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- Growth Stories #25: How to Build a DeFi Brand That Lasts: Lessons from Eco’s Jay Kurahashi-Sofue
Growth Stories #25: How to Build a DeFi Brand That Lasts: Lessons from Eco’s Jay Kurahashi-Sofue
Crafting trust in an ecosystem built on noise.
TL;DR: Web3 forgot that retention is marketing.
The projects that survive the next cycle will spend less on noise and more on narrative.
Hot take: web3 doesn’t have a marketing problem, it has a memory problem.
We sat down with Jay Kurahashi-Sofue, who now leads marketing at Eco, a stable-layer liquidity network, and previously helped shape Avalanche’s global growth.
Together, we dissected what most projects still get wrong about marketing, community, and retention in web3 - drawing from his perspective and lessons learned while growing two web3 juggernauts.
The Problem with “Crypto Marketing”
If you’ve spent any time in DeFi, you’ve seen the pattern:
projects chase viral moments, flood Telegrams with giveaways, and then wonder why their “community” disappears once rewards dry up.
Jay has lived through every version of this cycle and he’s adamant that most projects start too loud and too soon. At Eco, his main approach was beginning with the story and system, then layer in spend later.
“Teams spend before they have product-market fit. You don’t need a rocket until you’ve built the tracks.”
1. Start with a Narrative, Instead of a Campaign
In DeFi, your brand is basically your moat. Liquidity might move fast, but trust doesn’t.
Jay’s first principle is to own your narrative early: a single line that explains why you exist and who you serve.
Eco’s story: a stable layer for liquidity and infrastructure across chains.
Everything ladders back to that.
Most projects, he says, dilute their message by chasing every meta trend from RWA one month, to restaking the next.
The fix? Focus, Consistency & Creativity.
Focus means every post, event & product update reinforces the same mission.
Consistency means staying visible even when markets are quiet.
Creativity means finding new ways to express the mission instead of copying the same side events and shill threads everyone else runs.
“Great marketing isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing the same thing better than anyone else.”
2. Spend Smarter
The Avalanche veteran is blunt: most marketing budgets in web3 are “lighting money on fire.”
At ETHDenver last year, his 10-person team hosted four micro-events, moved 500 pieces of swag, and spent just ~$20K, a fraction of what others burned on sponsorship logos.
The goal in his own words was connection density, rather than direct visibility: getting deeper with the right hundred people instead of shouting at ten thousand.
3. Redefining “Community”
Telegram isn’t real community and Jay breaks it down simply: a channel is not a funnel.
A real community is measurable through behavior, rather than membership count.
He tracks activity like SDK downloads, documentation visits, and forum engagement, data that signals actual participation in the protocol.
That’s why for Eco, he insisted on an approach to invest in micro-leadership: small, autonomous user or developer circles aligned around purpose, instead of airdrops.
“Community tools fail because they’re built for announcement, not alignment.”
4. Developer Marketing Is Human Marketing
Developers remember who helped them ship faster, and that’s the whole playbook.
At Eco, Jay explains that meant mapping the entire developer journey from the first tutorial to the first deployment, and removing friction at every step.
Incentives help, but only when paired with education and empathy: clear docs, responsive support, and tools that actually work.
When asked about “growth hacks,” Jay laughs.
“Docs are your biggest growth hack. Nobody wants to read them, but everyone remembers when they’re good.”
5. Retention > Reach
Eco’s thesis: retention is marketing.
Airdrops, quests, and points systems are just tactics, but what matters is what happens after they end.
As Jay puts it, most projects mistake a successful campaign for success itself. True growth begins when the user stays, not when they arrive.
In his view, the new retention stack in DeFi looks like this:
Utility: Real reasons to stay (yield, integrations, or composability).
Belonging: Communities built around identity and purpose.
Consistency: Ongoing touch points (recaps, updates, transparency).
6. Bonus Question: What Are Some Underused Growth Channels?
In a space obsessed with X, Jay has found leverage elsewhere.
Physical & functional swag: keychain chargers, NFC-tags - things people actually use.
Creative IRL experiences: micro-events built around storytelling instead of generic sidebars.
Search and SEO: “Nobody fights for it, but it compounds quietly.”
Simply put, offline presence matters in web3 precisely because everyone ignores it.
7. The Future of DeFi Marketing
Eco’s long-term goal is to build a “stable brand layer” that outlives the noise cycles. Achieving that means merging product, community, and communication into a single feedback loop - where every interaction generates data, and every campaign sharpens the story.
“In this market, trust is the only yield that compounds.
The Takeaway?
Crypto’s next bull run won’t be won by whoever spends the most. It’ll be won by whoever tells the clearest story and keeps their users the longest.
From Avalanche to Eco, Jay’s philosophy is simple: marketing ends where real product experience begins.
✍️ PS
Next week, I’ll break down “The Marketing Stack for Physical AI”: the tools and agent frameworks powering this shift.
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