We in crypto have a problem. We're so busy patting ourselves on the back for building the future that we've forgotten to sell it. And for years, the guiding principle for our transit agencies has been “build it and they will come.” Guess what? They didn't. Not in the numbers we expected, anyway. And Solana's surge? It's a blaring klaxon, screaming in our faces that tech alone isn't enough.
Tech Purity vs. User Adoption?
Let’s face it, the crypto space can be a very technical, goofy place appearing at times to be a cult of technical purists. Decentralization is the sacred cow, and any suggestion of a compromise is heresy. Ethereum is definitely an example of amazing innovation. At times it seems to place these lofty ideals above what’s best for the user. High gas fees? Simply the cost of living in the decentralized dream, right. Complex interfaces? You'll figure it out, right?
Yet laypersons are not generally concerned with the details of consensus mechanisms. They’re looking for something that’s user-friendly, quick and low-cost. They want something that works. And that's where Solana comes in.
Solana isn't perfect, far from it. It’s suffered from widespread outages and public criticism. It gets something crucial: that crypto needs to be accessible to the masses. It emphasized speed with extremely low fees, creating a meme coin and NFT experimentalist’s playground. You know what? It worked.
Is Solana more centralized than Ethereum? Probably. Is it really just a less technologically sophisticated effort in some respects? Maybe. It's undeniably more popular right now. Why? Because it prioritized usability and marketing. It leaned into the meme culture, the absurdity, the goofiness. What it created wasn’t just a blockchain, but a community.
That’s not to suggest that the issue of decentralization is irrelevant. After all, it’s a core principle of crypto – and it’s definitely something we should be working towards. That shouldn’t be the reason why it’s a barrier to entry for the average user. It doesn’t have to be an excuse for a bad user experience.
Crypto Marketing Like Doge Did It
Think about Dogecoin. Technically, it's nothing special. It’s just another fork of Litecoin with a Shiba Inu meme pasted on it. Yet it shot to stardom, not for its tech innovation, but due to its high-profile marketing. Elon Musk, SpaceX, and Tesla. He was selling a story, a vibe, a sense of coming home. He harnessed the power of memes and nefarious community.
That's the Doge/Musk model. It's not about selling technical specifications. It's about selling a story. It's about creating a movement.
The same goes for Solana’s recent success. The Silly Dragon meme? Genius. It’s engaging, it’s humorous, it’s meme-able – most importantly, it embodies the ethos of our Solana community so well. It's not about complex whitepapers and intricate technical diagrams. It's about a cute dragon and a feeling of belonging.
As you can see, the celebrity coins are doomed to fail because they aren’t monetizing influence in collateralized debt obligations, they’re monetizing time. NFTs were going to be the new carrier for celebrity value, but didn’t work out. Blur’s points system artificially manufactured demand and really broke the NFT market. The airdrop era is ending. These are the warning signs.
Can Ethereum Learn from Solana's Success?
It appears that the Ethereum Foundation is finally starting to come to terms with this reality. They’re making noise on increasing execution efficiency (RISC-V) and democratizing power. Is it enough? Is it fast enough?
Ethereum must make concessions to the “secular world,” as the Op-Ed’s original headline called it. It needs to get its hands dirty. Most importantly, it needs to stop being scared of memes and start courting them. Most importantly, it’s got to put the user experience front and center.
Look at Pump.fun.…It’s a Solana native, the way Uniswap was an Ethereum native. It succeeds not in spite of but because Solana offers it the hostile ecosystem where it can truly flourish. Ethereum needs to make sure that it’s the sort of place that allows innovation and experimentation to thrive. This will likely mean giving up on some of its technical purity.
Crypto isn't just about technology. It's about people. It's about building communities. And it's about marketing. Solana's rise proves that. It is important to hear from it and we could afford not to, lest we allow to get left behind. Absent that action, we’ll merely remain a collection of smart people talking. If we want to be changemakers, we need to do more than just lecture the world. And what good is that?
Forget the tech for a minute. What's your story?
