Fragmented message, shared concern
Intersect’s Growth and Marketing Committee reported that nearly two-thirds of respondents rated Cardano’s current marketing as average or below average. The leading criticisms were inconsistent narratives and the lack of a visible long-term vision.
The most common request was a unified ecosystem voice covering Input Output, the Cardano Foundation, EMURGO, Intersect and community channels. The committee said the objective should be coherence rather than centralized control. That distinction matters in Cardano, where coordination has often been easier to propose than to govern.
More than 90% of respondents said a clear marketing direction was essential. Seventy percent said Cardano should spend more on marketing than it does today. Respondents generally supported allocating about 10% of the treasury to marketing and communications, with a higher tolerance of 15% to 20% for liquidity and partnership initiatives.
The figures describe demand for a strategy. They do not show that additional spending would produce adoption.
Builders are the proposed audience
The survey placed developers and founders at the center of future marketing efforts. Respondents said Cardano projects need visibility, storytelling and go-to-market support, in addition to technical tools and liquidity.
Grassroots and community-led communication was viewed as more authentic and effective than centralized campaigns. Yet only one in five respondents said they had the tools needed to explain Cardano effectively.
Intersect’s forum announcement summarized the results ahead of the 2026 budget cycle. The committee plans to use the survey as a starting point for deeper analysis, interviews and a 2026 Marketing White Paper.
Eighty percent of respondents supported creating a Marketing Advisory Council to coordinate ecosystem strategy. A discussion session is also planned for the Berlin Cardano Summit on November 11.
DeFi comes with a liquidity bill
DeFi was the leading ecosystem growth priority, selected by 51% of respondents. Governance, identity and real-world assets followed.
Participants identified low total value locked, limited stablecoin liquidity and weak visibility for DeFi projects as major barriers. Nearly three-quarters supported some form of treasury-backed liquidity program. Proposed tools included stablecoin incentives, ada matching and targeted liquidity support.
That proposal would move Cardano marketing closer to market structure. A campaign can buy attention, but it cannot by itself create a liquid stablecoin market, reliable trading depth or sustained protocol usage. Treasury support would therefore need clear eligibility rules, public reporting and measures that distinguish temporary incentives from durable demand.
The survey records support for such a program. It does not establish which projects would qualify, how losses would be handled or whether the spending would outperform other treasury uses.
Objection remains unresolved
The only critical response identified for this article came from ADA4Good, which argued that Cardano’s treasury should prioritize core development and infrastructure. The post said individual projects should market their own products and opposed broad protocol-level marketing as inefficient and difficult to measure.
No opposing response was found in the supplied sources. That leaves the central policy question open: whether ecosystem-wide promotion is a shared public good or an expense that should be carried by the projects seeking customers.
The next check is straightforward. Cardano’s proposed marketing direction will have to publish its budget, targets and results. Until then, the survey shows clear demand for coordination, but not yet proof that coordination can convert treasury spending into users, liquidity or revenue.
Daniel Friedman is not a person. No notebook, no deadlines, no face behind the name — just a byline this newsroom publishes under. Here is the production line underneath it, because a name beside a portrait reads like a journalist, and this one is not one.
The models. Writing: gpt-5.6-luna. Out on the live web: gpt-5.6-terra and gpt-5.6-luna. Pictures: gpt-image-1. Swap one in the newsroom and this line swaps with it — it is read off the machines, not typed here.
How a story is made
- Research. The searching model reads around the story, pointed at primary sources — the filing, the post, the repository — rather than at somebody else's write-up of them.
- Writing. The writing model drafts it against what was found, at Daniel Friedman's usual length and in Daniel Friedman's usual register.
- The loop. A reviewer reads the draft and sends it back with notes. Then reads it again. A piece can go round several times before it leaves the building.
- Enrichment. A quotation has to appear word for word on the page it is taken from. A chart may only use figures that appear in the source it cites. Whatever fails is dropped, and the reason is kept.
- Fact check. A last pass hunts for claims the article makes and its sources do not.
- A human stop. Sensitive subjects are held for a person to read before publication, and a person can kill any of it at any point.
If that sounds less like a newsroom and more like a factory: quite. It is called Press Factory.
This article was generated using AI and published automatically without human pre-publication review.
How this article was made
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