Here is where I see a big opportunity for improvement. All our research shows that no vertical specialisation (and instead using local communities only) is poor strategy. Virtually every L1/L2 ecosystem tried this generalist approach and some of the key learnings we’re gathering are that lack of vertical specialisation leads to:
- poor support as local programs can only offer generic advice. e.g. a gaming project in malaysia is closer to a gaming project in Latam, than to a DePin project in malaysia. Most web3 programs offer generalist advice that is shallow and builders complain about programs not being worth the time.
- poor access to customers and no customer centricity: it’s not the same communities that are interested in health tech solutions, gaming, collabtech, or defi. Having generalist communities creates the echo chamber that keeps reproducing Web3’s self-referential, jargony, and ultimately over-reliance on pump and dumps over real value creation.
- poor talent attraction: vertical-agnostic (i.e. generalist) programs compete without a USP with every other ecosystem and support program. As a result, they struggle to attract top talent, this has led multiple ecosystems with more resources than Scroll to shut down accelerators and cancel other generalist programs (e.g. SAFE, Polygon, etc.). Specialised talent are interested in participating in specialised communities, not in generalist ones.
- poor investment and resource allocation: as generalist program/community managers lack deep understanding of each vertical to know which projects are redundant and which projects have a unique proposition.
In the past, Web3 was only DeFI so it made sense to have this strategy. Now, Web3 has become multi-industry, and to tackle real-world use cases, we need more specialisation and focus than continuing with undifferentiated programs. Web3 is proving slow to adapt to this need (instead, we fund more and more undifferentiated L2s that compete with one another on the same red ocean arena).
Overall, local segmentation can be useful for some basic community building (e.g. to train developers, not to train founders). When it comes to supporting founders, local segmentation (instead of vertical specialisation) is based on an outdated understanding of Web3 and has too many downsides.
Scroll has an opportunity to lead the way with vertical specialisation!