What are OWS Communities?

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OWS Education / OWS Basics / What are OWS Communities?
Welcome to another segment of the ‘OWS Basics’ batch, part of OWS Education.
In this chapter we will look into what Communities in the NEAR ecosystem are, how they interact with each other and how you can become a part of one.
What are Communities? 
Within the NEAR ecosystem, we classify communities as either projects (DApps) building on top of NEAR, or community-based organisations (Guilds). Essentially, communities are composed of individuals that see the NEAR Protocol as the best environment to carry out their projects.
DApps
DApps — short for decentralized applications — is an application that runs on a decentralized blockchain system, typically through the use of smart contracts. The NEAR Ecosystem became the home for hundreds of different dApps among which are oracles, DAO’s, DeFi applications, games, and many more. You can find an overview of dApps building on top of the NEAR protocol at awesomenear.com. We know, we know, a lot of new concepts but please, bare with us: future OWS educational releases will go more in detail about all of these concepts.
Guilds 
Guilds are communities that make up the greater NEAR community. Each guild shares a specific vision and mission related to driving a more open, interconnected, and consumer-empowered world. At this point in time the NEAR Community consists of more than a hundred Guilds scattered all over the globe. Each of them has its own purpose and brings specific value to the development of the ecosystem. You can find all actual information about Guilds on the guild’s platform- join it with your NEAR wallet in just several clicks.
The main difference between Guilds and DApps is that the former is centred around people (for example, OWS is a Guild) while the latter is centred around a technology. However, both are built according to the basic principles of the Web3, and by people driven by innovation.
OWS and NEAR Communities 
The Open Web Sandbox partners with both Guilds and DApps from the NEAR Ecosystem: all communities have an opportunity to outsource a task to the OWS and our team finds the best fit among our contributors to perform this task. This way OWS facilitates engagement and collaborations in the ecosystem and maximises the value created by individual contributors.
How to become a part of a Community? 
To begin with, if you are reading this subpage, you are most likely either already a part of the OWS community or just one step away from joining it. You’ll find out more about how to become a full-fledged Sandboxer in the next subpage.
If you wish to join a Guild, the best way to come in contact with the Guild leaders is through the guilds platform that was mentioned earlier. As for the dApps, you will have to check the dApps’ website or social media to see if there are open positions at the moment. Another way to become a part of the Guilds’ or dApps’ team is to engage with them through OWS opportunities. We will go into more details about these opportunities in the chapter about the Project Dashboard.
The next subpage will tell you everything about becoming an OWS Contributor.
What is the Open Web Sandbox?
What are OWS Contributors?
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What are Communities?
DApps
Guilds
OWS and NEAR Communities
How to become a part of a Community?