Things keep getting worse for Internet Computer holders
Things keep getting worse for Internet Computer holders. I've been reading Herbert Yang's tweets. He used to be the former General Manager of Asia at DFINITY. He doesn't work there anymore, and while he is still building on ICP, these are the kinds of things I would have overlooked when I was an ICP maxi. But this stuff looks incredibly bearish for ICP, and the only solution, to me, at this point is marketing. So let's look at some of these tweets by Herbert Yang, because this is something that people constantly bullposting ICP need to really think about.
And this is what you're going to get out of me, since the community wanted to be toxic and talk about how what I'm doing is not valuable and I shouldn't get paid. Good. Then let's look at what is wrong in the Internet Computer community. Herbert Yang is in a great position to give critical feedback about DFINITY.
The original vision was never promoted
Herbert shared an article about how NVIDIA AI factory compute is becoming an investable asset class, and he wrote: "This is the original vision of the Internet Computer, a decentralized network of investable compute power. The tech is there, but it's never been promoted as such." This is a guy who used to work at DFINITY. To me, this simple thing right here is the whole story: it has not been marketed accurately and correctly.
Then someone replied to him and said the thing is, it never will, because the DFINITY and Dominic marketing team is deep in the pits of hell. That, to me, is exactly what is happening. And there's no reason for it. I've given a very clear solution to get this technology out there with marketing. Literally, DFINITY just needs to make a proposal to add a marketing fund to the Network Nervous System (NNS). It's literally that easy to fix.
Here's Herbert's reply. He said, "I joined DFINITY from Amazon Web Services in 2021, and I truly believed ICP could disrupt the entire cloud compute industry. Unfortunately, it never found that footing." Why did it not find that footing? Because of marketing, or the lack thereof. You can't just put hundreds of engineers together and hope that people find out about the technology. My reply, which apparently didn't get boosted much, was that without effective marketing it is difficult for ICP to find the footing.
The FUD is real, and it is not too early
Now let's go to a post that Herbert commented on. GeekChain wrote that it's sad to see even people who worked for DFINITY post these kinds of comments, that these conclusions are too early, and that the FUD is real. No, they're not too early. This has been out for five years. The headcount has continuously, at least in the last year or two, been cut drastically. The marketing has just pissed away almost all of the money in ICP. All kinds of partnerships, like the UAE one, going to Avalanche is an absolute crime, when Pierre is the Chief Business Officer at DFINITY.
Herbert said the ICP community should face the reality that ICP is still on a journey of finding its product-market fit, which it has everything in place for. You just need to market the technology. At this point, AI building on ICP is a very strong product-market fit. Building your own apps fully on chain is a very strong product-market fit. It needs to be marketed. He wrote, "I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but the journey continues. Even for the entire crypto industry, there are only two to five real product-market fits: Bitcoin as digital gold, stablecoins, and prediction markets." He says most L1 chains have not found their product-market fit by his definition, and ICP is no better, but no worse.
Here's the thing. Creating tech is step one. We need to find more users. And how do you find more users? Marketing. The Network Nervous System has everything, everything necessary to do the marketing. If DFINITY would submit a proposal to create a marketing fund, it's this easy. And you're not going to find these users in an environment where almost everyone is getting paid to show certain coins, or by chasing communities that have already been built by paying people to show coins. You're not going to just get a bunch of users off of virtue and technology. Not going to happen.
Why the Pakistan, Engine, and UNDP partnerships aren't enough
Let's look at some other things Herbert Yang has posted recently, because the ICP community has gotten like so many communities online: just tell me what I want to hear every single day. Someone replied to him, "Or maybe you just quit too early," and he answered, "I left DFINITY, but I didn't quit ICP." So he is still here, still interested. Someone else made the point that it's a fair point on the broader cloud industry, but asked why the Pakistan, Engine, and UNDP partnerships didn't count as meaningful footing. They might, but you're going to need something like twelve months to see how those work out. We can't just go twelve months without any other marketing or anything else happening. If you want the price to go up, the price is not going to go up off the technology by itself. People have to know about and use these technologies, and you're not getting that to happen without marketing.
Then there's his post about trial and error. He wrote that it takes quite a bit of trial and error to figure out true market fit, and that it seemed like ICP could ride the wave of being an ETH and SOL killer. But he's realized that what carried those L1 ecosystems was not the tech, but the community, the ability to enable people to make money. Now, how did that happen? By spending money on marketing. And on this front, he says, there's a lot the foundation needs to work on.
If DFINITY won't take care of people like me, I'm done hyping
For God's sake. If DFINITY is not going to set up the Network Nervous System to give people like me the opportunity to get paid to hype ICP every day, after I've hyped ICP in what must be thousands of videos now that have gone out to millions and millions of people, then I'm not going to do that. If you're not going to take care of someone like me, if Pierre is going to unfollow me when I bring this up, if the community is going to just shitpost me, I'm not going to keep going while the community shitposts me into oblivion. And then other people are not going to stand up and say, hold on, we need marketing, because we don't have hardly any users. These other layer ones have garbage technology, but a lot of users, because they do marketing.
So here it is. Herbert Yang has given you, straight from somebody who actually worked at DFINITY, the same basic thing that I'm saying: we need marketing. And product-market fit, to me, is there. AI building, like with Claude, directly on ICP, is there. But you're not going to get to keep having what ICP has right now, the amazing technology that Bobby O has so many videos talking about, forever. There's a clock that's ticking before somebody else puts out technology similar to what ICP has, and I'm going to do a video about this next. It's all going to be under their own control, it's going to be private, and it's going to merge directly with AI. ICP is running out of time to get a foothold, and marketing is essential to get a foothold, because other people are trying to replicate this technology. They're close to having it all down. When they launch it, it's over for ICP.
If you want to talk to me, go to jerrybanfield.com. I've got all my channels, all my accounts, my store, everything there.
So marketing, to me, is the only way this gets done. ICP needs to establish serious enough footing in time, before a competitor can come out and just grab the market share. I'll talk more about that in my next video, and you can find all of my Internet Computer coverage, from my maxi days to today, in my ICP Crypto playlist.