Crypto-Natural Crisis: When “Legend” Construction Gives to Marketing Carnival

Author: DeFi Dave

Compiled by: Yangz, Techub News

Cryptocurrencies are in a narrative crisis. It is true that we have made great progress at the technical level, with infrastructure, throughput and capacity expansion performance all achieving orders of magnitude improvements. But on the cultural level, the industry has fallen into some kind of "stagnation", and a large part of this is because we have lost the ability to tell moving stories. Apart from Bitcoin and Solana memecoin, the industry has not really attracted new players in organic growth for many years, and the resulting cloud of nihilism is surging the entire industry, especially in Ethereum and its surrounding ecology.

However, where is the antidote? Simply telling a story is far from enough, and marketing is a drop in the bucket. We must build a legendary system. Lorebuilding is not only a repetitive narrative, but also a stage for people to create a shared mythical universe.

At the time of writing, it is still difficult for me to summarize the full connotation of "Legend Construction", and this new concept that is being defined is still developing. The discussion in the article is only a phased result. In the future, I will further expand, clarify the concept through a series of articles, and provide more examples to support the viewpoint. I also look forward to more people joining the discussion and bringing their unique thinking and interpretation.

Go build the legend, friend

"Legend Construction" aims to cultivate a vivid narrative system that can see the current real issues, absorb those memes that have universal resonance and are timeless, and ultimately weave them into stories that make people identify with each other and participate in the creation. The Lorebuilder is the one who can identify emerging thoughts, understand their historical context, while absorbing collective emotions and weave them into coherent and fascinating narratives. They are like the legendary prophets. A clever builder will not force the direction to dominate, but listen to and protect this process and follow the legend's own evolutionary laws. The construction of legends cannot be forged and there are no shortcuts. They must be practiced and immersed in them personally.

Legend construction begins with one or a set of ideas, like a seed, sown by the Genesis Lorebuilder in a fertile cultural soil and takes root in the minds of early believers. If a legend crosses the critical point and becomes strong enough, it will attract different groups to join, contributing their respective rituals, memes or actions. Just like the growth of tree rings, the participation of each generation has created a new mark on the legend and injected new meaning and momentum.

The three levels of legendary influence are: attention, resonance, and co-creation.

• The first level of "focus": people are only investing a little energy, but have not really invested;

• The second layer of "resonance": people begin to feel a sense of belonging and establish an identity with them;

• The third layer of "co-creation": people are deeply immersed and contribute to the legend in their own way - it can be a simple internal joke or copypasta, or a iconic event or a brand new narrative that attracts new members.

The essence of legend is a narrative created by collective experience. Its highest form is to sublimate repetitive actions and meme into common culture, so that people can feel belonging and act for them, and ultimately form a spiritual spectrum worth passing on from generation to generation.

The legend of Bitcoin and Ethereum

To list examples of legend construction, Bitcoin and Ethereum are undoubtedly the best cases, and Satoshi Nakamoto is the "Abrahamic Lorebuilder" of the two

• similar to Abraham's common ancestor of the three major religions, Satoshi Nakamoto's thoughts are not only the cornerstone of Bitcoin, but also provide inspiration for countless protocols. Bitcoin and Ethereum have been around for more than ten years, which gives us enough room to trace the complete trajectory of its birth and evolution.

Bitcoin: From Creation to Cultural Phenomenon

The legend of Bitcoin began with Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, he sparked systemic doubts about the modern political and financial order for the first time. In the original white paper, Bitcoin was described as a "peer-to-peer electronic cash system" rooted in the idea that sovereign currency is dominated by code rather than human institutions, while decentralization, censorship resistance, scarcity and other traits are directly written to the bottom of the protocol.

In fact, Bitcoin is not the first digital currency attempt (DigiCash, Bit Gold and Hashcash before), but Satoshi Nakamoto’s breakthrough lies in the fact that he integrated his predecessors’ achievements (proof of work, digital signature, scarcity mechanism), and innovatively introduced designs such as “longest chain rules” and “halving mechanism”. When he engraved the "Times January 3, 2009: The Chancellor of the Exchequer is on the verge of the second round of banking rescues", the seed has been buried in the cultural soil. Since then, the community spontaneously became the breeder of legends. They created the principle of "anonymity", created memes such as "HODL", established ceremonies such as Bitcoin Pizza Day, and also tempered the collective traumatic memory of "Not your keys, not your coins" through the Mt.Gox event.

If we retell the history of Bitcoin from the perspective of legend construction, it can be roughly divided into the following periods:

• Satoshi Nakamoto and the Crypunk Era : Laying the Foundation of Thoughts

• " Ross Ulbricht" and the Silk Road Age : Verifying the First Real Use Case

• " Bitcoin Jesus" Roger Ver : Funding First Generation Startups

• Michael Saylor and the Wall Street era : Bringing Bitcoin into the institutional circle

Ethereum: Programmable Legend Iteration

Bitcoin has set a precedent for the construction of cryptocurrencies legends, and Ethereum is like an "apple" falling beside a tree. Ethereum’s creator Vitalik Buterin, who comes from the Bitcoin world, was initially active in the community as co-founder and contributor of Bitcoin Magazine, and after participating in multiple projects, he eventually opened his own path.

Ethereum has pushed the concept of Bitcoin to a new level and programmed sovereignty attributes. If Bitcoin realizes the vision of "exiting the old system", then Ethereum has created the possibility of "building a new world from scratch". Bitcoin’s scripting language is optimized for currency scarcity, and Ethereum, as a complete general virtual machine for Turing, nurtures a rich "infinite garden", which is the foundation of its legend of "world computers". The seeds of DeFi, NFT, and DAO have long been deeply embedded in the genes of Ethereum and are waiting for generations of legend builders to carefully water them.

On July 30, 2015, Ethereum was officially launched. The same newspaper title as Bitcoin engraved in its Creation block: "The Times January 3, 2009: The Chancellor of the Exchequer is on the verge of the second round of rescue of the banking industry." It is not only a tribute to the predecessors, but also closely links these two legends.

What is unique about Ethereum Legend construction is its layered construction model. In addition to Vitalik, early builder Joe Lubin incubated developer tools such as MetaMask, Infura, Truffle, etc. by establishing ConsenSys, which greatly lowered the construction threshold for Ethereum. More importantly, ConsenSys also brought hundreds of Ethereum builders to Brooklyn and New York City, sowing the seeds for New York City to become one of the world's most important cryptocurrency centers. During its peak, ConsenSys employees exceeded 1,200. Although it has undergone strategic adjustments, the foundation it has laid has always nourished the generational changes of the Ethereum ecosystem.

The current status of the legendary construction of Bitcoin and Ethereum

Bitcoin’s simplicity allows new legend builders to create new stories. For example, Michael Saylor took over the torch of his predecessors and led Bitcoin into the Wall Street era. Today, Bitcoin has become a regulated ETF and has won the medal of recognition from the traditional financial system.

In contrast, Ethereum is slightly more complex, and its legendary construction is progressive layer by layer. From the ICO craze, the summer of DeFi, the NFT craze to the DAO revival, every era reflects the proposition of "what can be built on Ethereum", while continuing its spiritual bloodline.

However, in recent years, the legend of Ethereum has been greatly weakened due to the continuous diversion of the originally condensed potential energy. People's attention and mental share are divided by various L2 and alternative L1s - and just a few years ago, these projects could directly attract users to Ethereum itself. Although L2 is already in the roadmap and is progressing as planned, in essence they have broken down the original heritage of Ethereum. I can even say that today's L2 is spiritually independent L1. (I will discuss this argument in a subsequent article)

Marketing is by no means a legend

What's worse is that we are witnessing a "assembled-line" gameplay that emphasizes numbers and ignores stories. The public chain raises huge amounts of funds, carries out short-term marketing activities, and completes the issuance of tokens, the entire ecosystem evaporates quickly. This model is unsustainable, and the more this happens, the more likely it is to be eaten alive by itself. In a blind pursuit of indicators, legend construction has been replaced by marketing, and profound myths have been replaced by cheap slogans.

What we see now is the superficial targets that attract "mercenary" participants. Those indicators that once represented progress have been gamified to no point. Users are regarded as data points to be optimized, not souls that need enlightenment. This is simply a Faustian transaction that ultimately leads us to the current burnout and disillusionment.

Marketing itself has no original sin - it is a proven business practice. The problem is that when marketers break into the cryptocurrency field without knowing nothing about the crypto cultural background and fundamental stories, marketing without legendary support is empty at best, and at worst, it is like fishing out of the waters. For cryptocurrencies (especially Ethereum), if you want to get out of the current downturn, you must first completely abandon this pure marketing thinking.

Conclusion

Legend construction is a spiritual infrastructure that unites the community. It gives meaning to individuals and gives belonging to the group. However, when most corners of the industry forget it and instead pursue cold indicators that attract short-term attention, we completely lose the ability to retain for a long time.

Fortunately, hope has not yet been destroyed. We can completely wake up from this collective amnesia and restart the great cause of legend construction. Countless precedents are available for us to study, imitate and innovate. Only by stopping self-deception can we let the pendulum of history swing back to the right track.

I look forward to a world where thousands of legend builders weave narrative symphony together, and active communities continue to create new technologies and nurture new cultures through collaboration. As long as we break the self-limitation of the information cocoon and replace our own governance with joint actions, a narrative revival and legendary reconstruction will be within reach.