amanda cassatt
I was CMO of Consensys from 2016 to 2019. As such I have a unique (though slightly dated) perspective on the Ethereum Foundation and who should be marketing Ethereum. Thought I’d pop my ideas and some history into a thread. Disclaimer others may have experienced the same events differently.
ConsenSys and the EF worked closely together at the start with some shared resources and personnel. Whichever one employed you, you were working on Ethereum. The structural difference was ConsenSys was for-profit, making it the logical home for commercial endeavors.
ConsenSys was part venture studio working on products like MetaMask and part enterprise consultancy. The latter created a massive impact with EntEthAlliance. The impact of associating Ethereum w/ Microsoft, JPM, Santander etc. cannot be overstated. Look at the Feb 2017 chart.
When I interviewed to join ConsenSys, I told Joseph that I wanted to make Ethereum like Starbucks and the MLB. It sounded like a joke. ConsenSys like EF was very academic. I was one of the most commercial ppl in the room. They worried marketing would ruin Ethereum.
Their worry was totally justified. To most people at the time “marketing” meant advertising. Instagram influencers slinging vitamin waters with #ad. Imagine marketing Ethereum that way! Cringe and horrible.
Our vision of marketing was different. We wanted to connect Ethereum with people that would actually use it, if only they knew about it. That meant marketing that looked more like comms (media, social, blogs) and operations (helping hosts organize meetups) than advertising.
The EF organized @EFDevcon, while we hosted @EtherealSummit and supported meetup groups. In addition to events we did a ton of press and content creation. We had a big multimedia team almost like a news outlet inside of ConsenSys devoted to educational content about Ethereum.
ConsenSys concentrated the incentive (ETH), capability (marketing and other teams), and will to market Ethereum. This type of commercial activity felt natural and logical to live inside a for-profit company.
In the 2018 bear market, ConsenSys didn’t want to be Ethereum’s sole marketing engine. As a for-profit raising money, it made sense to focus on marketing our products. Plus the original marketing effort worked- mission accomplished! In 2019 I left and founded @serotonin_hq
The EF was never the main entity responsible for marketing Ethereum. They were never configured to do this. It’s too commercial for them. That’s why it fell to ConsenSys originally. The EF should accelerate what it does best, technology, not be forced to walk on its hind legs.
When I left the CMO role at ConsenSys I thought marketing Ethereum should fall to its community rather than EF or ConsenSys. That’s why I summoned @MarketingDAO bringing together ecosystem marketers. ConsenSys committed to fund it but never came through. EF wasn’t interested.
In hindsight I realize MarketingDAO was the wrong approach. We had concentrated the will and capability to market Ethereum, but not the incentives. The DAO had no great pool of ETH. The participants were volunteers with no skin in the game. I won’t make that mistake again.
I watch with healthy skepticism and hope as Second and Third Foundations for Ethereum emerge. I am involved with and supportive of @Etherealize_io. The talent and the will to market Ethereum are there. But for this to work there needs to be the concentration of incentives.
What does success look like?
@Etherealize_io or similar must win hearts and minds of institutions, retail, and developers worldwide. We have a serious massive amount of work ahead. The scale is far greater than my contributions in the 2017 cycle.
Fun fact! The highest budget I ever got to market Ethereum and all our products was 10M. In 2017 it was more like 2M.
gof.art.blog 