Base from three perspectives: secondary investment analyst, independent researcher, and ecosystem developer
FC (Twitter @@FC_0X 0)
I just saw that Bases TVL has reached a new high, 1.7 billion, so I think its a good time to talk about this today, to see if we can dig up newer Alphas. I paid attention to Base before because two colleagues in our team are in New York and can experience it more personally. In fact, they discovered Degen quite early, and they told me at the time, but it was difficult for the fund to buy it because we couldnt write memos and couldnt tell LP that his community was good and this Meme name was great, so we could buy it, so we missed it. Today we invited three guests to discuss Base from three different dimensions. Professor Jiang is mainly a researcher, and he discovered Bases Alpha very early. Professor Liang looks at Base from a developers perspective. Then Minta and I look at the secondary with our fund, and she may look at it more from the trading dimension. This is our lineup today.
For the first question, Minta will first introduce to you the current data situation of Base.
Minta (Twitter@minta0103)
Since the beginning of March, Bases TVL has risen rapidly, from 400M to 1.8B, a 4.5-fold increase. In recent weeks, the number of weekly active users has remained at more than 1.4 million. The total number of users has reached more than 9 million, and the total revenue is close to 60 million.
At the same time, phenomenal products such as DEGEN, Friend.tech and Farcaster have all appeared on the Base network. Now when talking about the Base ecosystem, the market often thinks that it is the leader of the Social sector. In addition to the 100x coin Degen, a number of dozens of times coins have emerged in the Base ecosystem recently, such as Brett, the little blue man Normilo, Mog, etc. Today, Bankless wrote an article to discuss which of the Base and Solana ecosystems is more likely to be the next Meme wealth creation center.
In addition to Meme, Bases Defi ecosystem has also produced several golden dogs in the past two months, such as Aero, Extra Finance, Equalizer Dex, etc. The income of $Aero and $Equal has increased by more than 6 times in the past quarter.
FC (Twitter @@FC_0X 0)
Please tell us how you came to know Base, and how did Base rise from your perspective? What are the key points that Base did right?
Xin (Twitter@xingpt)
In fact, I was not the first one to pay attention to the Base ecosystem. I paid attention to it when it was launched onchain summer (last summer) because I thought that Coinbases chain launch was still a big news at the time. I also have a friend who is an engineer of the Base chain, so I talked to him about some technical things about Base. They made some improvements based on OP Stack and made some performance optimizations.
I think one of the things he did very well is that he didnt emphasize DeFi, or that it was different from most public chains. His team really liked art or humanities, so they attracted a lot of non-cryptocurrency users like me, or non-yield-oriented players. They didnt rush into various local dogs every day, but were more attracted by the development atmosphere or community atmosphere, which I think is quite different. So I paid attention to some Base, and also played some social networking in the ecosystem, or some new products. The second reason is that I am very optimistic about the social track. Although I think this track has not yet reached the expectations I thought, Farcaster, as a leader, has also gathered at least a lot of core players. In addition to some North American VCs like Paradigm, I think it formed the earliest seed users on Farcaster. I think this is something that other social projects may find difficult to replicate. So I think these two points are the unique features of Base.
Liang (Twitter@QiaoLiang 3)
Professor Jiang has actually summarized it very comprehensively. I would like to add a little bit, which is my perspective as a Farcaster ecosystem developer. In fact, when Base first came out, everyones impression was similar to what Professor Jiang just said, that is, the exchange issued this chain, and it must have dividends related to the exchange, just like the expectations when BSC came out. In fact, it is not from a technical level, but more from the overall and joint exchange itself. The strong user base and the deposit path are the basis, so everyone will naturally pay close attention to the Base chain. But in fact, from the specific development path later, it also largely reflects that Coinbase itself has the North American user attribute.
At the beginning, he did not launch any special meme products or projects. This is very similar to Coinbase, which is relatively conservative in listing coins. This is naturally related to his compliance background in the United States. The Base chain is still closely connected with Coinbase. The Base chain was also mentioned in the previous Coinbase financial report, so I am not sure whether it is a main body, but it should still be very close, not separated for compliance.
But when I paid attention to Base, I was actually a little disappointed at first. Because since the on-chain summer, it really doesn’t have a very rich ecosystem like other Layer 1 and Layer 2. For example, you need a token launchpad, you need to have all kinds of DeFi gift packages, all kinds of lending Perps, and all kinds of ponzi games, which is actually very similar to Blast.
In fact, at the beginning of Onchain Summer, Base was more inclined towards NFT and culture. This feeling was actually very similar to Zora, that is, it has many native artists, many cultural attributes, and commemorative attributes. For these people, the mint of NFT is more of a consumption, such as stamp collecting, collecting bottle caps, or for commemorative purposes, and the motivation for speculation is relatively weak. After a while, it feels that its volume is very small, and there is no expectation of the rich applications of BSC at the beginning.
But later on, I paid attention to it. Actually, this is what I know deeply now, that is, the real strength of Base is its deep binding with Farcaster. Because this is separated from Base and Farcaster, in my opinion, a big challenge faced by various Layer 1 or Layer 2 is that it itself does not have the so-called platform stickiness, or the platform stickiness often comes from the financial attributes of its platform. This can be seen from the matrix we use to measure a Layer 1/Layer 2. People often pay attention to TVL. This chain has a very high TVL, and we think it is very awesome. However, the daily and monthly active data of traditional Web2 platforms are often not applicable to public chains.
This actually reflects that the blockchain ecosystem and system itself does not have a rich account system. Everyone uses this non-custodial wallet system. For developers, it is difficult to reach these users easily. Whether you have a chain with 10,000 daily active users or a chain with 100,000 daily active users, as a developer, I still have to go to Twitter and Discord to recruit people. This has always been the current situation, and it is also one of the reasons why everyone relies heavily on the so-called crypto twitter phenomenon.
But Farcaster, because of its deep integration with Base, has improved this to some extent. That is to say, if you want to reach users on Base, a good way to go to market is to go to Farcaster. If we look at the data, we can see that a lot of the transaction volume on Base actually comes from Farcaster. This is actually a very killer (application) feature.
There are many reasons behind this. The simplest one is like the Coinbase Mafia mentioned by Professor Jiang. Dan and Jesse were colleagues before, including Linda Xie. They were all very familiar with each other at Coinbase in 2017 and 2018. Including the recent Farcon in early May, Jesse also pulled the Base team to deeply support, show up, and socialize. So this is a very unique point. I think the impact and characteristics brought by this are very far-reaching. Because Layer 2 or Rollup are actually very homogeneous now, and it is actually very difficult to distinguish 100 chains. Under such conditions, Base brings active users in the entire Farcaster protocol, which is a very unique point.
FC (Twitter @@FC_0X 0)
When developing on Farcaster or Base, will the ecosystem policies be different from those of other public chains?
Liang (Twitter@QiaoLiang 3)
Compared with other public chains, Base’s model of directly giving grants often gives very little support, which actually causes some complaints from developers. For example, let’s not talk about Farcaster’s latest round. In fact, in the last round, he received 30 million, and the team only had a dozen people, so he was not short of money. But when the developers of seven or eight clients met together, they felt that it was too unreasonable that you had so much money but didn’t give any Grants. In fact, some were given recently, but they were all because you had already made something, and then I would give you more or less based on your influence. But as a developer, this kind of support is actually a kind of fire that can’t put out the fire. And including Base, he didn’t give grants or very large support to help you like other ecosystems. He will look at your product and see that you have made something before giving you some support.
But in general, I think what Base did very well was that it paid great attention to the construction of the ecosystem in the early stage, including Farcaster. Before the growth, the daily active users should be 1,000 to 2,000. Among these 1,000 to 2,000 users, I personally feel that about half of them are developers, which is what they did well.
Successfully found the path and methodology for Alpha on Base
FC (Twitter @@FC_0X 0)
You have found different Alphas on Base, and the returns may be dozens of times. I want to know how you found these targets at that time? What was your thinking logic and action route at that time?
Xin (Twitter@xingpt)
I think there are two reasons. The first point is that it was relatively early. I did participate in Degen, but I didn’t get hundreds of times the return like some group members. I actually put in LP and then airdropped free money. When I saw Degen, I didn’t know it could become so big. To be honest, I just thought the community channel was interesting, so I put in an LP to play around. Because the community currency hadn’t taken off before, there was no expectation that it could become so big.
There were several opportunities to increase my position later. One was that Coinbase said it would build L3 for Degen, which had a significant boost to the rise. And earlier, I remember that when the market value was from 100 million to 300 million, there was a catalyst. Another application began to use Degen as its own ecological token, turning it from a farcaster community token into an application token. This increased its value from 100 million US dollars to 300 million US dollars. There should have been opportunities to increase my position in these two waves, but I didn’t add too much at the time because the rush was indeed a bit too fierce, so I added a little less and I still hold it now.
The second one is Mfer. I may have a higher multiple because I discovered it earlier and it is a big NFT IP, so I went for it. The third one, I think some of the audience may have gone for it earlier than me. After Degen was hyped, they started looking for small-cap coins with low liquidity, as well as some coins on Zora.
I think there are still many mistakes and misses, like Brett. When we saw him, we thought he was a good brother of PEPE, but we had a concern at that time, that is, the Meme ecosystem of Base had not yet taken off, so we may have just bought some to protect ourselves and did not dare to hold a large position. I think there is a very important reason for the rise of the last wave of Memes in the Base ecosystem, which is actually Solana began to be congested, and a lot of hot money ran from Solana to Base. Then after Solana resumed its normal function, the enthusiasm for many Meme coins returned.
Recently, I feel that most of the Meme of Base has not returned to the high point in March. This is my personal experience of rushing to Base. I think early discovery is more important. If you don’t find it in the early stage, if you can quickly increase your position when it changes its trend, it is also a safer choice. After all, not everyone can get a high multiple in the early stage.
FC (Twitter @@FC_0X 0)
There are actually several key points. The first is that when we are not sure about a coin, we can actually participate in it at zero cost (such as being an LP). The second is liquidity overflow. When more money comes into this ecosystem, we can actually look at the popular themes to see if there are relatively less liquid coins that can be bought. The third one is the PEPE brother you mentioned, right? This is related to the popular coins, and it may borrow the popularity. Then I would like to ask, if you give an example, who mentioned it at the time, or where did they discuss it, and then what reason did they give for buying, and you made this transaction, can you share it with everyone?
Xin (Twitter@xingpt)
I think it’s mainly the Twitter of players in Farcaster and Base ecosystem. There aren’t many things speculating on cryptocurrencies on Farcaster, but the enthusiasm for Degen is quite high. The discussion about Degen has become more heated, and the scenarios in which people start to use it have obviously increased, such as rewarding this wonderful comment. The second is Dracula, which I just mentioned, and some other products are all using Degen as the token of the project. The third is its community feeling, which is different from other projects. It is not a pure Meme route, nor a pure VC route. Its money is raised from some community projects and founders, such as one confirmation, and some big Vs in Farcaster ecosystem. This feels quite special to me. But in fact, my attitude towards Twitter is that it is better to see selling than buying. After there are more orders on Twitter, I may think it is a selling situation.
FC (Twitter @FC_0X 0)
When I browse Twitter, I often see people discussing a token. I also know that this KOL may have received money, that is, there are some promotion fees. So how do you judge when to sell?
Xin (Twitter@xingpt)
I haven’t found a very accurate way to play, but I have a general feeling that if it is a small KOL, and his reasons are relatively solid, maybe he only has a few thousand or even a few hundred fans, then the winning rate is often higher at this time. I am willing to buy some, or try a small position, but if it is a big KOL, then I may just use it as a selling point.
FC (Twitter @@FC_0X 0)
In fact, a small KOL may not have such a big influence, and he may be seriously looking for fundamental things, right?
Xin (Twitter@xingpt)
Yes, and nobody is paying him. To be honest, it is not likely that anyone will pay a KOL with a few hundred fans. So he may have something at this time. Once a big KOL calls, you will not have time to rush in. There are many robots watching them. That may be a better time to ship. Or if he is not on the train, then I will not get on this train.
FC (Twitter @@FC_0X 0)
So, Professor Liang, from a developers perspective, how do you capture Alpha?
Liang (Twitter@QiaoLiang 3)
From this perspective, it is more like looking at the project party rather than the Meme. Because including what Professor Jiang just said about Degen, it is actually not like a traditional Meme coin, especially since the airdrop at the beginning, it has made a lot of product strategies that are completely different from many Memecoins on Solana. Conventional Memecoin is directly released in one wave, and then directly speculated through price discovery. But Degen, in fact, only released a small part at the beginning, and then it is possible to release the proportion through airdrops, and the rules of airdrops are also deeply bound to Farcaster. Some assets with particularly strong Farcaster attributes, such as Farcaster OG, or some activity in the Farcaster community, will become some attributes of the airdrop quota. So it is actually more like a project, a social token.
So the idea of rushing to Degen in the early days was also very simple. Farcaster actually went through a huge transformation in terms of the direction of the entire product. Because we have been doing social for about a year and a half, we started with decentralized data, and we struggled a lot. Then we found that no one used decentralized data products. This track was basically either mining or self-entertainment, and there was no solid entry point that could be implemented. Later, we found that social protocols were a relatively solid point for using decentralized data, including CyberConnect, Lens, and Farcaster, which were later included in this category. After we finished the first client, it actually supported Farcaster and Lens at the same time, and was positioned similar to an aggregator. But later we also found that the two platforms are actually very different.
In fact, all social protocols or social products can be viewed from two perspectives. That is, its tool attributes and its community attributes. The so-called tool attributes refer to what your product can do, what your interaction looks like, what your UI looks like, does it look like Twitter, or does it look like reddit? Or discord? The specific functions of the product are different. The community attributes refer to what kind of people are behind it. We know that discord actually has a very large gamer community behind it, and github, that is all developer communities behind it. In fact, Farcaster and Lens are also like this. From the perspective of product functions and features, they are relatively homogeneous. Everyone is a so-called social graph, and everyone has a user profile, but in fact, the attributes of its community are very different.
The community attribute of Farcaster is that the founder is a North American Crypto OG who came from Coinbase. He has a very deep control and cultivation of the entire community attribute. He pulled the early users of Forecaster one by one on Twitter, and even went to Zoom calls with him directly to chat for a long time, and pulled them in one by one. Therefore, the early users of Farcaster, whether builders, VCs, or many people in the North American crypto community, actually did not do such special Ponzi things in essence, but actually paid more attention to the quality of such discussions. Lens, on the other hand, has a more Wild West feeling. There are all kinds of people in it, including those who issue NFTs every day, those who show off their own projects every day, those who post spam every day, and a large number of wool parties. The attributes of its community are actually more crude and shoddy.
However, Farcaster’s high-quality community attributes actually have their problems, that is, it has a certain degree of exclusivity. After entering, many Chinese users found that they had nothing to talk about. If you post some content that sometimes conflicts with the community attributes, people will criticize you and criticize you, so there is actually a kind of community atmosphere that is inherently anti-speculation. For a long time, there was only one community on Farcaster where people talked about speculating on coins, projects, and local dogs, and that was Degen. Others would talk about relatively serious and halal content, but this actually had some internal conflicts. As a social protocol based on Ethereum smart contracts, you use a lot of underlying infrastructure and elements of encryption, but at the same time, when you are guiding the area, you make it extremely halal. So there were at least two failed Memecoin projects before, one called point, and the other one was called something else, I forgot, but both had very explosive growth in the early days.
The point token was issued casually by a developer. It has many problems, such as high gas on the mainnet. When it was first issued, the entire minting authority was completely controlled by the developer. To put it bluntly, after the contract was issued, he first gave his favorite friends his authority to use, and minted a lot of it casually. He just thought it was fun, and he didnt say he wanted to issue a Memecoin. But when he woke up from a nap, he found that about $200,000 of ether had been entered into the contract. Then the community began to frantically pull groups for him to do things, and began to make demands on him as a project owner. But he himself didnt want to do these things. Of course, he also did some operations that complied with the communitys requirements, such as burning the remaining supply or burning his administrator authority. But it didnt change the fact that he didnt want to promote the project in essence, and the project soon died. But in fact, the entire community actually has a very large demand for Memecoin, and this was completely released when the first station came out. In the early days, many participants in this community liked to participate deeply.
FC (Twitter @@FC_0X 0)
Let me interrupt you here. When Degen first came out, were you excited or did you think it was just so-so? Because I think sometimes the more you participate in an ecosystem, the more you become de-enchanted?
Liang (Twitter@QiaoLiang 3)
This is indeed the case. Because the developer of Degen is familiar to us in the community, and he is also a client developer. His domain name is still there, called channels.fund. Later, he started this meme project, and everyone supported it from the community, because at least they knew that he would definitely not fail. But at the beginning, did everyone really think that this project would be so big? In fact, no, so I should have taken at least 7 or 8 million Degen airdrops at the beginning, and I probably sold them directly, sold a few hundred oils, and then completely bought them back at the secondary level. Later, I found that after a lot of wash-outs of this early airdrop, the communitys enthusiasm for Memecoin was still very high.
Another big difference is that almost all developers in the early Farcaster ecosystem said that they wanted to inherit Degen, including many project owners who bought directly in the secondary market at the beginning. At this time, I started to buy. On the one hand, I wanted to support it, and on the other hand, we wanted to use this as a bargaining chip to do marketing when the product was launched.
FC (Twitter @@FC_0X 0)
So everyone is hoarding and there is a need for marketing? Then many project parties are actually the main force.
Xin (Twitter@xingpt)
In fact, if you are familiar with the early Farcaster developer ecosystem, almost all project parties have integrated Degen to some extent. For example, the Bounty Caster made by Linda Xie is similar to a product called Zhubajie. They support users to use Degen as the currency of this platform to issue Bounties. Then there is Dracula, a video Dapp similar to tiktok. They also say that you can use Degen to buy the key of your creator. Their model of buying and selling keys is actually very similar to Friend.tech, which is not very innovative. Their innovation is mainly the integration with Farcaster. The content is to make this video, and the key is also a simple way to play a bonding curve. But one change they made is that you can use Degen to directly buy the key of your favorite creator. At that time, the number of Degen holders should have exceeded 10,000, far exceeded 10,000, so this is also a better strategy.
Then from the side, this actually helped Degen to pull up a wave of trading. Because it supports Degen purchases, it essentially requires you to first exchange ether for Degen, and then use Degen to buy its key, so this was also a relatively strong pull at the time.
FC (Twitter @@FC_0X 0)
I would like to add a question. From your perspective, in the Base ecosystem, if you only follow one person, or only look at the information on one website, what is your recommendation?
Liang (Twitter@QiaoLiang 3)
Actually, from a social perspective, I think it’s good to follow Mr. Luo (Twitter@0x luo). But to be honest, some things about on-chain or defi are not an area I pay much attention to, so I can’t say much. But in terms of social, I think Mr. Luo has a very deep understanding, and secondly, he is very willing to share, so I think you can follow him.
There is another website that I highly recommend, it is called Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/ . This is a product that I and Mr. Luo both like very much. It is very similar to hacker news. Hacker news is a developer community that everyone is familiar with, and you may have heard of it. It is a news release board of YC, and the quality of the community is very high. Kiwi News is actually a news release board in the Farcaster ecosystem, which contains a lot of content related to Farcaster and Base.
Beyond Social, the Possibilities of Base Ecosystem
FC (Twitter @@FC_0X 0)
We will stop here for Alpha. Next, lets talk about the Base ecosystem. Minta, can you first introduce the entire Base ecosystem and its current data? We want to see what new possibilities will emerge besides Social?
Minta (Twitter@minta0103)
Okay, actually, the Base ecosystem can be divided into four parts now. One is the bottom layer of infra, which has some basic wallet tools and dex. The second is the application layer, which can be divided into two categories. One is social applications like Farcaster, and the other is many application tools or application software in Base now. They are actually developed based on Farcasters friends, and they will actually be independently developed for C-end users. For example, you can see Kiosk and Recaster now, which just appeared on the Apple Store today. They are actually of this category. There will also be some games in the Base ecosystem in the application layer. But from the data point of view, the overall users of Base are definitely still concentrated in Farcaster and Friend.tech.
Then the third category is community, NFT, art, including Meme. Then there are some loyalty points systems, such as the little blue man mentioned earlier, and Mog, including the achievement system on the chain launched today, which can actually be classified into this category. There is also a fourth category that I personally pay more attention to, which may rise in the future, which is the RWA category. At present, Base has invested in some things in this area, but it has not been fully launched yet, but it will pay special attention to this sector for two reasons. One is that after the Ethereum ETF is passed, this kind of trend is actually good for the compliance story. The second is that there are many game-based RWAs now, such as lingo. Coinbase actually bets on RWAs such as midas, including Centrifuge itself is also trying to launch an RWA lending market on Base. So in general, there are these four categories.
FC (Twitter @@FC_0X 0)
So you yourself are more inclined to believe that RWA is the next point that may explode?
Minta (Twitter@minta0103)
Yes, this may be the next growth curve, but whether it is the outbreak point still needs attention.
FC (Twitter @@FC_0X 0)
So, the other two guests, where do you think Base will focus on next? And maybe you can talk about your trading strategy, or what proportion of funds you will allocate to try in the Base ecosystem?
Xin (Twitter@xingpt)
Let me start with the positive side. I think Base is a community with an ecosystem. Other public chains do not allow you to feel the presence of real people. They are basically just airdrop hunters and farmers. But in the Base ecosystem, at least Farcaster has real people, and some insights, including artists. I think the Chinese community in this ecosystem is not active, but the Korean community, including the British community, and some Vietnamese communities are very active, which I think is very beneficial.
The second one is RWA. I also think this story is boughtin. I also tweeted today that the theme of this bull market is to tell a good American story. An institution played by Americans is RWA. Base must account for a part of it. But as Minta just said, I haven’t thought of any one that will come out. To be honest, I may still need to continue to pay attention to RWA on Base.
I am still optimistic about the third Farcaster ecosystem, especially its integration with games. If you have friends who make games, you can discuss how to build this game ecosystem. I am also online on DevNet, you can also test it, and then I will talk about some negative factors.
Base actually has a very disadvantageous point, that is, it is very likely that it will not issue a coin, or at least it has not said that it will issue a coin. This point actually hinders many speculative users from using it, and I think these speculative users may account for at least 50% of the users of most public chains. This part has no airdrop expectations, or there is no incentive for this kind of currency, especially the incentive of the native currency. If this coin is removed, many public chains will actually have no ecosystem, that is, you cant use your own money to destroy the ecosystem. So this is why Base has not had any DeFi projects for a long time. The second reason is that it rarely feels like an ecosystem stack. If the valuation of the head project Degen is not high enough, then how high the valuation of its subsequent ecosystem can reach, I am a little worried about this.
The second is that as the son of Coinbase, if he does not maintain a good relationship with Binance or OKX, from another perspective, if Degen can be listed on Binance, I think its valuation space will be opened up immediately, so I don’t know whether it can be listed, this is the second concern. So on the whole, the overall outlook is positive, but based on these concerns, I may still spend more energy on building or accompanying the builder. If I want to buy secondary positions, I may now hold my bags more. Then I forgot to mention two points. In addition to the ecosystems that Farcaster just talked about, I think Sofamon and Mfer can also be consolidated.
I think after Friend.tech leaves, a lot of traffic will flow to applications other than Friend.tech. Sofamon is one of the few things that can be played. And Mfer has never taken off. From the perspective of the secondary market, I think it has been washed for a long time. The valuation is only 40 million. Any local dog of Solana can reach this market value, so I think it may still be possible to go for 100 million US dollars. I think there should still be a chance.
Liang (Twitter@QiaoLiang 3)
I am still optimistic about Degen and Farcaster in the long term. They are deeply bound to Base, and there are some chemical reactions in it. As I said at the beginning, dont think of Farcaster as a social protocol or social content, but as a financial network or a protocol wallet.
In addition, I am very optimistic about the combination of social and onchain, including Farcaster. In fact, the changes in the past three months are also derived from this point. Before, it was still very obsessed with making a social protocol that could be comparable to Twitter one day, including the founders original words, I want to have one billion users on the protocol. This is actually a daydreaming goal. If you look at it realistically, it must have a path to conquer crypto native users first. Under this condition, its growth in the past three months, or the changes in its products and strategies after the growth, are all to embrace the onchain scenario more deeply. Under this condition, I think there are many new possibilities. In the Farcaseter ecosystem, the client developers who were once desperate or confused suddenly found that there are actually great opportunities for the combination of social and onchain.
Because the official client of Warpcast was very strong before, it actually made everyone very uncomfortable. Many of these client developers had difficulty in financing and growth, and they were struggling. But after Degen, after the entire Farcaster adjusted its strategy, there was actually a consensus in the community that the entire social plus onchain is a state of great navigation. Including the mirror team, after they sold this content platform to paragraph, their Kiosk product also raised 10 million. In fact, they are all working in this direction, but there is no leading product yet, so this is a point we are optimistic about in the long run.
FC (Twitter @@FC_0X 0)
You just mentioned Farcaster’s adjustment strategy. Can you elaborate on it?
Liang (Twitter@QiaoLiang 3)
This is the contradiction within Farcaster that I just mentioned, that is, its founder built the community into an extremely halal community at the beginning. In his opinion, all the gameplays of Degen, Onchain, and Memecoin are actually marginalized, subculture, and niche communities. He is actually very resistant to them, including Degen. But in fact, without Degen, he would not have been able to raise 150 million yuan recently. Degen helped him attract traffic, and attracted 20 times the number of users or 30 times the monthly and daily active users. In his heart or in fact, he must be grateful for this product.
You worked hard on the product for two and a half years, but the daily active users were only 1,000 to 2,000. Then, suddenly, an ecosystem developer created a token for no apparent reason, which helped you increase the number of users by 50 times. However, the direction he was pulling in was a direction and scenario that you did not particularly embrace before. So after your usage grew 50 times for no apparent reason due to a new scenario, you adjusted your strategy and said, OK, now I have discovered and I admit it. I still want to build this billion-level social client and social protocol, but I realize that the crypto-native users will definitely be my first wave of seed users. I have to first provide them with the gameplay and scenarios they like, such as ponzi and memecoin, which are some scenarios they have to accept.
