The Future of Co-Marketing in a Multi-Chain World

Protocols launch on 5+ chains but run marketing in silos. This leads to duplicate spend, inconsistent messaging, and a ~30% lower user retention for cross-chain users who feel like second-class citizens.

• Wasted Budget: Competing for the same user across different chain-specific campaigns.
• Brand Dilution: Inconsistent narratives between Ethereum mainnet and L2/alt-L1 communities.
• Missed Network Effects: Inability to leverage a user's presence on Chain A to onboard them to your dApp on Chain B.

Infrastructure like UniswapX, CowSwap, and Across abstracts chain selection. Co-marketing must follow suit. Build shared incentive layers atop these primitives where protocols co-fund campaigns for user intents (e.g., "swap X for Y"), not chain destinations.

• Shared Liquidity Pools for Growth: Protocols deposit into a joint marketing treasury that triggers rewards based on cross-chain user actions.
• Unified Analytics: Track user journeys across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, and Solana with a single attribution model.
• Automated Payouts: Smart contracts distribute rewards to protocols and users based on verifiable, cross-chain events.

Forget single-chain TVL. The premium metric is the lifetime value of a user who interacts with your protocol across multiple ecosystems. This requires co-marketing partnerships with LayerZero, Wormhole, and wallet providers to track and incentivize holistic journeys.

• Valuable Behavior: A user bridging in via Stargate and providing liquidity on Avalanche is worth 3-5x a single-chain user.
• Partnership Stack: Align with cross-chain messaging infra, block explorers (LayerZero Scan), and identity graphs (ENS, SPACE ID).
• Proof-of-Action: Use zero-knowledge proofs for private, verifiable attribution of cross-chain behavior to trigger rewards.

Co-marketing campaigns must be as modular and composable as the app chains they support. Use Celestia for cheap, verifiable data availability of campaign logs and EigenLayer restaking to secure shared incentive contracts and oracle networks for KPI verification.

• Data Availability Rollup: Log all cross-chain referral and conversion events to a sovereign rollup for transparent, auditable campaign analytics.
• Restaked Security: Use EigenLayer operators to run oracles that attest to multi-chain user actions, making payouts trust-minimized.
• Composable Templates: Launch campaign "modules" (e.g., a liquidity bootstrapping campaign) that any partnered protocol can permissionlessly activate on their chosen chain.

Co-marketing drives liquidity to new, unaudited chains like Manta Pacific or Blast, creating ~$100M+ pools that are prime targets. Attackers exploit immature chain security to drain funds, then bridge out via LayerZero or Axelar, leaving the marketing partner's brand tarnished.\n- Attack Vector: Low-hanging liquidity on new L2s\n- Propagation: Cross-chain bridge finality gaps\n- Impact: Brand damage > direct financial loss

Co-marketed DeFi stacks (e.g., Pendle on Mantle, Aerodrome on Base) create concentrated dependencies on specific oracle providers like Chainlink. An exploit on one chain can cascade via price feeds, causing liquidations across all co-marketed chains simultaneously.\n- Attack Vector: Single oracle provider across ecosystem\n- Propagation: Correlated liquidations\n- Mitigation: Requires redundant oracle networks

Co-marketing campaigns promise future airdrops (e.g., EigenLayer, zkSync), attracting mercenary capital that manipulates governance on the partner chain. Attackers use borrowed governance power to pass malicious proposals, draining treasuries or altering fee structures.\n- Attack Vector: Sybil-attacked governance\n- Propagation: Proposal spam & vote buying\n- Result: Protocol parameter hijacking

Co-marketing assumes secure bridging via Across, Stargate, or canonical bridges. A zero-day in a widely promoted bridge becomes a central point of failure, trapping user funds and halting all cross-chain activity for the campaign. The marketing narrative collapses instantly.\n- Attack Vector: Single bridge dependency\n- Propagation: Complete activity freeze\n- Solution: Require multi-bridge, intent-based routing (UniswapX)

Co-marketing on high-throughput chains like Solana or Avalanche creates predictable, high-volume trade flows. Searchers build cross-chain MEV bots that front-run promotional trades, extracting value and degrading the user experience, making the campaign look like a scam.\n- Attack Vector: Predictable trade flow patterns\n- Propagation: Cross-chain bot networks\n- Outcome: User trust erosion

Campaigns promoting new account abstraction standards (ERC-4337) on chains like Polygon or Arbitrum introduce novel wallet vulnerabilities. A bug in a popular smart account implementation used across the campaign can lead to mass, automated draining of user funds via permissionless paymasters.\n- Attack Vector: Standardized smart account bug\n- Propagation: Automated paymaster exploits\n- Scale: Mass, non-targeted theft

Launching a token on 5+ chains creates 5+ isolated liquidity pools. Co-marketing a DEX partnership becomes a logistical nightmare, diluting incentives and user attention.\n- Key Benefit 1: Standardize on a unified liquidity layer like LayerZero or Axelar for canonical asset representation.\n- Key Benefit 2: Co-market around shared Total Value Locked (TVL) metrics, not per-chain stats.

Stop marketing individual bridges. Market the user outcome: optimal swap routes filled by a network of solvers. Your protocol becomes the preferred destination, agnostic to the path.\n- Key Benefit 1: Co-market with Across or LI.FI as solver providers, sharing fee revenue.\n- Key Benefit 2: User acquisition cost drops as you tap into the solver network's existing order flow.

Co-marketing a cross-chain yield vault is negligent without a shared security narrative. A hack on a partner's bridge destroys trust in your entire ecosystem.\n- Key Benefit 1: Co-market only with protocols using EigenLayer AVS or Polygon AggLayer for shared security.\n- Key Benefit 2: Joint audits and bug bounties become core marketing content, proving resilience.

Your L2 is not the product; the developer experience is. Co-market with the full stack: Celestia for DA, EigenDA for restaking, AltLayer for RaaS. Bundle credits and support.\n- Key Benefit 1: Attract developers by marketing a turn-key, cost-optimized chain stack.\n- Key Benefit 2: Share GTM costs with infrastructure partners, who benefit from your chain's growth.

Dropping tokens to 5 chains creates 5 transient communities. Co-marketing degens for a week doesn't build a sustainable ecosystem.\n- Key Benefit 1: Co-market with Galxe or Layer3 for on-chain quests that require interacting with your and your partner's core protocol functions.\n- Key Benefit 2: Use Hyperliquid or dYdX for perpetual futures on your token, creating a shared derivatives market to co-market.

Your multi-chain activity is your best marketing asset. Co-market indexed subgraphs and real-time data streams that showcase combined TVL, unique users, and fee generation.\n- Key Benefit 1: Provide analysts with a unified dashboard of your cross-chain ecosystem, powered by Flipside Crypto or Dune.\n- Key Benefit 2: Data partnerships become revenue streams and proof-of-traction for VCs.