Putting the Bear Market to Bed: An Analysis of Centrifuge’s 200M+ TVL Growth

The state of DeFi protocols has been quite questionable in terms of growth since the start of the bear market (understandably so). But one protocol that has defied the norms is Centrifuge. Centrifuge has been consistently growing since its inception in 2018. Despite the unfortunate market trends since the past year, this protocol continues to move uphill. 

Background

When looking for ways to boost product growth in Web3, we come across tens and hundreds of growth strategies. But how do we know what works? A lot of the time we cannot test out each strategy and see if it will work for our product. Especially when the said strategy is expected to take a lot of time to yield results. 

In cases like these two approaches work best:

1. Using data and analytics to find the best strategy for your product
2. Studying and implementing effective strategies that products similar to yours are using and tailoring them to your needs.

We have talked about data-driven growth and strategies like building a marketing funnel, and user retention strategies in the past. So today, we will be doing things a little differently. We will unravel the popular protocol, Centrifuge, to see how it has implemented growth strategies to reach where they are today.

What is Centrifuge?

Before we go further, let’s take a brief look at what Centrifuge is. 

Centrifuge is a credit protocol that allows users to offer financial support to businesses operating in the real world. Users are granted the opportunity to access a diverse range of assets, such as securities backed by assets, real estate properties, and financing for invoices. According to Centrifuge, these real-world assets (RWAs) present DAOs with a reliable and consistent means of generating yields. And these yields can be predicted and sustained over time.

Now that we know what Centrifuge is, let’s move on to how it has created an unignorable presence in the world of web3 and what strategies it has been using to keep building this presence and grow consistently.

Centrifuge Growth Strategies

While studying Centrifuge’s brand placement and marketing strategies, I came across several channels that their team is using to boost their presence and grow their protocol. 

These strategies include:

1. Content Marketing
2. Social Media Marketing
3. Community development (DAO)
4. Partnerships
5. Events

Let’s dive into each of these and see how you can use these strategies for your web3 product!

Content Marketing

Content marketing is highly effective for several reasons. 

1. It allows businesses to establish themselves as industry experts by sharing valuable insights and knowledge with their audience. 
2. Quality content builds trust, credibility, and brand authority, which can lead to increased customer loyalty and retention.
3. Content marketing helps businesses increase their online visibility and attract organic traffic. 
4. By creating high-quality content optimized for search engines, businesses can improve their search engine rankings and attract relevant visitors to their websites.

Let’s take a look at how Centrifuge incorporates content marketing into its growth plan. 

Types of Content

1. Product updates 
2. Press Releases 
3. Partnership announcements
4. Informative articles
5. Educative blogs

Notice how they are covering all aspects of the product. They are educating people about topics like Real World Assets (RWAs) that are off-chain and tokenize them to bring them on-chain. Since their protocol includes the said mechanism, this kind of content ultimately helps them raise awareness. 

Moreover, the partnership announcements and fundraising news brings a lot of attention to their product and brings it to newer ecosystems. They are constantly providing development updates, which creates a sense of trust within their community, partners, investors, and users.

Furthermore, they also have featured articles on very well-known platforms like The Defiant, Decrypt, Forbes, CoinDesk, and Blockworks that take their brand presence to a whole new level. This not only helps them secure backlinks and improve their SEO but also proves Centrifuge as a legit protocol that’s continuously improving and growing.

Platforms

Centrifuge puts up their blogs in two places:

1. Website
2. Mirror.xyz

This makes a lot of sense. Putting up content on the website brings more people to your website and improves the SEO. It makes it easier to rank the website on preferred keywords. 

Whereas using a platform like mirror.xyz is a smart move as it makes the content available to the relevant people (working in the web3 space). Mirror.xyz is a great platform to find curated and filtered content when you are building a web3 product. 

While we do have other content publishing platforms like Medium (which are great no doubt) but publishing it on a web3-exclusive platform brings highly relevant attention and worth to their content pieces. 

However, it's important to note that content marketing is a long-term strategy that requires consistency, quality, and relevance. Results may not be immediate, and it typically takes time to build a loyal audience and see significant returns on investment.

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing is something that must NOT be missed out on. Regardless of the kind of product you have, social media presence and marketing are crucial for growth. There are several reasons for this:

1. SMM is great to show product profiles and progress
2. It brings the community closer
3. It allows for 2-way communication between the product and audience
4. It allows for influencer collaborations
5. People are present on social media. And your brand needs to be where your people are.

Looking at Centrifuge, we see a great social media presence, especially on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Youtube. Let’s break down how each one is playing its part in the grand scheme of things.

Twitter

With 62.1K followers, Centrifuge is quite active on Twitter. Their profile is an amalgam of all the activities that are going on at Centrifuge. Be it tutorials, milestones, or events updates; all of that can be found on their Twitter. This is a beautiful representation of the audience engagement they’ve created throughout the years. 

LinkedIn

Centrifuge’s LinkedIn is very much similar to Twitter. They make sure to share all the notable progress to keep their followers updated with their achievements.

Youtube

Many products/companies are weary of creating a youtube channel and populating it with content. It may be because it requires a whole different kind of effort and might be a bit out of their comfort zones. But video content, if done right, can be a great way to engage with your audience. 

There is a variety of video content that Centrifuge has put up on Youtube, which they also share on their social media channels (Twitter and LinkedIn). Some of these types are:

1. About Centrifuge
2. Educative videos
3. Podcasts
4. Governance calls and AMAs
5. Panels and presentations

Community (DAO) Development

DAOs and communities are a big part of Web3. And dare I say, a must-have to grow your products. Having a product community brings in a sense of ownership among the users of the product. When they can connect with similar people and talk to the people behind the products, they feel like a part of a special ecosystem and become ambassadors of your product. 

Centrifuge has its own Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) with its governance structure and mechanisms. This allows their users to connect amongst themselves and the team behind Centrifuge on a deeper level and participate in the decision-making. By doing so, the users feel skin in the game and are more personally involved with the product's vision. With 14000+ members on their discord server, Centrifuge is playing the community card exceptionally well to grow their supporters in an exclusive DAO.

Moreover, Centrifuge also has a Credit group within their community, consisting of Credit experts and industry veterans.

Partnerships

Strategic partnerships play a crucial role in the growth and development of web3 products. Partnerships involve collaborating with other projects, organizations, or individuals within the decentralized ecosystem to achieve common goals, leverage synergies, and drive mutual benefits.

As of now, Centrifuge has worked with many notable protocols like MakerDAO, Aave, and BlockTower along with chains like Polkadot, Moonbeam Ethereum, etc. This allows for creating a strong presence and tapping into their ecosystems.

Events

Web3 events are a great way to get connected to all kinds of people that could help with your brand presence and product growth. The best part is, that you are meeting these people in a casual, real-world environment, that enables you to have long-lasting relationships with them. You could meet potential users, partners, and collaborators, and even get investors for your product.

Centrifuge goes all-in when it comes to events. They don’t shy away from hosting their own events and taking part in worldwide web3 events being hosted. They have an upcoming event in Sep ‘23 called “Real World Asset Summit” and are also doing a side event at EthCC. 

Conclusion

Using a variety of channels and strategies that are closely aligned with each other is a great way to build the presence of your Web3 product. Utilize platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Discord, and Mirror to engage the right audience and foster a strong community. Also, implement effective strategies across these channels to elevate your product's presence and gain a competitive edge. So, embrace the diverse Web3 ecosystem, attract targeted users, and position your product at the forefront of the industry.

Interested to learn more about Web3 product growth strategies?

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