2014 Vitalik Buterin couldn’t raise for Ethereum today

Opinion by: Aaron Barefoot, founder of ColdChain

Ten years after the creation of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin would not be able to raise funds if he had to start from scratch today.

Although we’ve had over a decade to build our alternative to the traditional centralized systems, we’re still asking one another when this mass adoption will happen, and projects advertise that they are onboarding the next billion — when the first billion isn’t even there yet.

Market shifts

One of the reasons we’ve failed to capture broader adoption is the way the markets have shifted from aspiring to provide an alternative vision to Big Tech to relying on social signaling for investment decisions and seeking short-term gains.

A significant effect of that is that, similar to how it works in Web2, creators of any kind only succeed if they build a big audience first. One might wonder: Why does an author need to have a prominent Instagram following? Crypto projects are more likely to gain the resources required if they capture a considerable mindshare.

The downside? For tech founders, it’s nearly impossible to stand out.

The influencer conundrum

A sane person would assume that it’s preferential for engineers of a product to work on the product instead of yapping on X. Not so in the current crypto market.

Without a following, you’re nothing. The only other path to meaningful backing is having a CV full of Big Tech experience. 

Marketing, which used to be thoroughly lacking in crypto, has become the one game in town. Look at Berachain, a project where the running gag is that it’s a party company. They’ve done well marketing themselves, with hundreds queueing for their parties.

Yet, few party attendees are likely aware of what Berachian does. To be fair, the team has a solid engineering track record, but chances are it would never have gotten so far if it wasn’t for its founder’s constant tweeting.

This begs the question: How was 2014 different?

Beyond the niche

In 2014, there was mostly Bitcoin. The ethos of cyberpunks was strong. Crypto was still a niche segment where builders focused on creating products aligned with their vision of increasing financial access, privacy and permissionlessness.

Recent: ‘Buy crypto’ and ‘Solana’ search volumes surge amid TRUMP meme frenzy

Anyone launching a project back then would have to prove solid engineering talent, a solution advanced to a minimum viable product level, and outline their ideas in-depth in a white paper.

Funds were raised with the initial coin offering model, requiring projects to build a community willing to put their money where their belief was.

Nowadays, what projects call communities are often more akin to a collection of mercenaries, recruited through the promise of an airdrop.

Short-termism

The lack of white papers in new product launches is an excellent metaphor for the way investors now do their due diligence. It rarely goes as deep as warranting a white paper. Instead, what matters more in this economy is:

• How many followers/how much engagement does the project have on X?

• What’s the fully diluted value?

• Is there a potential airdrop if I start using it now?

• Does it make for a good meme?

A mix of disillusionment with what the industry turned into and increased financial nihilism is likely to blame for more investors giving into the casino. Who needs decentralization if you can have a 100x?

As Eleftherios Diakomichalis mentioned during a talk during Devcon, crypto turns aspiring thinkers into PVP shillers. Being degen, however, was never one of the values of crypto. If anything, the short-termism associated with it runs counter to what we’re building: decentralized networks that are meant to last forever.

Chances are, this pivot is hindering crypto from becoming more mainstream. Marketing in crypto focuses almost exclusively on people already in crypto. It makes sense because few products legitimately add value to someone’s life outside someone already in the space. Even the honest ones in crypto will admit they rarely use Web3. Speculation might be attractive for the handful of short-term investors, but it isn’t for what crypto calls normies.

What’s marketing’s role in all this?

In line with what stakeholders were looking for, marketing in crypto is now often limited to shitposting and ensuring that vanity metrics such as TVL or active user count are hit. Instead of chasing narratives and easy-to-fake growth metrics, marketing needs to go back to the basics, to the original root of its name: creating a market. We need to build products that tap into existing needs and solve problems.

Marketing becomes the bridge between the product and the people who most benefit from it.

To do that likely requires rethinking how we build and figuring out how to cater to different audiences — those crypto-aficionados wanting to know all about the tech and the users who’ll just be happy to have a functioning product.

Our role isn’t just growing a big audience. What’s more important for longevity is acquiring actual usage. Only once we manage to onboard and retain that do we stand a chance of building better things and breaking out of the current cycle of degenerate accelerationism.

The next Vitalik shouldn’t have to be an influencer to stand a chance at receiving funding.

We might never outgrow our small niche if we don’t move away from solely engagement-based evaluation.

Opinion by: Aaron Barefoot, founder of ColdChain

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.