We always hear the word "community" as a reference to the body of players who are supposed to be the stakeholders that care the most about such or such blockchain.
This term has been a cornerstone of recent events, like bitcoin's 'block size' debate and the ethereum hard fork, coloring how these events are communicated to the wider public.
But what does "community" mean in this context?
Defining community
According to blockchain theory, the community is supposed to determine the future of a given public blockchain via decentralized governance and the magic of consensus.
Consensus decision-making is at the heart of public blockchains, because a plain majority can sway it one way or the other. Just like an election, more or less.
The baseline of a blockchain rests on its economic soundness, and the reality is that some players hold the strings to this economic soundness more than others. (Economic soundness also directly relates to blockchain security, but let’s not digress on that important tangent).
With such deciding power on the future of public blockchains, the community is an important body, because it represents the current governance.
So, I went on a research investigation to figure out the composition of a typical blockchain community. What I found is that this deciding community is a subset of a larger ecosystem.
The community represents the base players that have had an earlier economic role in the ecosystem. They are mostly the insiders, and they have an advantage in being more "in-the-know" than others. Their voices are louder, and their collective actions (or inactions) can effectively determine a blockchain's trajectory.
Whole article is here:
http://www.coindesk.com/public-blockchains-community-vs-ecosystem/