Crypto Blockchain Branding 101: The Projects You Choose Are the Brand You Become

ETH is the Amazon

Fantom is DeFi

Harmony is games

Solana is NFTs

Get hungry because soon, your chain must eat. Eat competition, eat and industry, eat and conquer. Why? Because scaling means branding means scaling. There can only be one or two Amazons and Googles. Crypto already has them.

The real questions for your chain:

• What will the chain eat?
• What vertical will chain, layer, your crypto kingdom take over?
• What will it be known for?

When you’re everything to everybody, you’re nothing. Users won’t know why they should adopt and bridge and play. They won’t build their DEX, launch their lock drop, stake token or play your games’ next season unless you give them a reason to do it on your chain and nowhere else.

Niching down is hard. It’s ego. It’s fomo. It’s seeing all the possible directions choosing one outcome from all the possible threads. It’s really hard for big brains. There’s so much you could do.

But fail to niche, and you will fail to attract sustainable user communities, generate value and grow. Define your niche and support the projects that help build the brand, and you build intangible assets that are priceless:

• Brand recognition
• Brand awareness
• Credibility
• Social proof

Harmony ate games. No not all games. But the most notable in the ecosystem: DeFi Kingdoms. $5B AUM. It signaled to the world that Harmony is the gaming chain. Even when DFK launched Crystalvale season two on AVAX, Harmony is still the game chain. Because once your brand gains reputation, it’s yours to lose.

Reputation is stronger than reality. Fantom is still the DeFi chain, with or without Andre. But it couldn’t have become that without the projects that solidified that rep. It wouldn’t have become that without another thing: telling people what it was.

Harmony say: we are for games.

Fantom say: we are for DeFi

Take a page from SaaS: Salesforce. There are way better solutions than Salesforce. But it ate the CRM vertical. Try getting an enterprise customer to move from the platform. Let us know how it goes.

So how do you help the projects help you brand your blockchain? First, you have to decide what you want to be when you grow up. It’s a choice. There are many verticals out there that future chains will own. Who will own:

• The image-driven chain
• The video chain
• The bio-med chain
• The travel chain
• The learn to earn chain

A highly specialized chain optimized for a specific vertical’s unique problems eats the world. The reason: your chain will become known for what it allows users to do really well, said differently the problem it solves. Apps are really just functions. Humans see function over form (Brain sees sitting thing first. Later it’s called a chair). Once brand recognition, awareness, credibility and social proof are built, users will know to come to your chain for specific reasons. Keep them engaged, keep allowing them to create value, they stay.

To build your brand, your chain must attract and invest in the projects who will build your vertical and help you eat the world.

If you need help choosing or developing the right ones, we can help.

If you’re interested in learning about more growth strategies for your project, we encourage you to connect on Twitter @bryancolligan. Join our Telegram for members-only alpha on projects we’re watching and DYOR resources for creating growth, credibility and engagement for your project.