GETTING NEW USERS IN CRYPTO IS HARDER THAN EVER (WHAT TO DO)

Marketing can be overwhelming. From choosing the right channels, to messaging, to coordination. Should you invest in an event? Start an ambassador program? What should the hackathon incentives be? There's always something that can be done.

Good marketers will simplify, plan, execute, and also help you save budget.

Still, crypto marketing is getting increasingly difficult.

What's really going on?

What can we do about it as founders, builders, marketers?

WHY? BECAUSE OF THESE 3 REASONS RESULTING IN:

THERE. ARE. NO. NEW. USERS.

REASON 1 (COMPETITION):

Space is getting saturated across chains, middleware, and dApps, each with tokens that are competing for attention

I asked Murong Feng, CPA who has never been onchain before (never owned a hot wallet, used decentralized apps) what she thought about there being over 350+ blockchains.

Turns out, there's even more than that.

I spoke with Cathal (Catty) Berragan from thirdweb and learned they alone work with 2000+ EVM chains.

I checked CoinGecko and found:

• 8700+ Layer 1 blockchains
• 5200+ Layer 2 blockchains
• This is also missing Layer 3 blockchains

Beyond chains alone, there are:

• 1500+ AI Agents according to Cookie3 's product, cookie fun
• 50k+ tokens made daily on pump dot fun according to Dune
• 44+ narratives tracked by Kaito
• Another category of middleware across proving, abstraction, interoperability, sequencing, and more - each with their own tokens

Are there new users flooding in to support all these new tokens that make up chains, infrastructure, middleware, and decentralized apps (dApps)?

Total value locked (TVL) this cycle compared to last matches Google Search trends for "crypto" which is down cycle-over-cycle signaling there is less interest from mainstream to come in.

Say new users do come in, there are now at hundreds to thousands of chains. Let alone 100s of wallets to choose from. It's more confusing than ever.

I've seen this myself as I live onboarded four people to crypto and watched them navigate choosing their first wallet, bridging, swapping, and using dApps.

REASON 2 (AUDIENCES):

There's multiple global audiences, each with different motivations, creating further fragmentation.

1. Devs and Builders: If you are a blockchain/network/ecosystem, you need developers to build apps that attract new users. This requires developer marketing and onboarding. Motivations can vary from wanting to build something only possible with your tech stack, grants, or seeing higher-chance of success based off network effects and distribution.
2. Customers and Users: If you are a protocol, dapp, middleware, or service provider, you will need to attract users for revenue. Ecosystems may be viewing dapp teams as customers. Not to be confused with token holders, as sometimes one can speculate and long/short your token without being a customer
3. VCs, Angels, Investors: These audiences are who you raise capital from, their motivations are for ROI, typically on a token which isn't always correlated to tech, # of users, or # of builders
4. Retail and Token Speculators: These audiences may or may not be users/customers of your product. They're also looking for ROI and trading tokens.
5. Tech Partners: These are usually other infrastructure or middleware projects. As we realized blockchains need to scale on speed, security, and costs, it birthed a whole category of middleware infrastructure from chain/wallet abstraction, bridging, interoperability, composability, modularity (etc insert hot new keywords here etc). There's also service providers and no I'm not referring to just agencies, but blockchain explorers, martech, vesting and unlock software, data availability, restaking, and much more. Yes there's the desired logo x logo collab post we see on X that is used from this audience to target others. This is why BD (Business Development) is such a trending role in our space. They need to build relationships, pitch, and sell to these partners.
6. Listing Partners: Listing partners include exchanges, launchpads, market makers, middlemen and brokers across OTC and KOL deals. These are audiences that contribute to your token success (or failure). Their motivation is usually ROI related as well.
7. Regulators and Institutions: These audiences can provide a ton of liquidity, and/or also cause your company to die.

Beyond these seven audience types, it fragments further as crypto is global. This means understanding cultural nuances, coordinating messaging in different timezones, and managing localized marketing efforts. It's why there are geo-based ambassadors and so many events around the world.

All this makes marketing more difficult in crypto. In web2, it can be more straightforward with clearer messaging and generally correlated motivations across different target audiences..

Selling supplements: target health-conscious people, elderly, those with higher disposable income.

Selling winter jackets: target those in cold climates, skiiers, mountain climbers, snowboarders.

Selling protein: target bodybuilders, those who gym memberships, exclude vegans (if it's whey)

REASON 3 (TECH IS PREMATURE & PEOPLE ARE HURT)

Bitcoin has died 415 times according to news article headlines tracked since it's birth. Beyond that, our industry is also known for scams, money laundering, and crime.

In 2021, I saw the biggest influx of users due to the NFT and Metaverse boom. We had celebrities coming in. If you worked in the space, old friends likely texted you about it. This all came to a halt when we realized gas fees can shoot up higher than the NFT cost itself, token prices can go straight down, and it's not that fun to lose money. FTX imploded. Tokens prices that celebrities sold on their Instagram's went to zero. All this causes reputation woes on the industry and a lack of trust to come back.

Mainstream left, we went into a builder (bear) market, and we now have these 1000s+ of chains and middleware.

SO WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?

I don't know, take a deep breath, silence your mind, and please tell me (seriously, I would love to hear your story. It's also important for your own marketing).

For me though, I fell down the Bitcoin rabbit hole in my college apartment around 2013 because I loved the values of sovereignty and self-sufficiency.

Since then, I've also seen crypto used heavily in places like Argentina, Indonesia, and Turkey.

I mainly survived living in Buenos Aires, Argentina because of crypto stable coins, to combat the insane inflation there:

There's also multiple companies using blockchain technology and have it completely abstracted. Some examples include casual gaming, micro loans, ticket issuance, and capital unlocks for those in emerging markets.

Maria Shen from Electric Capital also puts out a Developer Report each year. Web3 developers are growing overall (although down from last cycle, similar to the TVL and "crypto" search charts).

THE REALITY IS YES, IT'S BEEN 16 YEARS AND WE ARE STILL EARLY.

We have crossed the chasm in the sense that mainstream market with higher risk tolerance has adopted Bitcoin and see crypto as an asset class. We have Bitcoin ETFs now. When friends realize I work in crypto, they immediately ask "should I buy?"

What we haven't sold to them though is the need for thousands of chains, let alone a single app that they should use every day over Instagram, Temu, Tik Tok, WhatsApp, ChatGPT (which grew to mainstream exponentially faster than crypto). They have no idea permissionless access to lending and borrowing exists, or that you can own your social graph. Some who have heard of Polymarket have no idea it is built on a blockchain called Polygon Labs and Uma Protocol.

What does all of this mean?

AND..OR, IT'S JUST NOT READY, YET.

So let's start there.

I genuinely believe there are good-hearted, well-intentioned, for-the-greater-good values-driven people building in the space. A few of them I'm very lucky to call my friends. Including Mashal Waqar , Vijay Michalik , Alisia Painter and many others.

Say you are building with the best intentions.

What are the main marketing fundamentals you should know and use in crypto?

These are two slides I like to run through on my "what is marketing" presentations. It basically distills marketing strategy into four words.

You can watch me cover it in more detail here in this video I did with Mode Network : Crypto Marketing Fundamentals for Builders

There's also another version here from last India Blockchain Week in context of: Founder and Personal Branding

THREE OTHER IMPORTANT TIPS FOR GETTING USERS IN CRYPTO

We've identified 7 audiences, across multiple geographies. There's also your internal team members across BD, product, marketing, creative, legal. All these need to work together. In one of the AMOS series by Jin, Réka Medvecz and I, we had Charlie Rogers explain how he coordinates brand campaigns as CMO of Nillion .

Coordination allows all stakeholders to be involved and give your marketing efforts the amplification that can help break through and capture the sweet, fine, scarce attention in the space.

You can watch the clip of Charlie explaining how they coordinate here. This flow chart breaks it down visually.

Ultimately, because the tech is early and the space is so saturated, we do need to do things that don't scale.

This includes onboarding people one-by-one. Showing up in person. Educating them.

As much as I love showing friends who have never been involved in crypto pump dot fun, I give a lot of credit to their founder for doing this:

AND EVEN BETTER THAN THAT?

To cut through all the attention fragmentation, you need consistent messaging and content to stay relevant. It's why founders are replying to posts on socials. It's why you see them on podcasts, X spaces, making LinkedIn content, and now live video streams. It's why you see teams recording at events.

Talk to users/devs/investors/customers and tell their stories.

You'll also get solid product feedback.

Lastly, if you're a founder or builder. This is the most important:

Let's run it back to that part earlier where I asked in all caps "SO WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?" and told you to check in with yourself.

No one knows your WHY better than you do. Tell us why you're building. Tell us why it matters. These are stories you tell to your team, when recruiting new hires, when getting investors, when building community. Keep saying and repeating it. Try it in different content types. Also, please tell me, I genuinely would love to know.

Thanks for reading if you got this far. A little bit about Hype :

These slides are from my presentation I did February 2025 at Ethereum Denver called "Getting New Users in Crypto: Marketing Fundamentals for Builders" You can watch the full 10 minute video here.