NFC25: WEB3 NEEDS A REBRAND | Diego Borgo, Steven Dolcemaschio, Rugema, Mark Epps, Mo Salha

Hi everyone. Welcome to the Web3 Needs a Rebrand panel. I've got my clone with me. He wanted to come, wanted to wear the Sambini, so that's the boss. There's a lot of things — I've been in the industry since 2017, working with the largest brands in the world to bring them into Web3, and with the smartest founders in the industry trying to break through and go mainstream. That's why I proposed this panel around the rebrand of Web3, something I've been vocal about for a minute. The way the mainstream looks at our industry is still very premature — there's a lot of scams, scandals, and various issues. But most importantly, the customer is not in the room. We keep building for Discord, launching tokens, and it's so difficult for founders to raise without launching a token. There's no element of raising on equity alone. I wanted to put this conversation together with these guys because we come from different angles. We'll quickly introduce Steve, heading marketing and CMO at Reown; Rugma, co-founder of Schiller; Mark, working with the ATP Tour on comms and leading Web3; and Mo, senior business development at Miracle. So we're coming from different angles — Web2 brands that stepped into Web3, Schiller from an agency perspective, Reown that just went through a huge rebrand, and Miracle building natively. I'll jump straight into intros with my first question, which is very relevant for you, Steve. It's around the concept of crossing the chasm — think of Evel Knievel jumping cars, trains, trucks. Web3 feels a lot like that. How do you jump the chasm from the niche we're in to the mainstream? How do you go from early adopters, who are financially incentivized, to people outside the industry, people on the street who actually give a damn? You guys are tapping into that more and more, but what's interesting from your perspective is your background — coming from Web2, from comms and brand your entire career — and now you're here trying to do what many want to do but is quite difficult. So how does a brand like Reown, or any brand, go about crossing the chasm and bringing Web3 comms and brands towards the mainstream? What is your take?

Yeah, I totally agree with that. How do you feel, coming from the Web2 world with a very strong brand background, how do we do that in the industry? It's challenging — attention is the main thing, tokens are the main incentive, it's all about rewards. How do we break out of that model and get into the hands of people who don't care or don't even think about any of it, but at the end of the day will use a Web3 backed product? How do you see that as a brand lead in the industry?

Yeah, we're seeing a lot of that with Cookie and Kaito right now — the fight for short-term attention, as you mentioned. It's really funny that you mention brands not being a thing in Web3. I talk to a lot of founders who say 'the product's going to do it.' But how long can the product do it? What holds you back from someone coming in, copying your product, putting their brand on top, and running away with it? We're still in an early stage. I'm biased because I've worked with Cookie for over two years, and they're literally doing that — they went in, made a technically better product, and now they're stealing market share from a monopoly. It's interesting because founders are betting more on the product per se rather than brand. From your background, that doesn't play the long-term game. With Kaito, I can pay a monthly subscription to monitor my mind share, then pay them to run influencer campaigns to get to the top of the charts. That's a bonkers setup. They're a great product, but you can game your own metrics and prove that what you're doing is more impactful than it actually is. Talking about performance marketing, I want to go a bit towards your side, Rugma. It's a core element in the industry. The classic founding mechanism is a business guy and a tech founder, they do MVP and pivot looking for product market fit, and often they approach brand the same way — keep changing the message, see what sticks, do stunts, pay Kaito to be top of the chart. The concept of growth marketing from Web2 is very dystopian within Web3. I know a lot of what you guys do is the opposite — adding value, creating that long tail. So how do you navigate performance marketing plus branding in Web3 in such a difficult scenario that Steve just painted? What are clients looking for, and how has been your experience?

Thank you. Great question. Going back four years, things change quickly, but one consistent issue is branding in Web3 — trust and reputation. Crypto is often seen as a scam or extraction versus building value. At Schiller, we wanted to flip that, go more organic and authentic, think about ways to add value and retain community rather than grabbing as many users as possible. The quicker you gain an audience, the quicker you can lose it because it's about what's trendy. Products like Cookie and Kaito incentivize that behavior. Used correctly, they can be valuable, but we've had to navigate differently and almost say no to those opportunities if the value they're trying to add isn't long-term. We've been very selective and niche. People come to us wanting a certain number of followers or likes, and we have to say that's not how we operate. We do check KPIs and performance marketing in some ways, but we see Web3 less as a funnel and more as a culture. When that's your north star, you operate very differently. There's space for agencies that incentivize the hype cycle, but for us it's about creating long-lasting memories, cross-pollination, and building community in a way that makes people feel part of what's being built. We have to mix and match the performance and organic sides.

Yeah, it's a tricky situation — chicken and egg. The industry runs that way, and you're trying to change it, but doing things differently won't be as effective for short-termism and vanity metrics. You're always playing catch-up: if you don't do this, you won't get the same results, but if we keep doing this, we'll never evolve. Being the one to push and pioneer different ways is difficult. I totally feel you. Taking a stance and deciding who you want to work with is the only way forward. How do you think, based on your experience, we go from a niche audience on CT or Discord or people passionate about the technology, and use similar tactics to go outside the bubble and provide value? We've seen projects go to TikTok, the craziness of sponsorship — as soon as you get to a certain level in crypto, you have to sponsor Formula 1 or a stadium, which is bizarre. The numbers are huge, and people see the logo but have no connection. There's a gap: we sell to the same people inside the niche, then go to the biggest stage where nobody knows us. How do we jump that gap, bring it closer, create value for the mainstream audience from a marketing perspective?

It's a great point. It illustrates how young this industry is. Long-term maturity, although unknown, will be very important in allowing us to get where we are. When we think about legacy brands like Coca-Cola or Nike, they had to adapt their marketing strategies over time. There's a misconception that more eyes, more money, more numbers leads to sticking. I think it's about going slow but steady, building ways to connect and build community — whether small events, evergreen media, podcasts, etc. You need to get with the times. A lot of people on CT used to think Instagram, Facebook, Meta, TikTok are completely different audiences, but we can see from teams like Doodles, Chimpers, and Pudgy Penguins that they're using TikTok. Pudgy also went into Walmart with plushies. So, thinking outside the box on how you reach your audience, being okay with using mainstream tools but being unique with it — putting your own stamp on it, using your brand or values. The human brain hasn't changed, just the tools. Basic things like word of mouth are still powerful. Combine that with new tools and technologies, and over time you'll see the effect you want. It remains to be seen with new tech like AI and blockchain — there will be many challenges.

Right. You said something interesting about Pudgy Penguins. Who here is familiar with Pudgy Penguins? Show by raising hands. A few. Who's familiar with Scrub Daddy? That's a sponge that won on Shark Tank. Pudgy did a partnership with them. There's zero connection there, but it's a lot of what you're saying — how to tap into a totally different audience. Pudgy started as an NFT project, 10,000 penguins, but they're cute, memable, with strong IP. They're doing exactly that: bringing the customer from aisle 2 to aisle 7 — getting people who go to aisle 2 to go to aisle 17 and buy something different. Pudgy is one of the best in the industry at that. Talking of mainstream, my favorite project in the industry is the ATP NFT collection from 2022. I highly recommend looking it up. It was a great example of merging different audiences, leveraging technology with IP, getting fans from outside the industry excited about something not because of the technology but because you're culturally tapping into a fandom or industry. Culturally, as you are at the threshold of mainstream comms and innovation in Web3, what are the biggest challenges you face while trying to push Web3 forward within ATP, or trying to push upcoming technologies that are little understood and often overhyped to a mainstream audience, especially diehard fans who are difficult to talk to and not the most open to new things? How do you navigate that ecosystem?

The key to the answer is we don't try and sell this technology whatsoever. For reference, ATP Tour is a sporting organization that runs tennis events and promotes the sport. In the last couple of years we've had a Web3 division innovating in the space. We come at it from the opposite end of the spectrum: we're a very old-fashioned global legacy brand trying to find an edge using this technology. I resonated a lot with what Steven was saying about design, branding, product. What we focus on, and what's been the biggest catalyst for our success, is having a very clear focus on the problem we're trying to solve. As a business, we know very clearly: we don't know our fans, and we have a very fragmented user experience. We believe Web3 is a unique solve for that problem, but it is the last consideration when building. We start with what can we build that adds genuine value to fans or joy to their experience, how do we talk about it in a simple, cohesive way that resonates with our brand and how fans consume the sport? We ask ourselves all the time: does this truly need to be on chain? Most of the time the answer is no. That's how we view it. Culturally, you'd expect leading this charge at a brand like ours would be hard, but it's surprisingly easy. Sport is hungry to innovate. We recognize we're behind the ball compared to tech and other entertainment brands — we're slow to evolve and losing fans to other entertainment propositions. When I speak to senior management or the board, there is fear about an unknown technology they don't understand, but the opportunity to innovate is a huge carrot. We're getting over that hurdle. In 2022, the legal team was very risk averse. In 2025, we're a lot more comfortable. We're not alone in that. How we market it to fans: we just don't. We create products with this technology on the back end as an enabler. They never see or touch the tech.

Yeah, it tends to be the simplest answer. It's funny how we go around and around and come back to the beginning — just don't talk about it; what matters is the experience. Brand is the experience built on top of a product. Comparing 2022 legal difficulties to 2025, what keeps making you wake up and say we've got to push this thing? You still see the vision. I've worked with the largest brands from 2021 to 2023 bull run — Adidas, Porsche, Skoda, Salesforce, Unilever, Mastercard. Then everyone kind of went, 'Yeah, we tried the pilots, forgot about our mainstream audience, tried to bring them inside the jar, didn't work. This industry sucks, we're never coming back.' But you're experiencing something very different. How is that feeling? What are you guys seeing that those brands are missing?

For me, there are two main motivations. First is how low the bar is today. The opportunity is enormous. There's a billion people who watch tennis. Today we know less than half a million of them. That's a huge runway to do something really special from a very low bar. It feels like asymmetric upside. Second motivation: every once in a while, two or three times a year, you come across a project or product that really blows your mind, takes your breath away. If you're familiar with Sling Money — built on Solana, international money transfers — the first time you use it, it's almost hard to imagine the world before it. You used to pay huge fees and wait three days to send money. Experiences like that are light bulb moments where you can no longer imagine going back. Another amazing project is Inversion Capital — they just launched on Avalanche with a model to acquire legacy businesses, integrate blockchain, and make them more efficient. They're looking at buying telecoms companies. It's projects like these that make you go, 'Oh my god, there's a step change there.' That's what I want to do for tennis fans. I want a fan to wake up and feel their experience of consuming tennis is so much better than last season. It feels like magic. The answer is Web3 on the back end, making the experience more unified, better marketing, more opportunities to spend money, less painful. That's what drives me.

Love it. Mo, you're coming from a more native brand and company within Web3, catering a lot to Web3 users and also looking at how to step up from there. In an industry where tech is becoming a commodity — you can copy a product easily, with AI making vibe coding a thing — when technology becomes an equalizer rather than a differentiator, how does a company like yours differentiate itself? Especially from a business development side, when you're trying to get clients to use your product, what's in it for them? What's holding back someone from copy pasting and going after it cheaper, faster, more reliable? How do you see that from your daily conversations and being at the forefront of sales conversations?

It's a very good point. If you have a startup, you can concentrate on two things: push marketing when your product isn't really ready, building the lean startup way, pivoting and adding things along the way, or you do it how we did it. We didn't invest at all in marketing. We built product for three years and just closed MetaMask. We didn't go out with products especially because of that reason — if we went out with a big beta, everyone sees it, someone else copies it with a bigger marketing budget and could have stolen MetaMask from under our fingers. We concentrated three years on building a product until it was ready, until people have that aha moment. For example, everyone holds NFTs and tokens, and everyone was screaming for utility in the last bull run. Actually only 25% of people claim their rewards or perks because they don't know they exist. So we created a model where all those perks are aggregated in one place, one API. If you log in at one of the endpoints that will support MetaMask this summer, we read what you have in your wallet and tell you: because you hold Pudgy, you get a free ticket; because you hold Azuki, you get 50% off. This was missing in the space. We're so far with technology, why do we still have all this friction? Why do we still need to jump from Discord to Telegram to email? The quintessence is we just need to create a cool product. So we took a product-first approach, then marketing with the first big partner. Being a first mover has given us advantage to probably be the biggest or most used application in the industry. I will say our solution will be industry standard. We're not just talking with MetaMask, but OpenSea, BitKeep, OKX. Everyone is like 'why didn't anyone else do it before?' It will hopefully be industry standard. We're going live at MetaMask with an airdrop claim tab at the beginning, later adding different categories like events. We just want to show people the value above the floor price of what you're holding — it's like an interoperable key to many other benefits.

And just to follow back on the idea: what happens if tomorrow I copy your tech and do exactly the same thing but better? How do you defend that position? How is the business thinking about it? A lot of times in fast-moving tech products, first mover advantage is great, but we've seen with L1s — Solana stole the cake, now Base is putting the foot on the gas. Apart from product innovation, what is making people stick around? Is it community?

It really depends on if it's B2B or B2C. If it's a project targeting end consumers, it's really about community. And I'm not talking about followers or people that follow the hype — like we saw with LayerZero on the timeline; where are they now? It's not a proper community. But if you build something special with your community, solve a pain point, and grow with them, that's underrated. That's why big brands are tapping into it. For background, I come from Web2 and also have an agency working with luxury brands navigating Web3. Everyone is looking for this closeness to the community. That makes a huge difference. On the B2B side, we are happy that we collected data over the last three and a half years. You cannot just copy that. You cannot come and try to tap into the data we collected. So we are somehow the miracle safe on that side.

Awesome. We're running out a little bit of time. Someone tapped on my shoulder — I hope it's not boring. To close out, I'd love to get a word or a sentence. I've got to put you on the spot. The whole idea of rebranding Web3 and changing how people think about it, or the experience, or trying to wipe out the dirt we have — it's really hard. When you say 'I'm a crypto guy,' there's a clear framing from mainstream — people kind of go 'oh.' Web3 is going towards the same negative framing. So the rebrand isn't just changing the message or explaining it easier — it's about the customer. I think Mark said you start with the end in mind, the experience matters more than the tech. How do we bring the customer into the room in Web3? How do we get them to actually use products powered by it? I'll start with Mark.

Show don't tell.

Steve,

Culture.

Mo,

Solve a problem. Make it simple.

So we all are saying no news, going back to the basics. We keep going around the moon and coming back to the principles. As a takeaway, we get very deep into the ecosystem, the bubble, talking to each other, selling to each other, and we forget that there are 8 billion people out there who don't care. That's the whole idea of this conversation. Thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much.