How To Turn Crypto Trauma Into Award-Winning Content: A Guerrilla Marketing Case Study

The Funkhaus in Berlin used to broadcast East German propaganda. In July 2025, it broadcast something different: the sound of Web3 developers frantically coding through a 72 hour hackathon.

By: Fly You Fools

Walking through those halls at 3am, past developers slumped over laptops in rooms that once manufactured state truths, something felt familiar. The same exhausted hope. The same true believers grinding against reality. The same sense that beneath all the technical progress, we were part of something bigger than ourselves.

The Funkhaus Exterior - Source: funkhaus-berlin.net

The Setup: WebZero's Synergy Hackathon

The WebZero team (@joinwebzero) organized The Blockspace Synergy hackathon as part of the Web3 Summit. A chain-agnostic collaboration where "ecosystems unite and ideas converge."

160 hackers. 78 teams. Nearly $100k in prizes. One Fly on the wall, asking uncomfortable questions.

What did the Polkadot community really feel? What truths lived beneath the documentation and Discord channels? Every protocol has its unique cultural DNA – I wanted to decode Polkadot's.

Most teams arrived with ideas, plans, and half-built protocols to finish. Fly you Fools arrived intentionally empty-handed, curious about what really lurked beneath Polkadot's polished pink surface.

What emerged won the Marketing Bounty and revealed something every protocol leader should know: your community's most controversial truths could be your most powerful story.