Starting with the brutal truth:
If your team still says, “We don’t have competitors,” they’re not being bold, they’re being blind. In Web3, you’re not just competing on code. You’re competing for attention, liquidity, trust, narrative, and more.
That means your real competition might not look anything like you on paper, but they’re still eating your users’ mental bandwidth. If someone else has already captured your ideal user’s attention (and memepool), it doesn’t matter if your tech is stronger or your docs are cleaner. You’ve lost the most important resource: mindshare.
Now, before we even talk about who you’re competing with, here’s something just as important: you can’t create an impactful competitor analysis (or marketing at all) without setting clear goals. If your team hasn’t defined what success looks like – whether that’s user growth, liquidity, engagement, or onboarding – it becomes impossible to benchmark against others or craft strategies that actually move the needle. No goals = no direction.
All clear? Let’s get into it…
Or simply jump to the section you’re looking for:
- How to define who you’re competing with
- How to build an in-depth competitor analysis
- Example comp radar/analysis chart
- The main do’s & don’ts
- Final takeaway
First off, Who Are You Actually Competing With?
For those not native to marketing, there are two main types of competitors that every project should understand:
Direct Competitors
These are the obvious ones: Projects solving the same problem, within the same category, for the same kind of users.
For example, wallets in Cosmos: If you’re building a Cosmos-native wallet like Leap, a direct competitor would be Keplr, for example. They both target the same ecosystem users and offer similar core features (staking, token management, governance).
Indirect Competitors
These are trickier. They might not do what you do, but they’re absorbing the same attention – through memes, liquidity pulls, or narrative dominance.
For example, Farcaster vs. Lens ~ These decentralized social protocols are built on different infra with different philosophies. Yet they compete for the same mindshare: social-native builders, creators, and communities looking to publish, connect, and grow without relying on Web2 platforms.
⚠️ Important: Be realistic. Don’t compare your pre-seed app to Solana’s ecosystem-wide velocity. Benchmark what’s actually helpful for your stage and scope.
Most Analyses Stop at the Surface. Let’s Go Deeper
If your competitor analysis is just this:
✅ “Do they have staking?”
✅ “Is there a token?”
✅ “They have a Discord, cool.”
…then you’re only skimming the surface. And so is your strategy.
Some teams lean on tools like Metricool, Exa, or VentureMindAI – which is a great start. But if you stop there, you’re missing the why. Why are users showing up? Why do they stay?
Here’s how I like to break it down…
1. Social Presence & Engagement
Don’t be fooled by big follower numbers. What matters is how much of that following is actually engaging. Let’s start with a quick reminder of how engagement on X is calculated:
Engagement rate = (Total engagement ÷ Total impressions) × 100
With total engagement including likes, comments, RTs, QTs, follows (if the tweet led to someone following you), profile clicks, link clicks (if the post includes a link), media views (if there’s an image, video, or GIF), detail expands.
Now let’s be realistic. While we’re all used to seeing crazy engagement rates like 15% or even 25% during airdrop seasons or incentivized testnet surges, most projects won’t sustain that. According to Grok:
“A good engagement rate for a crypto company’s X account typically ranges between 1% and 5%, with rates above 3% considered strong, depending on the account size and industry benchmarks.”
Long story short ~ If you’re getting an average 3-5% engagement rate on posts, especially organic ones, give yourself a pat on the back!
➡️ Turn these insights into strategy: For example, if you notice your competitors getting replies, not just likes, tat’s a signal: shift some of your content to prompt interaction, not just broadcasting.
Once, I was stuck comparing my results with a bigger competitor, when my then colleague Paul Bramas mentioned another way to get a better picture when comparing socials – the follower-like ratio:
“Simply do the math, if a project that has 1M followers gets an average of 300 likes per post, that’s a 0.03% like ratio. If your account has 100k followers and averages 50 likes per post, while it has less likes than the other account, the like ratio is actually bigger, being 0.05%.”
So yes, scroll through their socials, see if people are replying, quoting, liking. If a project has 100K followers and 20 likes per post… that’s not a community. That’s a ghost town in a nice suit.
Tools like LunarCrush and Nansen Social can help you quantify it. But even a manual scroll goes a long way. (Another reason why marketing is a TEAM effort, and not just a one person job ~ just saying!)
2. Narrative & Positioning
The best tech doesn’t always win, but the best story with good timing often does. Ask yourself: What’s their “why now”?
Are they tapping into a current trend – ZK, modular, meme meta – or trying to build a new one? Can their value prop be explained in one sentence to someone outside of crypto?
Or, here’s another quick test: show their tagline to a friend who doesn’t work in Web3. Do they get it? Do they care? If not, they’re selling to themselves, not the market.
➡️ Turn these insights into strategy: For example, if your competitor’s tagline hits and yours doesn’t, it’s time for a messaging sprint, not another product sprint.
3. Community Energy
Lurk in their community channels like X, Discord, or Telegram. Seriously. Set a timer for 20 minutes and just observe.
- Are people engaging or just lurking?
- Is the team active, or hidden ghosts?
- Are the conversations meme-fueled, support-driven, or dead silent?
You can spot a difference between airdrop farmers and true believers within five minutes. And it’ll tell you more about the project’s true health than any KPI.
For example: Spend five minutes looking up Base on X around the time of one of their big announcements, and you’ll feel the excitement, dedication, and overall cult-like hype. Compare that to a dormant project where the last major surges of engagement were three testnet cycles ago…
➡️ Turn these insights into strategy: For example, see which memes or keywords and topics are catching on. Remix them for your voice – don’t fight the wave, flow with it.
4. Onboarding & Incentives
I love putting myself in the shoes of a curious new user. You click the link in their bio.
- How long does it take before you understand what to do, and why you should care?
- Can a user go from “hmm, interesting” to “I’m in” in three steps or less?
- Are incentives designed for retention, or are they just dangling short-term yield with no narrative scaffolding?
The best projects make onboarding seamless and incentives meaningful. The rest… hope you won’t bounce.
An example? Go to Zora. Within seconds, you get the jist of what it is, what you can do, why it matters. There’s no dense docs or tokenomic rabbit holes. Just a clean, Instagram-like layout that guides you from interest to action, backed by naturally included incentives (not like incentivized testnet incentives or airdrops, but actual user-created value).
And the results of this simple onboarding and incentives funnel speak volumes: After the Base App launched, Zora saw an organic surge in new users, driven by how easy it was to onboard and engage. In July 2025 alone, Zora reached a peak of over 38,000 mints.
➡️ Turn these insights into strategy: For example, if your competitor can convert users in 3 clicks and you take 10, you’re not just losing attention… you’re burning potential believers. Time to simplify.
Turn Insights Into Action: The Comp Radar
Once you’ve gathered insights, organize them into a shared source of truth, like a “Comp Radar.” This isn’t just a spreadsheet, it’s a living map of your competitive landscape.
Use it to align your product, marketing, and community strategies around where you can actually win, not just with better features, but with sharper positioning. For example:
Field | Why It Matters |
Project Name | Basic ID. Include their logo if you’re making slides |
Value Proposition | Are they leading with tech, speed, UX, community, incentives? What’s the “why now”? |
User Experience | Is it smooth, complex, gamified, mobile-first, etc.? Use it yourself. |
Status | Mainnet, testnet, dead, acquired, pivoted. Helps qualify them. |
Layer/Type | L1, L2, dApp, protocol, infra, NFT project, etc. |
Direct or Indirect Competitor | Helps categorize relevance and influence on your user/investor base. |
Main User Target | Builders, degens, institutions, creators, etc. |
Strengths / Pros | Where are they winning? Narrative, memes, UX, funding, backers? |
Weaknesses / Cons / Limitations | Gaps you can exploit. Confusing UX, limited market access, bad tokenomics, etc. |
Notable Backers / Partners | Shows traction and strategic strength. Can also help identify your potential investor targets. |
Top Marketing Campaigns | Learn what messaging, formats, or platforms have worked for them. |
Fundraising Amount | Helps assess burn rate and war chest. Crunchbase/DeFiLlama are good sources. |
Year Founded | Shows how long it’s taken them to get to where they are. |
# of Employees | Size = velocity. Compare to your team. Use LinkedIn or Crunchbase. |
Token/Tokenomics | Shows monetization approach. |
Market Cap Rank | Helpful if public. Indicates scale and investor attention. |
Listings | Where is their token listed? Any top CEXs or niche DEXs you might target next? |
Global Website Rank | Use SimilarWeb or Semrush to check traction. |
Monthly Visits | Measures reach. Compare to your own analytics. |
Top Countries | Gives insight into language, region-specific narratives, and growing local communities that you could tap into |
Avg Visit Duration | Measures content/site stickiness and user intent. |
Bounce Rate | High = bad UX or wrong audience. Low = users find value. |
Pages per Visit | Indicates engagement. Are people just skimming or exploring? |
# of Backlinks | Signals SEO authority and long-term awareness building. |
Organic Keywords / SEO | What are they ranking for? Could be a content gap or angle you can steal. |
Feel free to copy this and tailor it to your project’s specific goals. Make it a shared lens for your whole team ~ color-code it, drop it in Notion, and revisit it regularly during product or marketing standups. The key is to make it useful, not just a one-time exercise.
TL;DR: The Main Do’s & Don’ts
Still here? Great. Let’s quickly remember what to do and what not to do:
❌ Saying “we have no competitors”
✅ Everyone’s competing for attention, even you.
❌ Comparing yourself to Ethereum
✅ Be honest about your stage, resources, and user profile.
❌ Only benchmarking features
✅ Analyze story, traction, and emotional pull.
❌ Ignoring indirect competitors
✅ If they’re shaping user expectations, they’re shaping your market.
❌ Never updating your analysis
✅ Web3 moves weekly. Your comp doc should too.
If You Take One Thing Away
A competitor analysis ISN’T about copying. It’s NOT about being jealous. And it’s definitely NOT about pretending your project lives in a vacuum.
It’s about clarity:
- Clarity on who’s already talking to your users
- Clarity on how your message holds up
- Clarity on where you can actually win, not just with better tech, but with better positioning
Because in Web3, the loudest project doesn’t always win. But the clearest, most self-aware one? Often does.
So zoom out. Do the research. Use that research for more tailored actions. And most importantly, build something your users can understand, actually use, and believe in.
If you’ve made it this far ~ thanks for sticking around. Hopefully something here sparked a new idea or gave you a fresh angle to bring into your marketing work.
Disclaimer, this is just my perspective shaped by years of building and running marketing across multiple industries. I’ve tested a lot, learned a ton, and earned some real wins through consistent, hands-on work. But the one thing I always come back to? Stay curious, keep sharing, and never stop listening.
I’d love to hear your take! Whether it’s a different pov, a question, or something this reminded you of. Find me on X or Linkedin. I’m always up for a good idea swap. Growing together beats going at it alone.