Author: DeFi Dave

Translated by: Yangz, Techub News

Cryptocurrency is deeply mired in a narrative crisis. Indeed, we have made significant progress on a technical level, with infrastructure, throughput, and scalability performance achieving orders of magnitude improvements. However, on a cultural level, the entire industry has fallen into a kind of "stagnation," largely due to our loss of the ability to tell compelling stories. Aside from Bitcoin and Solana memecoins, the industry has failed to attract new participants for years, leading to a nihilistic cloud that looms over the entire sector, especially in Ethereum and its surrounding ecosystem.

So, where is the antidote? Merely telling stories is far from enough, and marketing efforts are just a drop in the bucket. We must build a lore system. Lorebuilding is not just about repeating narratives; it is about creating a stage for people to co-create a shared mythos.

As I write this, I still find it difficult to fully encapsulate the entirety of "lorebuilding," a new concept that is still being defined. The discussions in this article are merely a preliminary outcome, and in the future, I will further expand and clarify the concept through a series of articles, providing more examples to support my views. I also look forward to more people joining the discussion, bringing their unique thoughts and interpretations.

Let’s Build Lore, Friends

"Lorebuilding" aims to cultivate a vibrant narrative system that can insightfully address current real-world issues, absorb universally resonant and timeless memes, and ultimately weave stories that foster identification and collaborative creation. "Lorebuilders" are those who can recognize emerging ideas, understand their historical context, and weave collective emotions into coherent and engaging narratives. They are like prophets in the lore. Skilled builders do not forcefully dominate the direction but listen to and protect the process, following the evolutionary rules of the lore itself. The construction of lore cannot be faked or shortcut; it must be practiced and immersed in personally.

Lorebuilding begins with an idea or a set of ideas, like a seed, sown by "Genesis Lorebuilders" in fertile cultural soil, taking root and sprouting in the minds of early believers. If a lore crosses a critical threshold and becomes strong enough, it will attract different groups to contribute their rituals, memes, or actions. Just like the growth of tree rings, each generation's participation leaves new marks on the lore, infusing it with new meanings and momentum.

The three realms of lore influence are: Attention, Resonance, and Co-creation.

• The first level "Attention": People invest only a small amount of energy and have not truly engaged;

• The second level "Resonance": People begin to feel a sense of belonging and establish an identity with it;

• The third level "Co-creation": People are deeply immersed and contribute to the lore in their own ways—this can be simple internal jokes or copypasta, or it can be a landmark event or a new narrative that attracts new members.

The essence of lore is a narrative co-creation shaped by collective experience. Its highest form is to elevate repetitive actions and memes into a shared culture, allowing people to feel a sense of belonging and act upon it, ultimately forming a spiritual lineage worth passing down through generations.

Bitcoin and Ethereum's Lorebuilding

If we were to list examples of lorebuilding, Bitcoin and Ethereum are undoubtedly the best cases, with Satoshi Nakamoto being the "Abrahamic Lorebuilder" of both—similar to how Abraham is a common ancestor of the three major religions, Satoshi's ideas are not only the cornerstone of Bitcoin but also inspire countless protocols. Bitcoin and Ethereum have existed for over a decade, giving us ample space to trace their birth and evolution.

Bitcoin: From Genesis to Cultural Phenomenon

The lore of Bitcoin begins with its Genesis Lorebuilder, Satoshi Nakamoto. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, he first sparked a systematic questioning of the modern political and financial order. In the initial white paper, Bitcoin was described as a "peer-to-peer electronic cash system," rooted in the idea of sovereign currency governed by code rather than human institutions, with characteristics such as decentralization, censorship resistance, and scarcity directly written into the protocol's foundation.

In fact, Bitcoin was not the first attempt at digital currency (previous attempts included DigiCash, Bit Gold, and Hashcash), but Satoshi's breakthrough lay in his integration of previous achievements (proof of work, digital signatures, scarcity mechanisms) and the innovative introduction of designs such as the "longest chain rule" and "halving mechanism." When he inscribed "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" in the genesis block, this seed was already planted in the cultural soil. Subsequently, the community spontaneously became the nurturers of the lore. They created the principle of "anonymity," forged memes like "HODL," established rituals such as Bitcoin Pizza Day, and through the Mt. Gox incident, distilled the collective trauma of "Not your keys, not your coins."

If we were to retell the history of Bitcoin from the perspective of lorebuilding, it can be roughly divided into the following periods:

• Satoshi and the Cypherpunk Era: Laying the ideological foundation

• "Dread Pirate Roberts" (i.e., Ross Ulbricht) and the Silk Road Era: Validating the first real use case

• "Bitcoin Jesus" Roger Ver: Funding the first generation of startups

• Michael Saylor and the Wall Street Era: Bringing Bitcoin into institutional circles

Ethereum: Programmable Lore Iteration

Bitcoin pioneered the lorebuilding of cryptocurrency, while Ethereum is like an "apple" that fell beside the tree. Ethereum's Genesis Lorebuilder, Vitalik Buterin, came from the Bitcoin world, initially active in the community as a co-founder and writer for Bitcoin Magazine. After participating in several projects, he ultimately carved out his own path.

Ethereum elevated the ideas of Bitcoin to new heights, programming the attributes of sovereignty. If Bitcoin realized the vision of "exit the old system," then Ethereum opened up the possibility of "building a new world from scratch." Bitcoin's scripting language was optimized for monetary scarcity, while Ethereum, as a Turing-complete general virtual machine, nurtured a bountiful "infinite garden," which is the foundation of its "world computer" lore. The seeds of DeFi, NFTs, and DAOs have long been embedded in Ethereum's DNA, waiting for generations of lorebuilders to carefully nurture them.

On July 30, 2015, Ethereum officially launched. The same newspaper headline inscribed in its genesis block as Bitcoin's: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks," is both a tribute to its predecessor and tightly connects the bloodlines of these two lores.

The uniqueness of Ethereum's lorebuilding lies in its layered construction model. In addition to Vitalik, early builder Joe Lubin founded ConsenSys, incubating developer tools like MetaMask, Infura, and Truffle, significantly lowering the barriers to building on Ethereum. More critically, ConsenSys brought hundreds of Ethereum builders to Brooklyn and New York City, sowing the seeds for New York City to become one of the world's most important cryptocurrency hubs. At its peak, ConsenSys employed over 1,200 people. Although it has undergone strategic adjustments, the foundation it laid continues to nourish the generational evolution of the Ethereum ecosystem.

Current State of Lorebuilding for Bitcoin and Ethereum

The simplicity of Bitcoin allows new lorebuilders to create new stories. For example, Michael Saylor has taken up the torch from his predecessors, leading Bitcoin into the Wall Street era. Today, Bitcoin has become a regulated ETF, earning the badge of recognition from the traditional financial system.

In contrast, Ethereum is somewhat more complex, with its lorebuilding being layered and progressive. From the ICO craze, DeFi summer, NFT frenzy to the DAO renaissance, each era reflects the question of "what can be built on Ethereum," while continuing its spiritual lineage.

However, in recent years, due to the original accumulated momentum being continuously diverted, Ethereum's lore has sharply weakened. People's attention and mental share have been divided among various L2s and alternative L1s—just a few years ago, these projects could directly attract users to Ethereum itself. Although L2s were already on the roadmap and progressing as planned, they have effectively severed the original lineage of Ethereum. I could even say that today's L2s are spiritually independent L1s. (I will discuss this point in future articles.)

Marketing is Not Lorebuilding

Worse still, we are witnessing a "production line" approach that emphasizes numbers over stories being repeated: public chains raise huge amounts of money, conduct short-term marketing campaigns, and after completing token issuance, the entire ecosystem quickly evaporates. This model is unsustainable, and the more it continues, the more likely cryptocurrency is to be consumed by itself. In the blind pursuit of metrics, lorebuilding has been replaced by marketing, and profound myths have been supplanted by cheap slogans.

What we see today are merely superficial goals aimed at attracting "mercenary" participants. Those metrics that once represented progress have been gamified to the point of meaninglessness. Users are seen as data points to be optimized rather than souls to be inspired. This is akin to Faustian trading, ultimately leading us to the current state of fatigue and disillusionment.

Marketing itself is not inherently sinful—it is a time-tested business practice. The problem arises when marketers enter the cryptocurrency space without any knowledge of its cultural background and foundational stories; marketing without the support of lore is, at best, hollow, and at worst, exploitative. For cryptocurrency (especially Ethereum) to emerge from its current slump, it must first completely abandon this purely marketing mindset.

Conclusion

Lorebuilding is the spiritual infrastructure that binds communities together, giving individuals meaning and granting groups a sense of belonging. However, when most corners of the industry forget this and instead chase cold metrics that garner short-term attention, we lose the ability to retain long-term engagement.

Fortunately, hope has not been extinguished. We can awaken from this collective amnesia and restart the great endeavor of lorebuilding. Countless precedents are available for us to study, emulate, and innovate. Only by stopping self-deception can we allow the pendulum of history to swing back onto the right track.

I look forward to a world where thousands of lorebuilders weave a symphony of narratives together, and vibrant communities continuously create new technologies and nurture new cultures through collaboration. As long as we break the self-imposed limitations of information echo chambers and replace individualism with collective action, a renaissance of narrative revival and lore reconstruction will be within reach.

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