When I first got into crypto, I was a big Ethereum guy - the reason why I got into their ICO was because the smart contracts idea was very interesting to me and I could tell that the community really cared about pushing the needle on things back then.
At this point I liquidated everything related to ETH (except for Decentraland, which I think still has potential only because of their transparent governance that is better than even the L1) and haven't looked back ever since. I've been talking to people outside of crypto a lot lately and it's been kind of tough because in 90% of cases, people come with an attitude of skepticism and even hostility - that's how bad the reputation of "Web3" has become.
So I've been thinking about what got me to switch from ETH to Tezos (one of the best projects in Web3, hands down) to begin with - I basically changed my whole life trajectory because of it so it wasn't something I did on a whim...but at the same time, it seemed like the obvious choice and I just did it - felt like a no-brainer to me, anyway.
What was it that got me to switch? I keep on going back to the story about how shortly after interacting with the folks at @TeiaCommunity, I was blown away that the team there was actually using ledger records to handle issues and problems...which basically never happened around the time everyone was going nuts over memecoins and PFPs. Then again, I remembered that that sort of thing was what got me interested in crypto to begin with - in the earlier days of BTC and ETH, showing records was part of the culture of crypto, because they were actually using the technology as intended.
Skip over today, you have influencers and "leaders" in the space openly saying that people don't care about this stuff - justifying the act of half-assed jobs and cutting corners - which not only opens up the door for scammers to run the show, but also compromising core parts of the system that makes it basically a slower, more expensive, less secure version of what already exists.
Seems like every other week there's news about a big hack siphoning millions out of an exploit or system so the "future of finance" thing feels like a bad joke, more than anything these days. To get the industry's reputation out of the gutter, it's going to take more than just your usual buzzwords and marketing strategies - we have to go back to the source.
Anyway, this is mostly for the Tezos folks who at this point is probably the only community that can pull this off, because they still believe in the core principles of the blockchain itself. I think the best thing we can do right now is to make it a habit to post ledger records whenever possible (tzkt, IPFS links) and make it a habit of weaving it into every conversation where relevant. Not only would it boost engagement, but it'll also boost trust in the system itself.
Show, not tell, eh? This will only work if everyone gets together and work towards a common cause. Right now, this seems like the lowest hanging fruit for improving the reputation we have to the world as a whole.