a16z crypto: The cryptocurrency industry has entered the "seeing is believing" era

Author: Paul Cafiero, Head of Crypto Communications at a16z; Source: a16z crypto; Compiled by Shaw, Jinse Finance

For decades, the tech industry has always won public recognition and outside praise by drawing on a steady stream of novel ideas. In the startup world, the abbreviation for “Minimum Viable Product,” or MVP, happens to be exactly the same as the initials of New York NBA star Jalen Brunson.

But over the past ten years—especially in recent years—the tech industry has undergone a dramatic shift. Simply having an MVP, a brilliant idea, and a top-tier team is no longer enough to move mainstream audiences. The crypto industry has been hit the hardest. On top of regulatory inquiries and a large number of negative projects taking up headlines, public skepticism and vigilance have increased significantly, and the constant noise in the industry has taught people to proactively filter information.

When traditional financial (TradFi) institutions begin seriously moving into crypto—with BlackRock issuing tokenized money market funds, Fidelity filing crypto ETF applications, and JPMorgan using its own blockchain to complete transaction settlement—the industry’s narrative completely changes. People no longer only discuss what crypto is; instead, they start asking: how can you truly earn real recognition within the industry?

We are now in this brand-new stage, where the rules of industry communication have quietly been rewritten, and everyone in the field must adapt.

Welcome to the “Show Me Era.”

What has changed, and why now?

In the early days of crypto, the industry’s communication logic was essentially “pie-in-the-sky storytelling”: the vision itself was the product. Projects could go live with nothing more than a white paper and tokens, and the media and crypto community would naturally pay attention. Everyone was betting on a project’s potential in the future, not on results that had already been delivered. That logic no longer works at all today.

At its root, this shift in communication logic has been driven by three overlapping factors: first, skepticism toward crypto technology—an attitude that has persisted for decades, continues to ferment, and deepens over time; second, large traditional financial institutions entering the crypto space at scale, no longer stopping at the conceptual level but instead launching products that are actually implemented; and third, the AI industry appearing to have exploded overnight, when in reality it has been built up over decades—now rolling out mature products for everyday consumers in bulk.

Large institutions are no longer just watching from the sidelines, or limiting related activities to internal innovation departments—they are fully committing to large-scale, real-world deployment: BlackRock CEO Larry Fink fully embracing the tokenization track, Fidelity building end-to-end custody and ETF infrastructure, JPMorgan launching the Onyx blockchain network, and Franklin Templeton launching on-chain money market funds.

These are no longer trial experiments. They are mature, fully deployed products, supported by a complete traditional finance compliance framework, institutional client groups, and strong assets and liabilities.

When traditional finance enters at scale, it raises the bar for evaluating “legitimate and trustworthy projects” in crypto. When the world’s largest asset manager tokenizes U.S. treasuries, media, counterparties, and the market’s expectations for proven performance from high-quality projects naturally rise as well.

From a policy perspective, the industry has also officially moved into mainstream view. Last year, the GENIUS Act passed smoothly. Now the CLARITY Act, which fully regulates market structure, is set to be submitted for a full-vote consideration by the entire Senate, and the wording that projects use when communicating with the public will be adjusted further afterward. If the CLARITY Act becomes law, founders will be able to disclose project construction details in a more fine-grained and concrete way—something that was completely impossible in the past.

Whether or not the industry is ready, crypto has already entered maturity.

This directly reshapes the industry communication environment: the outside world no longer starts by asking “What are you doing?” Instead, the question becomes: “What have you already deployed? Who is actually using it?”

At the execution level, a purely compelling story narrative can no longer move the market. The market now needs hard, verifiable proof.

A New System of Proof of Performance

The promotional phrasing that used to work—“We build product Y for group X, and this track is significant”—must now be supplemented with a second layer. I call it a proof of performance system: a complete set of evidence that turns hollow, abstract vision storytelling into credible, tangible outcomes.

What does a complete proof of performance system include?

• Partnerships with real implementation value, not just talks and negotiations. There should be genuine technical integrations, deployed on-chain contracts, and partners willing to publicly endorse why they chose you. In the past, a single partnership announcement could be used as a substitute for demonstrating project progress; today, only the partnership itself can substantiate business growth and be convincing. In other words, a leading institution, protocol, or platform chose you among many competitors, and you can clearly explain the reasons behind that choice.

• Public, detailed, hard-numbers data. Publish real mainnet transaction volumes (not just testnet data), active wallet addresses, revenue, and user retention curves. Don’t just say “growth is rapid.” Provide specific percentages, time periods, and benchmarks for comparison. Journalists in the industry are becoming more professional over time, and they will independently verify the data through on-chain analytics platforms such as Dune and CoinMarketCap. If the data cannot withstand on-chain verification, the project’s narrative will lose credibility.

• Signals of real product-market fit. Clearly define the user segment, as well as the core reasons why users—including other industry clients—continue to retain and use the product.

I believe the strongest evidence of product-market fit is not a launch event, but rather the organic formation of a native community that arises before PR efforts, then keeps expanding.

If a project’s most loyal users are all investors and token-holding stakeholders, that is a risk-warning signal. These users exist with financial incentives. But if users actively find the project through word of mouth, seeking it out on their own—that is the kind of quality material worth publicizing.

All effective substantiation comes from external endorsements formed spontaneously before PR: third-party institution collaborations, security audits, and independent industry research. The most persuasive proof has never been staged or self-produced by the project itself—it is third parties proactively recognizing the project’s value in the market.

Lessons for early-stage project communications

In the early days, when the product is not yet mature but the vision is very clear, teams are very likely to choose grand vision and manifesto-style content as their main messaging. This approach is sincere by intention and there’s nothing inherently wrong with it.

But in today’s market environment, it only leads outsiders to see the project as having a higher risk profile.

A more reliable communication approach is to plan the narrative sequence around already delivered outcomes. Prioritize the data you are most confident in, even if the scale is not huge: 1,000 daily active users who have absolutely no awareness of the founding team are far more convincing than an investor strategy involving hundreds of millions. A protocol with $50 million in trading volume within 90 days of launch is far better than empty talk about “a massive trading volume after we scale in the future.”

At the same time, outward promotional wording must be precise and restrained. “We are building the future of payments” is only a viewpoint vision and not a proof of performance; “We have reduced cross-border settlement time from 3 days to 4 minutes, and three existing companies are already using it in production,” is the real, concrete evidence that carries the vision.

For dedicated communication teams—and for founders who personally take responsibility for speaking externally—the core operational logic is: narratives should be generated based on facts, not by forcing narratives to package facts. This kind of content creation has a higher barrier and demands greater rigor, but only this kind of content can truly move the market. Especially now.

Long-term development perspective

The above does not mean visions are no longer important. Mature crypto project communication always runs on two tracks in parallel: one track shows current deployed results, and the other track explains the broader long-term value behind the product. The key difference lies in the order of the narrative and the share of content.

In 2021, the industry could still accept a promotional mix of 80% vision and 20% deployed results. Now, that ratio has completely flipped.

You can still publish white papers and industry manifestos, but relying on only those is far from enough. Visions still have value—they can add depth to deployed metrics and provide long-term interpretive angles for media and analysts. But grand visions must be supported by solid deployed results in order to earn market recognition.

The “Show Me Era” is not a short-term downturn or adjustment in the industry. As the crypto audience (media, institutions, and everyday retail investors) continues to improve in professionalism, the evaluation standards will permanently rise.

High-quality builders within the industry have already realized that this change is actually good news for projects that do the work steadily. If you have real business growth, complete data, and heavyweight deployed partners, higher industry thresholds will automatically filter out industry noise—making your project’s advantages stand out even more.

The key question is this: Is your communication strategy meant to showcase deployed achievements, or is it still only going to describe future promises?