5 pillars of trust building in Web3

Trust. 

Trust is key to onboarding new customers, selling more products, and generating buzz.

Trust is at the core of any business's growth. 

If it’s lacking, new potential customers aren’t going to give you the time of day. Tarnish your reputation and your existing customers will be on the lookout for a competitor they trust more.  

Building trust isn't just an addition to your other processes. It should be the core of what you do. Building trust makes it easier to attract, convert, and keep your customers. 

Trust is underrated when it comes to biz growth.  

There’s that very old, very tied (but very true) cliché saying that “if people like you, they’ll listen to you. But if people trust you, they’ll buy from you.”

This is arguably even more true in Web3.

The problem we face as Web3 brands is that trust in our industry is dangerously - but understandably - low.    

Why trust in Web3 is dangerously low

Trust is low simply because there are too many scams, hacks, and issues in Web3 right now.  

Feels like every week there’s news of an exploit, hack, scam or issue that costs everyday users millions (or billions) of dollars.  

I mean, take the whole FTX fiasco as an example.  

The news is running rampant with it. Often leading with headlines that mention “fraud” and “crypto” in the same breath.  

While the claims aren’t wrong, they are misleading. 

The average person doesn't understand that this is just a case of old fashioned fraud. It has nothing to do with the wider crypto ecosystem, and even less to do with blockchain.  

SBFs antics have given the press negative ammunition that will last them for months to come. 

That’s months of people seeing the words “crypto” and “fraud” together day after day. 

The average person is going to read all of this and think “this whole Web3 thing is a scam”. They don't have the experience to separate SBFs actions from crypto as a whole, let alone blockchain. 

Thing is, SBF and FTX are simply the latest in a long line of scams.  

And if this was all of the exposure you had to the world of crypto, you’d think it was a scam as well.  

What it means is when a new business pops up and explains how they leverage blockchain tech, the people who have been conditioned to think crypto is a scam will have zero trust in the offer.  

It’s already happening.  

The public view on cryptocurrencies in the US has taken a battering throughout the whole FTX issues.  

There’s been a dramatic fall in trust in crypto.  

You might be thinking “well that’s crypto, Web3 is about more than cryptocurrencies”. And you’d be right.  

But next time you meet someone who’s not embedded within Web3, ask them if there’s a difference and if they can explain it. 

I guarantee they won’t be able to. 

Most people view crypto and blockchain as one and the same. 

The more negative press crypto gets, the more trust in blockchain and Web3 is eroded.  

This is a huge problem for the growth and mainstream appeal of Web3. 

If people don’t trust the core foundation of your project, how are you going to get them to hand over their personal and payment details. 

You won’t be able to. 

So what’s the solution?

What can Web3 brands do to increase trust? 

If we’re being honest, the damage caused by issues in this bear market will take a long time to repair.  

We’re talking years here. Not months.  

All we can really do is keep building and keep proving the value and effectiveness of Web3 as a solution.  

But there are a few core elements to projects that will help build trust a little faster. There are 5 core pillars to building trust with each and every project in Web3.  

1. Truth over trust

The wonderful thing about blockchain is that there is a public ledger.  

We’re going to have to move away from brand-led claims of being solvent, having X users, or simple claims of being the best. 

Trust in the brand won’t be enough. 

We need truth. 

Take for example the recent FUD around Binance and the rumours of them following in the same footsteps as FTX.  

Binance created a page on their site listing their cold wallet addresses. This means anyone can check those wallets with a simple crypto explorer tool.  

People looked into this and discovered that Binance have over $60B in assets.  

There’s no trust needed here because Binance have provided truth. 

2. Identity supported by actions

A big thing for any business is to have a vision. 

Something you want to achieve, an underserved section of society you want to help, a huge problem you want to solve.  

That vision is important for attracting users and community to your project. 

But the vision alone isn’t enough.  

Your public actions need to reinforce and build toward that vision.  

Your vision attracts people, your actions keep them engaged and believing in you. 

Take for example an NFT collection and community like World of Women.  

Their vision is to achieve better representation of women in NFTs through a community and support system.  

It’s a worthy vision that resonates with a lot of people. 

But that’s not enough, right? The actions of the team need to support this belief and vision. Otherwise they’re just pretty words on a page.  

World of Women take actions that build on their vision and promise. 

It won’t take long of scrolling through their socials to see simple support and amplification of female NFT artists, news of events furthering their cause, or even just their community getting together to support one another. 

World of Women is a great example of how to do things well.  

It’s not enough to have a laudable vision, your public actions have to support it to build real trust and excitement.  

3. Third-party audits

This is where things start to get a little complicated and where we’re currently deficient.  

There is a move for more auditing companies that will provide services like smart contract audits.  

Which is great because a poor smart contract can lead to costly loopholes and exploits.  

But I don’t think there are enough of these brands out there yet, nor do I think that there’s enough expertise in the space.  

Whether it’s preventative measures like pre-launch audits or analysis of systems after an issue has occurred, there simply aren't enough people out there doing this sort of stuff.  

It’s most apparent when you rely on the crypto community to highlight bad actors and do analysis. 

I love the Twitter feeds of people like ZachXBT, but he (?) is one person. He can’t be everwhere and provide warnings for the future. 

If we want to build trust we have to increase the number of trusted auditing services to prevent issues before they arise.  

A handful of audit-only firms who have no stake in the protocols they're auditing are needed. They need domain authority and expertise to help build that trust. 

I’d feel more comfortable engaging with a brand if they had an “audited by X” trust seal on their website.  

The problem is in finding all the issues that can arise in blockchain tech before someone exploits them.  

4. Community

Community is the core of most Web3 companies. 

And they’re also a great indicator of how the brand treats its users.  

You can jump into most communities for free (might have a few channels that are closed off to non-holders). I recommend doing this for each brand you're thinking of trusting.  

Jump in and see whether or not the team is engaged and helpful to users.  

It's not uncommon to join a community and see user questions being ignored or simply find a completely dead server.  

In these cases, the brand doesn’t appear to care about their users which to me indicates an entity unworthy of trust.  

You’ll also often find their community members talking candidly about the project on social media.  

Just head to a social platform and search for the brand. Won't take long to turn up positive or negative sentiment.  

For example, this quick search I did for Brave’s web browser shows some good feedback from everyday users. 

5. Genuine user reviews

Here’s where I think there’s a huge gap in Web3.  

There are a couple of sites doing “expert” reviews of products and brands. 

There are also a couple of Twitter accounts or YouTube channels that do very basic overviews of project features. 

The problem with relying on one person's opinion is it’s too subjective. 

A single person can be bought. 

They can have a good or bad experience that’s an outlier and not indicative of everyone else’s experience.  

But there’s no real dedicated location where people can offer detailed thoughts about the projects they use. 

Their opinions on how it’s helped them, what it could be used for, and whether or not they believe it to be worth the money.

I mean, this sort of thing is super important. 

Think of your own shopping behaviours when you head to Amazon. 

Two products that are almost identical pop up. One has a 5-star rating with 500 user reviews. The other, a 3-star rating with 400 reviews. 

Which do you choose? 

The 5-star one right? 

Honest opinions from real users are powerful. 

Especially if they’re on a third-party site not hosted by the brand itself.

Why?

Because these third-party reviews are seen as more trustworthy and less likely to have been doctors to give a favourable review.  

Just look at sites like G2.com and their “trust badges” as an example. These things are plastered over various sites to help them increase conversions. A similar offer for Web3 should help more brands build more trust.

These elements could help Web3 users more easily trust your brand and sign up to try it out today. 

If there was such a service that is. 

The good news is, that’s exactly what we’re building here.   

Decent Reviews is a place where your users can leave reviews on their experience with you. 

Reviews that can then be used for…

• Insights into how to improve
• Improvements in understanding your audience
• Marketing collateral in the form of star ratings and testimonials or badges
• Lead generation for new customers though better BoFu optimized search results

These kind of reviews are super important for growth. And with AI coming in to the content game, it’s these kinds of genuine user reviews that will convince people to take a chance on a new project.  

If you’re working on something that could benefit from user reviews, message us now through this page and we’ll see if we can help you build some trust and generate more qualified leads for your brand.