No aspect of a protocol/crypto project is more representative of its worth than its whitepaper. It acts both as a symbolic milestone and a carefully designed story of the company’s current and future objectives. Those familiar with the market and blockchain projects should have an educating experience when reading whitepapers. However, whitepapers remain largely unapproachable, due to their esoteric nature and a broad inability to express technical concepts in terms accessible to the average reader.
A whitepaper’s function/purpose is
- to provide the information to potential investors and
- to promote the token.
For those projects that have been incredibly successful at converting the contents of their whitepaper into large investments, we find that they share the following commonalities:
- they have carefully selected the correct topic/project to write a whitepaper on,
- they have identified the goal they wish the whitepaper to achieve (is the goal to raise funds, create awareness, or to sell a product or service?),
- they have considered all aspects of their audience and how to write particularly to that group,
- they have meticulously structured the introduction and conclusions to the paper to be as to-the-point and attractive as possible, and lastly
- they have packed their whitepapers with valuable information, data, and graphics that are consistent in visual and contextual appeal.
Oftentimes, aspects of the whitepaper’s format are overlooked, resulting in such basic readability errors such as poor layout, spelling, grammar and contradictory information – a sure sign that something is not quite right with the project. Other aspects that are overlooked consist of:
- poor mobile format,
- design that is up-to-date and future-proof,
- and design that is tailored to the specific audience that will be reading it.
It thus goes without saying that the task of constructing a whitepaper is a difficult one – it must cover the technical aspects of a project in detail while also remaining relatively comprehensible and attractive in its layout and design to its audience. This is especially true for protocol/blockchain-specific startups, where much of the audience are not trained to deconstruct academic writing, and are only fresh enthusiasts seeking to gain knowledge about a particular technology.
Balancing the construction of such a critically important document is only half the challenge, the other crucial aspect of the process is distribution, and reaching the targeted audience in the most effective manner possible. This involves the need to leverage social channels where most of the targeted audience reside, email lists to provide marketing material to those that CHOSE to be on such lists, and the massively loyal networks of crypto-specific influencers and media companies to drive your whitepaper’s distribution.
