Explaining Ethereum's Marketing Crisis | David Phelps | Mark Beylin | Jill Gunter | Lane Rettig |

[Music] good morning welcome to the final day of talks at eth Denver uh we're at the regenerator main stage my name is Jane Harold from coent I'm really excited to be here uh I hope you all got some rest uh I see some early risers so a great job for that we have a great show for you today uh starting off with a great panel that's near and dear to my heart as a marketer longtime marketer in ethereum uh it's called exploring ethereum's marketing crisis it's with David Phelps from Joker race Mark Balin boost VC Jill Gunter uh espresso systems and Lane ring uh near Foundation thank you Jay good morning good morning gmgm vitalic thank you for joining good to see youo wo all right good morning Denver so I'd like to introduce you to the buffet culture Council that has been appointed to fix ethereum's marketing great there was the Silver culture we're the Golda culture actually represent we're the second string let's let's just go ahead and kick off with some intros Jill do you want to kick it off yeah my name is Jill I work on a company called espresso systems we're building infrastructure for scaling and composability on ethereum and I guess I'm up here because I have a lot of hot takes online sure yeah uh I'm Mark Balin uh I'm an investor uh at a fund called boo VC uh have been a builder in the crypto space for like eight years uh in the ethereum ecosystem so I have a very long history broken history with ethereum but I love the project and so you're right and so uh that's why I'm on this second string uh marketing Council for ethereum thanks for having me these these chairs are so comfy like you really feel like you're on the main stage you know compared to all the other panels that I've to doing stools like this is amazing I'm I'm David Phelps I'm a co-founder of uh project called joke race um we are auning contest so for example Jill right now is running a contest um for ethereum brand hack for to create a new ethereum logo voting just open so you can actually go to jo. and go vote on your favorite um logo to be be the new theum also we got 69 entries which just makes me proud we couldn't have plan that could couldn't couldn't couldn't ask for anything you cut it off at 69 so no more entries exactly yeah yeah we were like this is it every every contest has to have 69 entries that's the rule I wish yeah that's new product someone comes along they're going to crush us with that um anyway I guess I'm here also because I have uh spicy takes that's probably why I'm also not on the silver culture as well I think this goes for all of us um I'm Lane I was at the ethereum foundation 2017 to 2019 in a research role and then also as a core developer for a while um I am now a researcher at the near Foundation where I'm focused on governance and ultimately when you talk about the ethereum foundation you're talking about the governance of the ethereum project right so uh near and dear to all of our hearts I think um yeah look just to be clear correct me if I'm wrong I don't think any of us have any affiliation with the ethereum foundation we are literally just like ogs who care deeply about this project of this community and just want to kind of have a spicy conversation about what's going on and what should happen and um we're going to keep this super casual as you've probably figured out by now so yeah let's go ahead and kick off like open question like what what's going on what's what's your hot take on kind of like ethereum in 2025 I'm feeling bullish this morning I I don't know if you all went online this morning but there have been a lot of big announcements today uh Danny Ryan who is an OG uh core developer was behind a lot of the great technical initiatives in ethereum he is joining a company called etherealized which if you haven't heard of you soon will um I view them as in some ways maybe a spiritual successor to a company called consensus which many of you are probably familiar with um and yeah the first time I heard the word spiritual and consensus in the same time but in all seriousness I think that there has been a huge gap that's been left as consensus has I don't know perhaps matured and also kind of like spun off into a lot of different companies like metamask and infura and a lot of the things that you use all the time I think that there's been a whole left in terms of stewarding uh ethereum go to market and product and uh yeah I'm feeling really bullish that ethereal eyes is going to step into those shoes new EF leadership um I think that yeah there's a lot of reasons to feel very hopeful today so yeah that's my like light coded I don't know if someone wants to go like dark coded on this Mark no I think that's like generally I agree I think things are feeling more positive today than they were yesterday and than the day before and so like in that regard that's a win um you know I think yeah the markets don't always reflect that uh and the vibe in the room doesn't always necessarily reflect that but I think you're right that like wait are we not up 20% today I'm joking I haven't looked at I haven't even looked at I just closed it but pump it I remember when we were up 20% it was the the fall of 1983 yeah but it does feel like there's a lot of stuff I is happening under the surface which is great and then you know in six or eight months maybe perhaps the vibe will return and in the meantime we can just hopefully make a lot of jokes and people can continue to be kind and criticize each other and I don't know feels great though I'm actually yeah I'm also feeling weirdly bullish I mean look the ethereum marketing is just hilariously bad it's like you really like like almost to the point that it's like so bad that it's good because everyone talks about it all the time you know um any any publicity is good publicity like that kind of what's that any any press is good press like that kind of well yeah I mean look like you know people complain all the time about the EF having no marketing presence not doing anything to really support apps not being out there talking about what's being built in the ecosystem not using the apps right and this is all 100% true like this is all totally checks out and I can say that as an app builder but like I I do also think like if you are expecting Daddy to to take care of you you like and you're expecting your product Market fit to come from like some guy who built the chain and is incentivized you know for you to take off purely because it is his product that you're using like that's not product Market fit right like and that's you know it's nice it's a magnifier it you know helps you accelerate a little bit faster but like this idea that we always have to be looking to the leader and to Daddy I mean I think we're all in the space because we kind of oppose that right and that's part of the reason ethereum doesn't do this right like part of the reason they don't do that is cuz like they don't want to speak for the community they want the community to kind of step up and speak for them eles and so I've kind of been in this mode I think since Jill did this brand hack of like you know personally feeling like where's Daddy like you know why am I abandoned as like a child in this space that no one wants to support me you're not a child yeah to realizing like you're not a child right like you are totally capable of going out and just doing yourself and like that kind of Gap you know it's similar to like Satoshi in some ways it's like you know there is no leader there and so everyone else had to step in and I think it's like you do kind of compare the ethereum culture to like a salonic culture or something it's like shortterm the salon culture will always win because like they are so heads on and like support um and I I still kind of wish we had some of that in ethereum but I do think like there there's a lot to be said for the ways that like Community come come together do stuff like the brand hack and that is just like that speaks to kind of the Grassroots like feeling of this culture even at a $300 billion valuation and that's really special like that's really kind of amazing because you don't no one's doing that for Apple right no one's doing that for Amazon I think I think this is just just fact that we're at e this is a great example of this the ethereum foundation is not here is not a sponsor this is very organic we're four random people on this stage getting to talk about this like you guys are not being paid to be here like hang but but I want to jump in here actually because I do think that there's something to be said and I think the Apple comparison is a great one right where apple offers all of the developers building on top of Apple this amazing distribution right Apple constantly is searching for uh builders on the edges of their sort of network uh highlighting them every year at WWDC they bring people in so they're like very active in terms of playing that like hand toand combat role on the ground but also in terms of like creating systems that uh bring to the center the best and like sort of brightest apps the App Store ranking charts being sort of like the obvious primary example there and so I do think though like you're right you know David I agree with you in that like uh we can't just sort of like wait for Daddy to promote our product right but the challenging part is that like uh if you're a product Builder in crypto actually like getting more top of funnel is not an easy thing besides like sponsoring events you know whatever like some tweets or you know maybe some content post you can gr grade but at the end of the day it's like actually just very challenging to find new users and users for them to find apps like it's still a very persistent problem and I don't know if like this is the role of the EF to create these kinds of charts or whatever and obviously there's great sort of private companies that do some versions of this especially like in Defi and whatever but um at the end of the day I think there's some Gap there around the way that the EF and uh like ethereum in general the way that we like highlight projects that are worth people's time uh and like what is a good use of your attention right now what's what's being used on chain I think we're still like in the early stages of figuring out how to do that 100% I mean we we talk all the time about ethereum's biggest crisis being a liquidity fragmentation like liquidity fragmentation is an issue for people who are already in ethereum right if you're not already on chain and you're starting to use a new app you don't have a problem with liquidity fragmentation you just upload your funds right exactly to whatever app you're working on and you're good to go like the real problem is intentional fragmentation I think and it's like um that's just true dodas and crypto like that is our entire world is we are just like over stimulated with like options for dopamine at any moment right and like we can get it so easily um that it means like it's very hard to know where to look um and so yeah this is I mean look self-promotion this is one of my hopes with contest is like you could actually create leaderboards to show where people are in a decentralized way but like regardless of that you know blockchains are app stores in a way like a blockchain literally is an App Store where it's like you're going here to like launch an app and like you think what what blockchains do much better than app stores is just fees in Tech right it's like you're not paying a 30% fee you're now paying like a 0.001% fee and it's faster right and it's permissionless and that's great but what very few blockchains are doing is the other side of the app store which is distribution and I think like part of the reason we're here is like Salon really killed it as like understanding that their chain was an app store and they had to do distribution in some ways right and that's nice I almost I almost wish that there was like a Michelin star list of ethereum where someone was going around just like giving stars to to daps that were like based on Security based on ux whatever and that there was like a running list of like here are the restaurants you should be eating at we have we have like L2 be I think it's called right for for L2 is very similar what you're describing exactly and there's uh like defi Lama is also very useful but it's not quite the same in that like those are more sort of like metric based I'm talking about like actually a group of people that sits down and curates a list of like here's the thing that you should be doing I want to zoom out for a second because there's the question right of like why don't we have that and like why don't we have an equivalent to Mountain Dow and why don't we have an equivalent to you know what's salana is all over my timeline with paid ads like I follow all these salana people whatever but like that's not why they're on my timeline it's paid ads and I think that that is really Salient here because it all comes down to the money like we're all in crypto we're all like you know game theorists like why why does it take us so long to figure out that it's all about incentives and I think that this is the problem in ethereum and particularly when it comes to the go to market and marketing challenges that we've felt over the last 5 years it's like I'm up here I work for a company called espresso like my incentive is to sh espresso to you I need ethereum to be like some level of a successful in order for my project to be like David's up here we've heard about joke Grace like three times go vote everyone but like you know we're all incentivized in our own ways and you have to ask the question who's incentivized to fight for ethereum and even even someone like Joe luin right who's like one of the biggest eth whales out there he was the founder of that company consensus that I mentioned who's been super impactful and like you know he's working on lanaa which is consensus Zone L2 and so like 10 years ago every time I'd hear Joe Luben speak it was about ethereum it was evangelizing ethereum now it's like 50% about ethereum and 50% about L that's total like I have so much respect for him but that's just the reality right and so you have to follow the money and the incentives and it's like I think that the biggest frustration that people have had with the EF is they're sitting on a treasury and they're doing important work with that treasury but it's not going towards ideas like Mark was just describing and so someone has to fund that the other idea that someone mentioned to me here at eth Denver actually was like looking at all of the side events looking at all the sponsorships and how much money would be spent on you know like catering platters that don't get eaten and these drinks and whatever right and so and it it the question was like well what if these companies just like bought eth and like everyone would just be happier and like it would just be all this constant by because it's a lot of money and and so it was like okay well you would still need a way to sort of like publicly po post that you're like sort of buying eth in this advertising way because at the end of the day right these conferences there this sort of uh plutocratic uh uh way to distinguish yourself right sponsors just show out more and more money to separate themselves from kind of other companies right so it's like what if they could separate themselves by just buying eth or like what are these other methods that we could you know who's the Michael sailor of ethereum two legitimately there's two there's there's text and there's clouded follow both of them me later as they say Jill I really like what you were saying about uh I mean just paraphrasing here it's kind of like a tragedy the common situation right like all of us that are building on ethereum relying upon ethereum in some way shape or form it's like incumbent upon all of us to make sure ethereum is healthy and succeeding and yet it's not my job or his job or his job or your job right so whose job is it and I think again like you get end up in this tragedy the common situation where we don't have a central government I mean the closest thing we have is the ethereum foundation so like isn't it the role of the foundation to be the actor that solves these coordination problems like what you just described a second ago that's that's the definition of a coordination problem like we'd all do better you know if we did exactly what you just said but there's no one who has the authority to like you know you know the technical side they do a great job of that I don't know if you guys have been following what's going on with like the EF and the open intense framework and they brought together all of these like viciously competitive projects to actually collaborate it's just it's just missing on the go to market side can can I ask a question do do you guys think that the EF should be decentralized what does that mean it feels like our problem is a lack of centralization like we we have no shortage of decentralization I don't know why why that so what I mean is like EF Is Not Elected right like no one at you know no one who holds eth gets to choose who runs it no one gets to help like have input on the road mapap um like there's no they get to do whatever they want and they they're not beholden to anyone um like is is there a way in which like this is a governing Council of a kind of digital nation state like should it be at least a represent you notational democracy that like we are electing or having input over I think that's the wrong direction actually I think we need to look at the projects that have a track record of stewarding ethereum again like not some venture-backed interest whatever like like me but projects like eth Global mikow is like an OG example of this and you know they applied for funding from the EF and got it and like that's exactly how it should work and I think I think you're right David that like I wish that there was more promotion by the EF of like if you guys want to go do stuff just apply for funding like you can just you can just do things and you can just get funding but there isn't I I think something that came out to me during this brand hack competition is there's just this hunger from people to contribute like hundreds of designers have ended up reaching out to me and David over this who just want to do something for ethereum but they're like I don't know like how I don't know where to begin like I can't work for free you know and we just need more of these platforms again I think eth Global and mik are great examples of this that get the funding do the work to get the funding from the EF and create the pl platform I think one of the challenges for the EF right is like the game theory of the system right is like you don't want to have this extremely explicit live governance that can be attacked on a regular basis so you want to be constantly sort of minimizing that at least from a perception perspective right but also in ideally doing the things behind the scenes that are still necessary and so the question to me is like you know the EF has sort of been doing some of these activities again behind closed doors or sort of behind the scenes and to me the question is like should the EF be doing this more explicitly right and that sort of addresses the sort of Game Theory question of like is it really sort of game theoretically optimal for the EF to continue sort of pretending like their governance is minimal or should we be more like explicit and acknowledging kind of like what are the councils that are helping to Define these directions who is making these decisions people have been talking about a board for theorum so like those questions are I think opening like uh uh uh forcing the conversation right or or displaying the paino from community members that like hey the fact that this governance is not explicit the fact that it happens in private is like to the detriment evidently of the community and that like something should change um and maybe maybe we're wrong I think you need in order to understand anything about the way ethereum works you need to understand what Mark was just explaining that like ethereum has always had this allergy to any form of explicit uh governance for the reason that you just described which is that there's this fear that it would like somehow be attacked if it existed I guess the question I want to ask is and and this also is in contrast to many many I won't even name any specific examples because like pretty much every other project I'm aware of is governed differently right it's also worth noting that like Yeah from a liability perspective right like historically there have been like very good reasons why it doesn't make sense to do something like this again as time goes on and regulations evolve that's kind of a big totally and maybe it does need to evolve that's part of the reason we're here but I guess the question I want to ask is like look in quotequote default world like offchain governance you know we've kind of settled upon mechanisms like democracy they're obviously deeply flawed they're Perfect Right systems of checks and balances you know transparency Etc as like the best thing we've got do we not like why are those things inappropriate for something like ethereum or or are they I mean it's not exactly ethereum is not a nation state exactly but I mean it's a you know there's there's similarities it's pretty close to one I think that that winds up though with like in a government in the US government we have a centralization of power now how that power gets run and distributed Within in that centralized entity of the US government that's a very decentralized Democrat Democratic process but there we don't have like competing and complimentary like subgovernments at the federal level we have States though actually it yes it's a federal system but we don't have competing governments at the federal level and I think that that is more akin to what is happening and also what is appropriate within ethereum where we have now etherealized and consensus to some degree and the EF it's like the decentralization has to be happening I think at the entity level I think the the hardest thing here is just like how do we get people excited about contributing to this culture like like forgetting forgetting like you know the political merits of like a benevolent tyranny versus a democracy it's like how do you actually like take the Grassroots efforts of a social consensus machine that H you know only works if everyone has bought into it and give people an outlet for their enthusiasm you know it's what you're saying Jill like there's so much hunger for people who want to do marketing for ethereum they want to celebrate ethereum they want to talk about this and they have no outlet for it um and and and for me like that's actually the central problem with like the lack of democracy it's not even like creating a better political system it's actually just embracing a way for people to come in and have impact and feel and feel empowered you know no matter what the actual impact is like like just giving people like a sense that they actually like can have SA in this is really really I think crucial and still a way that ethereum really can probably distinguish itself from much more kind of centralized you know models of power like salana um and and and that that for me is the missing thing is just like no one wants to come into this you know it's like people a $300 billion valuation the ogs are all worth billions like you're a young 19-year-old Dev you're looking at this thing and it looks old you know it doesn't look like there's huge upside here and it doesn't look like there's a culture where you can come and get involved and like people are going to support you like like that that's the central thing it's less about like the actual support itself being meaningful or the political structure being meaningful than it is about the values that we are espousing that will get people excited to come into this space I I want to also add that I actually think that there is a form of democracy that kind of already exists via eth Price Right which is like people vote with their dollars their eyeballs their feet and I think the reality right is that we have seen this sort of like I don't say Exodus right but there's certainly been price action has been negative against Bitcoin right so we have this mechanism I agree and like Comm is voting but but there's no is there an accountability mechanism because like I don't know that the foundation or the community is responding to that and so that's the key right like requires the foundation to actually listen to that signal and again it's like not clear that it necessarily does and it's also not clear that it does in a way that's like Earnest right versus this like oh people are angry because price is down versus like pric is down because people are angry and like the two are very intertwin I think like more and more people start to realize that that is the case and this this is like the only voting mechanism or the only mechanism we have to express our voices let me ask you guys thing what would you do like if you could do one thing differently if you had like a hundred million budget you were you were a for the last two years you were the executive director of the EF $100 million budget over the course of one year to go work on ethereum marketing what would you do you literally stole my question thank you that's a great question sorry sorry I I would do I would do a year-long championship round like you know it would be like you know we have a year-long basically hack you know to to to create the next great ethereum app and it's like you're running regular competitions between people regular demo days everyone's tuning in like again I'm Shilling in some ways right but like I do think like we are in a culture where attention is fragmented attention is the hard thing and if you can turn this stuff into sports in a way that everyone is gaining because they're getting the center stage like that's really meaningful for for Builders and that's really meaningful again and what it signals about the culture that there is a culture that actually is really supportive of apps here um and it doesn't mean that the EF has to Crown those apps themselves that can still be turned over to community to decide but I think they need to put in the structures where there can at least be these kinds of curation mechanisms to have the Michelin star right like you know app store and to be able to have these Championship rounds and to be able to have Shark Tank and like gamify the thing you know like make this fun um the the biggest the biggest issue I think with ethereum right now is it's just like the culture feels like it's a bunch of Boomers like me and it's like um it needs to be fun I think that's the number one thing I think I'm I'm going to go in a different direction my answer is going to be very product oriented but I think that I I have a belief personally that the EF should be hosting more of the digital spaces where ethereum social layer lives that the fact that these conversations happen in like private spaces and in private contexts uh is like not great and and again like these sort of uh information curation websites as well I I think it would be great if yeah the EF had more like actually built and hosted more of those websites that were like an app store meet uh a sort of like the the Agora a digital Agora for ethereum where you could like talk about what people were building and I know this sort of exists fragmented in different forums spaces already and those are like great for technical discussions but yeah thinking more about like the app layer the social layer and how the EF perhaps can provide like a very impartial um uh uh yeah surface on which ethereum apps can can display themselves um because no one's going to be impartial in providing like a stage every stage otherwise is going to be opinionated but it's nice to have this like very uh yeah like impartial ideally data driven uh product offering for ethereum and then also hopefully that makes that becomes a a sort of a pipeline for people who discover ethereum to go down that rabbit hole and find they're looking yeah I I agree with both of those sets of answers actually I think I think the foundation has been like reluctant to aggressively deploy Capital because of the kind of subtraction mindset philosophy that a talks about all the time which is that like rather than being the the main actor rather than being center stage in the ecosystem the foundation feels that its role is to kind of like create space for other people to come you know build the things that need to be built I think it's possible to deploy Capital more aggressively along the lines of what Mark was just saying to deploy critically missing pieces of infrastructure that can that can be deployed in in a incredibly neutral fashion I think the App Store is a really great idea I think platforms for more open dialogue about ethereum's future about how to deploy the capital itself um I love the idea of contests and you know Games and Things that feel fun um I don't know about a central marketing committee I mean I guess that's a complex topic but I think we could be doing a better job of coordinating our messaging outward facing to the rest of the world to companies to governments things like that that as well what what's your answer by the way Jill I think I would start by hiring some firms to help support do doing market research and kind of design research and just collecting perspectives from all around the world all different archetypes on what ethereum is what it means what it should be doing and I would guess that the three archetypes probably that we'd end up having to go after would be institutions would be developers and would be kind of like the OG Cipher Punk like what are ethereum's values this is what it stands for and that's probably going to be a lot of kind of like the core developers and if that's right like if that is kind of the three personas that we need to Market to and we need to care about then I would seed three organizations with the mandate to bring products to Market to those organizations and the reason why I'm so hyped today is because I actually think that this is kind of what's happening I think the EF is going to play that third role of being like where the core development happens where the research happens and really the stewards of the cipher Punk Vision I think etherealized is going to take and run with the kind of like Wall Street and institutional go to market and then I think that there's there is some kind of Blank Space still and this is what most of our conversation has been about for the like app developer go to market um but I'm I'm less worried about that because again we have folks like eth global who've been doing God's work on that front they just need more resources more funding and then I think you know this is where the foundational research would come in is like informing how all three of those personas and archetypes can be also unified right instead of this kind of like fragmentation of message and attention well said you belong you belong on the council I well this is the council right we're the second string um okay we're almost out of time but Mark David final thoughts any concrete things that those of us here should do or that people watching the live stream in the audience should do like what's the one thing you would encourage people to do to make ethereum great again um you can take this one yeah you want to start no okay uh yeah I think talking to your friends and family about ethereum is the first thing that came to my mind when you asked this question I'm go door door I don't want to say gobor doors and ask them if they believe in our Lord and savior you heard no but it's it's interesting because I think for a long time people in ethereum have gotten and especially people who have entered the cycle like or entered crypto sort of last cycle have gotten really burnt out of having those conversations right and I think at the the reality is there's just still a lot of Education that has to happen in the world and when I say have conversations right I don't just mean talk I also mean like listen uh and so in that regard uh being able to hear what your friends and way are saying about ethereum and how they feel about the network I think is actually also the most useful thing we can do in terms of understanding you know to Jill's Point like this sort of broad Market survey of like how do people perceive ethereum what do people want from us as leaders in ethereum or or from our networks that we're building uh from a marketing perspective like they will tell us um and so yeah like talking to people who aren't just the folks who are you know on the stage or at this conference but asking people who are outside of the network as much as we can I think that's that that data is key we all need Normie friends and family members to keep us honest yeah and don't call them normies I think it's a good place to start any closing thought yeah um you know I think right now ethereum is kind of suffering from the worst of centralization and decentralization at the same time it's like we have the worst of centralization in terms of like no real accountability for like a political structure that we're all kind of looking to to save us and it's not happening uh and then on the other hand we have the worst of decentralization in which it's like this thing is undefined it is left open to all of us to Define what ethereum is what its North Star is but like no one knows you know it's just mysterious and so I kind of think the best analogy for ethereum is like the Christian Church like I I think this is like Christianity you know it's like there's a fundamental kind of substrate religion but then people form their different denominations and we call those l2s um and I think it's like honestly the best thing you can do is join your local church um and like find the denomination that is right for you um what is a weakness about ethereum is also a strength like the fact that it is this kind of flexible substrate that can be adopted into different denominations creates fragmentation but it also creates a lot of opportunity to Encompass different cultures as well the church lasted a few thousand years hopefully ethereum will as well uh I guess my final thought is like we are ethereum right so it's on us so we and as you guys are saying we have our work cut out for us so let's keep the keep the religion going thank you guys very much we're that's all the time we have thanks