About W3A

Why We Built This

In 2024, our team was working on Outposts, a personalized web3 newsletter that helped people stay up to date with their onchain activity. We'd spun out from a collapsing DAO and were building something we believed in—but like most web3 teams, we struggled with marketing.

We tried everything: quest campaigns, paid advertising, reward-based programs. Some worked, some didn't. We learned a lot about what drives (and doesn't drive) actual user behavior in web3.

When it came time to monetize Outposts through advertising, we hit a wall. Every ad network we looked at was the same: generic banner ads, gambling promos, or outright scams. We weren't comfortable showing that to our users. More importantly, we realized something: the technology we'd built to personalize content could actually revolutionize web3 advertising.

Instead of showing random ads to random people, we could serve ads based on specific onchain behavior. Instead of charging for impressions, we could track actual conversions and only charge for results. The same infrastructure that personalized news could personalize advertising—and prove it worked.

That realization became Specify. We launched in early 2025 and have been moving fast ever since.

Meet the Founders

Ross is Scottish and based in Lisbon, Portugal https://x.com/ross_neilson

Madusha is Sri Lankan and based in Sweden https://x.com/Madusha_PT

What We've Learned

In less than a year, we've driven millions in transaction volume for some of the biggest DeFi protocols in web3. We've seen conversion rates above 1% (which would make any web2 marketer jealous). We've run dozens of incrementality tests that proved which campaigns actually work vs. which ones just claim credit for organic growth.

But more importantly, we've seen how much money gets wasted in web3 marketing. Protocols spending six figures on conferences with no measurement. Quest campaigns generating vanity metrics. Ad networks charging for impressions that never convert.

Someone needed to document what actually works. So we wrote it all down.

Why We're Sharing This

Raise the bar for web3 marketing

The industry needs to move from hype-driven spending to data-driven decisions. Just like web2 figured this out decades ago, web3 needs to grow up.

Build more sustainable businesses

Publishers should make money showing relevant ads. Protocols should acquire real users, not rent mercenaries. Users should discover products they actually want to try.

We benefit from a smarter market

When more protocols understand performance marketing, more will be ready to use platforms like Specify. We're not worried about educating our market—we're excited about it.

The Honest Part

Yes, we built Specify. Yes, we obviously think it's the best option if you're serious about performance marketing. Our pricing model (pay per conversion), targeting capabilities (onchain behavioral data), and incrementality testing (proving causality) are why we exist.

But this course isn't a sales pitch. These are universal principles that work regardless of which platform you use. We mention Specify occasionally as examples, but everything here applies whether you work with us, our competitors, or build your own solution.

If you read this course and decide to use another platform, we're genuinely curious why—reach out and tell us. But mostly, we just want you to make better marketing decisions.

What We Want Web3 Marketing to Look Like

In 3-5 years, we want web3 marketing to look more like web2 in the best ways: data-driven decisions, sustainable publisher businesses, and users discovering products through relevant, personalized recommendations instead of spam.

• Less money wasted on vanity metrics
• More protocols measuring what actually matters
• More publishers earning sustainable revenue
• More users finding products they genuinely want to try

Performance marketing won't solve every problem, but it's a big step toward a more mature industry.

Backed by TICC

Specify is part of The Internet Community Company (TICC), our parent company. We've been working together in web3 since 2021, and our team of six is spread across the world. We're fully bootstrapped—no VC funding, no pressure to grow at any cost, just building something we wish existed.

We've been in the trenches. We've run the campaigns. We've made the mistakes. We've seen what works and what doesn't. This course is us sharing those lessons.