How Early-Stage Web3 Projects Get Their First Wave of Users When the Market Doesn’t Care
TaskOn3 min read·Just now--
Bear markets are when the real work gets done. Here’s where to start.
Bear markets are brutal for user acquisition. Token incentives lose their pull. Airdrop hunters move on. The projects that survive, and the ones that come out ahead when sentiment turns, are the ones that figured out how to build genuine user relationships when nobody was paying attention.
This is a three-part guide to doing exactly that. No fluff. Just the approaches that actually work when you’re starting from near zero in a market that isn’t in your favor.
We start at the beginning: who your first users actually are, and where to find them.
1. Accept that the first 100 users are a different problem than the first 10,000
Most early-stage projects skip the first phase entirely. They launch a token, run a quest campaign, acquire 50,000 wallet addresses, and call it traction. Then they wonder why DAU is 200 three months later.
The first 100 users are not a distribution problem. They are a product-market fit problem. Before you think about scale, you need people who actually want to use what you’ve built, not people who want the token you’re distributing.
This means your first user acquisition strategy should look less like a marketing campaign and more like a research operation. Find the people who have the problem your product solves. Talk to them directly. Get them using it. Learn why they stay and why they leave. The insights from those first 100 users will shape every growth decision that follows.
The first 100 users are not a distribution problem. They’re a product-market fit problem.
2. Find where your users already are, and show up there
In a bear market, generic Web3 audiences are exhausted. They’ve seen hundreds of projects launch, most of which are gone. The projects that cut through are the ones that go deep into specific communities rather than broadcasting wide.
This means identifying the exact communities where your target users spend time, whether that’s a Discord focused on a specific chain, a Telegram group around a particular niche, a Farcaster channel, or a forum thread. And then showing up there as a contributor, not as a marketer.
Practically, this looks like:
- Answering questions relevant to your product area, before anyone knows who you are
- Sharing genuine insights about problems in your space, not promotional content
- Asking for feedback on specific product decisions and actually incorporating it
- Building relationships with a few community members who trust you enough to introduce you to others
This approach is slow and doesn’t produce impressive charts. It also produces users who genuinely care about what you’re building, which is the only kind worth having at this stage.
Next: once you have your first users, how do you reach the next wave without burning your entire budget on cold acquisition? Part 2 covers ecosystem partnerships, campaign design, and the retention mistake almost every project makes. Stay tuned!
TaskOn helps Web3 projects grow from cold start to loyal community.
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