jakiro
Source: X, Rui@YueiZhang
In the cycle from 2022 to 2024, the model of strong VC endorsement + large airdrop to “community” + first-time coins has become the mainstream trend in the market. The ultra-high premium of terminal exchanges in TGE makes their preferences determine thisIt is the most reasonable path.The Bear Market Cycle Attention PVP model allows the issuance of large projects to suck blood in the entire market, from APT-SUI-OP-ARB, they are all terrifying monsters that come out of this path.For these projects, they gain short-term voice to the community by scattering coins, which is a path dependence, so the way to do ecology is to spread money, and to spread money to projects that hope to bring traffic (because they lack directness)ability to communicate with community/traffic).So we can see that in the past two years, some celebrity VC applications have been able to gain enough voice in these ecosystems.
Originally, this game of bullying will slowly fade, and altcoins will complete a darkest level reshuffle like an 18-20-year cycle.However, with the passage of spot ETFs, the market’s money-making effect has returned. These projects are constantly searching in their own comfort zone, and the market will continue to pay.The two most interesting examples are Sei and Python. The Runway of these two projects should not exceed 6 months before they were launched. After they were launched, good investment institutions + strong track benchmarking + airdrop effect = first-time large-scale + super highInitial FDV.The former was shipped crazy OTC after it went online, while the latter hit a new high after it landed on Binance from OK.In essence, the market is constantly strengthening its logic under the original valuation model, which has pushed them to highs that they should not have.
So the bear market came in April. In fact, there were signs of the market before the bear market. Starknet became the last “king-level project” to be launched and maintain its market value. ZRO and Zksync became victims of the collapse of expectations and valuation models.Not only did the opening performance be very poor, but the airdrops were also beaten back.In essence, the project party saw the decline trend of this gameplay and did not dare to give so many airdrops (the terminal exchanges have limited buying orders).So negative feedback continued to strengthen and a vicious cycle began.
What’s the problem?The two shallow reasons are that with the emergence of MEME, retail investors cannot focus on VC coins; and the number and expectations of short hunters are getting higher and higher, resulting in everyone obtaining the initial state coins through airdrops, no oneWhen buying at the opening, the project party cannot get feedback from the buying market, and it has become a game for everyone to compare who can sell faster.But the deep reason is that the terminal exchange found that it could not obtain enough new users through strong VC endorsement projects + large-scale airdrop activities, and the stock situation was unable to provide enough trading volume.
As a result, very few VC project second-level performances were good in May-September, but with Trump’s victory, things turned around.
Here are two types of projects that return to the perspective, one is the project party that still uses traditional logic to do things.We have seen that APT and STX are still struggling to find difficulties on this path. Since November, they have tried hard to push favorable points, moving closer to the mainstream, and spending a lot of money to inspire the ecosystem (APT’s TVL revenue leads the market, and STX gives new BTC a lotIn essence, it is a traditional cycle of news – market buying – valuation benchmarking – currency price increase, but unfortunately the market does not buy it.In fact, they did not do well. The same idea was very effective at the beginning of the year, but the version is not right now.
The other type is project parties that combine business operations and market making. Sui and ENA are representatives. From 1U to 5U, everyone doesn’t know what Sui has done, but the increase reminds everyone that it has done so many things again.Ena is the Ming card to absorb goods at the bottom of 0.2, and then sends rewards for the second quarter. The bull market has come, and the double rise in capital rates and coin prices have led to the establishment of Pendle YT-PT’s points pricing model, and expectations for the third quarter have increased – TVL has risen-The cycle of rising coin prices has begun.This may be the mainstream version now.
Returning to the perspective of new projects, when the issuance channels are more diverse and the exchange is no longer an absolute terminal, the user’s mental model becomes the new final end. How to invade the user’s mental model and build a buying market becomes the projectThings that Fang needs to think about.There is no standard answer to this question yet. The most direct thing is of course building a community, but this is very difficult, only a few projects such as Monad, Bera, and Megaeth have been implemented.What is more advanced is achieved through third-party tools such as Kaito and Echo or direct KOL rounds. Kaito is the embodiment of attention economy, while Echo gives retail investors a hope for early participation. The KOL round is the simplest and most direct content.Invite to retail investors.We saw Megaeth build an extremely strong community through Megamafia+Echo wheels, and also saw Fogo, as the core circle project (founder of Crocswap), selling more shares to the Echo wheels, and a large number of Pre TGE projects have chosen to airdrop for Yap.Before there is no standard answer, everyone is trying.
From 21 to 23, technology is the primary productivity, and strong VC endorsement – good technology – orthodoxy is the version answer (this is also due to the path dependence of the 21-year bull market cycle).However, with the change of wind direction, the relationship between technology and attention has been deconstructed, and the proportion of technology in user mental models is getting lower and lower (of course, from the VC perspective, it is another problem, so I can write another article for this), products are greater than technology, communities are greater than technology, early chip ownership is greater than technology, and technology-led narrative has become a gorgeous dream.
But is technology really useless?In fact, technology has always been the most important thing in blockchain. Technology determines decentralization, and decentralization determines the existence basis of the blockchain industry.In the mental model changes from the last cycle to this cycle, the market has abandoned micro-innovation and small technology upgrades, and has abandoned VC coins that only talk about technology and do not care about the market, but is still looking forward to the Fundamental-level innovation brought by technology.Always have hope for Crypto.
