Written by: DeFi Dave
Translated by: Block unicorn
Cryptocurrency is facing a narrative crisis. Admittedly, technological progress has been made, with infrastructure, throughput, and scalability improving by several orders of magnitude. However, from a cultural perspective, we seem to be "stagnating", largely because we have forgotten how to tell compelling stories. Apart from Bitcoin and Solana meme coins, the field has not significantly introduced new participants over the years, leading to a nihilistic cloud overshadowing the entire industry, especially in Ethereum and related areas.
So, what is the solution? Merely telling stories is not enough, and marketing stories are absolutely insufficient. You must build myths. Myth-building is not just repeating narratives, but paving the way for creating a shared mythological system for others.
While writing this article, I found it difficult to fully encapsulate the myth-building I wanted to define, as it is a new concept still being interpreted. The definition provided here is preliminary, and in future articles, I will expand, clarify, and provide more examples supporting my point of view, while also looking forward to others offering their own ideas and interpretations.
You Need to Build Myths, Anonymous
Myth-building is the act of cultivating a vivid narrative that observes current relevant issues, transmits universally resonant and enduring memes, and uses this information to form a story that people identify with and co-create.
Myth-builders are those who identify emerging ideas, understand their historical context, absorb collective emotions, and weave them into a coherent and compelling narrative, inviting others to participate. They are prophets of myths. Excellent myth-builders do not forcibly specify direction; they listen, serve as guardians of the myth, while remaining responsive to its natural evolution. Myth-building cannot be faked or bought; it must be genuinely experienced and integrated.
Myth-building begins with one or a set of ideas, a seed of meaning, carefully cultivated by the Genesis Block myth-builders in fertile cultural soil, taking root in the hearts of early believers. If a myth crosses a certain threshold and is strong enough, it will attract new groups to contribute through their own rituals, memes, fragments, and actions. Like growth rings on a tree trunk, these contributions mark the myth's growth through each generation, with each bringing new meaning and momentum.
The three levels of myth effectiveness are attention, emotion, and co-creation. The first level, attention, is when people focus a certain amount of energy on the myth but have not yet fully committed. The second level, emotion, is when people begin to feel invested in the myth and form a sense of identity. The third and final level is co-creation, where people's investment in the myth is so deep that they begin to contribute in their own ways. This could be a simple inside joke or copied text, or a milestone event or new narrative that attracts new community members.
At its core, myth-building is a collective narrative creation activity shaped by shared experiences. In its highest form, it transforms repeated behaviors and memes into a shared culture, making people feel a sense of belonging and take action, creating a lineage passed down to future generations.
Myth-Building of Bitcoin and Ethereum
We could provide countless examples of myth-building in practice, but to illustrate my point, I will use only Bitcoin and Ethereum. Satoshi Nakamoto himself can be seen as the "Abrahamic myth-builder" of both, with his ideas not only forming the basis of Bitcoin but also many other protocols, just as Abraham is the father of the world's three major religions.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin began with its Genesis Block myth-builder Satoshi Nakamoto, who conceived it in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. This was the first time in decades that people seriously questioned the modern political and financial world order and envisioned an alternative. In the original white paper, Bitcoin was described as a "peer-to-peer electronic cash system", rooted in the concept of sovereign currency determined by code rather than human institutions. Characteristics such as decentralization, censorship resistance, and scarcity were directly embedded in the protocol.
Bitcoin was not the first attempt at digital currency; DigiCash, Bit Gold, and Hashcash had preceded it. But what Satoshi Nakamoto did was combine the effective parts of these efforts (proof of work, digital signatures, scarcity) into a complete system, while introducing new elements like the longest chain rule and halving mechanism.
Satoshi Nakamoto planted the seed of Bitcoin, etching a message in the Genesis Block: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." From the earliest days, the community spontaneously took on the responsibility of promoting Bitcoin. Their contributions, such as establishing the principle of anonymity, creating the "HODL" meme, Bitcoin Pizza Day rituals, or trauma-bonding events like the Mt. Gox incident that gave rise to "Not your keys, not your coins", became myths.
Viewed through the lens of myth-building, Bitcoin's history itself could be an article, but some important myth-builders and the eras that defined them include: Satoshi Nakamoto and the Cypherpunks, laying the founding principles; "Dread Pirate Roberts" and the Silk Road era, proving Bitcoin's first real-world use case; Roger Ver ("Bitcoin Jesus"), funding the first generation of startups; and Michael Saylor with the Wall Street era, bringing Bitcoin into the institutional realm.
Ethereum
While Bitcoin pioneered myth-building in cryptocurrency, Ethereum is a fruit not far from the mother tree. Ethereum's Genesis Block myth-builder, Vitalik Buterin (V God), came from the Bitcoin world, initially a co-founder and contributor to Bitcoin Magazine, interacting with the community, later participating in different projects, and then charting his own path.
Ethereum further expanded Bitcoin's sovereign concept, making it programmable. Bitcoin was "exiting the system", while Ethereum was "building a system from scratch". Bitcoin's script language was limited, optimized for scarcity; Ethereum is a universal, Turing-complete virtual machine that provides infinite possibilities. This "infinite garden" mindset is the mythical foundation of Ethereum as a world computer, empowering people to build new systems, new worlds, and new paradigms. The early seeds of decentralized finance (DeFi), Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT), and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) were already rooted in Ethereum's genes. It only needed generations of myth-builders to nurture these foundations.
Ethereum officially launched on July 30, 2015, with its Genesis Block containing the same message as Bitcoin: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks", paying homage to its predecessor and further tightening their bloodline.
What makes Ethereum's myth-building unique is its expansion of myths by building upon them. One of the earliest myth-builders, besides V God, was Joe Lubin, who founded ConsenSys. This startup studio incubated early tools like MetaMask, Infura, and Truffle, greatly improving the developer experience on Ethereum. Additionally, ConsenSys brought hundreds of Ethereum developers to Brooklyn and New York City, planting the seeds for the city to become one of the global cryptocurrency centers. At its peak, ConsenSys had over 1,200 employees. Although the company later reduced in size and changed its mission, its work laid the foundation for the prosperity of subsequent Ethereum eras.
The Current State of Mythology Construction for Bitcoin and Ethereum
Bitcoin's simplicity allows new myth-makers to create new stories. For example, Michael Saylor has taken up the torch, leading Bitcoin into the Wall Street era. Bitcoin has now become a regulated ETF and gained recognition from traditional finance.
Ethereum is more complex, with myth construction happening in layers. This complexity is reflected in eras such as ICO, DeFi Summer, Non-Fungible Token craze, and DAO revival, all of which reflect what kind of world is being built on Ethereum while maintaining its original lineage.
However, in recent years, Ethereum's mythology has significantly weakened as the energy invested in it has been dispersed. Attention and mental share have been split across L2 and L1 alternative layers, which would have directly attracted users to Ethereum itself a few years ago. L2 has always been part of the roadmap and executed as planned, but in reality, they represent a break from Ethereum's previous lineage. I even believe that today's L2 is spiritually L1, but this argument is left for another discussion.
Marketing Is Not Myth Construction
Worse, we see a repeatedly used script that prioritizes data over stories: blockchain projects raise massive funds, launch short-term optimized marketing campaigns, initiate token generation events (TGE), and then watch the ecosystem evaporate. This is unsustainable, and the more this happens, the more the cryptocurrency industry risks self-destruction. In the pursuit of data, myth construction is replaced by marketing, and compelling myths are replaced by cheap slogans.
What we see today are surface-level goals that attract opportunistic participants. Metrics that once indicated progress have been gamified and become irrelevant. Users are viewed as data points to be optimized, not souls to be inspired. This is a Faustian trade that leads us towards user churn and disillusionment.
Marketing itself is not inherently wrong; it is a time-tested effective practice in other industries. The problem lies in marketing professionals entering the crypto space with no understanding of cultural context or foundational stories. Marketing without mythology is at best hollow, and at worst, predatory. For cryptocurrency, especially Ethereum, to emerge from this stagnant period, it needs to break free from purely marketing thinking.
Conclusion
Myth construction is the spiritual infrastructure that brings a community together and maintains its connections. It gives individuals purpose and a sense of belonging. But in many areas of the industry, this has been forgotten, replaced by cold metrics that optimize short-term attention with fleeting spikes, unable to achieve long-term retention.
But all is not lost. We can awaken from collective amnesia and restart myth construction. There are countless examples to learn from, imitate, and adapt. We can swing the pendulum back towards meaning—but only if we stop deceiving ourselves.
I hope to see a world with thousands of myth-makers weaving stories together, composing a symphony of an active community, continuously creating technology and forming culture through collaboration. We can return, and a creative storytelling/myth construction renaissance is within reach, provided we stop limiting ourselves in isolation and begin taking meaningful actions together.
