Encryption Narrative Crisis: When "Legend" Builds to Yield to Marketing Frenzy

Crypto Assets are deeply trapped in a narrative crisis.

Written by: DeFi Dave

Compiled by: Yangz, Techub News

Crypto Assets are deeply mired in a narrative crisis. Indeed, we have made significant progress on a technical level, with infrastructure, throughput, and scalability achieving orders of magnitude improvement. However, on a cultural level, the entire industry seems to be in a kind of "stagnation," largely due to our loss of the ability to tell compelling stories. Aside from Bitcoin and the Solana memecoin, the industry has failed to attract new participants for organic growth for many years, and the nihilistic cloud arising from this is overshadowing the entire industry, especially in the Ethereum ecosystem and its surroundings.

However, where is the antidote? Simply telling the story is far from enough, and marketing promotion is but a drop in the bucket. We must build a lore system. Lorebuilding is not just about repeating narratives; it is about creating a stage for people to collectively forge a shared mythos.

At the time of writing, it's hard for me to fully summarize the full meaning of "legend building", a new concept that is being defined, is still developing. The discussion in this article is only a phased achievement, and I will further expand and clarify the concept through a series of articles in the future, and provide more examples to support my opinion. I also look forward to more people joining the discussion and bringing their unique thoughts and interpretations.

Go build a legend, friend

"Lorebuilding" aims to cultivate a vibrant narrative system that can insightfully address current real-world issues, absorbing those universally resonant and timeless memes, ultimately weaving them into stories that generate identification and foster collective participation in creation. "Lorebuilders" are those who can recognize emerging ideologies, understand their historical context, and weave collective emotions into coherent and compelling narratives. They are akin to the prophets of legend. Skilled builders do not forcibly dictate the direction but rather listen to and safeguard this process, aligning with the evolutionary laws of the lore itself. The construction of lore cannot be forged nor shortcut; it must be personally practiced and immersed in.

Legends are built on one or a group of ideas, like a seed sown by the "Genesis Lorebuilder" into 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 meaning and momentum.

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

• First Level "Attention": People only invest a small amount of energy and have not truly committed yet;
• The second layer "Resonance": People begin to feel a sense of belonging and establish identity recognition with it;
• Layer Three "Co-creation": People are deeply immersed and contribute to the narrative in their own way—this can be simple inside jokes or copypasta, or it can be a landmark 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, giving people a sense of belonging and motivating them to act, ultimately forming a spiritual lineage worthy of being passed down through generations.

The Legend of Bitcoin and Ethereum Construction

If we were to list the paradigms constructed by legends, Bitcoin and Ethereum are undoubtedly the best cases, and Satoshi Nakamoto can be regarded as the "Abrahamic Lorebuilder" of the two—similar to how Abraham is considered the common ancestor of the three major religions, Satoshi's thoughts are not only the foundation of Bitcoin but have also inspired countless protocols. Bitcoin and Ethereum have been around for over a decade, giving us ample space to trace back their complete trajectory of birth and evolution.

Bitcoin: From Genesis to Cultural Phenomenon

The legend of Bitcoin began with its creator Satoshi Nakamoto. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, he first sparked a systematic questioning of the modern political financial order. In the initial white paper, Bitcoin was 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 written into the protocol's foundation.

In fact, Bitcoin was not the first attempt at digital currency (there were previous attempts like DigiCash, Bit Gold, and Hashcash), but Satoshi Nakamoto's breakthrough lay in 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 "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. Subsequently, the community spontaneously became the cultivators of the legend. They created the principle of "anonymity," established memes like "HODL," and marked rituals such as Bitcoin Pizza Day, further refining the collective trauma memory of "Not your keys, not your coins" through the Mt.Gox incident.

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

• Satoshi Nakamoto and the Cypherpunk Era: Laying the Intellectual Foundation
• "Terror Pirate Roberts" (i.e. Ross Ulbricht) and the Silk Road Era: Verifying the First Real Use Case
• "Bitcoin Jesus" Roger Ver: Funding 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 Crypto Assets, while Ethereum is like an "apple" that fell beside the tree. Ethereum's founding builder, Vitalik Buterin, hails from the Bitcoin world; he initially became active in the community as a co-founder and writer for Bitcoin Magazine, and after participating in multiple projects, he ultimately carved out his own path.

Ethereum takes the concept of Bitcoin to new heights, programming sovereign attributes. If Bitcoin realizes the vision of "exit the old system," then Ethereum opens up the possibility of "building a new world from scratch." Bitcoin's scripting 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 rooted in Ethereum's DNA, waiting for generations of legendary builders to tend to them carefully.

On July 30, 2015, Ethereum officially launched. The same newspaper headline engraved in its genesis block as Bitcoin: "The Times January 3, 2009: Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks," is not only a tribute to its predecessor but also tightly connects the two legendary bloodlines.

The uniqueness of Ethereum Legends lies in its layered construction model. Apart from Vitalik, early builder Joe Lubin founded ConsenSys, which incubated developer tools such as MetaMask, Infura, and Truffle, significantly lowering the construction threshold for Ethereum. More importantly, ConsenSys 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 Crypto Assets centers. At its peak, ConsenSys had over 1,200 employees. Despite undergoing strategic adjustments, the foundation it laid continues to nurture the generational evolution of the Ethereum ecosystem.

The Current Status of the Legends of Bitcoin and Ethereum

The simplicity of Bitcoin allows new legend builders to create new stories. 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 the badge of recognition from the traditional financial system.

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

However, in recent years, due to the continuous diversion of the originally concentrated momentum, the legend of Ethereum has sharply weakened. People’s attention and mental share have been divided among various L2 and alternative L1 projects—just a few years ago, these projects could directly attract users to Ethereum itself. Although L2 has already been on the roadmap and is being advanced as planned, they have essentially severed the original lineage of Ethereum. I can even say that today’s L2 is spiritually an independent L1. (I will discuss this argument in a subsequent article.)

Marketing is by no means a legend.

To make matters worse, we are witnessing the repetition of a "pipeline" approach that focuses on numbers and light on stories: public blockchains raise huge sums of money, carry out short-term marketing campaigns, and after the token issuance is completed, the entire ecosystem quickly evaporates. This model is unsustainable, and the more this happens, the more likely it is that cryptocurrencies will be eaten alive on their own. In the blind pursuit of metrics, legend building has been replaced by marketing, and deep myths have been replaced by cheap taglines.

Today, all we see are surface goals that attract "mercenary" participants. Those once-representative indicators of 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 time-tested business practice. The problem arises when marketers enter the Crypto Assets space with no knowledge of the cultural background and foundational stories of encryption; marketing without legendary support is, at best, hollow and at worst, exploitative. For Crypto Assets (especially Ethereum) to emerge from the current slump, it is essential to completely abandon this purely marketing mindset.

Conclusion

Legend building is the spiritual infrastructure that binds the community together, giving individuals meaning and granting groups a sense of belonging. However, when most corners of the industry forget this and instead chase cold metrics that garner short-term attention, we completely lose the ability to retain over the long term.

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

I look forward to a world where thousands of legend builders weave narrative symphonies together, and vibrant communities continuously create new technologies and nurture new cultures through collaboration. As long as we break the self-imposed limitations of information cocoons and replace individual actions with collective efforts, a renaissance of narrative revival and legend reconstruction will be within reach.