By Artem Voinov, Web3 & Fintech Growth Specialist, CBDO at ICODA
The Problem With Crypto Marketing in 2026
Crypto marketing in 2026 is oversaturated with agencies optimizing for retainer renewals, not results. Thousands of tokens launched this year. Most will fail, and not because the technology was wrong.
ICODA data shows 11.5 million crypto tokens failed in 2025. 86% of all token failures since 2021 happened in that single year. Behind most of those failures: projects that skipped marketing entirely, or hired the wrong people.
“The wrong people” means marketers who have never built anything, never lost money, never sat across the table from a founder watching a budget disappear. In a market this volatile, that gap is expensive.
Who Is Artem Voinov?
Artem Voinov is CBDO at ICODA and part of STIVE.AI. The titles aren’t unusual. His background is.
Before going into crypto professionally, he had already run a vape business, music studios, event projects, and his own performance marketing agency (Voinov Agency). In 2021, he was Marketing Specialist at Marquiz, a SaaS lead generation tool, while simultaneously losing real money in crypto. Not paper losses: tens of thousands of dollars of his own capital, testing ideas, joining projects early, learning what actually moves markets.
“Most marketers never had their own business. They trade marketing without knowing what it’s like to risk a real budget. Like infobusiness people who teach success without having had success.”
He has been on both sides: running growth campaigns for other people’s projects, and watching a budget disappear into the wrong channels as the founder.
He joined ICODA as CBDO in 2024. The crypto marketing agency has now completed 650+ projects across crypto, DeFi, iGaming, and Web3, attracting $200M+ in investments for 50+ ICOs. In 2025, he co-founded STIVE.AI, an AI marketing agency with 50+ projects completed. His Telegram channel “Art of War | Crypto Marketing” has 3,000+ subscribers. He’s based in Panama City, Panama, where he moved in May 2026.
ICODA Results Across 650+ Projects
The framework is three layers: Foundation (website, branding, positioning), Content and Community (PR, KOL, SEO, Reddit, Quora), Paid Traffic (Meta, Google, Moloco, crypto ad networks). Each depends on the previous one. Paid traffic into a broken foundation doesn’t accelerate growth; it accelerates failure.
Some specific numbers:
Godex is a non-custodial, no-KYC crypto swap. After a campaign built entirely on AI SEO and GEO: 688% growth in ChatGPT traffic, 500+ AI citations across LLM systems, 3x increase in exchange volume. Godex now ranks #1 in AI visibility among its direct competitors.
Windice.io, a crypto iGaming platform, went from 7,000 to 14,000 daily users through SEO. No paid traffic.
Walllet.com, a seed-phrase-free crypto wallet, had a campaign target of 5,000 users. It ended at 100,000+, driven by Google, Meta, and Moloco combined with a referral mechanic and PR.
Banana Gun ran a KOL campaign ahead of the Bybit ByVotes contest. 50+ KOLs across YouTube and X, covering CIS, English, European, MENA, and Asian audiences in a two-day coordinated push. Market cap doubled, adding $50M.
| Client | Channel | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Godex | AI SEO / GEO | 688% ChatGPT traffic growth; 3x exchange volume |
| Windice.io | SEO | 7K → 14K daily users |
| Walllet.com | Paid traffic (Google, Meta, Moloco) | 5K target → 100K+ users |
| Banana Gun | KOL (YouTube + X) | Market cap doubled; +$50M |
Other clients include BingX, Huobi, Bitget, TON, Polkadot, 1inch, BC.Game, Floki, and 640+ more.
His Actual Philosophy on Marketing
He doesn’t sell guarantees.
“Marketing is not a money printer. Marketing = probability + execution.”
Marketing, in his framework, controls roughly a third of business success. The other two thirds are the product and market. Running ads against a broken product doesn’t fail because of the marketing; it fails because marketing amplifies what’s already there.
“I don’t promise invest 1$ get 3$ back. I remove chaos, wasted time and wasted money.”
Most agencies pitch the upside. Artem’s starting point is different: the first ROI in crypto marketing isn’t doubling your money, it’s not losing it. A professional who tells you the uncomfortable truth before taking your budget costs more upfront than one who promises results. Over 12 months, they cost a lot less.
He applies the same logic to his client list. Projects with unclear products, founders wanting to skip the foundation work, teams expecting results in weeks from channels that compound over months — he turns those away.
How to Work With Artem Voinov
Three consulting formats:
| Format | Price | Duration | What You Get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quick Audit | $300 | 1.5 hours | Critical fixes and prioritized action plan |
| Deep Dive | $750 | 3.5 hours | Full audit + strategy + PDF report |
| Custom Training | From $5,000 | Team format | Crypto/fintech marketing playbooks for your team |
All sessions come with a 24-hour money-back guarantee.
The typical entry point is the Quick Audit. A founder a few weeks into a presale: traffic running, money leaving, conversions flat. The session usually surfaces the same patterns — a landing page explaining the product from the team’s perspective rather than the buyer’s, a funnel with too many steps before anything happens, or a token narrative that’s technically accurate but doesn’t create urgency. At $300, the audit doesn’t need to produce miracles. If it stops one more week of the same ineffective spend, it’s covered itself several times over.
- Free 30-minute call: calendly.com/av-icoda/30min
- Telegram channel: t.me/ArtemVoinov
- Website: voinov.io
Why This Matters for Founders Choosing a Specialist
Most people selling crypto marketing services have never bought it. Artem has. He burned the budget, hired the wrong people, tested channels that didn’t work. That’s what the operator background actually means: he knows how it feels to watch money go in and nothing come out.
“Web3 isn’t about who codes better — it’s about who sells the story better.”
If you need your project to show up in AI overviews SEO searches, rank for the right keywords, and reach the right people with a message that lands — find a crypto marketing specialist who tells you what’s broken before touching your budget. That’s a shorter list than it looks.
“I don’t need clients. I only need the successful clients.”
That’s the filter. It’s also a useful thing to hold up against anyone else who pitches you.
