Building Trust in a Trustless World: Marketing in the Age of Rug Pulls

Transcript

[Music] Hi everyone. I'm happy to see you today here and uh I see some familiar faces. Uh so uh today today we're going to talk about the most valuable currency in web 3 trust and I will teach you how to build trust in a trustless web 3 world using brand marketing instruments. So uh let me share a bit about myself. My name is Daria. I'm a brand and communication strategist. I'm builder of trust and web three love marks and also I'm the host and author of the decentralized voices podcast and uh you can scan a cure code to learn more about

the podcast and also I'm happy to have uh the people from all these amazing companies among the guests on my pot. So let's talk about trust. Uh we all like to say don't trust verify. However, our don't trust verify industry already reached 80 billion in TVL but total value lost because of scams, rack pools and many other uh not very good initiatives and uh I really recommend you to check out the resource web 3 is going just great uh because there are many many cases that happen daily in our industry and uh it impacts on the

perception of the industry and it doesn't help to build trust with people from uh outside of the web3 industry and also for us for builders and um many projects they build really great projects with value for users and with value for markets but sometimes they miss this trustworthy signals that uh m can make their projects look suspicious. So today we're going to talk about how to uh avoid this and what kind of trust versus symbols can we use. Uh I asked more than 30 people I guess about their perception of trust in web 3 and there

were like two groups of people. Uh one group uh answered that it's about product, it's about security assets, transparency and no intermediaries between Ellis and Bob. But the another one a group said that it's about brand reputation, good UX and sometimes number of followers. So I do believe that both these sites should work together like in one in in like like one organism. Uh and um this is Joe. He's user of a defy application and he wants to find uh like one more defy application for example to swap and there is a product A and

product B and product A and product B they have great tag and they have both solid security however product A has smooth UX attractive UI clear product message and uh trustworthy founders and product B doesn't have this trust sorcery signals. So it's not surprise that Joe would use product A because uh he he's a human and he wants to trust and he wants to check this trust forces signals and probably product I will earn more money because because of more users and because of more trust from them. Uh however revenue is not the only one roy

of trust. There is also lower customer acquisition cost, higher user engagement, business longevity growth. So everything goes from trust and uh we should do everything to gain it um and build it for our users and for partners, community and other people around. And uh uh yes and one more slide. uh so uh I want to share with you two pillars of psychology of trust and uh to build trustworthy brand or to be a trustworthy person you have to combine these two pillars like competence and worms. So first of all you have to be

intelligent, skilled, experienced but at the same time you have to be friendly, ready to help, be creative, be good-looking. So only in this combination it can work. So like hard skills and soft skills and uh it works for both for persons like for for for people and for brands and I want to share with you five principles of building trust in a trustless world and first one is tech awareness. So uh web3 builders every day build a lot of products and technologies and they have to um teach their users or builders to build with their

technologies and people don't trust thing they don't understand it's clear message. Uh I like the example of Ziki Sync how they did this L5 explainer of zero knowledge proofs and uh it was it it went viral and uh I'm sure some of you have this book maybe played this game because they created a game based on this book and it was super successful because complex tech concept was explained in engaging way. Uh also Alchemy they created this university and uh they teach developers solidity JavaScript and other languages

technologies and it helps them to educate developers and to build brand awareness among web builders and centrifuge. Centrifuge educates the existing and potential audience with their documentary and they uh released the documentary on Airbchization and it explains really great how it works. The second principle is clear product message and we have to clarify what we built and for whom. Uh and web3 industry is well known of its buzz words because uh like like all of you and me also and people um in the corridor use all this

like uh redefining experience frictionless token velocity and blah blah blah blah blah and it doesn't make any sense for users and maybe just for our teams and not for every every member of our team. So we have to clarify our message if we want to build for for mass users. And to clarify this vision we have to uh to clarify this message we have to uh we must have product vision and product vision can help build narrative like answer the question what do you do and what's the benefit for your audience also values and mission and they help to build storytelling and ask simple but sometimes very difficult

question. What does humanity need this? Why does this uh why does humanity need this idea? And also product market fit. Uh there are many projects that lack product market fit unfortunately. And uh that's the answer to the question why do your project uh why do your customers uh must say yes and how many people would use a product for its value without token incentives. Uh I really like the example of Ledger because they built this connection between Ledger brand and security. When you think about Ledger, you always think about security.

Also one more example, ZK passport. ZK passport is about privacy. It's like verification solution to verify your ident ZK based solution to verify your identity without giving up your privacy. and it's easy to understand. So the third principle is memorable visual identity and good branding can make your project sexier. Uh I'm sure you all know unis swap brand. It's the most pinkish brand in the web field and when you think about uh like pink color or unicorns you always think about unis swap. They have consistent branding on different

platforms and channels. But it's not the only one unicorn in web 3. There is one inch also. And they also have this like mascot and character in their logo and their branding. But they have completely different vibes, completely different communication styles. And it means that even if you have something in common with other brand if you use your product strategy and communication strategy properly uh it it it would work and uh you will u you will be different you will look different. Uh one more example is Rava. So they have this very uh like famous ghost and it's a place to be in web 3 and probably many of you will

dance at Rava on Wednesday I guess. Uh so they have consistent branding and uh sometimes they change styles, colors and everything but they have the same character, the same communication style and you always can recognize uh Ravi and Ronny among others. Uh however design can kill can kill trust uh to your brand because of some mistakes. For example, many stock images uh trying to copy paste branding of well-known projects, nonresponsive design, overuse of 3D graphics and many many other mistakes can make your brand uh like

this like look and feel cheaper. So this means that you have to uh find a really good brand designer and brand strategist and like people who are involved in your brand style. uh like to avoid these mistakes. So the first principle is trust can't be bought and track record is more important than short-term hype. So I beg you like don't hype on promises and prove and deliver and uh I'm sure you all know these cases when product uh is yapping about something on X or anywhere else and then uh mainet happens and doesn't work or it works but in like

not not the same condition they uh was expected. So this means that it's easier it's better to prove than uh than than uh explain why it doesn't work. And I do believe that transparency must be visible. Uh so do regular updates, publish some uh news uh or development stages, meet your users and talk to them and they will remember you and your project. also use your product or services internally to test and identify the pain points and the main uh problems. This calls like dog fooding I'm sure you know. Uh so the example of

long-term brand is Ethereum. Obviously it has like more than 10 years of technology. It's cryptocurrency and it's global community of builders and Ethereum is the reason why we are here today and like um yeah and we we see and we have everything that happens. So, Ethereum is a great example of this like long-term consistency and um yes and proof and deliver combination and also forecaster. I like to follow the co-founder or maybe he's like one founder of uh forecaster Dan Romero. He constantly shares updates about

forecaster and about development stages and everything and uh it involves people in his uh project and people know this project because of his active participation and promotion and the fifth principle reputation first. So number of followers is obviously important but it less important than engagement. So uh the ka platform reimagined online reputation and uh I created this meme to highlight that being called is not so popular and now uh compared to being a smart follower and sometimes people even try to bribe smart followers uh to follow their

projects. It doesn't show the maturity of the industry and it showed that some projects don't believe that they can gain trust in like normal way in normal communication. They want to pay for attention. So like it it it's it says much about trust. Uh and I want to share with you the screenshot from my uh Kaio U profile. uh and as you see like I gained uh like some followers and smart followers but doesn't mean that I have more trust now I'm not sure maybe online but in real world like it doesn't count like our engagement with like real

people with humans here for example in this audience so uh I want to highlight with this slide that um like you can pay attention to online obviously but don't forget about like your offline communication and how you treat others and how uh what kind of trustworthy signals you give and obviously X is the like uh crypto uh Twitter and like web three industry stacked on X on one centralized exchange. So I recommend you to be more decentralized in your communication styles and also forget about bots because many projects buy bots and it

looks a bit like miserable to see like 100k or 300k uh accounts with two three likes per post. So like it you should be like very naive to think that all this like people follow this project. So uh like I think that trustworthy um can be gained in more ethical way let's say and also my recommendation to use team le marketing. So if you're a founder, great. You can promote your project, but also please encourage your team to promote the project because it can help not only like in direct uh promotion or explaining the value of your project but

also to build employer brand because if you need to hire a lot of people uh employer brand like good employer brand will help you to make it cheaper and faster. uh also your personal brand. You have to understand what's the personal goal for building your brand because many people try to build personal brand just because to be popular. No, it doesn't work. So if you have your project and you want to promote it, yes, you have your goal. If you want to find a job, for example, you you have a goal to to find a job and to build your personal brand. and many many other personal goals can be like uh tailored to your name and your game. And

uh you you should go outside of crypto Twitter. You should go to podcast, public talks like uh personal meetups, hackathons and avoid being in a company with people with doubtful reputation because it can impact your future in bad way. And actually being a nice and reliable person always works. So don't forget about this. So to wrap up my presentation, I want to highlight these five uh principles like market longevity, awareness of tech, clear product message, consistent branding and public timber members and founders. So build your trust as a spider builds its web uh and connect all these uh elements

in one in one web. Yes. So you can build trust in a trustless world. Thank you for your attention and let's connect on X. Uh and uh you can scan a QR code of my podcast. Thank you very much and I'm ready to answer to your questions. Yeah please. Oh. Hey, I am Nishal. Uh yeah, so actually uh we are Inscribe and we are doing the same thing like you know uh we started our project. It's a small startup right

andcribe uh and whenever you know we post on telegram we have like a small community on telegram and discord we get a lot of you know uh these uh bots maybe not uh these like you can get followers pay money and drop hunters. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we avoid that, right? Because we want, you know, the uh the organic uh follow basically users who want to use. But I think it's kind of very very slow like you know uh like if you are doing this and it's taking a year for you know to get some followers. It's like end of the project also sometimes. So like what your thoughts on that? Uh yeah, so I understand you and uh you have for example if you want to raise investments

probably you should show your investors some numbers uh or like to show the community that you grow fast. However like these people will never use your project or if they use it for airdrop for example then they will leave. So this means that you should find the audience because like if you have product market fit and if you see that like your project covers markets need or like some audienc's need um this means like you should push that audience and try to build for them because like I don't understand why projects like try

to be like close their eyes and believe in miracle that all this like 300k uh are their users or like they are not their users. Let's be honest like uh half or even like more than half of that people they are not their users. They just bots or maybe like many airdrop hunters they like push this bots and create a lot of accounts that like act like users and then nothing. So I think this like be so if you have a product market fit and if you cover the need you you should put push that audience. Uh if you are trying to find this market fit

please find it. Yes. But um I actually like to be honest I I'm waiting till that time when all this bubble of this air drops and all this like bots and everything when it will like boom and everything will finish. I I'm waiting until this time to be honest and then projects will start building like normally because on in web two uh companies don't pay users for example that use their cars or buy their jackets. So we didn't get anything from like clothes uh brands uh to wear them. Uh we buy so

I'm waiting that time. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, thank you very much. [Applause] [Music]