Encryption Narrative Crisis: When "Legend" Builds to Give Way to Marketing Frenzy

Author: Decentralized Finance Dave

Compiled by: Yangz, Techub News

Cryptocurrency is deeply mired in a narrative crisis. Indeed, we have made significant progress on a technical level, with infrastructure, throughput, and scalability performance achieving orders of magnitude improvements. However, on a cultural level, the entire industry seems to be in a kind of "stagnation," and a large part of the reason for this is our loss of the ability to tell compelling stories. Aside from Bitcoin and the Solana memecoin, the industry has failed to truly attract new participants for organic growth for many years, and the nihilistic cloud that has arisen from this is overshadowing the entire industry, especially in the Ethereum and its surrounding ecosystem.

However, where is the antidote? Simply telling stories is far from enough, and marketing promotion is merely a drop in the bucket. We must build a legend system. Lorebuilding is not just about repetitive narratives; it is about creating a stage for people to collaboratively forge a shared mythological universe.

As I write this article, I still find it difficult to fully summarize the entire connotation of "legend building"; this newly defined concept is still under development. The discussion in this article is only a stage result, and in the future, I will further expand and clarify the concept through a series of articles, providing more examples to support my views. I also look forward to more people joining the discussion, bringing their unique thoughts and interpretations.

Let's build legends, my friend

"Legend Building" aims to cultivate a living narrative system, which can gain insight into current real-life issues, absorb those memes that have universal resonance and timelessness, and finally weave into stories that people can identify with and participate in the creation. Lorebuilders, on the other hand, are those who can identify emerging ideas, understand their historical contexts, and absorb collective emotions to weave them into coherent and compelling narratives. They are like prophets of legend. Clever builders do not dictate the direction, but listen to and watch over the process, following the evolution of the legend itself. The construction of legends cannot be faked and there are no shortcuts, it must be practiced and immersed in it.

Legends are built upon one or a group of ideas, like a seed, sown by the "Genesis Lorebuilder" into the fertile cultural soil, taking root and sprouting in the minds of early believers. If a legend crosses a critical point and becomes strong enough, it will attract different groups to join, contributing their own rituals, memes, or actions. Just like the growth of tree rings, each generation's participation carves new marks into the legend, infusing it with new meanings and momentum.

The three levels of influence in legend are: Attention, Resonance, and Co-creation.

• First layer "Attention": People are only putting in a small amount of effort and have not truly committed yet;
• Layer Two "Resonance": People begin to develop a sense of belonging and establish identity recognition with it;
• Layer Three "Co-creation": People immerse deeply and contribute to the legend in their own ways—this can be a simple inside joke or copypasta, or it can be an iconic event or a brand new narrative that attracts new members.

The essence of legend is a narrative co-creation shaped by collective experience. Its highest form is to elevate repetitive actions and memes into a shared culture, fostering a sense of belonging and prompting people to act, ultimately forming a spiritual lineage worthy of being passed down through generations.

The Legend of Bitcoin and Ethereum Construction

When it comes to listing exemplary legends, Bitcoin and Ethereum are undoubtedly the best cases, and Satoshi Nakamoto can be regarded as the "Abrahamic Lorebuilder" of both—similar to how Abraham is the common ancestor of the three major religions, Satoshi’s thoughts are not only the cornerstone of Bitcoin but have also inspired countless protocols. Bitcoin and Ethereum have existed for more than a decade, giving us ample room to trace back their complete trajectories of birth and evolution.

Bitcoin: From Genesis to Cultural Phenomenon

The legend of Bitcoin begins with its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, he sparked a systematic questioning of the modern political financial order. In the initial white paper, Bitcoin is described as a "peer-to-peer electronic cash system," rooted in the idea of sovereign currency governed by code rather than human institutions, with characteristics such as decentralization, censorship resistance, and scarcity directly embedded in the protocol's foundation.

In fact, Bitcoin was not the first attempt at a digital currency (there were previous attempts such as DigiCash, Bit Gold, and Hashcash), but Satoshi Nakamoto's breakthrough was his integration of previous achievements (proof of work, digital signatures, scarcity mechanisms) and the innovative introduction of designs such as the "longest chain rule" and the "halving mechanism." When he inscribed "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" in the genesis block, this seed had already been planted in the cultural soil. Since then, the community has spontaneously become the nurturer of the legend. They created the principle of "anonymity," forged memes such as "HODL," established rituals like Bitcoin Pizza Day, and through the Mt.Gox incident, they distilled the collective trauma of "Not your keys, not your coins."

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

• Satoshi Nakamoto and the Cypherpunk Era: Laying the Theoretical Foundation
• "The Dread Pirate Roberts" (i.e. Ross Ulbricht) and the Silk Road Era: Validating the first real use case
• "Bitcoin Jesus" Roger Ver: Funded the first generation of startups
• Michael Saylor and the Wall Street Era: Bringing Bitcoin into the Institutional Circle

Ethereum: The Programmable Legend Iteration

Bitcoin pioneered the legend of cryptocurrency, while Ethereum is like an "apple" fallen beside the tree. Ethereum's founding builder Vitalik Buterin came from the Bitcoin world, where he initially engaged with the community as a co-founder and writer for Bitcoin Magazine. After participating in multiple projects, he ultimately carved his own path.

Ethereum has taken the concept of Bitcoin to new heights, programming sovereignty attributes. If Bitcoin realized the vision of "exit the old system", then Ethereum has opened up the possibility of "building a new world from scratch". Bitcoin's script language is optimized for monetary scarcity, while Ethereum, as a Turing-complete general virtual machine, nurtures a bountiful "infinite garden", which is the foundation of its "world computer" legend. The seeds of DeFi, NFT, and DAO have long been deeply embedded in Ethereum's genes, waiting for generations of legendary builders to carefully nurture them.

On July 30, 2015, Ethereum was officially launched. The same newspaper headline as Bitcoin carved into its genesis block reads: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks," which is not only a tribute to its predecessor but also closely links the two legendary bloodlines.

The uniqueness of Ethereum's legend lies in its layered construction model. Apart from Vitalik, early builder Joe Lubin founded ConsenSys, incubating developer tools such as MetaMask, Infura, and Truffle, significantly lowering the barriers to building on Ethereum. More importantly, ConsenSys brought hundreds of Ethereum builders to Brooklyn and New York City, planting the seeds for New York City to become one of the world's most important cryptocurrency centers. At its peak, ConsenSys had over 1,200 employees. Despite strategic adjustments, the foundation it laid continues to nourish the generations of the Ethereum ecosystem.

The Legend of Bitcoin and Ethereum's Construction Status

The simplicity of Bitcoin allows new legends to be created. For example, Michael Saylor has taken up the torch from his predecessors, leading Bitcoin into the Wall Street era. Today, Bitcoin has become a regulated ETF, earning a badge of recognition from the traditional financial system.

In contrast, Ethereum is relatively more complex, with its legendary construction being layered and progressive. From the ICO craze, the summer of DeFi, the NFT frenzy, to the revival of DAOs, each era reflects the question of "what can be built on Ethereum," while also continuing its spiritual lineage.

However, in recent years, the once-consolidated momentum has been continuously diverted, causing Ethereum's legend to weaken sharply. People's attention and mental share are being divided among various L2s and alternative L1s—just a few years ago, these projects were able to attract users directly to Ethereum itself. Although L2s were already part of the roadmap and have been progressing as planned, they have effectively severed the original lineage of Ethereum. I could even say that today's L2s are spiritually independent L1s. (I will discuss this point further in subsequent articles.)

Marketing is by no means a legend.

Worse still, we are witnessing a repetitive "assembly line" approach that emphasizes numbers over stories: public chains raise huge amounts of funding, carry out short-term marketing campaigns, and after completing the token issuance, the entire ecosystem quickly evaporates. This model is unsustainable, and the more it persists, the more likely cryptocurrencies are to be self-consuming. In the blind pursuit of metrics, the construction of legends has been replaced by marketing, and profound myths have been substituted by cheap slogans.

Today, all we see are superficial goals that attract "mercenary" participants. Those indicators that once represented progress have been gamified to the point of meaninglessness. Users are seen as data points to be optimized rather than souls to be inspired. This is nothing short of Faustian trading, ultimately leading us to the current state of fatigue and disillusionment.

Marketing itself is not inherently evil - it is a well-tested business practice. The problem arises when marketers enter the cryptocurrency space without any knowledge of the cultural background and foundational stories, leading to a type of marketing devoid of legendary support, which can be described as hollow at best and as exploitative at worst. For cryptocurrencies (especially Ethereum) to overcome the current slump, they must first completely abandon this purely marketing mindset.

Conclusion

The legend of construction is the spiritual infrastructure that凝聚社区, it gives individuals meaning and grants groups a sense of belonging. However, when most corners of the industry forget it and turn to pursue those cold metrics that gain short-term attention, we completely lose the ability for long-term retention.

Fortunately, hope has not yet been extinguished. We can completely awaken from this collective amnesia and restart the great endeavor of building legends. Countless precedents are available for us to study, imitate, and innovate. Only by stopping self-deception can we allow the pendulum of history to swing back onto the right track.

I look forward to a world where thousands of legend builders work together to weave a symphony of narratives, and where active communities continue to create new technologies and cultures through collaboration. As long as we break out of the self-imposed limitations of the information cocoon and replace each other with joint action, a renaissance of narrative revival and legend reconstruction will be within reach.