Lorebuilding: How to Build Your Community Through Storytelling | DeFi Dave - Cap Money

Hey folks, uh we are back with a fireside chat. Uh the title of which is lore building, how to build your community through storytelling. Uh so we have Keley and Defi Dave. Thank you. How's it going?

Hey Dave.

Hey Keley. How's it going? Good to see you again.

Good to see you.

We made it out of LA.

I know, just barely. Um, hi everyone. I'm Key. Uh, I joined crypto in 2018. My background is in PR and communications, uh, which lends itself to storytelling and lore building.

And I'm excited to be here today. Dave, do you want to introduce yourself? Yes. How's it going everybody? My name's DeFi Dave.

I've been in crypto for eight and a half years. I've done everything from marketing to business development. And something I've learned in my time in crypto is how to tell stories and why do certain stories click with people? Why are people emotionally resonant with them? And you know, this is how I came up with lore building.

Awesome. So to kick things off, what led you to develop the idea of lore building?

Yeah. So being in crypto for almost nine years, you see a lot of things. You see bow markets, you see bare markets, you see builders and founders rise and fall. But at the end of the day, you wonder like why do these why do some some founders hit the jackpot? Why do some projects really resonate with people?

And it's because as humans we interpret and we perceive the world through stories uh through symbols and that's how we derive meaning in our lives and what we identify with. And so between being in crypto for nine years and my personal background like in college I studied history, philosophy, political science and you know wondering like how did we get here and even that question how did we get here? Uh it requires a story and so that's how like the background of it and what really sparks it was uh eat Denver last year um honestly for me eat Denver last year was like such a bust. I was so I was like so depressing and I was like asking people like why and I had this one conversation after with my friend uh Jing Tao uh and he was talking about we need better storytellers. Ethereum needs better storytellers.

I'm like how can we motivate the next generation of storytellers and this is how I developed this idea of lore building which became an article last year which went viral on Twitter got over you know 50,000 views uh and really sparked this conversation around it. And given the current market, why does it feel especially important right now to lean into lore building?

Yeah, because right now everyone's so [ __ ] depressed honestly. So to motivate people again, we need to, you know, what is the next story that will really capture people? How can we and how can we motivate those people to tell those stories? And like right now it's a little bit of a lull, but you know what? It's not going to be a low forever and new people are going to step in and you know, shine new light.

Love that. With that being said, what is your actual definition of lore building? Yeah. So lower building to me is being able to cultivate this living narrative. And it's not really a top down thing.

It's not a leader saying, "Hey, this is the story." It's like, no, it's the community. They feel inclined and motivated enough to build this story together. And they begin to identify with the story. It becomes part of their identity.

So it's more than just like a thing that they look at. It's a thing that becomes a part of them. So much so that they act upon to co-create.

Yeah. What does it look like in action? Like can you give us an example of what lore building actually looks like?

Yeah. So obviously the I think the first example of lore building in crypto is Satoshi. He was the genesis lore builder and you look at the historical context that he developed Bitcoin and it was in you know post collapse of 2008 uh the great recession you know you even say you see it in the first Genesis block like you know you know second bailout on the brink uh and Satoshi he really planted the seeds. I want to think I want everybody to think of lore builders as like a steward like of a gardener. He planted the seeds and you know he wrote the Bitcoin white paper.

He developed he started the Bitcoin forum but he was really the antenna that attracted the and sent out a frequency that attracted that early community those people like on the edges on the fringes uh whether they were cypher punks whether they were uh just nerds whether they were uh just you know people that aren't really on the forefront of society they were like but they became zealots of it they he really attracted like uh like a religious community in the beginning uh that it wouldn't have survived without the community and they be they began to co-create with Satoshi. Uh they built like the first memes, the first lore and lord building doesn't have to be some big action. Could be as small as like creating like the hodal meme. It could be as small as like not your keys, not your coins, but these things permeate. These things have meaning and they these things become symbols and have weight and gain weight over time.

And you mentioned community. Uh what role do lore builders play in building community? Yeah. So, lore builder, like Satoshi was the first lore builder, but there are other ones that come after him. Uh, you need like I think it was Jefferson said like the the tree of liberty needs to be soaked with the blood of patriots from time to time.

You can kind of take that with lore builders too. Then the garden needs to be watered from time to time. And I think you see this especially in Ethereum. So, uh, Vitalik was the first lore builder of Ethereum. He actually gives credence to Satoshi because in Ethereum's first block is the same thing of Genesis of the the Genesis block uh quote but uh in Ethereum there's different generations of lore builders.

So you had, you know, the first people like building the infra and you had like Joe Luben with uh consensus and then you had years later Defi summer and that class of lore builders building this mythos around DeFi and like oh we're going to take on the big banks and then you had like NFTTS and the art world and you had a lot of excitement happening on Ethereum and you had a lot of people motivated to build on Ethereum because the stories were so poant and so present you had people leading those stories so lower build and so those are it's really important for lower builders to, you know, keep keep that lore line going.

Love it. And so, as you've developed this concept, how do communities move from the attention phase to building emotional connection and then to real participation and action?

Yeah. So, I say the three stages of lore building are attention, feeling, and action. So attention is you just, you know, you look at something, you may like read it, read read a tweet or watch a video and you start to form an opinion, but it's not really very strong yet. Feeling is when you actually have an emotional connection to an idea, whether you're for something or against something. It's very important.

It's even being against something is very important and it's good for people to be against you. That's why I say like FUD is good because that means you're building a community of insiders and true believers. And then action is when people actually like feel motivated enough to actually co-create the story with you. And like I said, it could be as big like small as like creating a meme or as big as like you know starting meetups and like just you know just the most important thing is just to show up and show action.

I love it. Pivoting a little bit. People often conflate PR with marketing and storytelling and marketing. Um how is lore building different from marketing in your

Yeah. So marketing is not lore building. uh marketing and growth hacking optimizes for metrics. They optimize for numbers but lore building itself is an inefficient process. Uh it's you know it's well its value is intangible.

Uh I like to say something like if uh lore building is uh you know gardening then growth hacking and marketing is factory farming. So it's you know lore building takes time. It's a inefficient process but it's through that inefficiency that your community coaleses and develops in the same way that you know in cryptography it takes like time for a cryptographic cipher to be secure enough. It takes time for a community to develop. It takes time for like people to really uh believe in it does just doesn't happen overnight.

These stories, these rituals, these connections, they're they're formed over time. And so yeah,

it's a marathon, not a sprint. It's a marathon, not a sprint. It takes time. All good things take time.

Definitely. What are some common traits of lore builders?

Yeah. So, I think uh lore builders are incherently intuitive to both the historical context that they exist in and also uh to their community around them. uh they understand their place in the present moment and where they came from and where they see things going and also they understand uh the type of community they want to build and the people in their community and they can just they can just feel it they just have a an a sense of a curation of like where the community should go. Um they're inherently selfless. Uh they view the lore as bigger than themselves and that they're basically a note on a grand symphony of this of the ls of the lore playing.

So they see theel Yeah. bigger than themselves.

Yeah. I have the thought that EQ is the new IQ. So

EQ is new IQ. Especially when IQ is just, you know, I don't know, going as

Yeah. What is something that is actionable that people can do to start lore building today if they're interested in

Yeah. So I think the simplest thing uh lore builders can do if you're like looking to build your community is a simple AV test. See things like what works, what doesn't work. just put stuff out there, whether it's memes, whether it's uh just, you know, fun things like, you know, I'll give you an example is like my my cherry blossom shirt. They're like, "Dave, like, why do you always wear cherry blossoms?"

And I'm like, "Well, um, for years I, you know, I've been going to these conferences. I've been wearing like funky shirts like this. I I'm really into vapor wave nostalgia." And even before crypto, this was my sense of fashion. And out of like all the things I wore, the cherry blossom stick stuck out.

Uh, they're like, "Oh, Arizona iced tea, DeFi." People actually got mad at me when I didn't wear my cherry blossoms and I was like, "Okay, there's something here." Especially because I'm into stable coins. I work on cap. I've worked on stable coins in the past and I'm like, "Wait, stable coins dollar Arizona I see 99 cents."

So, I just like doubled down on that and I just, you know, I wear it everywhere. I wear cherry blossoms everywhere. Hell, I have like cherry blossoms on my arm. I really put it on my sleeve, no pun intended. Um, and so that's another thing like when you see a meme that hits in your community, you double down on it.

You triple down on it. Uh, another example is like one of the things I started with a friend was Eth Bushwick. We just started that as a joke for fun and somebody in the community started Sigs Inside and it we I noticed how much that really hit with people so I just like doubled down triple down on it. Became like a rallying cry and I even made hats and stuff for it. So, uh, double triple down on things that work.

I love that lore. Thank you, Dave. And thank you everyone for joining.

Uh, wait, we have five minutes.

Oh, we do?

Yeah.

Oh, wow. I didn't see that. [laughter] We have Yeah, we have Does anybody have any questions? I'm down to rant more. [laughter]

I think uh I will always have a soft spot for DeFi summer. Uh when that started to come up, it was for me personally like when my first job I worked at I wor I was in charge of exchange listings and I had to deal with the [ __ ] of centralized exchanges and the process of like trying to get listed. And then when I saw DeFi pop up and how effortless it was to like create a unis swap pair, I like clicked with me like oh my god like this is I can see DeFi. That was just like one thing I can see it taking off and it seemed people really rallied around this idea of like oh like this we can like actually grow an alternative system and like build an alternative system. It was just a lot of fun in those early days of DeFi summer.

Um and obviously I think uh you know things we see what works. It's a era of experimentation. What works doesn't work. uh and we mature as a space and here we are defi I think is like one if not like the most proven use case of crypto today and now we have the institutions coming on chain and we have new lore builders coming.

Is that why you chose the name DeFi Dave?

Oh so I chose the name DeFi Dave because uh back in July 2020 I was like driving around the country and I I was I've been writing my whole life and so I was writing this new I was writing a new thread about DeFi. I was like [ __ ] it I'll change my Twitter name to DeFi Dave. But here's like another thing. Um, it's not just it's not just but yes, I made the name I created the name DeFi Dave, but it's other people that solidified it and other people that you know grew to have like uh some connection to an identity with it and so and double down on it. So like you guys made the name DeFi Dave as much as myself.

Love it.

Yeah. And I'll make like another important point with like the different generations of lore builders that come in to build community. So early on you have like Satosh Satoshi and you had like different generations and then you have like I think like a recent example of this is Michael Sailor. He was the lore builder for Bitcoin on Wall Street. He spoke Wall Street uh in Trafi's language.

He was able to put it in terms and understandings really created in a story that Trafi could understand and that's why he was so successful. And I wrote my lore building article and cited him. And a few months later you had Tom Lee with Bitmine come along and become the lore builder, the Wall Street lore builder for Ethereum. And I felt really validated on my thesis about that.

You're on point.

Yeah. Uh, you got any other questions? I can keep ranting. Yes.

Oh, can you speak louder?

Yeah, I think um obviously Bitcoin, Ethereum, um, early chain link, Salana, I think Ripple. Honestly, man, like anybody like anybody that's been able to build this like a rapid community that people have some emotional connection to, uh, they've done a good job. Um, and so I'm trying to think of other examples. Yeah, early chain link. Um, yeah, it's there's a there's a there's a few.

I I don't want to say all of them because like it's the ones that like do well and like I don't it's it's an interesting thing about the ones that do well, I guess. Yeah, go ahead. I was going to say, are there any projects that could be doing better?

Um, I think we all can be doing better to be honest. Um, I think a lot of projects right now are just they think about they're just building products, but they're not really telling a story about their products. Uh, there's this uh great framework that was developed by this guy named Patrick Hanley called the primal branding. And he talks about how uh brands the brands that do well uh tell create a story about their brands that their consumers identify with like uh whether it's like Nike or McDonald's or whatnot. And he talks about like the primal code of of primal branding.

So it comes down to the origin story like how the creation story like how did it come about the creed the icons the rituals the other um there's there's the there's seven of them but all these all these different elements that he talks about in the primal code is uh they all are elements of a story um and so if you're looking to look more into the lore building framework definitely look into that uh primal primal branding uh and also uh like I said uh earlier about like this theory of self-determination Uh what makes uh and oh yeah I sent you this video before about Runescape. Like why is Runescape so popular after 25 years? Uh it's because uh these players uh they feel a sense of autonomy and agency within the game. Uh they they're able to uh like advance in the game with their competence and they have a sense of relatedness to each other. Like did you know in Runescape they're actually they can they actually vote on like if they want an upgrade or not to a game.

And so there's this like inherent sense of like co-creation within Runescape where it's not the developers building for the game. I mean to for the game it's like them co-creating with its players so that it's like more of a sense of we than a sense of other.

I loved Runescape growing up.

Yeah. I I yeah I think we all played Runescape.

Uh any more any more questions? I got I got one more thing. I think like an I think uh religion is really good at uh you know this idea of lord explaining and showing this idea of lord building like you know obviously in Christianity you have Jesus but what would Jesus be without like Peter and Paul I mean Peter was like the became the first pope and Paul became he was once a doubter and then became an evangelist and he like spread all across the old Roman Empire. So uh lord building is a concept much bigger much older than crypto and will be here uh far beyond crypto. So

much bigger than us.

Much bigger than us. We're all just part of the story.

Yes.

It's just Yeah.

Thank you, Dave. I appreciate it. Thank you, everyone.