# Community-Driven Ecosystem Construction The EdgeX project takes a user-centric approach, where users drive the operation and ecosystem development through active community engagement. By empowering users to participate in shaping their ecosystems and decision-making processes, the project fosters value growth and facilitates the rapid scaling of its ecosystem. Users purchase and deploy EdgeX hardware nodes to contribute to the project and ecosystem development. By deploying EdgeX edge computing nodes, users provide various resources such as AI capabilities, network bandwidth, storage space, or personal professional skills. The user's participation generates Proof of Work (PoW), which enables them to earn $EX token rewards. The $EX tokens are used within the ecosystem for transactions, service purchases, or investments. As the ecosystem grows, early adopters can expect to see multiple-fold returns on their initial participation. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://edgex-labs.gitbook.io/edgex-whitepaper/edgex-project/competitiveness/community-driven-ecosystem-construction.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.