Host: No, no, you good morning Cardano and Natalya. So today we have the founder of ADALink, a marketing firm building on-chain on Cardano. So let’s give a warm welcome today.
Natalya: Hola. Hola everyone. Thank you. Thank you for having us.
Host: It’s good to have you sis. I have known you for a long time, almost two years since I first met you at Intersect in the marketing working group. So before we dive into the questions, let me give you a bit of introduction to our guest on the hot seat today. So Natalya has 10 years of experience in marketing. She comes from Brazil if I’m not wrong. Argentina, right? Please correct me, sister, if I’m wrong.
Natalya: Yeah, I’m from Puerto Rico.
Host: Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry for the mistake. It’s my fault. And she has been pushing for marketing and its growth on Cardano for enterprises from various periods. She’s also built ADALink, which is a marketing platform using Cardano’s technology to bring in decentralized marketing for people, builders, creators, and businesses. They have successfully launched an initiative where they have given rewards of almost, I think it was 200,000 ADA, and they have engaged with a lot of projects building on Cardano. I have seen the growth; they’re launching new updates every day, bringing new performance on Cardano. I also saw “Explore Cardano” where they made an advertisement which has garnered almost—I think it was close to 8 million views now—bringing Cardano in front of a lot of people who were previously maybe not reached. So I’ve invited sis here because I want to ask from her marketing expertise: how does she see Cardano and her experience building a business on Cardano? So if you can give a bit of your experience about why you joined Cardano and when did you start building on Cardano.
Natalya: Yeah. First, thank you again for inviting us to chat a little bit about what we’re working on here on Cardano. We’ve been around this space since around 2021 when we entered the Cardano community and started getting involved, always with the mindset of creators. How can we take advantage of the blockchain technology? How can we innovate? Because it is an economic system, how can we leverage it in a way that can help the entertainment and creative industries?
Initially, when we entered the space, our idea was to create an affiliate network or a partnership management platform that could connect SPOs and creators, advertisers, and marketers to help SPOs attract new delegation. When we developed this system thanks to Project Catalyst, we realized it could also help Cardano projects that had tokens to promote themselves and get more awareness for their products to the external public.
Host: Okay. And before I comment on that, I have to apologize. It is not 8 million. It is actually 42 million views. Okay. And that’s a huge amount of views on X. I just posted it on the Jumbotron also, and the second video is close to 1.1 million views. That’s a lot of sharing of Cardano to the outside community. This is what we have always been asking for: to bring eyes to the projects on Cardano. Natalya has built a platform for us. It seems she wanted to support decentralization because the more SPOs are marketed, the more people delegate, and the more Cardano becomes decentralized and secure.
Since you built the platform, I’ve tried it and enjoyed using it. Today, after almost six years in the ecosystem, how do you see the Cardano ecosystem having evolved and the business opportunity growing?
Natalya: First, thank you for trying out the platform. It is our baby. In general, for Cardano businesses, there’s certainly a challenge tied to marketing. You cannot sell what you do not promote. If you don’t get your product in the eyes of people who need it, you cannot expect them to use it. As an ecosystem, we have neglected marketing. I have to state that loud and clear.
Marketing a blockchain product is not easy. There is onboarding friction because people need to be onboarded to crypto first. There is also a difficulty around funding. To grow, you need consistent funding. On Cardano, we mostly had Catalyst, but the cycles were inconsistent and required a lot of campaigning. It’s not like a traditional business where you work directly with a client. The resources for builders are very limited.
Host: Marketing makes it easier for people to understand what the product actually is. You are bringing creativity to a tech-heavy industry. After so much struggle, why did you not leave Cardano? Why are you still sticking with Cardano today?
Natalya: Honestly, it’s because I’m very stubborn. My team is very stubborn. We really believe in the power of decentralization and the ethos. We understand the technology, but we also have experience in the creative industries. Our motivations are intrinsic. We want to know to what extent we can use this technology to benefit the industries we love.
Host: According to you, is Cardano a product or a movement?
Natalya: It’s definitely both. You have to market it as a product, but there’s an underlying vision. Cardano gives you decentralized money and censorship resistance. You treat it like a product in marketing, but you use the movement to amplify the impact the technology has on people’s lives.
Host: Regarding the “ghost chain” narrative, how would you build a strategy to battle that?
Natalya: What we did with the “Explore Cardano” campaign was show that Cardano has live products you can use today. We reviewed and analyzed over 300 Cardano products. We created a “Pathfinder” tool on explorecardano.com where users answer questions about their interests, and it recommends a product based on the Cardano Summit Awards. We have to continue to promote the products that are live and support each other.
Host: I was shocked there are 300 products! How does the technical nature of these products make your job as a marketer tough?
Natalya: The first thing you do is define the “buyer persona.” Who is your product for? Some products don’t need ads; they need you to go to specific conferences and onboard people there. Cardano has multiple types of businesses: content creators, AI products, artists using peer-to-peer tech, developers, and gamers. When you define the audience, it helps you develop a strategy.
Host: With the recent DeFi hacks on other chains, is security an opportunity for Cardano to market itself?
Natalya: Definitely. You have to play your strengths. Cardano’s strength is reliability. Our tagline is “Decentralized, Fast, Reliable.” We explored many narratives for our ads, and my favorite script focused precisely on security. We have to keep hammering that message beautifully and poetically. While we might not be as fast as Solana, we are more decentralized and secure.
Host: Narratives change fast in crypto. How do you manage long-term marketing when the focus shifts every few months?
Natalya: You anchor your strategy around strengths that won’t change: decentralized, fast, and reliable. You have a global brand awareness campaign, but you also need a budget for quick promotions for current things. This is where community content creators are important; they can respond quickly to what is happening.
Host: What are your future plans for ADALink, and what do you think of the current marketing proposals like the CF Summit and Token 2049?
Natalya: I am supportive of anyone trying to solve the marketing problem. If I were a DRep, I would use a framework: look at what percentage of a budget a typical technology company allocates to marketing. If we aren’t allocating that much, we are underfunding it.
For ADALink, we are releasing our next feature on the preview testnet. It’s the first affiliate marketing platform built on Cardano. In Web2, these platforms drive 15% to 40% of growth. Now Cardano has a growth engine where anyone can be a promoter. You share an affiliate link for a project, and you get commissions instantly on conversion. This allows marketing efforts to be tracked and attributed at the point of conversion, which is something nobody else in Web3 has in this decentralized manner.
Host: That is amazing news. This is what Cardano needs to onboard people. Wishing you all the best. To the delegators and users: you are the heartbeat of this chain. See you at the next episode.