Vee

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Metrics looking good in reports doesn't always mean much Seen this happen so many times now: Discord is active, engagement up, 100k+ followers on twitter, metrics looking great… then you actually check retention and people are trying it once and leaving At the end of the day, when it comes to adoption, Real, long term users are the only thing that matters. Pretty numbers make you FEEL great… but the uncomfortable metrics are usually the real ones Its who's actually staying vs who's just passing through

Something I keep noticing: Protocols that survive aren't always the ones with the best tech The ones where people genuinely believe in what's being built have the most chances to be adopted. And I don't mean "believe number go up" I mean like REAL belief. The kind where people keep showing up even when everything's down 70% I’ve seen teams with amazing engineering fail because they don’t communicate why they matter. Seems like just showing up consistently when things suck matters way more than having the perfect product.

There's a moment every crypto founder knows too well. A new user tries the product. Maybe they even complete a transaction or two. And then... They never come back. Founders lose their minds trying to figure out why. The product works fine. No major bugs. Then they double check the flow and spend weeks fixing edge cases. Everything works perfectly. So they convince themselves its just a user problem. "They just don't get it yet." "Crypto users aren't ready for this." In reality, someone hears about your protocol. Maybe from a friend or they saw a thread that got them curious. Doesn’t matter. They land on your site, read a bit, still not entirely sure what this does but they're WILLING to try. So they connect their wallet to go through the flow and complete the action. And then they sit there thinking "okay... what did I just do??" They don't come back because they never understood what they signed up for in the first place. Here's what’s happening: Most technical teams assume that if someone completes the flow, they understood it. But knowing how to click buttons isn't the same as knowing WHY it matters. I've sat in calls with founders and asked them "okay so what problem does this actually solve for me?" And they'll start explaining how the system works and what makes it different from competitors. Anything but answer the actual question: why should someone care? I’ve worked on privacy protocols where we’ve made 15+ onboarding guides explaining WHAT we were protecting and WHY someone would want their transactions private in the first place. We got a 20% increase in adoption. Users weren't just trying out the product, they kept coming back to use it again. Because they understood the meaning behind each action. The protocols that retain users aren't the ones with the best privacy stack. They're the ones where people finish their first transaction and think "oh, I get why this is important for me now." Ask someone who just used your product for the first time: "What did you just do and why does it matter to you?" If they can't explain it clearly, you have a clarity problem. The best stack in the world wouldn’t be used if people don't understand why they're interfacing with it.

My family still thinks I work in Bitcoin. I've tried explaining privacy protocols, zero-knowledge proofs, and decentralised exchanges. They nod politely and ask if the price is going up. I’ve just come to accept it. Anyone else?

Crypto job descriptions be like: "We need a marketer who understands ZK rollups, can code in Solidity, runs our Discord 24/7, writes all our content, manages partnerships, and also please bring your own audience" Budget: $3K/month and some tokens that might be worth something in 2045 And then founders wonder why they can't find good marketing talent

I felt this in my bones. I’ve been in crypto full time as a marketer for 5 years now and most projects I’ve been with have gone sideways. @Penumbrazone had amazing privacy tech and I had the opportunity to work with the most incredible and humble individuals (for which I am still extremely grateful for) but the tech did not consider the user experience and got no adoption. It went out silently. At Gnosis, I helped launch a V2 of a product that had, unbeknownst to me prior to joining, already failed user adoption tests during the previous bull market cycle. It was like beating a dead horse. Everyone could see it but just because leadership refused to, we had to march on. Unsurprisingly V2 too has tepid adoption at best. I get it, this is the nature of any startup. The innovation cycle, the tests, the highs and lows, the failed ventures. But it doesn’t take away from the disappointment that you feel when you see so many startups raise tens or even hundreds of millions, promises the world and beyond, just to collapse almost overnight and go out quietly instead of publicly acknowledging what worked and what didn’t. I still have utmost faith in crypto. I live in Latin America and I see daily how many people are gated from using traditional financial systems and crypto is their best change of a more equitable financial future. I’m confident that as the industry matures, we would learn and grow at a faster rate than before. I have learnt so much in these 5 years. But for now, I’m allowed to feel tired.

I noticed there's a specific kind of exhaustion: It happens when you've built something technically brilliant and nobody notices You see protocols with worse tech getting more attention. Your team is proud of what you've shipped, but embarrassed by how invisible you are I've seen founders start questioning if the idea was bad, if their audience even exists, or if they're wasting time in this space altogether Because building the tech was never the hardest part It’s more like watching something you believe in go unnoticed because the story never got told right That's the gap real marketing is supposed to fill: Why what you’ve built matters and how it can change someone’s life

I've seen founders editing landing pages between engineering meetings and reviewing every single post before it goes out They're exhausted and a little resentful about it But they're also terrified to delegate because the last freelancer they hired didn't understand the tech, didn't care about the mission, and left them with generic content that sounded like everyone else So they keep doing it themselves. Which means the product development slows down, the messaging stays inconsistent, and burnout creeps in Marketing isn't supposed to be another job the founder has to do It's supposed to free them up to build what they're actually good at building But that only works when you find someone who cares about getting it right, not just hitting a content quota

Growing up in Singapore as a minority with no connections meant most doors were closed before I even knocked Jobs required speaking Mandarin, networks required the right school, opportunities required family wealth… yet I had none of that What I did have was a willingness to learn from people ahead of me and a refusal to let my starting point define what I was capable of Turns out, being underestimated just means you get to surprise people And crypto is one of the few spaces where that's still possible

Worked with this engineering team They spent 4 years building an incredible product. Kept saying "it's so perfectly engineered that users will just get it" And then... nobody showed up The tech was brilliant but nobody understood what it did I'd ask them: "okay so what does this solve for me" and they'd launch into this whole technical explanation And I'm thinking: “ok we’ve already lost people” It’s interesting because you can build the most perfect product yet if people don't understand it then your efforts go down the drain Doesn't matter how great your code is if nobody knows WHY they need it

Some decisions don't make sense at first In my late 20s I had this realization that if I didn't actually apply myself and learn and grow I'd just stay stuck. So I packed everything and left Singapore with no real plan. Honestly I didn't know what I was walking into But following my instincts got me to meet people I would’ve never imagined crossing paths with and work on projects I’d usually see on the news Trusting your gut and moving in the direction of your dreams has a way of working out

I’ve seen that founders don't trust marketers anymore They hired agencies that farmed engagement, pumped out AI content and ran quest campaigns. The so-called “marketing” got them a spike in numbers, then everything eventually died Marketing shouldn't create temporary wins that just look good in a dashboard. Relying on short term hype isn’t sustainable It has to build the foundation for people to understand what you're solving and why they should care

Every time the market goes red, the timeline goes quiet Unfortunate… that's exactly when builders should be most active: Have real conversations. Support the community. Share insights. The community you build during downturns is the network that WILL carry you through the next cycle.

I've noticed something in the crypto space. Some of the most brilliant, world-class level engineering is happening in products that almost nobody uses or even knows about. The tech works amazingly well. But the people who worked on this product can't explain what the product does in a single sentence. Most users just want to understand how it can help them.

Did I miss the content creator era? 😔

The more people I know, the more I realise that there are people who love their suffering. No amount of support will make them feel better. Keep your distance. You can only change yourself.

It’s somehow intrinsic knowledge that the best thing to do upon TGE & airdrop is to sell profitably and not be a bag holder. However, this just fuels short-term, financial incentives driven behaviours. Eg. It’s been a minute since I’ve heard anyone shouting about berachain since TGE Hopefully as the industry matures we all move to playing long term games with long term people and TGE events just become reasons for people to have even more conviction in the protocol and to hold for decades, not days

> got serious about copywriting > started writing on LinkedIn > first 45 posts flop. 0 likes. > kept going anyway > 1 winner. 150k views, 1,100+ likes > now getting requests to do sponsored content Biggest lesson: you can just do things

guy with 4 likes on his post told me that i'm doing it wrong (407+ likes and growing on mine) why are men like this