Author: Paul Cafiero, Public Relations Partner at a16z
Translation: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher
For decades, the technology industry gained public recognition and external acclaim based on the interesting ideas it produced.
So much so that the entrepreneurial concept of "minimum viable product" shares the same acronym as Jalen Brunson (the New York Knicks' star) – MVP.
But the tech landscape has changed drastically over the past decade, and especially in recent years: a minimum viable product (MVP), a great idea, and a great team are no longer enough to capture an external audience. The crypto industry has been hit particularly hard—a mixture of regulatory issues and headline-grabbing bad actors—has sharpened people's ability to separate signal from noise, as they are increasingly inundated and begin to filter.
When traditional finance (TradFi) participants take crypto seriously—such as BlackRock launching tokenized money market funds, Fidelity applying to launch a crypto ETF, JPMorgan settling transactions on its homegrown blockchain—the focus of conversation shifts. It’s no longer just about what crypto is, but also about how to earn recognition within the industry.
This is the moment we find ourselves in. This moment quietly rewrites the rules for everyone building in this space. Welcome to the 'Show Me' era.
What Changed? Why Now?
For much of its history, the crypto industry has followed a logic of promises: vision as product. You could launch a project with just a whitepaper and a token, and the media and crypto community would flock to it. People were always betting on what something might become, not on what it had already proven. But this dynamic has shifted.
Why? In short, I believe this shift in communication style is the result of a confluence of factors: the deepening, persistent skepticism about this technology (which has been around for over two decades); the massive entry of traditional financial institutions into the crypto space, not just nominally but actually launching products; and the artificial intelligence industry (whose overnight success is actually the result of decades of work) launching tangible, consumer-facing products.
Major institutions are no longer just watching or confining innovation work to their separate 'innovation departments,' but are starting to build scaled 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 TradFi compliance frameworks, institutional clients, and balance sheets.
The massive influx of TradFi has raised the bar for what constitutes a 'serious' project in the crypto space. When the world's largest asset manager starts tokenizing Treasury bonds, the level a credible project needs to demonstrate to the media, partners, and markets also increases.
From a policy perspective, the industry has also entered the mainstream. With stablecoin legislation (the Lummis-Gillibrand bill passed the Senate last year) and now comprehensive market structure legislation (the CLARITY Act expected to go to a full Senate vote for a final vote), the way products are communicated will also change further. If the CLARITY Act passes, founders will be able to talk publicly about the products they are building with an unprecedented degree of specificity.
In short, the industry has matured, whether it was ready or not.
The resulting communication environment no longer starts from 'what are you building,' but rather:
"What have you built? Who is using it?"
In practice, this means a compelling story alone is no longer enough to move the needle. We need evidence.
The New Proof Stack
The pitch that used to work—"We're building X for Y because of Z"—now needs an upgrade. I call it the 'layers of evidence': it turns hypothetical, abstract narratives into credible, concrete reality.
So what does this proof stack look like?
Genuine, tangible partnerships—not 'in discussions.' Actual integrations, signed contracts, and partners willing to go on the record about why they chose you. In the past, announcing a partnership was often a perfunctory way to measure actual impact. Today, it's only effective if the partnership itself is a demonstration of impact. That is, a major institution, protocol, or platform chose you among alternatives; and you can explain why.
It also means sharing more hard data, such as mainnet (not testnet) transaction volume, number of active wallets, revenue, and user retention curves. Not 'growing rapidly,' but specific percentages, timeframes, and baselines. Reporters covering this space are becoming more sophisticated and will do on-chain verification. If your data doesn't hold up under scrutiny from Dune, CoinMarketCap, or other analytics tools, your story won't either.
The proof stack also involves sharing real signals of product-market fit. Who is using your product? Why do they (and others in the market) continue to use it?
I think the best proof of product fit is not a product launch announcement, but an organic, growing community that exists *before* the PR push.
If your most enthusiastic users are your investors or stakeholders, that's a red flag, as they have an economic incentive to hype. But if they are people who found you through word of mouth, that's definitely a story worth telling.
It's all about reporting on what exists *before* the media hype, not after—third-party validation, audits, and independent research. The most credible evidence isn't concocted; it's when someone else tells the world it's 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's tempting to put the vision out first, to write a manifesto. It feels authentic, and it is authentic.
But in the current environment, this is perceived as a risk.
A better approach is to build the narrative around what you can prove. Start with the data points you are most confident in, even if they are small: one thousand daily active users who don't know the founder is more compelling than a one million dollar strategic investment. A protocol that has processed $50 million in transaction volume in its first 90 days is more attractive than one that can handle high volume 'once it scales.'
This also means being more precise in your claims. 'We are building the future of payments' is an argument, not evidence. 'We reduced cross-border settlement time from three days to four minutes, and three businesses are using this service today' is evidence that happens to contain an argument.
For communication teams and founders, the practical implication is that the story should be led by the facts, not the other way around. It's a different way of writing—in some ways harder, requiring more discipline—but it's what actually works. Especially now.
The Long Game
But this doesn't mean vision is irrelevant. The best crypto communications still follow both paths: introducing what we've already built, and explaining why it's just the beginning of a much larger plan. The difference lies in the order of information and the mix.
By 'mix,' I mean that in 2021, you could measure success with 80% vision and 20% substance. Today, that ratio is completely inverted.
You can still publish whitepapers, manifestos... but they are not enough. Vision still matters—it makes the argument more compelling and provides material for journalists and analysts to write about—but the vision must be supported by the substance behind it.
***
The 'Show Me Era' is not a temporary industry adjustment. The crypto audience—including media, institutions, and retail—is becoming increasingly sophisticated, and this trend is here to stay.
The best builders in the space have realized this is actually good news. If you have genuine user growth, real data, and real partners, a higher bar works in your favor; it filters out the noise, making your signal clearer and louder.
The question is, is your communication strategy designed to prove it, or is it still just designed to make promises.
