where they later go down to the basement and find out that the illegal gambling has turned into russian roulette.

lol. high stake players.

I think that a lot of the early users in were from crypto markets and at that point of crypto, community was meaningless, it was all about your own wallet. A lot of them never shook that mentality.

However, like you said about timing, there were others also and they are part of the community or are at least, trying to create a community and often it is out of their 'own wallet' so to speak.

It is always difficult to govern in a decentralized environment because of the variation in understanding, expectation and desires but, I think we are slowly, slowly creeping toward working out how to do it.

The thing is that most of us still run on the programs we have come from, authority and maximisation and we need a paradigm shift in what community, value and responsibility is before we can really see how fast we can move. This takes time and personal investment from everyone as the psychology of scarcity is hard to shake and replace with one of abundance.