The Web3 Press Kit: What to Build Before You Pitch CoinDesk, The Block, or Bloomberg

A journalist at The Block gets hundreds of pitches a week. They delete most of them in under thirty seconds. Not because the project is bad. Because the pitch arrived without anything a reporter could actually use to write a story.

A pitch is an ask. A press kit is the infrastructure that makes a "yes" possible.

Most Web3 founders confuse the two. They spend weeks crafting the perfect cold email and attach a 40-page whitepaper. The journalist has six other pitches open. They close yours.

I've run PR campaigns for 50+ protocols, placed stories in CoinDesk, The Block, Cointelegraph, Forbes, and Blockworks, and the single most common thing that kills a pitch that deserved to land is the same every time: the founder had nothing journalist-ready sitting behind it.

This is what you actually need to build before you send a single outreach email.

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What a Web3 press kit is (and what it isn't)

A press kit is not your whitepaper. It's not your pitch deck. It's not your tokenomics doc.

It's a structured set of materials that lets a journalist write a story about you without sending a single follow-up question. That's the only test that matters.

Generic press kit guides will tell you to include a company overview, leadership bios, and a logo. That's baseline. For a Web3 or AI startup pitching a beat reporter who covers DeFi infrastructure or on-chain governance, that's not enough. The bar is higher because the beat is harder to verify.

After FTX, the tier-1 crypto press became significantly more skeptical of founder claims. That's actually good for legitimate projects. A CoinDesk piece that cites your smart contract audit, includes actual on-chain data, and quotes an independent source carries more weight with investors and in LLM training data than any paid placement. But you have to give journalists the materials to do it.

The difference between a generic press kit and a Web3 press kit is the verification layer.

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The seven components of a functional Web3 press kit

1. The journalist-ready fact sheet

One page. Not your about page. Not your whitepaper intro. A fact sheet purpose-built for media.

It should include:

• What the project does in two sentences. If you need more than two sentences, your narrative isn't ready.
• Chain and stack — what blockchain you're built on, what protocol category (L1, L2, DeFi, infrastructure, tooling, etc.)
• Founded date and incorporated entity name — reporters need the legal entity for accuracy
• Headquarters and key operating regions — especially relevant if you're doing APAC outreach
• Funding raised — total, round name, named investors if they're on record
• Key metrics — TVL, active wallets, daily transactions, or relevant KPIs for your category. Live numbers, not projections.
• Token details — ticker, chain, contract address (publicly verifiable), circulating supply if applicable
• Three bullet-point milestones — the things that are actually newsworthy

This is the doc a reporter scans first when they open your email. It should be a PDF that takes ninety seconds to read.

The Block rewards substance and is unforgiving of hype. CoinDesk wants a clear news hook, a verifiable claim, and access to a named executive. Bloomberg's crypto desk wants the same things the finance desk wants: hard numbers, named investors, and a story that would matter to institutional readers. Your fact sheet is where all of that lives.

2. The media-ready executive bio

Two lengths: a 50-word version for quick mentions and a 150-word version for feature pieces.

Write both in third person. Journalists copy and paste directly from bios. If yours is in first person, they have to rewrite it, and they won't.

The 50-word version covers: current role, one credential that establishes authority on the topic you're pitching, and one prior role or outcome that signals legitimacy. The 150-word version adds the full arc: where they came from, what they built before, relevant domain expertise, and one quote-ready statement on why this project matters.

The bio should also include confirmation of interview availability and the best contact method. Reporters are working on deadline. "Available for comment via Telegram" is not a contact method.

3. On-chain data links

This is the element that almost every generic press kit guide skips, and it's the one that separates a Web3 kit from everything else.

Attach direct links to:

• The project's primary smart contract(s) on a public explorer (Etherscan, Solscan, etc.)
• A Dune Analytics dashboard or equivalent showing activity metrics
• The token contract address and deployment date if applicable
• Any on-chain governance proposals or DAO votes if relevant to the story

You're essentially giving the reporter the ability to verify your claims without relying on you. That's exactly what a tier-1 reporter wants. It also signals that you have nothing to hide, which in the current media environment is itself a signal.

If your on-chain data doesn't match what you're claiming in the fact sheet, fix the fact sheet before you pitch. Reporters check.

4. Audit references and security documentation

For any project handling user funds or running smart contracts, this is non-negotiable.

Include:

• The audit firm name(s) and the date(s) of the most recent audit
• A direct link to the public audit report
• A one-line summary of scope (which contracts were audited, what was found, what was remediated)
• Bug bounty program details if you have one

This is not optional for DeFi, bridging, or custody-adjacent products. A reporter at CoinDesk or The Block covering a protocol announcement will ask about it. If you don't have the answer ready, the story stalls or gets reframed around the gap.

A CoinDesk feature that cites your audit is worth infinitely more than one that doesn't mention it because you buried the information.

5. High-resolution brand assets

This one should be obvious but it's consistently wrong.

Provide:

• Logo in SVG and PNG, white and dark background variants
• Minimum 1200x628px product screenshot or feature image cleared for editorial use
• A short product demo video link (optional but useful for tech reporters covering launches)

No watermarks. No "please credit us." Editorial teams don't use assets that come with conditions they didn't agree to.

If the assets aren't in the kit, a designer at the outlet will use whatever they find on your Twitter profile. You don't want that.

6. A boilerplate that doesn't read like a token sale

The boilerplate is the two-to-three sentence company description that appears at the bottom of a press release and gets used in the "About [Company]" paragraph in coverage. It's small. It matters more than founders think.

Most Web3 boilerplates fail one of two ways. Either they're generic ("a leading decentralized protocol building the future of finance") or they're legally questionable ("holders will earn guaranteed yields through our proprietary staking model").

A functional boilerplate:

• States what the product does and who it's for in plain language
• Mentions the chain or ecosystem
• Does not make claims about token performance, yield guarantees, or speculative outcomes
• Ends with the website URL

That's it. No moon language. No "revolutionizing." No "-Fi" portmanteau.

When I launched Rari Chain's mainnet PR in January 2024, the boilerplate focused on a single sharp operational fact: this is an Arbitrum chain built to protect NFT creator royalties at the contract level. That one sentence anchored coverage in CoinDesk's Protocol newsletter, The Block, and Cointelegraph in the same week. The boilerplate didn't try to do everything. It did one thing precisely.

7. A named media contact who actually responds

This should be the easiest part and it's consistently the one that costs deals.

The contact in your press kit needs to be:

• A named person, not press@
• Someone who checks their email daily, not weekly
• Someone who can answer technical follow-up questions or immediately route them to someone who can
• Available during the embargo window if you're pitching under embargo

If you don't have a PR lead, put the founder on it. A journalist waiting 48 hours for a follow-up response will write the story without your quote, or will move on to the next pitch. Both outcomes are worse than being prepared.

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The pre-pitch checklist: build this in a day

If you're two weeks out from a funding announcement, a mainnet launch, or a major partnership, here's what to build before outreach starts:

Build it all in a shared folder — not a Notion doc that requires sign-up, not a Google Drive link that expires. A Dropbox link or a press page on your own domain at /press or /media is standard. Update it every time something material changes.

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What the kit does not fix

A great press kit does not manufacture a news hook. It's infrastructure for a story that already exists.

If you don't have genuinely newsworthy material — a verifiable funding round, a mainnet launch, a partnership with named parties, original data that reporters can't get elsewhere — the kit can't change that. The press kit removes friction for a story that's already there. It doesn't create the story.

This is also why timing matters. I posted a launch PR strategy that's worth keeping next to your press kit:

wanna activate PR for a major launch/announcement? here's a quick strategy: - Create active thought leadership 1-2 month before the launch - Secure 1-2 podcasts/interviews 1 month before the launch - AMA - 15 days before the launch - Embargo press outreach: week before the launch Shilika Jain on X, 11 Oct 2024

Your press kit should be ready by the time the embargo window opens, not assembled the morning you hit send.

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The difference between pre-seed and Series A

The press kit structure above works at any stage. What changes is the weight of each component.

At pre-seed, you probably don't have TVL metrics or an institutional audit from Certik or Trail of Bits. That's fine. Lead with what you do have: on-chain proof of concept, named angels, a precise technical claim that a reporter can verify independently. The kit is thinner but it has to be accurate. One unverifiable claim at pre-seed kills credibility more efficiently than at any later stage.

At Series A or B, the bar flips. You should have 12 months of on-chain data, named lead investors, an audit trail, and concrete user metrics. If your kit doesn't have numbers at that stage, reporters assume you're hiding them. They're usually right.

The common mistake across both stages is the same: sending materials that are built for investors, not journalists. Investor decks answer "can this return capital?" Journalist-ready materials answer "is this a story my readers will care about tomorrow?" Those are different questions and they require different documents.

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Building the kit vs. hiring someone to build it

You can assemble this kit yourself in one full working day if the underlying materials exist. The fact sheet takes two hours if you already know your numbers. The bios take an hour each. The asset collection is an afternoon.

What takes longer is the narrative work that underpins the kit: figuring out what the news hook actually is, writing a boilerplate that doesn't accidentally create a securities issue, and knowing which of your metrics will resonate at CoinDesk versus which belong at Cointelegraph versus which are better suited for a Bloomberg terminal brief.

That's where a senior operator earns their place.

PR is the launchpad to build authentic & genuine reputation. Advice to web3 companies: do your PR right — build genuine relationships & trust. Shilika Jain on X, 11 Jul 2025

The kit is the minimum. The relationship is what gets you picked up.

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Book a 30-min teardown with Shilika — bring your press kit draft (or the announcement you're trying to land) and walk away with a concrete plan: https://calendly.com/shilikajain/30min/