Navigating Crypto Brands, Good Luck

Once a quarter a friend reaches out with a pristine background asking if they should join a tier 1 blockchain company. In every case so far I have recommended against it.

The reasoning is straightforward: it’s a downgrade for their personal brand.

Tier 1 blockchains still do not have the brand cachet of a Fidelity or Franklin Templeton. When you leave Goldman to join Solana, you’re trading institutional credibility for something the traditional finance world hasn’t quite figured out how to value yet. The LinkedIn algorithm may reward the move with engagement. The hiring manager at your next gig may not.

This raises a question worth asking: will blockchains ever achieve that level of brand perception? And should they even try?

Good Execution

The closest we’ve seen to good execution on this front is Canton. We had early attempts with R3, but the market wasn’t ready. Canton has managed to strike a balance that eluded its predecessors—institutional brand perception paired with the kind of low-level community engagement that makes for a quality launch.

The difference matters. R3 built impressive technology and signed major banks, but timing and market education weren’t there. Canton arrived when institutions had already done their homework on distributed ledger technology. They weren’t selling the concept anymore; they were selling infrastructure to buyers who already understood what they needed.

Layering Your Brand

What’s more likely to work in practice for existing blockchains is a layering of brands.

The model involves a separation: an operational or go-to-market company that does not engage with community but instead remains purely B2B. This entity handles the institutional relationships, the enterprise sales cycles, the compliance conversations. It speaks the language of procurement departments and legal teams.

This may dilute mind-share. It may take focus away from the blockchain itself. But it can also add significant value by demonstrating that a tier 1 industry player now supports the network. The brand arbitrage flows in the direction you want it to flow—from established credibility to emerging technology, not the reverse.

Getting Based with Coinbase

In a way, Coinbase has achieved this organically with Base.

Coinbase built its institutional credibility over a decade. Public listing. Regulatory engagement. Custody solutions for hedge funds. By the time they launched Base, they had already solved the brand problem. The blockchain inherited legitimacy from its parent rather than having to manufacture it from scratch.

Perhaps this is the template for how blockchains should manage their brands, albeit in the inverse. Instead of a blockchain spawning an institutional arm, you have institutional players spawning blockchains. The credibility transfer works because it starts from a position of strength.

For the tier 1 blockchains that already exist without this institutional parentage, the layering strategy remains the most viable path. Build the B2B entity. Keep it clean. Let it borrow credibility where it can, and over time, let that credibility flow back to the underlying network.

Until then, I’ll keep telling my friends with pristine backgrounds to think carefully before making the jump.