I was sitting in the sauna with my friend, Brett, when he asked me if I had ever read the book “Sapiens” by Yuval Harari.

I had, but it had been a while.

Brett, who is fresh in the middle of the graphic novel version of the book, gave me a fresh download of information about Harari’s concepts of “myths” and how they are the common, but fictional, element to the human experience.

Common Human Myths

There’s the idea of money, which if you’ve read this blog for more than 5 minutes, you get. That’s the essence of the “red pill” moment when you realize that Bitcoin or any crypto can be “money” in the same way that the dollar or euro can.

There’s the concept of the corporation, which is a unified mission towards an outcome, but itself doesn’t exist. For example, the DeLorean car company doesn’t exist anymore as a legal entity. It has no assets, but it represents an idea. Even today, a company like Facebook…what is it? Servers? Buildings? People? Those all change. The IDEA plus the logo that serves as the rallying cry for the logo is all you have.

Then there’s religion, which has an origin myth/story that is reinforced and renewed through ritual.

And finally there’s the nation-state, which is based upon a set of supposedly shared common values and principles among people who live in the same geography.

Crypto Networks and Harari’s Myths

As Brett was talking, I couldn’t help but think about the challenges (and opportunities) that cryptoeconomic networks have. They are also, in many ways, based upon the myths that Harari has outlined.

There’s a native money, which people in that network, be it Bitcoin, Ethereum, Radix, or Arweave believe to have value.

There are shared rituals…the best example I could come up with was the 10 minute block time for Bitcoin and the quadrennial “halvening” of the block reward as things around which the community can have confidence in their consistency.

There’s definitely the idea of a “corporation,” though in Web3 we call it a “DAO” which is a group of people coming together in pursuit of a common goal with a common bond.

And I’m not the first one to recognize that these cryptoeconomic networks represent a digital, virtual concept of nation-state which is independent of geography, something I touched on nearly 6 years ago in Blockchains, Cryptocurrencies, and the end of Nation States?.

The Winning Crypto Networks

One of the topics that has been near and dear to my heart is the idea that crypto communities should become tribes with a common identity and symbols.

I’ve touched on this a few times before over the years in

• 3 Must Haves to be a World-Class Crypto Brand
• What Crypto Marketers Can Learn from Tough Mudder about building Tribes
• Crypto Fraternities and Sororities

Now, I’m (slowly) working my way through Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization , recognizing that different cryptonetworks are going to have different approaches (and different success/failure rates) in identifying, cultivating, activating, and strengthening their tribes. Not only will they have to increase the number of tribal members, but they’ll have to figure out a way to elevate (without discrimination and appropriate for a decentralized world) those who are the most dedicated/devoted members of the tribe.

As I’ve touched on before, quoting Kyle Samani  in  Good Artists Copy. Great Artists Steal,

“The logical conclusion is that the key to long-term, sustained success is go-to-market strategy and execution, and that technology and product are almost irrelevant.

For almost all crypto teams, this should be a scary thought.

I suspect if you asked every crypto team “Which function is strongest in your organization, technology and product, or go-to-market?” less than 1% would say go-to-market.”

Well, I’m in that 1% that says go-to-market.

So much of crypto is now focused on feeds/speeds stuff like Transactions Per Second and Total Value Locked. Those are important, but the network that can figure out how to build a non-defecting tribe that is welcoming of outsiders is going to win.

The hard part will be figuring out how to measure tribal passion, but that’s another topic.