Crypto projects need to work together. Yes, even ones who are in direct competition with each other for the same use cases and users.
This space has long been dominated by tribalism. After the era of Bitcoin dominance ended and the original chain was no longer supposed to do everything, every blockchain under the sun scrambled for market share. But it wasn't just market share they were vying for: they were vying for a shot at the throne, of being the one chain to rule them all.
That hasn't worked out well for any of them. Ethereum came the closest, but failed to properly encapsulate the majority of use cases in crypto. Now, we have many chains, particularly legacy ones, fighting for relevance and survival, their remaining communities still convinced that their project will be the one that wins, while all others will lose. This hasn't worked out very well.
And yes, it has always made sense for chains with different use cases to work together, because network effects can be compounded without stealing users and market share from each other. But now, it makes sense for even direct competitors to co-promote. Here's why.
Storming the beach analogy
Imagine a group of soldiers storming a beach under heavy gunfire.
Each one needs to break through the enemy fortifications in order to survive. They each have a limited amount of ammunition with which to accomplish their mission, and can only recover some off of fallen comrades.
Defeating the enemy in this analogy is achieving mass adoption. The soldiers are individual blockchains (or blockchain projects/companies), and ammunition can be considered as users or market share.
Rather than attempting to break through alone, they should join forces and fight as a unit, taking risk and effort to help each other to succeed and survive.
Wait, shouldn't we be fighting each other?!
Wouldn't it make sense for the projects to be directly competing with each other, even harming each other to get ahead?
No, definitely not at this point. Here's why.
In the storming the beach analogy, sure, a soldier could attempt to take out the competition, and if they're lucky even take their ammunition. But this makes enemies out of the rest, amplifying the threats on their life. It also makes breaking through the enemy fortifications significantly more difficult for a lone soldier than with a group. Picking off single combatants one-by-one is much lighter work than taking on a group working together.
Similarly, if a crypto project hurts others and competes with them aggressively, yes, there may be a chance that in doing so they manage to steal away some of their users (ammo). But not only do they still face a much more difficult path to victory than by joining forces, but they lose the opportunity to learn from other projects and potentially share users much closer, so that if one falls, its users and market share have an easy second-best option to shift to, rather than dissipating and leaving crypto entirely. And, if toxic enough, a crypto may make actual enemies, and have to face them as well as the central banking system they're currently fighting.
Some crypto projects are already busy alienating their contemporaries, and as such we're seeing them left out of beneficial collaborations.
Is everyone going to make it?
Quite simply, no.
Most crypto projects won't make it long-term, and will either continue a slow slide to irrelevance, or will completely collapse outright. There is no avoiding this: in the free market as in nature, there is a constant cycle of life and death as the survivors rise to the top.
However, this was always unavoidable, and death comes faster without collaboration. Working together ensures that some, not all, will survive. Fighting alone ensures that 0.5/10 will survive the storming of the beach (50/50 chance one will make it). Working together, the chance is 2/10, meaning that probably two will survive.
The sooner the space starts working together and fighting to win, and puts maximalism aside, the sooner we can get to actually changing the world.