Recent discussion around @KaspaCurrency seems to be more about staying decentralized and faceless. I do want to point out that sometimes the materials are problematic and low quality.
I don't want to pretend this is just an issue of #Kaspa ideology or culture. The issue was not CENTRAL MARKETING (as @michaelsuttonil says), it was BAD MARKETING. Yes, it does some good, but is also highly problematic and can be a net negative for #Kaspa.
I will use @Kaspa_Commons recent piece published on https://t.co/lexvRUJa34 as an example. The title is "Why Kaspa Succeeds Where Millions of Crypto Projects Have Failed" (May 21, 2025). In response to the @coingecko statistical analysis of “failed” projects, this article listed contributive factors to success/failure and happily concluded that #Kaspa always succeeds.
To me, this is a very representative piece that shows how a lot of #Kaspa bullist posts/articles are mere combinations of self-defeating Co-opium, selective mutism, and Yakety-yak of hard-to-understand tech terms to bluff on the #Kaspa technology to make things look better than they are. The last reason, I think, is the major cause on a private level why @hashdag and core devs who write codes are uncomfortable–these false hopes are somehow converted into their “responsibility” after being entrenched by others a thousand times on X and other media.
(1) This piece is about success/failure. However, it had no discussion of what defines a failure or a success (and why such standards are appropriate). It seems to take the definition of failure by CoinGecko’s piece as granted: a crypto project "failed" when it is no longer actively traded.
Firstly, the activeness of trading is hard to tell and is vague to define. Secondly, this is a very problematic definition by itself. It’s almost like our life: does the fact that in the end, our hearts stop beating after 100 years necessarily mean that we all failed in life? A project may have had its peak time of glory and faded out later as better technology (such as #Kaspa) emerged.
Why would we accept this standard? I think because $KAS is more or less actively traded today. So taking this standard is advantageous or simply makes us feel good and comfortable enough so that we don’t need to think a step further if this is a good standard to begin with.
My observation is many #Kaspa pieces were written in a similar way before: no standard, nor any justification of any standard, just take whichever part that sounds good for #Kaspa.
Though I am not sure it is a good way to define “crypto failures”, let’s still move to the next part: “Common Factors Leading to Cryptocurrency Failures.”
(2) A valid and sound argument in formal logic is “If P, then Q” + P is true. You can easily see these arguments are poorly organized with this in mind.
If “lack of utility or purpose”, then "crypto failure"? What is the utility of $DOGE (by definition, it is still actively traded and therefore not a crypto failure)? What is the utility of $TRUMP? Or even, what is the already delivered use case of the utility of #Kaspa?
If “regulatory and legal challenges” then failure? ETH and PoS are all legally challenged by the SEC once as they may be seen as investment contracts. Are they all failed projects? Aren't PoW activties also subject to regulatory challenges?
It is also weird to me to say @pumpdotfun is a failure - I doubt anyone else in crypto will say that. I know, the argument is “https://t.co/cQiufpVn5B makes launching tokens easier and therefore you see more failures.” This is even worse: most technology makes something in our life easier, and yes more attempts/incidents will result in more failures. Does that mean we should say no to new techs that make our life easier?
My observation is these are all co-pium arguments and quickly turn to be self-defeating when you realize these are not #kaspa exclusive advantages. Such posts refuse to take the landscape but ground their claims with highly selective examples (usually minor and marginal ones in the crypto world).
Unfortunately, these are just common factors that most crypto projects (incl. #Kaspa) have and may lead to both failure and (undefined) success. Let’s now move on to “Common Traits of Successful Cryptocurrencies.”
(3) Now you should quickly see: the #Kaspa maximalists (i guess incl. KaspaCommons itself) most hated meme projects may have the strongest community engagement+grassroots community and brand building. Clear use cases – a lot of times still a marketing problem as you just need to invent some use cases to be delivered in the next 50 years.
Yes, they may lose out a bit on “robust technology”, but look at the example quoted here in the article: Firo, a coin with ~$2,000 trading depth on exchange if you check by yourself. By definition, that is a “crypto failure”, and following the logic pattern of this piece, “robust technology” should be a factor for failures.
(4) Moving on to “Marketing Traits in Failed Projects”: Overhyped, Under-Delivered [“BTC is KAS testnet] “tried to capitalize on buzzwords” [solving trilemma].
The funniest part included both “Expensive Ad Buys and Paid PRs” and “No Post-Launch Marketing Plan”. So either way, you will be found traits of failure. You should have a marketing plan, but no paid marketing should be part of that plan.
Putting (3)(4) together, my observation is #Kaspa posts are often written with failures and contradictory statements. Yet everyone seems to just ignore these. Interestingly, these days the community is much more critical (i.e. of the Forbes piece we saw today) compared to just post $KAS bullish comments everywhere.
(5) Then somehow, we come to the asserted “Kaspa’s Success” section. For me, I am not even sure if these are all “successes.”
The VERY sarcastic thing is that now precisely the developers are not pleased by the way of communication adopted by @KaspaCurrency when “Transparent, Developer-Led Communication” is put as the No.1 reason for success.
#Kaspa did advertise on narratives. In early 2024, @DesheShai already spoke everywhere of 10BPS, which is just delivered 3 weeks ago. Before crescendo, it was all "narratives."
The emission schedule is somewhat radical and can cause problems as well. Of course, in this article, it is always a “sound economic model.”
(6) “Kaspa’s continued success is attributed to its commitment to technological excellence, transparent governance, community engagement, sound economics, and real-world utility.”
It sounds like whatever Kaspa does, not only technology but also governance/marketing/branding/community/tokenomics, is always succeeding. Doesn’t that by itself sound like an artificial hype overstatement?
(7) Throughout this article, you can smell that it is almost allergic to the MONEY MARKET. No paid advertisements/PRs though almost all companies in the world (not just crypto ones) do the same. No mention of the price movement, which in my opinion is almost hypocritical and scoundrelly: how can $KAS, an asset, avoid talking about its own prices? Ask yourself, aren't you here, at least partly, due to the fact that $KAS = 0.0002 in June 2022 and got 100x in 2 years time? Why we are so reluctant to admit that we care about the prices? Why always tell us not to care about prices/hypes/being popular in the crypto world? Is it really possible to skip the cryptoland and jump directly to mass adoption by non-crypto players?
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Now restate my opinion: I don't want to pretend this is just an issue of #Kaspa ideology or culture. The issue was not CENTRAL MARKETING, it was BAD MARKETING.
To me, @KaspaCurrency had the same problem of (7). In the past, it implicitly sets a “KaspaWay” that isolates itself from hot money, shall it be from crypto gamblers, investors and the capital market. What makes things worse is regardless of results, it tries to say whatever follows this KaspaWay is succeeding and refuses criticism.
For Core Devs (a group I can't represent neither), I guess maybe they feel disappointed when they are misrepresented by someone who doesn't write code, nor understand crypto and is occasionally an expressive political commentator. When that voice no longer passes knowledge to the community based on facts and science but adds its own fantasties and imagaintations and pretend the work is a belonging of its, that can be VERY VERY annoying.