From Stealth to 100K+: My Time at Fermah

Life update: I've stepped down from my role at Fermah.

Over my time there we:

• Participated in a16z Crypto's CSX in NYC
• Took Fermah from stealth to a known name in the ZK space
• Grew our X and Discord community from 0 to 100k+

I had a similar run as CMO at Irys right before this, so I'll be taking a short breather to explore a few curiosities before jumping back into the trenches.

That said, I'm always fueled by chatting about ideas with builders. If you want to discuss growth strategies for your project, explore working together, or just connect, my DMs are open.

Meanwhile, here are a few highlights from my time as Fermah's CMO, creative director, project manager, BD, therapist, and (of course) intern.

Building the Brand from Scratch

When I joined, Fermah wasn't even called Fermah. We had a blank slate and had to figure out how we wanted to show up in the world. Naming, visuals, narrative, everything.

It all came together in this post, where we launched out of stealth and announced our fundraise from a16z Crypto and Lemniscap.

Getting the Right People Talking

A core goal for launch was to get the right people talking about this problem, not just farm vanity metrics.

That strategy led to coverage from top-tier media outlets including The Rollup, The Block, and CoinDesk.

Best of all, Vitalik Buterin joined the convo to highlight the exact problems we set out to solve.

Confidential Proving Delegation

Vitalik's comment ended up as the perfect public validation for our next big product launch, Confidential Proving Delegation (CPD). CPD tackles the same privacy bottleneck he was talking about.

Fun aside: the video below was shot in Austin while I ran all of pre and post-production remotely from Dubai and Seoul. What a time to be alive.

Onboarding the ZK Ecosystem

Along the way, we launched testnet and onboarded some of the leading ZK teams, including zkSync, Boundless, Scroll, LayerEdge, Horizen, ZKV Protocol, Orochi Network, Hyli, Zypher Network, Aligned Layer, ElectronZK, Reclaim Protocol, Gateway, Functor Network, and Interstate.

There are several other big names that haven't even been announced yet.

Launching Pie

Beyond the tech, we also launched Pie. ZK can be pretty abstract, so we created Pie as a friendly guide and entry into the ZK rabbit hole.

Fun fact: Over 100k people minted the NFT.

The Numbers

To put some numbers behind all of this: both our X and Discord communities grew from 0 to 100k+.

But beyond just numbers, it's been gratifying to personally connect with the vast range of community members that show up every day to learn about ZK and Fermah.

What's Next

After helping Fermah and Irys go from zero to real prominence through a range of experiments, I have a pretty good feel for which levers actually drive growth.

If you've made it this far in the thread and want a sparring partner on narrative, launches, or growth more broadly, I'm happy to share everything I have learned, free of charge, so you can get the right people to care about your work.

No strings attached. Just keen to connect with sharp builders working on cool problems. DMs open, let's chat.