Europe’s biggest event for cosmonauts – as members of the Cosmos blockchain community refer to one another – drew a record 600 in-person attendees from around the globe to the Gateway to Cosmos conference in early June.
I moderated panels on investing and fintech, gave a PR workshop and coordinated media interviews at the event where Angle42 was proud to be the media partner of the organizers, venture capital firm RockawayX. It was an absolute pleasure to meet so many brilliant individuals, exchange ideas, and forge new collaborations at what was a high-octane start to Prague Blockchain Week.
The Cosmos Hub is the gateway to a rapidly expanding ecosystem of independent blockchains all interconnected via the ground-breaking IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication) protocol. There is no doubt the technology is impressive and innovative – and deserves greater adoption.
But the recurring theme that resonated with me as a communicator was how the Cosmos community can tell its story in a way that attracts people to take advantage of the products and services. Participants agreed the “cool kids build on Cosmos” but also lamented that, for now at least, masses of developers and consumers aren’t flooding into the ecosystem.
For me, Cosmos must extend beyond its borders and explain itself and its projects to the broader worlds of Web3, fintech and tech generally. This challenge is certainly not unique to Cosmos. At Angle42, as we help companies set their strategic communications and craft their narratives for the media and customers, we see many teams starting out too focused on the developer details and essentially talking with insider jargon to their known universe of tech-savvy colleagues. Our role is always to show the teams how to showcase themselves to wider audiences. We experience the same whether we are supporting companies in the Web3, AI, or any other frontier tech industries.
The Gateway conference is a great jumping off point for Cosmos to communicate outward.
In real life, Cosmos is far from the fractious community I was anticipating after following some Twitter fights. The collaboration and determination to build out an ecosystem and attract many more users was palpable in Prague. Challenges remain for sure. But with projects like dYdX and Sei Network choosing Cosmos, Jelena Djuric‘s Noble bringing in stablecoin liquidity, Nym developing a unique privacy infrastructure and the likes of Polymer Labs issuing a rallying cry for an OpenIBC movement, there is so much to look forward to.
I was inspired by the 50-odd attendees at my workshop, “Press 101: How to win media attention for your startup.” The eagerness not only to build cutting-edge tech, but also to build a company’s reputation and craft narratives to excite the media was encouraging.
The key now is to tell the stories to earn the projects the attention they deserve. The community is improving on so many fronts. There’s every reason to believe Cosmos can get its communication right, too.
Let’s build stellar reputations to match the out-of-this-world products.