Buying reach is easy. Getting thirty creators to say the same true thing is the hard part.
KOL and influencer campaigns for crypto, run through direct relationships rather than a marketplace — sourcing, negotiation, briefing, management and reporting. Built over four years operating from Dubai, with the creators themselves and with the managers who represent them.
Direct relationships
Creators and the managers who represent them, not a reseller list bought from a platform.
Fee separate from spend
Creator cost passed through. No hidden margin on what you pay them.
Verified users, not views
Impressions are a diagnostic. The commercial outcome is the result.
White-label
For agencies with client demand and no KOL relationships of their own.
Why most crypto KOL spend underperforms.
Rarely the creators. Almost always the brief.
The campaign is bought as reach. Follower counts get totted up, a budget gets divided, and nobody decides what the audience should end up believing. Thirty creators then improvise thirty versions of your project in the same fortnight.
The brief is a feature list. Creators are handed the deck and asked to make it sound exciting. The good ones refuse, the rest produce something forgettable, and the spend is blamed on the channel.
Nobody negotiated properly. Rates in this market are relationship-dependent and wildly inconsistent. Going in cold, through a marketplace, you pay the stranger price.
The measurement is decorative. A report full of impressions and engagement rate, with no line connecting any of it to a wallet, a sign-up or a deposit.
What running a campaign properly involves.
Where this came from.
Four years in Dubai, and the relationships that came out of it.
Through the Dubai years I built friendships and working relationships with leading crypto KOLs and with the managers who represent them — the people who actually control access, pricing and scheduling in this market. Towards the end of IOPn I ran TGE and token-push campaigns with them, including work on Peaq, Simon’s Cat, Solv and Sugar Boy.
That is a different thing from having an account on an influencer platform. It means honest pricing rather than the stranger rate, briefs that get read, and creators who will tell you before the campaign that your story does not hold up — which is worth more than the campaign.
The wider background: Head of Content at Frankfurt-listed NAGA through a $65m token sale to 63,000+ retail investors; co-founder and COO at Megavrse, with Binance, Polygon, Chainlink and Filecoin partnerships and the first NFT collection on Binance; co-founder at IOPn. See the work.
Not a fit if…
You want a pump. You want anonymous creators posting undisclosed paid promotion. You want a guaranteed price outcome. Or you want the cheapest possible cost-per-thousand, in which case a marketplace will beat me on price and you should use one. This is for teams who want a launch that holds up afterwards.
Questions.
How is this different from an influencer marketplace?
A marketplace sells access to a list. These are working relationships, which means real pricing, real briefing, and creators who push back when the story is wrong.
What do campaigns cost?
It varies enormously by creator, region and format — anyone quoting a flat rate before seeing the brief is guessing. Budget gets scoped on the first call.
Do you take a margin on creator fees?
No hidden margin. Creator cost is passed through, management fee stated separately.
What do you measure?
Verified users, wallets, sign-ups — whatever the commercial outcome is. Impressions are a diagnostic, not a result.
Can you work white-labelled through an agency?
Yes, where an agency has the client demand and no KOL relationships of its own.
Got budget allocated and no idea what it should buy?
Twenty minutes, direct with the founder.