Editor's Note: The crypto industry is entering a new phase of communication. In the past, a whitepaper, a token, a grand vision were enough to attract the attention of media, community, and capital. However, after regulatory scrutiny, industry scandals, and accumulating information noise, the external audience's patience for a "story" is decreasing.
The core argument presented in this article is that the crypto industry has entered the 'show me' era: the market no longer just asks what you want to do, but instead questions what you have already done, who is using it, whether the data is genuine, and if partnerships are tangible. As traditional financial institutions such as BlackRock, Fidelity, JPMorgan, Franklin Templeton, and others enter the crypto space with tangible products rather than concepts, the industry's standards for "credible projects" have been elevated.
This means that the communication logic of startups must also change. The vision is still important, but it can no longer replace evidence. Real transaction volume, mainnet data, active users, revenue, retention, third-party validation, audit reports, and publicly endorsed partnerships are becoming a new 'evidence stack.' A more convincing statement now is: 'We have reduced cross-border settlement time from three days to four minutes and real businesses are already using it,' rather than 'We are building the future of payments.'
For crypto projects, this is both a pressure and an opportunity. A higher communication threshold will weed out a lot of noise that relies on conceptual packaging, but it will also make teams with real products, data, and users more visible. The question is no longer whether a project can tell a big enough story but whether it can provide enough solid evidence to support the continuation of that story.
The following is the original text:
For decades, the tech industry has been able to gain public recognition and external acclaim with interesting ideas that emerge from within it.
At one point, this situation reached a point where startup companies' commonly mentioned "Minimum Viable Product" (MVP) even shared the same abbreviation with stars like Jay-Z. (New York forever.)
However, in the past decade, especially in recent years, the tech industry has undergone significant changes: MVPs, good ideas, and excellent teams are no longer enough to impress external audiences. The crypto industry has been particularly impacted – regulatory uncertainties hanging in the balance, coupled with bad actors constantly making headlines, have made people's "BS radar" increasingly sensitive. As the noise grows, people have also become more proactive in filtering information.
And as traditional finance (TradFi) players truly begin to take the crypto industry seriously — such as BlackRock launching a tokenized money market fund, Fidelity applying for a crypto ETF, JPMorgan Chase settling trades on its proprietary blockchain — the focus of the discussion has also shifted. It's not just about "what crypto really is," but also about "what truly deserves serious consideration in this industry."
We are now at this juncture. This juncture has quietly rewritten all the communication rules for every crypto builder. Welcome to the era of "Show Me the Evidence."
What Has Changed? Why Now?
For most of its history, the crypto industry has operated on a "promise logic": the vision itself is the product. You could launch a project with just a whitepaper and a token, and the media and crypto community would be willing to follow. What everyone was betting on was always what something might become in the future, rather than what it had already proven. Today, this dynamic has changed.
Why? In simple terms, I believe this shift in communication comes from the combined effect of several factors: the technology has been developing for over twenty years, and people's skepticism towards it continues to persist or even deepen; traditional financial institutions have massively entered the crypto space, not just in name but actually launching products; at the same time, the AI industry is delivering consumer-facing, directly perceptible products — although it seems like an overnight success, it has actually been building up for decades.
Large institutions are no longer merely observing this field, nor are they isolating related efforts in "innovation departments"; they are starting to build infrastructure for scalable applications: BlackRock and Larry Fink fully embracing tokenization; Fidelity building custody and ETF infrastructure; JPMorgan Chase launching the Onyx network; Franklin Templeton launching an on-chain money market fund.
These are no longer experiments but real products, backed by the compliance frameworks, institutional clients, and balance sheets of traditional finance.
The large-scale entry of traditional finance has raised the bar for the crypto industry in terms of "seriousness." When the world's largest asset management company starts tokenizing government bonds, a credible project needs to prove something to the media, partners, and the market that has also risen.
From a policy perspective, this industry has also entered the mainstream. With stablecoin legislation (GENIUS Act) passed last year and now the comprehensive market structure bill (CLARITY Act) set for a full Senate vote, product communications are expected to further evolve. If the CLARITY Act is passed, founders will be able to openly discuss what they are building to an unprecedented degree of specificity.
All of these changes have stacked up to mean that this industry has matured — whether it's ready for it or not.
The upshot is that the starting point of the narrative is no longer "what are you doing," but rather, "what have you done? Who's using it?"
In practice, this means that an attractive story alone can no longer really move the needle. We need evidence.
The New Proof Stack
The narrative that used to work was: "We're building X for Y, and here's why it matters." Today, that narrative needs a second act. I call it the "proof stack": a layer of evidence that turns hypothetical, abstract storytelling into credible, concrete storytelling.
So, what does a proof stack look like?
Substantive partnerships, not just "engagement." This means real integrations, contracts deployed, and a willingness to publicly explain why your partners chose you. In the past, partnership announcements were often a lazy substitute for flagging growth. Now, a partnership is only valid if it's evidence of growth itself. That is, a major institution, protocol, or platform choosing you out of a dozen alternatives, and you can coherently explain why.
It also means you need to share more hard data: not testnet but mainnet transaction volumes; active wallet numbers; revenue; retention curves. Not "growing fast" but specific percentages, timeframes, and benchmarks. Reporters covering this space are becoming more and more sophisticated, doing their own on-chain checks. If your data doesn't hold up to scrutiny from Dune, CoinMarketCap, or other analytics dashboards, your story doesn't hold up either.
The proof stack also includes real product-market fit signals. Who's using your product? Why are they continuing to use it, including why other market participants are continuing to use it?
I'd argue that the clearest signal of fit isn't a press release; it's a pre-existing, organically growing community before the PR push.
If your most fervent users are your investors or project stakeholders, it's a yellow flag because they have an economic incentive to pump the volume. But if these users are coming to you through word of mouth, that's a story worth telling.
The key here is that the coverage and interest exist before the media blitz, not because of it. Third-party validation, audits, independent research — these all count as important evidence. The most credible evidence is that which you haven't contrived. That is, others are proving to the world: there is something here.
What Does This Mean for Early-Stage Startups?
When you are still in the early stages, your product is taking shape, but your vision is already very clear, the most common urge is to lead with that vision, with that declaration. It feels authentic. And it is authentic.
However, in the current environment, this expression will be seen as a risk.
A better approach is to craft a narrative around what you can prove. Start with your most certain data point, no matter how small. For example, having a thousand daily active users who don't even know the founder is more convincing than a $1 million strategic investment. A protocol that processed $50 million in transaction volume in the 90 days before launch is more compelling than a protocol that will handle volume once it scales.
This also means that you need to describe your proposition more precisely. "We are building the future of payments" is an argument, not evidence. "We have reduced cross-border settlement time from three days to four minutes and three companies are already using it today" is an evidence point, naturally embedding a larger argument within it.
For the communications team and founders handling communication themselves, the practical implication is that the story should grow out of the facts, rather than starting with the story and then working backward to find factual support. This is a different way of writing—arguably harder in a sense, and more disciplined—but ultimately more effective. Especially now.
The Long Game
All of this does not mean that vision is no longer important. The best crypto communications still run on two tracks simultaneously: here is what we have built, and here is why it is just the beginning of something much larger. The difference lies in the sequencing of the narrative and the balance of information.
When I say "balance," I mean that in 2021, you might get away with 80% vision and 20% substance. But today, that ratio has flipped.
You can still release whitepapers, put out manifestos…but that's not enough anymore. Vision is still crucial; it gives meaning to evidence points and provides a direction for journalists and analysts to continue writing. However, the vision must be earned by the substance beneath it.
The era of "show me the evidence" is not a temporary industry correction. The maturity of the crypto audience—whether media, institutions, or retail—has permanently leveled up.
The best builders in this space have realized that this is actually good news. If you have real growth, real data, and real partnerships, a higher bar works in your favor; it filters out the noise and makes your signal louder by comparison.
The question is, is your communication strategy designed to showcase this evidence, or are you still in the stage of promising this evidence?
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