Religion as a framework for blockchain

By Paul Veradittakit

Compiled by: Block unicorn

Today'sBlockchainIt’s getting close to the “good enough” stage.

The transaction cost has been reduced to less than $0.01 per transaction, and Solana, Avax, Sei, Sui, and L2 On-chain throughput may be sufficient, and manyBlockchainClaims of 10-50K+ transactions per second (TPS) are being processed, but this will only become a significant factor when the TPS limit is reached, which may not occur until the next 3-5 years.wallet(such as Rabby, Zerion and Backpack), the path to a better user experience is now clearly visible.

For the new first layer (L1) and second layer (L2), it’s already hard to find differentiation. After achieving these basic entry requirements, everything becomes a competition for attention and a community of “followers.”The best example is religion, a model of a strong community of followers.

So, how can we become the next religion? How can we become the next BTC/ETH/SOL?

Every religion needs a leader

No one knows that ETH has a genius boy Vitalik, whose blog posts are regarded as the Bible. SOL has Anatoly, who argues with ETH geeks every day on Twitter.

The best example here is probably the most notorious LUNA, a controversial cult leader Do Kwon or DK (RIP) who laughs at every naysayer. Cardano (ADA) is another great example, he streams several times a week from sunny Colorado.

BlockchainThe leaders of BTC have become legendary figures who pass on this ideology and description of future development in the form of white papers. When these legendary figures or leaders die, the ideology becomes stronger. Satoshi Nakamoto is "dead", but the ideology of BTC is stronger than ever. If Vitalik dies, ETH will still exist and thrive as a decentralized world computer.

I find that there is a problem with projects like Big Token, that is, there is no central figure to worship or rely on. This is also the second layer of ETH (L2) are in trouble, they rely on the myth of ETH, but they are followers of the existing religion. Therefore, I think ETH L2 still needs to come from these centralized organizations such as Base x CoinbaseexchangeConduct strong marketing because theirCommunityIt won't be as powerful as L1.

Every religion needs a near-death moment and a resurrection

Jesus was crucified but rose from the dead. BTC experienced its near-death moment with the Mt Gox hack but then it made a miraculous comeback.ETH in The DAO In the hacking incident (you can read about this hacking incidentWho stole $11 billion in Ethereum?), 14% of ETH is locked incontractThenCommunityThe proposal to fork a new ETH chain has seen a quick recovery and become stronger. SOL is closely tied to FTX, and when FTX fell, SOL fell from $35 to $9, and people saw them as the next LUNA. However, now we are seeing its recovery.

Breaking away from a near-death encounter that wiped out all but the most devoted supporters also forms the basis of your most hardcore followers.

LUNA fell, but never came back (but still has “Luna Classic” enthusiasts). FTM also fell, but it lacked a mythical figure who looked more like Andre Cronje (AC) than Michael Kong (CEO of FTM). Fortunately, other chains (unfortunately) have not yet suffered a near-death blow, as many of them are still too new, including the second layer (L2).

Make early believers rich, such as increasing their wealth a hundredfold

Price increases are the best business development strategy, you make people rich and they become your biggest supporters. Bitcoin has seen over 200x growth between 2013 and 2018 for its early adopters, forming its core following.Ethereum, on the other hand, grew about 40-fold between 2020 and 2022, enriching its ICO backers, a diverse group who chose Ethereum over hundreds of other ICO projects.

On the other hand, SOL has increased by about 100 times in the last cycle, but most of it is held by venture capital companies rather than the community, so its grassroots influence is not as good as ETH.Unexpected airdrops like JTO and PYTH enriched the Solana community, where those who staked 1 SOL received $10,000 in JTO. They made the little people who could only afford 1 SOL rich, instead of distributing based on the amount of SOL staked, which favored the rich.Note that most airdrops (or points for that matter) do not enrich the community, only unexpected airdrops do.

During the bear market, L2’s ARB and OP also conducted quite successful airdrops. This is clearly a positive feedback loop, where rising prices attract more enthusiastic supporters and attention, which in turn leads to another rise in prices.

From now on, I will be looking at how TIA used the momentum from the airdrop and the subsequent 10x price action. Early Celestia developers can now receive ~$200k in airdrops. SEI, on the other hand, screwed up their airdrop and lostXiaobai NavigationEarly community members, but now slowly rebuilding it. Aptos and Sui are also venture capital chains, so a great airdrop strategy is needed to win organic community support.

Building religious communities using memes and unique identifiers

You need memes that spread quickly and easily, even with monetary incentives. You need inside jokes so people feel like they belong to an exclusive club. You need people to blindly support a “greater cause” because they feel like they belong.

Nothing illustrates this better than the “laser eye” BTC geeks (Bitcoin laser eyes can be said to be a cultural attribute of the Bitcoin community, vigorously promoting Bitcoin consensus). For Ethereum, there is “.eth” X name (referring to the fact that many Twitter users’ nicknames end with .eth). With SOL, people would use “◎” or “.sol” - the way Solana is played, not many people use it. But now BONK, dogwifhat, Popcat, etc. lead the Solana culture. You also have 0xmert who basically lives on X and laughs at every Ethereum geek. AVAX has the “” X name, while OP and ARB use and instead.

Memes must grow naturally from the community, you can't impose memes on the community.You can't justTokenThe community added an "Inu" to the end of the name and considered it a successful project (because Shiba Inu has the suffix Inu, many meme coins also add Inu to the end of their names, thinking they are successful memes). For example, "Solana inu" did not become popular, but $BONK and $WIF did. The Base community performed surprisingly well on $BALD, which was original and a little interesting, but unfortunately ended up being a scam.

You need a charismatic leader with a strong narrative to kickstart the flywheel and lay the foundation for your followers. Then it becomes a positive feedback loop: early community → memes and culture → price increase → more community → more memes → price increase → more community.

The closest thing to a "religious community" I've seen outside of the profession is Berachain. These people just understand crypto humor and community.SEI has done quite well in terms of multiple “Sei” puns, for example, the $SEIYAN community even launched an ecosystem fund. Sui and Aptos are somewhat lacking in this regard, but I believe these will follow as the number increases.

A simple narrative or one-line dialogue as a rallying cry

To spread your religious beliefs, you need a simple sentence to sell it. BTC is "digital gold" and ETH is "the world computer".SOL is "parallel processing" or "ETH killer". Recently, there have been some strong claims that Celestia-led "modularBlockchain", and "Parallel EVM" of SEI and Monad.

It’s much easier to tell people you have a “parallel EVM” (still an EVM, but the chain runs faster) than to tell them EIP-4844 will reduce the data cost of Ethereum Rollups by introducing blobs submitted via KZG.

Summarize

Blockchain的成功归结于强大的社区。一个由开发者、投机者和用户组成的社区。而最强大的社区是宗教。

With over 240 L1/L2s and only a handful of original applications, blockchain faces stiff competition for attention. Technology is no longer a differentiator. There’s a reason Blast doesn’t talk much about their tech stack (no one cares) and focuses on their community and yield.

I wrote this post because everyone loves to speculate on L1/L2 because there is a market premium (and it’s also the easiest narrative to understand when “investing in blockchain technology”). But I actually prefer to talk about real-world use cases.

So which L1/L2 will become the largest religions in the next cycle?

The article comes from the Internet:Religion as a framework for blockchain

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