Author: Paul Cafiero, a16z PR Partner
Compiled by: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher
For decades, the tech industry has gained public recognition and external praise through its emerging interesting ideas.
So much so that the entrepreneurial concept of “Minimum Viable Product” has received the same abbreviation as Jalen Brunson (New York Eternal) —— MVP.
However, in the past decade, especially in recent years, the tech field has undergone tremendous changes: Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), brilliant ideas, and excellent teams can no longer attract external audiences. The cryptocurrency industry has been particularly hard hit —— regulatory issues and bad actors frequently making headlines have intertwined —— which has heightened people’s ability to discern authenticity, as they are increasingly overwhelmed by various noise and begin to filter.
When traditional finance (TradFi) participants take cryptocurrencies seriously —— for example, BlackRock launching tokenized money market funds, Fidelity applying to issue cryptocurrency ETFs, and JPMorgan conducting trading settlements on its self-developed blockchain —— the focus of discussion has shifted. This is not only about the essence of cryptocurrencies but also about how to gain recognition in the industry.
This is the moment we find ourselves in now. This moment quietly rewrites the rules for all those building in this field. Welcome to the era of “Show Me.”
What has changed? Why now?
Throughout much of the development of the cryptocurrency industry, it has followed a logic of commitment: vision equals product. You only need a white paper and a token to launch a project, and the media and cryptocurrency community will flock to it. People have always bet on the potential future direction of things, rather than what has already been proven. But this dynamic has shifted.
Why? In short, I believe this shift in communication is the result of several factors working together: a deepening skepticism about the sustained existence of this technology (which has been developing for over twenty years); traditional financial institutions entering the cryptocurrency space on a large scale, not just nominally but actually launching related products; and the artificial intelligence industry (whose overnight fame was actually built over decades) launching viable consumer-facing products.
Large institutions are no longer just spectators or limiting innovation efforts to their respective independent “innovation departments,” but are beginning to build scalable solutions: BlackRock and Larry Fink fully embracing tokenization; Fidelity’s custody and ETF infrastructure; JPMorgan’s Onyx network; Franklin Templeton’s on-chain money market fund.
These are no longer experiments —— they are real products, backed by corresponding traditional financial compliance frameworks, institutional clients, and balance sheets.
The large-scale influx of TradFi has raised the bar for “serious” projects in the cryptocurrency space. When the world’s largest asset management company begins to tokenize government bonds, the level of proof a credible project needs to demonstrate to the media, partners, and the market also increases.
From a policy perspective, the industry has also entered the mainstream view. With stablecoin legislation (the genius bill passed last year, now comprehensive market structure legislation with the “CLARITY Act” expected to go for a full Senate vote), the way products are communicated will further change. If the “CLARITY Act” is passed, founders will be able to publicly discuss the products they are developing with an unprecedented level of specificity.
In summary, the industry has matured regardless of whether it is ready.
The resulting communication environment no longer starts with “What are you building?” but rather:
“What have you built? Who is using it?”
In fact, this means that merely having an engaging story is no longer enough to change the status quo. We need evidence.
The New Proof Stack
The previously effective sales pitch —— “We are building X for Y, and here’s why” —— now needs an upgrade. I call it “layered evidence”: it can transform hypothetical abstract narratives into credible, concrete realities.
So, what does this proof stack look like?
Real, tangible partnerships —— not “in discussions.” Actual integrations, signed contracts, and partners willing to publicly state their reasons for choosing you. In the past, announcing partnerships was merely a perfunctory way to measure actual influence. Today, it is only truly effective when the partnership itself is a manifestation of influence. That is to say, a significant institution, protocol, or platform has chosen you among many alternatives; and you can clearly explain why.
This also means sharing more hard data, such as transaction volumes on the mainnet (not the testnet), active wallet counts, revenue, and user retention curves. Not “rapid growth,” but specific percentages, time spans, and baseline figures. Journalists covering this field are becoming increasingly professional, and they will conduct on-chain verification. If your data cannot withstand scrutiny from Dune, CoinMarketCap, or other analytical tools, your reporting will not hold up.
The verification stack also involves sharing real signals about product-market fit: who is using your product? Why do they (including other market clients) continue to use it?
I believe the best proof of product-market fit is not a product launch announcement, but an organically growing community that existed before the PR push.
If your most enthusiastic users are your investors or stakeholders, that is a red flag, as they have financial incentives to promote. But if they are people who found you through word of mouth, that is definitely a story worth telling.
All of this relates to reporting before, rather than after, media hype —— third-party verification, audits, and independent research. The most credible evidence is not fabricated, but rather what others tell the world is true.
So, what does this mean for startup communication?
In the early stages —— when the product is still taking shape but the vision is clear —— it is easy to want to throw out the vision first and write a manifesto. This feels sincere, and it is indeed sincere.
But in the current environment, this is seen as a risk.
A better approach is to build your narrative around what you can prove. Start with your most confident data points, even if they are small: a thousand daily active users who do not know the founders is more persuasive than a million-dollar strategic investment. A protocol that processed $50 million in transaction volume in the first 90 days is more attractive than one that can only handle large volumes after “scaling up.”
This also means you need to express your points more precisely. “We are building the future of payments” is an argument, not a proof. “We have reduced cross-border settlement time from three days to four minutes, and today three companies are using this service” is a proof that conveniently includes the argument.
For teams and founders responsible for communication, the practical implication is that the story should start from facts, not the other way around. This is a different way of writing —— in some ways more difficult, requiring more discipline —— but it is what is truly effective. Especially in the current climate.
Long-term Strategy
But this does not mean that vision is unimportant. The best crypto communication still follows two paths simultaneously: one is to introduce what we have built, and the other is to explain why it is just the beginning of a larger plan. The difference lies in the order of information and the proportion of delivery.
The “proportion” I refer to is that in 2021, you could measure success with 80% vision and 20% substance. But now, that ratio has completely flipped.
You can still publish white papers, manifestos… but that is not enough. Vision is still important —— it makes the argument more persuasive and provides material for journalists and analysts —— but the vision must be supported by the substance behind it.
The “Show Me Era” is not a temporary adjustment in the industry. The cognitive level of the cryptocurrency audience —— including media, institutions, and retail investors —— is increasingly rising, and this trend has become a foregone conclusion.
The best developers in this field have realized that this is actually good news. If you have real user growth, authentic data, and genuine partners, then a higher bar is actually beneficial to you; it filters out distracting information and makes your signal clearer and louder.
The question is whether your communication strategy is designed to prove this, or if it is still just designed to make promises.