Crypto has not marketed itself well. Although most readers of this blog may protest, the fact is that - to many of the genpop - crypto appears to be exactly what the media portrayal often says it is: full of scammers, hackers, and criminals. A mad medley of get rich quick schemes perpetrated by cryptobros through algorithmic marketing campaigns designed to sucker the little guy into spaffing away their hard earned money in the hope of a better life. Just the latest line going up before the inevitable crash.

A Decade of Marketing Excess

And the truth is in many cases they are right. Just look at the currently raging memecoin cycle and how much most people are losing every day, despite this same manic exploitation happening in ‘21, in ‘17, in ‘14 - and so on. Nothing wrong with responsible gambling, of course, but to most outsiders and many insiders the majority of crypto is just that - gambling and speculation.

It’s all about the money. This EU speech chastises crypto’s recent advances, but it too is solely focused on the finances. The bellwether crypto, Bitcoin, is nothing but an alternate money system and imagined (that doesn’t mean not real) store of value. If all you talk about is the 21 million supply schedule and t0k3n0m1cs, for many talented creators, it gets pretty old pretty fast. 

And there is the massive suffusion of altcoins which simply very fancily dressed Ponzis. Let’s not get started on the thousands of differently dressed reward structures and the associated language which fundamentally boils down to ‘give us your money and if enough people do you will get more back;’ There is still new technology yes, maybe they have smart contracts - or perhaps  ‘nightshade sharding’, ‘proof of history’, ‘liquid proof of stake’, ‘subnetworks’, ‘whispersync’, ‘proof of spacetime’. Yes these are very real blockchain advances/variations, but often they are merely vessels through which the main aim can be achieved: pamping the FDV for the ultimate VC sell off and team supply dump. 

It’s not a good look, because that attitude then perpetuates itself right throughout the crypto ecosystem. For 99% of these projects, their reach extends their grasp. Yet, because of the strange fever dream that is crypto’s extraordinary rise to prominence as a global asset class, what you say you will do is far more important than what you actually do. Take a random handful of any developer roadmaps around top crypto published in, say, 2021, the peak of the last mainstream mania - how many have actually been achieved? Very few. There’s always a pivot, there’s always a new ‘technology’ which is really just a redux of an old technology. There is always a new attempted utility, usually one that chases the tail of another successful marketing campaign - sorry technological advance - perpetrated by another VC chain or cryptobro developer team.

Crypto’s Developer Marketing Problem

It’s massively alienating for developers, who then don’t get involved - or get involved for the wrong reasons - and then technology in the space doesn’t evolve at the pace it could potentially grow at. Developer tooling in crypto is abysmal, even 15 years on. In part, this is because talented developers make useful ecosystem-supporting tools when they can work for a VC chain and get enormous exits. Developer onboarding is terrible with so much non-universal lingo and jargon. Compensation packages are often token-based, the very speculative asset trying to be pumped. Developers are not involved in the ‘decentralized’ aspect of the ecosystem at all. Also, there is almost zero standardization in crypto, making it particularly unappealing for software devs who are used to well-documented languages and architectures within which to work. Then there are the risks. Make a mistake as a crypto developer and suddenly millions of dollars of assets can vanish overnight when one of your smart contract bugs gets exploited. A daily anxiety that many developers feel they could do without. And did we mention the constant need to pivot to chase the latest trend already?

Obviously some will follow money, it’s their prerogative, but most developers out there actually want to build tools that change the world - not hype-boost shiny substanceless tokens. Yes, developer activity is highest on successful chains, but that’s only because it gives a chance for subsequent utility to thrive.  There is a sense for most developers of crypto not actually aiming to solve real world problems - in many cases just adding them. “What’s the point?” I don’t want to empower gambling and money laundering. I won’t want to rub shoulders with insufferable “crypto bros”.

An Antidote to the Corruption

And you, dear reader, know so much of this is such a dark corruption of the potential inherent in blockchain, distributed ledger technology, distributed access-control systems, tokenized system architecture, trustless protocols, self-sovereign digital economies, consensus-based infrastructure, and so on. For us and our tools, we like the term Open Web tech, something which is a foundational substrate for a better internet to be built upon, delivering autonomy to developers and users alike. 

Yet that potential starry future is occluded by the obscene focus on hype and finance. Many of our community ask why we haven’t yet produced a roadmap, and the truth is that a roadmap without actionable delivery is just a hype document to sell tokens. Many ask when we will enact our TGE: we will do so when our tech has matured to the point where the tokens produced are delivering utility for software developers building on Source Network on day one and when SourceHub has begun actively enabling self-sovereign identity, enforcing ACPs and trust anchoring the use of DefraDB in real world applications that running on local edge compute devices globally: smart cars, irrigation systems, vending machines - you name it.

The Source of Hope for the Future

Our plea to alienated developers is this: crypto is brilliant, just immature. These technologies can and will change the world in which we live - Source Network is proof of that. And not every community is obsessed only with their Lamborghini exit. Through cryptographic frameworks, software devs can create and implement solutions with total sovereignty that releases them from the parasitical rent-seeking walled enclosures they’ve spent their lives operating in, and often watched their life’s work wither inside. ZK-based identity systems, autonomous state machines that run perpetually, instantaneous infrastructure in under-served markets - necessary tools for a better world that protects creators and users. And, if you really do want to talk about money, the ability to move millions of dollars of assets through your ecosystem to target needs with a few clicks and near-zero operational overhead due to flat-rate gas fees. The potential is unlimited - but true foundations are needed.

Source Network’s SourceHub - our trust protocol - is just one spoke in our wheel of tools that roll to deliver a better internet for everyone - especially developers. Our tools are about promoting developer sovereignty around their application data and therefore control over its own destiny. We’re about future proofing the internet away from the creeping centralization that threatens to destroy it, and with it our individual liberty. We’re about promoting interoperability and integration across different software environments without data being siloed or harvested against the express consent of the users and developers who produce it. We are building the tools the Internet of Things needs to serve communities, exponentiate local internet utilities, and fundamentally contribute to better society. Privacy, sovereignty and freedom to everyone who is online - i.e everyone in the world. We don’t give a damn about the moon, it’s not that far away from earth. We are targeting the stars, a new conceptual reality for our digital civilization, a new hope for our species as it continues its journey towards Open Web technology.