Mars Bars and Crypto Tokens

TL;DR

• A common pattern is: Folks hear something → liken it to another (unrelated) thing of the same name → get a hankering for it → purchase it.

• Vitalik Buterin (aka ETH Daddy), mentioned Ethereum Name Service (often referred to as ‘ENS’) in an interview. Shortly after that, a token of the same name shot up in price.

• Crypto investors started buying up ENS tokens, and pushing prices up 50% in a day. All without really understanding how the two were connected – cause the ENS token is more of a governance tool than an investment asset.

Full Story

In the second quarter of 1997, sales of Mars Bars skyrocketed for no apparent reason…

There was no extra marketing spend…no new ad campaigns…but for whatever reason – folks couldn’t get enough of the chocolate n’ caramel covered nougat.

Turns out, it was all thanks to the extra news coverage being given to the Mars Pathfinder Mission that was taking place at the same time.

It was all totally subliminal!

Folks heard something → likened it to another (unrelated) thing of the same name → got a hankering for it → purchased it.

All without understanding how the two were connected.

And something similar has just happened in the crypto world.

Vitalik Buterin (aka ETH Daddy), mentioned Ethereum Name Service (often referred to as ‘ENS’) in an interview. Shortly after that, a token of the same name shot up in price.

It didn’t make sense right off the bat, because despite having similar names, they are two very different things.

The Ethereum Name Service is the Web3 equivalent of domain name service:

You can go online → purchase yourname.eth → own that domain on the Ethereum blockchain for a set amount of time.

But Web3 is decentralized, which means there’s no central company/companies managing the purchase/exchange of domain names like there are in Web2.

So who maintains it all? The “Ethereum Name Service (ENS) DAO.”

Which is a confusing (yet far more succinct) way of saying “an organization that anyone can join, which helps manage the Ethereum Name Service protocol.”

Now, here’s where Ethereum Name Services and ENS tokens intersect…

Folks can join/help manage the Ethereum Name Services protocol, using ENS tokens.

If you hold ENS tokens, you can submit proposals to tweak/change how ENS domain system functions, cast votes and manage future development…

So when Vitalik said ENS is “an important component of layer 2 development”…

Crypto investors followed in the footsteps of Mars Bar fans from decades past, buying up ENS tokens, and pushing prices up 50% in a day.

All without really understanding how the two were connected – cause the ENS token is more of a governance tool than an investment asset.

What a fun/weird world we live in.