Crypto Marketing

After a busy month during November where the Jelurida team attended the Singapore fintech week, The Capital and Blockshow conferences and many more, followed by a workshop with Casino Austria International, where we explored together blockchain applications for the gambling industry, I would like to share some of my observations about Jelurida/Ardor/Ignis/Nxt and life in general.

Let’s start with a few observations:

1. In Singapore last month, I saw that people know about us, but they do not consider us a major player.
2. Compared to most 2017 ICOs that raised modest funding, we are doing better than 90% of them. Many of the players that are doing better than us are typically better funded and/or backed by some powerful influencers (cryptography professors, financial advisers, crypto evangelists)
3. Businesses are somewhat reluctant to build on our tech and integrate with us. And even if they do they try to charge us premium for this.
4. We are doing much better marketing-wise than we used to with improvements to the website, conference schedules, weekly wins, monthly news-letters, press releases, and event videos.

So why are people not using our tech?

First of all, many are using it, but of course we need many more. Especially in the context of developers, they are impressed with our tech but still build on Ethereum since they already started last year and they still cling to the hope that Ethereum will be able to deliver on its frequently missed goals. Getting new projects to build on Ardor is a top priority, but how do we get there if we cannot get our message taken more seriously?

Let’s face it, public blockchain competitors to Ardor with temporarily higher market value like EOS, Cardano, Tezos, Atom, Lisk, Waves, NEM has negligible traction at the moment with regards to real applications. They are not doing better than us on this. Sadly, at the moment, the promise of making blockchain a development platform for public permissionless applications has not materialized, yet.

In my view, if you pick 200 coin names at random without any regards to tech/team/marketing and ask people to invest into them (isn’t that what 99% of the investors really do?), in the short term you’ll get some Poisson distribution that looks like what we see today on coinmarketcap. Some tokens will do better, some will disappear into oblivion and some will be stuck somewhere in the middle like us. This is almost unrelated to anything the token developers will say or do. Call it Nihilism if you like but this is what it is.

Of course, we humans like stories, so the guys at the top will be crowned as “marketing geniuses” in the absence of any reasonable explanation to their good fortunes. Some of their leaders will become celebs and will be chased by the public media. The poor guys at the bottom of the pack will be called “losers” and will be blamed they are not doing enough “marketing”.
The network effect of the winners will help them get articles on the news, list on exchanges and wallets, but also expose them to the wrath of regulators and make every mistake they make much more visible and costly.
The guys below in the list have a harder time making their name known but will be mostly left alone to develop their tech and focus on their work.

What it means for us as the Ardor/Ignis/Nxt community?

Clearly it is better (and more profitable) to be on the winners side and we need to get there. It will require good execution and “marketing” but also a good amount of sheer luck. But as they say “fortune favors the brave”.

If you think we should be on the winners side, what should you do?

1. If you have to complain, do it less publicly and focus on the positive. I know you may think that some things can be done better and that the folks at Jelurida should spend their money on this or that, or maybe you lost money on our tokens, or maybe you just had a bad day at work or your spouse pissed you off. Remember, posting negative messages in public forums and social networks, even if you have good intentions, creates negative sentiment about our projects and directly reduces our chances of success. It’s a prophecy that fulfills itself. Don’t do that!
2. Do share your ideas and criticism privately with Jelurida staff and community leaders. We will do our best to follow up on your feedback. Everyone who tried to approach me on slack, email, telegram, linkedin, and twitter knows that I’m doing my best to respond to everyone in the most respectful and honest way.
3. Learn from our great contributors. I don’t want to mention names so that I won’t miss one of our many loyal supporters! Engage smartly and positively on all social networks to support us. It will cost you nothing but your time. Make the team aware in case you need some backing or identify an opportunity.

Let’s work together to bring luck on our side!