us, then educated about NEAR through over 100+ NEAR spaces with different projects, founders, and key players in NEAR ecosystem. As a result, they don’t just passively consume content. Every projects that comes to our spaces notes the quality and depth of questions our community asks, their deep understanding of NEAR ecosystem, as well as the fact that going to our spaces instantly brings users and community members to their projects, since our community members always interact with the guest projects, and often become their most active community members, if they like the project. Eventually, after learning so much about NEAR, our community members become creators, a good example would be @Devbose , who is the biggest KOL account on $NEAR after Wax, was introduced to NEAR through our spaces. I truly believe that we have created a record amount of NEAR maxis
The reason why I think it is so important, is that based on my experience NEAR has close to 0 community in the traditional sense of this word in Web3. Most of NEAR “community” are employees or ex-employees of the NEAR entities, or project builders supported by NEAR grants. In other words, there are a lot of builders, but there is a noticeable void when it comes to the audience, which was pretty evident by the twitter engagement in NEAR ecosystem over the last year. The only other real community I can think of would be Shitzu Community.
We believe that in web3, most of “communities” usually form as a consequence of active NFT or DeFi environments where there are speculative opportunities, which are common community-drivers in web3, which NEAR currently doesn’t have. While it this is a good thing and something we like NEAR for, since this means we don’t have rugs, scams, and countless ponzis that most other chains do, and proudly show off as their “volume” and " activity". However, as a random negative consequence of the absence of this environment is absence of the web3 community. This leaves a giant hole in NEAR ecosystem. This is where Chill&Shill stepped in and has filled this gap, creating a high quality educational space that encourages a deep understanding of NEAR by bringing quality speakers and builders. All this time we have been fostering organic community growth, creating community which we believe will form the core of organic NEAR community in the future.
Moreover, Chill&Shill serves as a hub, providing NEAR projects with a platform to attract users, engage with the community, hone their pitches, and network with other NEAR builders. In turn, our community gets to learn about new projects, ask questions, and connect with others within the NEAR ecosystem. We’ve also fostered collaborations between NEAR projects, further strengthening the ecosystem, which we believe is very important considering how disconnected different NEAR projects and builders are from each other. In the future, we plan to collect feedback forms from projects to better understand the value they derive from our space. On top of that, as mentioned before, we also grow the NEAR community and onboard people on NEAR who have not heard of it before through our spaces.
Hope this was not too much to read, this is something we are very passionate about and have a lot to say 
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We have previously explored the idea of paid spaces during a period when the Marketing DAO was inactive. However, the response was largely negative. Given that most of our guests are NEAR-based projects operating on grant funding, few are willing to pay for Twitter spaces. Considering the current state of the NEAR ecosystem, without the support of Marketing DAO, we wouldn’t be able to maintain our current activities.
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Anyone from the NEAR eco can easily register for our space, from the forum and beyond. There is a calendly link for anyone to book the space in the Wax account bio, and since Wax is the biggest KOL account in the NEAR eco, lots of projects are able to find their way though that. We also have lots of projects reach out to us directly, asking to come to the space, who we accommodate directly. Moreover, we’ve worked with Aurora and the Human Guild to bring their projects into our spaces directly. If you are building on NEAR I would encourage you to book a slot and come to our space here - Calendly - Chill Shill