Myth, Meme, and Sense of Belonging: The Deep-Seated Needs of the Encryption Culture

Written by: Decentralized Finance Dave

Compiled by: Block unicorn

Cryptocurrency is facing a narrative crisis. Indeed, there have been technological advancements, with infrastructure, throughput, and scalability improved 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. Aside from Bitcoin and Solana meme coins, the space has not significantly introduced new participants over the years, leading to a nihilistic cloud hanging over the entire industry, especially in Ethereum and related areas.

So, what is the solution? Simply telling stories is not enough; just marketing stories is absolutely insufficient. You must build a myth. Myth-building is not just about repeating narratives, but about paving the way for others to create a shared mythos.

When writing this article, I found it difficult to fully encapsulate all the mythologies I wanted to define, as this is a new concept that is being interpreted. The definitions provided in the text are preliminary, and in future articles, I will expand, clarify, and provide more examples that support my views, while also looking forward to others offering their own thoughts and interpretations.

You need to engage in myth building, anonymous.

Myth-making is the act of cultivating a vibrant narrative that observes relevant issues of the moment, conveys universally resonant and lasting 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 engaging narrative, inviting others to participate. They are the prophets of myth. Excellent myth builders do not force a direction; they listen, serve as guardians of the myth, while remaining responsive to the natural evolution of the myth. Myth building cannot be faked or bought; it must be genuinely experienced and integrated.

Myth building begins with an idea or a set of ideas, a seed of meaning, sown by the creators of the creation myth in fertile cultural soil, carefully nurtured as it takes root and sprouts in the hearts of early believers. If a myth crosses a certain threshold and is strong enough, it will attract new groups of people to contribute through their own rituals, memes, fragments, and actions. Like the growth rings formed on a tree trunk, these contributions mark the growth of the myth in the transmission through each generation, with each generation 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 fully committed. The second level, emotion, is when people begin to feel a sense of investment in the myth and develop a sense of identity. The third and final level is co-creation, where people's investment in the myth is so profound that they begin to contribute to it in their own way. This could be a simple internal joke or a copy-paste text, or it could be a milestone event or a new narrative that attracts new community members.

The core of myth-making is a collective narrative creation activity shaped by shared experiences. In its highest form, it transforms repetitive actions and memes into a common culture, allowing people to feel a sense of belonging and take action, and creates a lineage that is passed down to future generations.

The Myth Building of Bitcoin and Ethereum

We can cite countless examples to demonstrate the practical applications of myth-making, but to illustrate my point, I will only use Bitcoin and Ethereum. Satoshi Nakamoto himself can be seen as an "Abrahamic myth-maker" for both, as his ideas form the foundation of not only Bitcoin but also many other protocols, much like Abraham is the father of the three major world religions. Bitcoin and Ethereum have both been around for over a decade, giving us enough hindsight to understand their origins and development.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin began with its mythical creator Satoshi Nakamoto, who envisioned it after the 2008 financial crisis. This was the first time in decades that people seriously questioned the modern political and financial world order and imagined alternatives. In the original white paper, Bitcoin is described as a "peer-to-peer electronic cash system," rooted in the idea of sovereign currency determined by code rather than human institutions. Characteristics such as decentralization, censorship resistance, and scarcity are directly embedded in the protocol.

Bitcoin was not the first attempt at digital currency; DigiCash, Bit Gold, and Hashcash had all come before. What Satoshi Nakamoto did was to combine the effective parts of these efforts (proof of work, digital signatures, scarcity) into a complete system, while also introducing new elements such as the longest chain rule and the halving mechanism.

Satoshi Nakamoto planted the seeds of Bitcoin, inscribing the message in the genesis block: "January 3, 2009 'The Times': Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." From the earliest days, the community took it upon themselves to promote Bitcoin. Their contributions, such as establishing the principle of anonymity, creating the 'HODL' meme, Bitcoin Pizza Day, and the trauma bonding events like 'Not your keys, not your coins' spawned by the Mt. Gox incident, have all become part of the legend.

The history of Bitcoin viewed through the lens of myth-making could itself be written as an article, but some important myth-makers and those defining their era include: Satoshi Nakamoto and the cypherpunks, who laid the foundational principles; "Terrorist Pirate Roberts" and the Silk Road era, which proved Bitcoin's first real use case; Roger Ver ("Bitcoin Jesus"), who funded the first generation of startups; and Michael Saylor and the Wall Street era, which brought Bitcoin into the institutional realm.

Ethereum

Although Bitcoin pioneered the myth-making of cryptocurrency, Ethereum is the fruit that has not strayed far from the mother tree. Ethereum's myth-building creator Vitalik Buterin (referred to as V God) comes from the Bitcoin world, initially as a co-founder and writer for Bitcoin Magazine, interacting with the community, later participating in different projects, and then embarking on his own path.

Ethereum extends Bitcoin's idea of sovereignty even further, making it programmable. Bitcoin is an "exit system", while Ethereum is a "system built from scratch". Bitcoin's scripting language is limited and optimized for scarcity; Ethereum is a general-purpose, Turing-complete virtual machine that opens up endless possibilities. This "infinite garden" thinking is the mythical foundation of Ethereum as a world computer, giving people the ability to build new systems, new worlds, and new paradigms. The early seeds of decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are already in Ethereum's DNA. It takes generations of myth-builders to nurture those roots.

Ethereum officially launched on July 30, 2015, and its genesis block contains the same message as Bitcoin: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks," paying tribute to its predecessor and further linking the lineage of the two.

The uniqueness of the myth built on Ethereum lies in its expansion of the myth by building upon it. One of the earliest myth builders, aside from Vitalik Buterin, is Joe Lubin, who founded ConsenSys. This startup incubated early tools such as MetaMask, Infura, and Truffle, greatly improving the developer experience for building 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 hubs. At its peak, ConsenSys had over 1,200 employees. Although the company later scaled down and its mission shifted, its work laid the foundation for the prosperity of the subsequent era of Ethereum.

The current myth-building status of Bitcoin and Ethereum today.

The simplicity of Bitcoin allows new myth builders to create new stories. For example, Michael Saylor took up the torch, leading Bitcoin into the era of Wall Street. Bitcoin has now become a regulated ETF and has gained recognition from traditional finance.

Ethereum is more complex, with mythical construction taking place in layers. This complexity is reflected in eras such as ICOs, the DeFi summer, the NFT boom, and the revival of DAOs, all of which reflect what kind of world is being built on Ethereum while maintaining its original lineage.

But in recent years, the myth of Ethereum has significantly weakened, as the energy invested in it has become dispersed. Attention and mindshare have split towards alternative layers of L2 and L1, which would have directly attracted users to Ethereum itself a few years ago. L2 has always been part of the roadmap and has been 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 will be discussed later.

Marketing is not a myth.

Worse still, we see a recurring script that prioritizes data over stories: blockchain projects raise huge sums of money, conduct short-term optimized marketing campaigns, initiate and carry out Token Generation Events (TGE), and then watch the ecosystem evaporate. This is unsustainable, and the more this happens, the greater the risk of self-destruction for the cryptocurrency industry. In the pursuit of data, myth-building is replaced by marketing, and captivating myths are replaced by cheap slogans.

What we see today is a superficial goal that attracts profit-driven participants. Indicators that once indicated progress have been gamified and become irrelevant. Users are seen as data points that need to be optimized, rather than souls that need to be incentivized. This is a Faustian bargain that leads us toward user attrition and disillusionment.

Marketing itself is not fundamentally flawed; it is an effective practice that has been tested over time in other industries. The problem arises when marketers enter the crypto space without any knowledge of the cultural background or foundational stories. Marketing without mythology is, at best, hollow, and at worst, predatory. For cryptocurrencies, especially Ethereum, to emerge from this stagnation, it is necessary to break free from purely marketing-driven thinking.

Conclusion

Myth building is the spiritual infrastructure that brings the community together and maintains its connections. It gives individuals a sense of purpose and belonging. However, in many areas of the industry, this has been forgotten, replaced by cold metrics that optimize fleeting spikes in short-term attention, failing to achieve long-term retention.

But not everything is hopeless. We can awaken from collective amnesia and start myth-making anew. There are countless examples to learn from, imitate, and adjust. We can swing the pendulum back towards meaning—but we must stop deluding ourselves.

I hope to see a world where thousands of myth builders weave stories together, forming a symphony of an active community, continuously creating technology and shaping culture through collaboration. We can return to a creative storytelling / myth building renaissance that is within reach, provided we stop imposing limitations on ourselves in isolation, and instead start taking meaningful actions together to achieve this goal.