Marketing of crypto as a technology is completely captured by actors who just want to market speculative investments rather than the value creation mechanisms they represent. Imagine if the marketing of Coca Cola were completely buried by the marketing of Coca Cola stock. Or T-bonds were easier to buy than groceries.

Delver at contraptions.venkateshrao.com, running summerofprotocols.com, host of /gloom ☀️

We need a 3-pronged sector marketing strategy:

1. Increase size/variety of in-crypto dog-fooding economy.

2. Be real about tx costs, volatility, and tax/kyc burdens. Work to lower them for non-apocalyptic futures of extended coexistence with fiat and CBDCs

3. Promote all protocols, not just blockchain tokenized ones

Summer of Protocols

This last one is the premise of /sop summerofprotocols.com

60% of the marketing needs are shared with all protocols that have decentralized/distributed architectures.

80% with protocols that use crypto (Merkle trees, keypairs…) but not tokens or blockchains

Rising protocol literacy floats all these boats

Protocolization is a BIGGER story than blockchain-crypto and has been going on about 3x as long, starting with the PC. Any technology that distributes computational agency protocolizes the world further. And replaces industrial monolithic institutional landscapes run by fiat elites with distributed equivalents.

Protocolization is as big as urbanization in transforming ways of life. It is creating a new kind of human with new basic literacy, just as urbanization turned farming households into consumption households. And created “users” and “consumers” who had “jobs” for narrower producer roles.

We don’t yet know what kinds of humans will emerge at the other end. We’re in the equivalent of 1820s relative to urbanization. The idea of “consumer” was 70 years in the future. Less than 20% of the US had paycheck jobs earning cash salaries. The economy was mostly intra-household production.

NFTs were an okay entry toy product that created some literacy

Global funds transfer is choked by kyc and fiat on/off ramps, but that’s probably as it should be. It will grow slowly.

Tx costs for retail are now ok with L2s but fiat exchange rate risks are too high and in-crypto economy too small

The challenge lies in shifting the narrative from speculation to the foundational technologies. Solutions can include refocusing on the tech & its value creation. This could involve collectively increasing educational efforts, utility showcasing & fostering communities centered on tech first approaches.

If there's financial incentives for people to speculate, they will. And crypto is perfect for that.