Go-To-Market in Web3: UX, Community & Adoption Beyond the Hype | ETHSofia 2025

Transcript

[Music] like this. >> So, we see each other for a while and then not. Uh, okay. Uh, welcome everybody. We are so glad to see such a big crowd here today. My name is Ellie as you already heard. um founder of Nisha also part of the organizing team of ETH Sophia. I would like to uh give the word to Vanina and Yana to present themselves and share a little bit more information as of um who they are and what their experience is

just to warm up a little bit. Thank you so much. Thank you Ellie for the invitation and thank you to all of you for being here uh to this hopefully very very interesting panel we are just starting now. My name is Jana Denkova and I'm the head of BD for D research and D news sister companies to defy Llama. Um and I would love to share a bit of our experience with uh launching different products over the last couple of years with you. Hi, I'm Venina. I've been doing blockchain marketing for close to a decade now. Uh which I guess makes me a dinosaur in the space. Um I do own a cryptokitty though, so you know

that's okay. Um I have been uh dealing with all sides of crypto and blockchain marketing. I've done ICO. I've taken multiple projects uh to market as my um work with one of the largest uh marketing agencies in the space. And uh yeah, I'm happy to be here and to talk about go to market and everything that goes without with it >> with it. Uh so quite an experience and quite professionalism here on stage. uh and we're going to jump to the first question that is uh most of the web3 project projects go with let's refine the technology let's make the project

better let's add this functionality let's add even more and there is another beautiful butterfly flying there so let's code this and let's add that but except the the technology what is the biggest hurdle and what is the bigger challenge to web3 projects today in your eyes. >> I would say that there are many many different hurdles. Um, one of them being product market fit and I'm sure we're going to talk about it a little bit more. Uh, but most of the companies in the space they we objectively do not have product market fit unlike web two where usually a startup uh basically sprouts out of solving a particular problem. In web 3, we tend to go, as you

said, to the technology first and we're like, "Oh my god, we've got this amazing tech. What can we do with it? Let's figure out how how we can use it." And then we kind of like invent just invent use cases, problems, narratives, and all of that. So, um that's that's one of the one of the big struggles. And then from a purely marketing perspective, um I would say one of the biggest hurdles that we have in the space is the different audiences that we need to deal with. A single project in web 3 usually has multiple different audiences. On the one hand, you've got the users of the technology. So you've got the users of your SDK, your D app, your protocol, whatever you're building. Then on the other hand, you've got the token holders

that is a completely and your token is usually like a completely separate product. Um and then you've got community that is sometimes token holders, not necessarily only token holders. So you need to cater to the community as well because otherwise they are the ones that are going to come and FUD you hoping that if they don't you're going to do an airdrop or something. Um so yeah as a marketer that's the one thing that I struggled most with. Um being able to address all those different audiences at the same time with the same website with the same communications um and and staying consistent over that.

And I think a big part of it has to do with trust as well because obviously the word decentralized is still perceived as something confusing in a way. A lot of people still think that decentralized is a synonym of losing money and we just need to find a way to earn credibility and really build trust. Um so shipping the code is the easiest part really. Building that trust is something crucial. Um and it actually takes a lot of time to build trust. So I would say from our own experience probably trust is the big and and the most challenging

hurdle. >> Right. This is very interesting point because um one thing very common problem here in the web3 space um is set to be the user experience. It is seem to it seem there is there are some stats saying that less than 1% for some apps are the users that actually stick and there's some all sorts of marketing tricks and business tactics. So you on board a new um million users and there is the million bitcoins question. Uh um what is what do we need to improve in the user uh interface?

So the web two users can transmit and on board without all these complicated processes of seed phrasing. uh saving in some space etc. >> Yeah. Um I think at the moment using DAP uh feels a bit like doing your taxes while diffusing a bomb really. Uh and complicated is a good word to describe it. So in my opinion wallets need to actually feel invisible. So social login, automate automated gas management as well as account um accusations um attribution sorry this is something

really really important and seamless user experience is definitely going to bring over the next 100 million users. Uh but yeah details are important. Seamless user experience is uh what would take us there. >> I I agree with you. every every interaction with the DAB feels like pulling teeth. Um I consider myself a crypto native person and every time I need to bridge money from one chain to another um I need to mentally prepare myself maybe take a pill to kind of like you know be be in the right state of mind to do that and not lose my mind. Um the UX I agree with Yana completely that we need invisible infrastructure. We need everything that happens under the

hood to stay under the hood. We are still in the stage where the technology is very new and we're very excited about it and as everything new and exciting we want to share that excitement with the rest of the world with our mothers with every web to normi that we share that we meet. So we keep talking about the technology and the complexities of that technology and how it works. Nobody cares. Nobody gives a flying f about the technology that we use. People just want to be able to sign up for stuff quickly, easily. The attention span of the now a day user is less than 3 seconds. If you can't sign up for that, you lose that within that time frame. You lose that user. That user is gone. They're not

going to use your crypto wallet. They're going to go and use Revolute or Venmo or Cash App or whatever is at their disposal where they can sign up and pass KYC in under a minute. So, that's what we need to change, I think. And that actually reminds me, my dream product would probably never ever contain the word blockchain on the onboarding screen. We need to simplify things as much as possible and not have to tell our grandparents how to use um uh adapt. Honestly, it it just needs to be seamless.

We keep talking about that, but and I know that I sound like a broken record because I repeat that example over and over again, but it's been years since Reddit executed a massive NFT sale without mentioning the word NFT or wallet or blockchain or crypto once. So, >> exactly. >> True. >> It I pretty much uh liked uh this about uh a seamless experience. That's true. That's true. Um but then again talking about the ones who stay uh they're then uh becoming part of the community. All right. But how do you think uh web three projects can build

authentic community? Because nowadays we talk about yeah the technology is uh the king over there. Very very important. Next up come the the the square with the users. They're next in the pyramid. So how do we build this authentic community? People that ride the wave with you share the same values and how important you think is this to include in the go to market strategy for the web projects? I would say it's pretty important to to build a a community but not to do it for the sake of building a community. A lot of projects do it because that's the playbook for running a web 3 project and

you know we got to start with a community and we all have the discords and the telegrams and a lot of those projects they don't really need the type of people that they have attracted on their community. The fact of the matter is to this day the majority of communities are mercenary. They're only there to see if there's going to be some rewards, some air drop, if there's anything that they can get out of it. And that's okay. That's fine. It's we just need to be aware of it. Most of us um and I'm guilty of the same as well. Mo most of us like to think that no, these people really care about my tech and my community and they share the same values that I do. No, they don't.

They're only there to make bank out of your token or use your tech. Either way, it's fine. you just need to address the right community and once you're able to provide those people a reason to stick around, they will stick around. But if you just have a generic chat that doesn't really give anything back, whether it's token, whether it's a token, whether it's rewards, whether it's attention, um then your community is just not going to make it. You're going to end up with a Discord server with 50,000 people and five of them being active.

>> And I totally agree. In fact, building an authentic community couldn't be the goal per se. Um, we definitely need a follow, a loyal following, sorry. But uh to keep that following, you really need to to communicate in a way that makes sense to the crowd on one hand, but then at the same time just be true and authentic to your own values and make sure the community actually um has relates in a way and and just shares the exact same values. And I can give us an example actually what we do at DL News.

uh we take pride in providing uh very very honest and independent journalism and sometimes this journalism is uh actually brutally honest to the extent when certain projects um they don't like it. Um still we provide this type of very very high quality editorial that just uh sits independently and this is something that our audience uh values and we have seen um this pulls the traffic in uh in a way and at the same time um I would say the crowd that doesn't stay around over time is like those hyped tourists that just believe

uh but then the truth seekers uh the truth seekers sorry actually stick around and they are the ones that that matter over the long term. Um so so yeah me personally also do believe that shared values is in the cord of community building. I mean of course profit can be weighed in but at the end of the day I still have this romantic u vision that maybe we do share some values over here in crypto. Uh okay uh next question perhaps is going to be uh very interesting especially for the people who have been building something in web 2. uh and this is in your eyes

what is the difference is and is there a crucial difference uh in web three go to market strategies and in web two go to market strategies >> I think I touched upon that uh earlier in the conversation but yeah in web three you usually already have a problem that you're solving it is a real problem and that's why you decide to you know create a product or a service and start a business and all of that in web 3 we start with hey we've got this amazing technology let's see how we can apply apply it to what the existing ecosystem and how it can solve problems. So there's a lot more how do I call it retroactive research on how on how your tech solve yes exactly like you know identifying the the people who actually

have the pain point that your product uh that your product solves and that's a very tricky situation because you know how how do you do a go to market strategy for a product when you're still trying to figure out what the product actually is. um where it's it's a very kind of like the chicken or the egg situation and a lot of crypto projects have struggled with that. Um there is a way to get out of that with a lot of user research and talking to your supporters users community um everyone in the space, but that's something that I've never really experienced in my work in web 2. And that is I would in my opinion that is very very specific to web 3. um one of the biggest differences

>> and building on that once you figure if it is the chicken or the egg that comes first I guess uh one of the main differences between web two and web three is that with web two you can actually build in stealth so you can actually launch big afterwards but with web three um the the launch is the foreplay in a way um so the community and building the the the community are efforts that come months earlier and this is something really really important. Um at the same time I would say um that there are still quite some um space there is still quite some space

that we share with with web two in the sense that for example uh user experience as well as brand design is something that we still need to very much focus on. Uh but yeah, web 3 is just uh yeah, quite uh quite of an experience. >> True. >> Uh and here you remind me of something that it's true in web three projects building something uh huge announcements about PRs, campaigns and everything and then we look for who is actually going to using use this product. Uh so hype is going hand to hand with web three projects but hype is not sustainable

most of the time and uh what are your takes on how you can actually have a sustainable growth write the hype and then keep the communication and keep the the value of your project or service provides still on high level. So how do you have this sustainabilities in in this? How the web three projects or if you have if you uh if in your mind have some examples of uh projects that u manage to retain the hype and serve the purpose that they promised they serve.

Well, one of those projects that's popped to mind right now um but again I can't really know if it's going to be uh if it's going to sustain the hype long term is double zero with uh the physical infrastructure that they're building mostly mostly because they were the first and for now actually the only project that is tackling uh infrastructural pro projects and yeah it is only Salana I understand that kind of like yeah very very salanacentric but still it's it's there's a lot of hype around that uh around that project and that hype is coming from the community from the people who see the problem and they're like okay and again you see we we circle back to oh there is an actual problem that we're trying to solve with this um they have a very web web to approach um to building the business um

the other thing that I wanted to add here is that yes hype cycles are amazing and you can do so much if you jump on the bandwagon but it can't be the only thing that you do for growth and marketing as long as you use hype cycles and hype as a supplemental activity to a solid long-term strategy, I think you're going to be fine as a project and as a company. Um, the thing is a lot of projects literally because again everything is happening so quickly and everything is is so dynamic. A lot of projects pop up today, right? The the hype wave um and then they die tomorrow.

Why? Because they didn't have the fun foundation that they needed. they didn't have the long-term vision of, hey, where we want to be with our product, with our service, with what we're building in, I don't know, 6, 12, 18 months. And um, to me personally, as a marketer, if you do that work correct, you're going to be okay. You're going to survive the crypto winter. >> Um, and I totally agree with that. Value is at the real heart of it. Once you make sure you bake utility before the peak, then obviously you create enough value for your users to stick around on the long term. Um, I think hype could be defined as sugar rush, but you actually

need protein to sustain. So it's it's really really important that that you can communicate clearly to to your community what that um core value is uh and to solve the problem as as Vonina said for them. Um at the same time an example that I can give is probably define lama uh because our data dashboards for example are used regardless of whether the market goes up or down and in fact we have seen that traffic um peaks at bare markets. uh which totally makes sense because I mean at the end of the day audience needs a reli reliable source of information

um to to really find what what they need in terms of um in terms of information and details of uh what's important on the market right now. Um so yeah >> resources >> uh very yeah very very interesting take thank you um I have one final question and I hope the time it will be enough uh uh for us to discuss that it is your piece of advice for web three founders that are kicking off right now what do you think is the most important for their go to market strategy to be included and what to avoid >> the million-dollar questions. Uh we're

asking here the the million Bitcoin questions. Uh if I knew, I would probably be chilling on a private island somewhere. Uh I don't think I know. But yeah, I mean web theory is all about the fun about being unhinged and reckless and shipping fast and testing in production. And I love that about the industry. But my advice to founders would be have have your fun, but also take a minute to reflect on what is your backstory, your origin story, where you're coming from, and where you want to go. Um, once you figure that out, you can be strategic while still being reckless and unhinged and having all the fun.

>> Um, and I think the devil is in the details, right? I mean uh we see actually at do research we see this every day. Um sometimes founders confuse decentralization with abdication. um in the sense that you can really see projects who forget uh owning the boring stuff. Uh you know and um taking care of customer support, documentation, admin, uh marketing, communications, all of that is a big big big chunk of it. Uh and the moment you own that um then you look like a genius on the next bull run.

So this is this is quite important and I guess adds up nicely to what you just said. Um thank you. Well, thank you. Uh that has been amazing for me. Thank you both. I would love to do that again sometimes. Uh thank you everybody as well. [Music] [Music] Heat.