Organising the Social Layer: How Organisational Paradoxes Shape Engagement in Cryptocurrency Communities

Cryptocurrencies (crypto) and their underlying blockchain technologies are designed around the promise of collective organising without reliance on centralised authority, intermediaries, and hierarchical coordination. Yet sustaining collective participation in decentralised networks without conventional forms of coordination remains an organisational challenge. This study demonstrates that keeping participants engaged in crypto communities depends on continuous work within crypto’s social layer. Drawing on the organisational paradox lens and 26 semi-structured interviews with developers, team members, and regular users across four crypto communities, we show that sustained engagement depends on balancing organisational paradoxes rooted in communication, decision-making, and community development: technical discourse versus social-media-style interaction, decentralised participation versus centralised guidance, and scaling versus a sense of authentic community. Our findings suggest that continually balancing, rather than resolving these tensions is essential for engagement and community cohesion. This research contributes to the theoretical understanding of decentralised organising by showing how collective participation can be maintained in organisational arrangements that seek to reduce reliance on conventional centralised structures. More broadly, we show that decentralisation does not eliminate the need for organising but relocates much of this work to the social layer of interaction, coordination, and community building, where contradictory demands must be continually negotiated to keep participation workable and sustainable.