As part of the SIP-031 roadmap, Stacks Labs is gearing up to become the new growth engine for the ecosystem and one of the first big hires will be a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). We’d love your input before the role opens up.
If you’re a longtime contributor, a builder, or just have strong feelings about the Stacks narrative, your take will be important in shaping this role. Below are some questions to consider as you weigh in:
What do you want in a CMO for Stacks Labs?
What should the CMO optimize for (brand, growth, community, something else?)
What marketing efforts is Stacks not doing today that it should be?
What audiences should Stacks be focused on?
What partnerships or integrations should be targeted?
How should Stacks measure marketing success - adoption metrics, media mentions, community growth, on-chain activity, or something else?
What’s one bold, unconventional marketing idea you’d like to see tried?
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Below is a draft job description to give you a sense of the scope under consideration. Take a look and let us know if you think anything’s missing or needs adjusting. For example:
Are there functions, context or responsibilities missing in the draft?
Would you change or revise any of the listed requirements?
What other marketing teams, campaigns, or strategies should be looked to as inspiration?
Cheers Alex - I wanted to highlight this Community feedback from X (via @fractured_data):
"To push @Stacks into the Top 20, the new CMO needs to come from outside the ecosystem.
Someone with:
Deep institutional relationships to leverage (Most importantly) Proven history of onboarding new users & growing communities at scale
Poach from $HYPE, $SUI, or $HBAR "
— @fractured_data on X
Curious to hear others’ takes – do you agree the ideal candidate should come from outside the Stacks ecosystem? Or would a seasoned Stacks-native be more effective?
Senior marketing leader with proven wins in L1/L2 ecosystems (Polygon, Solana, SUI, Hype). Previous experience with fintech apps, RWAs, HNWI investment platforms is a plus (think Masterworks, Yieldstreet, wealth management apps)
Experience driving ecosystem TVL (think institutional partnership and adoption) and active DEV counts, not just brand awareness. (We need more builders as well)
Deep crypto-native storyteller but that plays well on X/Discord but also resonates with Bloomberg/CNBC/LinkedIn
Comfort balancing grassroots marketing with institutional growth plays.
Goals:
Expand the active user base beyond the current community bubble
Attract builders to deploy high-impact apps that lock liquidity & create network effects.
Leverage integrations/partners to accelerate growth flywheel
Build a scalable, distributed growth machine so ecosystem projects can leverage shared marketing resources (press, content, GTM playbooks, ambassadors).
…
Its time to build and grow the relationship with institutions and users who are hungry for Bitcoin yield.
Great points @diegomey.btc - agree that the next CMO should have both crypto-native storytelling + proven institutional growth wins. Love the emphasis on driving TVL & builder adoption, this needs to be front and centre in this jd.
Sharing more great notes from a community member who DM’d me their thoughts on the CMO role – adding them here for everyone’s visibility and discussion. Thanks for all the input so far – a new version of the JD reflecting community feedback will be posted here soon.
CMO Notes
What do you want in a CMO for Stacks Labs?
- At least 5 years of experience in crypto
- Must have DeFi or fintech experience
- Tweet I like about marketing and product
- https://x.com/bram_m11/status/1882800841901412824
What should the CMO optimize for (brand, growth, community, something else?)
High level - I think 95% of our job is to build a best-in-class products (Stacks the protocol, STX and sBTC the tokens, and open source devtools that enable people to build on top of it). Today, our products are not best-in-class - we have a roadmap to get us there, but we are not there today. A great CMO must be able to articulate the role/ value of marketing for the phase we are in today and the vision for marketing Stacks as it evolves in the future.
What marketing efforts is Stacks not doing today that it should be? - I would like to see fewer campaigns that are more targeted/ laser-focused on high-value or high-signal audience segments. In the past, the Stacks ecosystem has done great work partnering with community agencies - the result is high number of participants, but also lots of churn (ie EasyA Hackathons). Let’s flip that on its head and see what happens.
What audiences should Stacks be focused on? - Blue chip partnerships that go beyond surface-level announcements. A great CMO can put together a plan for how we activate audiences from Sui to Solana to Aptos - Muneeb made announcements at each of those protocol conferences, but as an ecosystem, we didn’t have a follow up plan for how to get those audiences engaged and involved in stacks.
What partnerships or integrations should be targeted? - BD team has some great partnerships in the works. Before adding more, I think we need to make sure our product and tech stack are bullet-proof and deliver meaningful value, without headaches, from day one.
Own the Narrative: Make Stacks synonymous with “Bitcoin Layer 2” in every conversation, from crypto Twitter to the Financial Times.
``I would change this to “Create and drive the narrative…”
In many ways, Stacks already is the “leading Bitcoin L2” - what this CMO needs to do is deliver a compelling narrative for why people even need a Bitcoin L2, and then why Stacks is the best/ only option in that category. For me it’s not enough to just own the existing narrative, they need to come to the table with fresh, compelling, audacious ideas for narratives that can move the needle.
For example
- Counter narrative/ Values narrative - Bitcoin has become more closely associated with certain political movements (Trump, Milei, Bukele). Can this CMO create a narrative that positions Bitcoin for everyone else?
- Examples of great narratives - Celestia did an awesome job creating and owning the “modular blockchain” narrative, they were able to create a category that separated them from the ocean of other layers and stood out. Aztec owning the “Ethereum privacy” problem/solution narrative. Optimism (for a while) owned the “regen” narrative. Stablecoins as a category.
Engineer Growth Flywheels: Design and deploy campaigns that turn liquidity → users → builders → liquidity, on repeat.
Launch Big, Win Bigger: Orchestrate global go-to-market plays for protocol upgrades, sBTC features, and high-impact partnerships.
Ecosystem Supercharging: Work with builders and DeFi protocols to amplify their launches, boost TVL, and drive network effects.
Build the Army: Grow and lead a distributed team of community builders, growth marketers, and creatives who live and breathe Stacks.
Measure Everything: Run high-velocity experiments, track what works, and double down with precision.
Be Everywhere: Conferences, podcasts, panels — you’ll help make sure Stacks has a magnetic presence in every corner of the industry. - this was slightly confusing to me. In that - does it mean the CMO is expected to be the face of stacks. or make sure stacks is everywhere.
Collaborate with Titans: Work hand-in-hand with exchanges, wallets, DeFi protocols, institutions, and media to make Stacks unmissable.
Qualifications
Battle-tested marketing leader with 8+ years of senior experience, ideally in crypto, fintech, or high-growth tech.
I would strongly suggest that crypto experience is a must, not an ideal.
Operator mindset — you’ve built and scaled brands, grown communities into the millions, and driven user adoption at speed.
Hi, I’m weighing in as someone who successfully built a crypto community at University of Michigan and worked at Google in developer product marketing. I’m excited about STX and would be interested in contributing to marketing.
What I want in a CMO: Crypto-native with DeFi/exchange connections who grows a team of excellent crypto marketers. Hands-on leader who mentors and develops talent. Clear communicator during uncertainty. Brings a proven playbook for growing a crypto including token price, developers, users.
Should optimize for: 1) Increasing STX price, and 2) increasing DeFi activity on Stacks. Token price changes usually get attention and attract users. Drive awareness of Stacks’ key benefits. High-value users need to know how they can solve their immediate pain points using Stacks.
Partnerships/integrations: Token discovery is often done through exchanges. It seems like STX isn’t stackable on most CEX. On many CEX it’s not available or has low liquidity. This seems like a basic distribution problem that limits accessibility.
Measure success by: Token price impact and on-chain DeFi activity. These are useful for people in the ecosystem (making money).
Marketing ideas:
For consumers, position STX as the “golden goose” that helps you earn bitcoin passively. “It’s like a savings account, but with Bitcoin.” Today there’s friction with other bitcoin yield methods. Stacks natively reduces that friction unlike any other crypto.
Bitcoin Layer 2 is technical jargon that means nothing to most people. “Bitcoin’s DeFi layer” sounds appropriate for crypto audiences. “Programmable bitcoin” is more understandable for sBTC. My point is to use descriptive words to make Stacks known for its usefulness.
The token color was changed from purple to orange. But bitcoin is a different orange. Why not align with Bitcoin’s orange for stronger brand association? And some exchanges still have the purple color. These details matter.
Call it staking instead of stacking. Staking is a familiar term. If I tell others to stack their STX, it sounds like I’m mispronouncing stake or I don’t know what I’m talking about. In fact, I spoke with my AI when writing this, and it asked if I meant staking not stacking.
There is a question above about whether a seasoned Stacks-native would be better than someone outside the ecosystem. I would think someone outside the ecosystem would be significantly more effective. Stacks has room to grow compared to other crypto projects. Fresh perspective from outside might be what’s needed to unlock the next phase of growth.
Deep institutional relationships to leverage
(Most importantly) Proven history of onboarding new users & growing communities at scale
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