Written by: Pyrs Carvolth, Christian Crowley

Translated by: Chopper, Foresight News

In the current cycle of blockchain applications, founders are learning a troubling yet profound lesson: companies do not buy the "best" technology; they purchase the upgrade path that poses the least disruption.

For decades, new enterprise-level technologies have promised order-of-magnitude improvements over traditional infrastructure: faster settlements, lower costs, cleaner architectures. However, the practical outcomes rarely align perfectly with the promised technical advantages.

This means: if your product is "obviously better" but still fails to win, the gap does not lie in performance but in product fit.

This article is for a group of cryptocurrency founders: those who started in the public blockchain space and are now painfully transitioning to enterprise-level business. For many, this is a huge blind spot. Below, we share several key insights drawn from our own experiences, case studies of founders who successfully sold their products to enterprises, and real feedback from enterprise buyers, to help everyone sell to companies more effectively and secure orders.

What Does "Best" Truly Mean

Within large enterprises, the "best technology" is the one that perfectly integrates with existing systems, approval processes, risk models, and incentive structures.

SWIFT is slow and expensive, yet it remains standing. Why? Because it provides a sense of shared governance and regulatory security. COBOL is still in use because rewriting stable systems poses risks to survival. Batch file transfers still exist because they create clear checkpoints and audit trails.

An uncomfortable conclusion is that the adoption of blockchain by enterprises faces obstacles not due to a lack of education or vision, but because of misaligned product design. Founders who insist on promoting the most perfect form of technology will continually hit walls. Founders who treat the constraints of enterprises as input for design rather than as compromises are most likely to succeed.

Thus, instead of undermining the value of blockchain, the key is to help the technical team package a version that the enterprise can accept, which requires the following mindsets.

Enterprises Fear Loss Far More Than They Love Gains

When founders pitch to enterprises, they often make one mistake: they think decision-makers are primarily driven by gains—better technology, faster systems, lower costs, cleaner architectures, etc.

The reality is that the core motivation for enterprise buyers is to minimize downside risk.

Why? In large institutions, the costs of failure are asymmetric. This is the complete opposite of small startups, and founders who have not worked in large companies often overlook this. Missing an opportunity seldom results in punishment, but clear mistakes (especially those related to unfamiliar new technologies) can severely impact one’s career, trigger audits, and even attract regulatory scrutiny.

Decision-makers rarely gain direct benefits from the technology they recommend. Even when there is strategic alignment and company-level investments, the benefits are often diffuse and indirect. But losses are immediate and often at the personal level.

As a result, enterprise decisions are rarely driven by "what is possible to achieve" but more by "what is unlikely to fail." This explains why many "better" technologies struggle to gain traction. The threshold for implementation is typically not technological superiority but whether using the technology makes the decision-maker's job safer or riskier.

Thus, you must rethink: who is your customer? One of the most common mistakes founders make when selling to enterprises is assuming that "the most knowledgeable about technology" are the buyers. The truth is that enterprise implementation is rarely driven by technological conviction but rather by organizational dynamics.

In large institutions, decisions look less at benefits and more at risk management, coordination costs, and accountability. At an enterprise scale, most organizations will outsource part of the decision-making process to consulting firms, not because they lack intelligence or expertise, but because key decisions must be continuously validated and stand up to scrutiny. Engaging well-known third parties provides external endorsement, disperses responsibility, and offers credible bases in case decisions are questioned later. Most Fortune 500 companies operate this way, hence significant consulting fees are included in their budgets each year.

In other words: the larger the institution, the more decisions must withstand internal scrutiny afterward. There’s a saying: "No one gets fired for hiring McKinsey."

How Enterprises Make Decisions

Enterprise decision-making resembles how many people currently use ChatGPT: we do not let it make decisions for us; we use it to validate ideas, weigh pros and cons, and reduce uncertainty while remaining accountable.

The behavior of enterprises is largely similar; their decision-support layer is human, not a large model.

New decisions must pass through layers concerning legal, compliance, risk, procurement, security, and executive oversight. Each layer has different concerns, such as:

• What problems could arise?
• Who is responsible if something goes wrong?
• How does this integrate with existing systems?
• How do I explain this decision to executives, regulators, or the board?

Thus, for genuinely meaningful innovative projects, "clients" are rarely a single buyer. The so-called "buyer" is actually an alliance of stakeholders, many of whom are more concerned with avoiding mistakes than with innovating.

Many technically superior products end up losing for this reason: it is not that they cannot be used, but that there are no suitable people within the organization who can use them safely.

Take the example of an online gambling platform. With the popularity of prediction markets, crypto "water sellers" (such as deposit channel service providers) might view online sports betting platforms as natural enterprise clients. However, to do so, you must first understand: the regulatory framework for online sports betting is different from that of prediction markets, including individual licenses by state. Knowing each state's regulatory stance on cryptocurrency, deposit service providers would realize that their clients are not seeking to connect with cryptocurrency liquidity products, engineering, or business teams, but rather legal, compliance, and financial teams who are concerned with the risks associated with existing gambling licenses and core fiat operations.

The simplest solution is to clearly identify decision-makers early on. Do not hesitate to ask your product advocates (people who like your product) how they can help promote it internally. Behind the scenes are often legal, compliance, risk, finance, security... They all have unknown veto power and differ in their concerns. Winning teams will package the product as a controllable risk decision, providing stakeholders with ready answers and a clear benefit/risk framework. Just by asking, you can find out for whom to package and then find a seemingly secure yet reassuring path to "agreement."

Consulting Companies

Many times, new technologies will first pass through an intermediary before reaching enterprise buyers. Consulting firms, system integrators, auditors, and other third parties often play critical roles in the conversion and legitimization of new technologies. Whether you like it or not, they have become gatekeepers of new technologies. They use mature, familiar frameworks and collaboration models to turn new solutions into concepts people understand and to transform uncertainty into actionable recommendations.

Founders often feel frustrated or doubtful about this, thinking consulting firms slow progress, add unnecessary processes, and become additional stakeholders affecting the final decision. They indeed do! But founders must be realistic: just in the U.S., the management consulting service market is expected to exceed $130 billion by 2026, with most coming from large enterprises seeking assistance on strategy, risk, and transformation. Although blockchain-related businesses account for only a small portion, don't think adding "blockchain" to your project allows it to escape this decision-making system.

Like it or not, this model has influenced enterprise decision-making for decades. Even if you’re selling blockchain solutions, this logic will not disappear. Our experiences communicating with Fortune 500 companies, large banks, and asset management institutions repeatedly demonstrate that neglecting this layer could lead to strategic missteps.

The collaboration between Deloitte and Digital Asset is a typical case: by working with large consulting firms like Deloitte, Digital Asset's blockchain infrastructure was repackaged into a language enterprises are more familiar with, such as governance, risk, and compliance. The involvement of trustworthy parties like Deloitte not only validates the technology but also clarifies and substantiates the path to implementation for institutional buyers.

Do Not Use the Same Sales Pitch

Because enterprise decision-makers are extremely sensitive to their own needs (especially downside risks), you must customize your presentations: do not use the same sales pitch, PPT, or framework for every potential client.

Details matter. Two large banks may seem alike on the surface, but their systems, constraints, and internal priorities could be vastly different. What impresses one bank may be completely ineffective for another.

A one-size-fits-all sales pitch effectively tells the other side: you haven’t taken the time to understand this institution's specific project definitions. If your pitch is not tailor-made, it becomes difficult for the institution to believe your solution can fit perfectly.

Another serious mistake is advocating for a "clean slate" approach. In the crypto space, founders often tend to depict a whole new future: completely replacing the old system with newer, better decentralized technology to usher in a new era. However, enterprises rarely do this; traditional infrastructure is deeply embedded in workflows, compliance processes, existing vendor contracts, reporting systems, and countless touchpoints and stakeholders. Starting over disrupts not only daily operations but also introduces various risks.

The greater the scope of change, the less likely anyone internally will dare to make a decisive call: the larger the decision, the larger the decision-making coalition.

Successful cases we’ve seen involve founders first adapting to the current state of their enterprise clients rather than requiring clients to conform to their ideals. When designing touchpoints, they need to integrate into existing systems and workflows, minimizing disruptions and establishing reliable touchpoints.

A recent example is the collaboration between Uniswap and BlackRock on tokenized funds. Uniswap did not position DeFi as a replacement for traditional asset management; rather, it provided permissionless secondary market liquidity for products issued under BlackRock's existing regulatory and fund structure. This integration does not require BlackRock to abandon its operational model but extends it onto the blockchain.

Once you navigate the procurement process and the solution is officially online, seeking more ambitious goals is entirely feasible.

Enterprises Will Hedge, You Need to Be the "Right Hedge"

This risk aversion manifests as a predictable behavior: institutions will hedge, often on a large scale.

Large enterprises will not make a single bet on emerging infrastructure; instead, they will run multiple experiments simultaneously. By allocating small budgets to multiple suppliers, testing various solutions in innovation departments, or piloting projects without impacting core systems, they can retain choice while limiting risk exposure.

However, for founders, there is a subtle trap hidden here: being selected ≠ being adopted. Many crypto companies are simply one of the options enterprises use to test the waters; piloting might work, but there’s no necessity to scale.

The true goal is not to win a pilot but to become the hedge option with the greatest likelihood of success. This requires not just a technological advantage but also professionalism.

Why Professionalism Trumps Purity

In such markets, clarity, predictability, and trustworthiness often outweigh pure innovation: relying on technology alone is insufficient for success. This is why professionalism is crucial as it reduces uncertainty.

By professionalism, we mean: when designing and showcasing products, fully consider institutional realities (such as legal constraints, governance processes, and existing systems) and strive to operate within these realistic frameworks. Adhering to norms signals: this product is manageable, auditable, and controllable. Regardless of whether this aligns with blockchain or crypto ideology, enterprises view technology implementation this way.

This may seem like enterprises resist change; however, that is not the case. It is a rational response to the incentives driving enterprises.

Being fixated on the ideological purity behind the technology, whether "decentralized," "minimal trust," or other crypto principles, makes it challenging to persuade institutions bound by legal, regulatory, and reputational constraints. Demanding that enterprises accept a "complete vision" product all at once is too ambitious and hasty.

Certainly, there are examples of win-win scenarios with breakthrough technologies + ideological purity. LayerZero recently launched its new blockchain Zero, attempting to solve scaling and interoperability issues in enterprise implementation while preserving the core principles of decentralization and permissionless innovation.

However, Zero's true distinction lies not just in architecture but in its approach to institutional design. It did not create a one-size-fits-all network and expect enterprises to adapt but instead co-designed dedicated "Zones" with core partners for specific scenarios like payments, settlements, and capital markets.

The architecture of Zero, the willingness of the team to genuinely collaborate around these application scenarios, and LayerZero's brand have maximally reduced some of the concerns held by large traditional financial institutions. These factors combined led Citadel, DTCC, ICE, and others to announce their partnership.

Founders easily interpret enterprise resistance as conservatism, bureaucracy, or lack of vision. Sometimes it is indeed the case, but often there’s another layer of reason: most institutions are not irrational; their goal is to maintain operations. Their design aims to preserve capital, protect reputations, and withstand scrutiny.

In such environments, the technologies that succeed are not necessarily the most elegant or ideologically pure, but those that strive to adapt to the current state of enterprises.

These realities can help us see the long-term potential of blockchain infrastructure in the enterprise domain.

Enterprise transformation seldom happens overnight. Consider the "digital transformation" of the 2010s: despite the relevant technologies existing for years, most large enterprises are still modernizing their core systems and often spend vast sums to hire consulting firms. Large-scale digital transformation is a gradual process requiring controlled integration and expansion based on mature use cases rather than a complete overnight replacement. This is the reality of enterprise transformation.

Successful founders are not those who demand a complete vision from the outset but those who understand phased implementation.