Wang Feng’s Ten Questions Live: Me and my Friend.Tech friends
Organized by: MarsBit
Did you take your friends to a room today? I think this sentence should become the advertising slogan of Friend.Tech (hereinafter referred to as FT). Love it or hate it, there is no debate that the FT has become a phenomenal product.
This is a good start, and the tempting encrypted social dining table is suddenly opened. With many imitation disks and new experiences that promote competition, SocialFi has emerged one after another, including Stars Arena, which collapsed due to rushing to the game, and Tomo, which has just entered in the form of an app.
Today, it is necessary for us to do a small review of this seemingly long-awaited and sudden new species, talk about the reasons behind FT’s overnight popularity, and understand the experiences and feelings of the deep participants.
In this issue, I hope to use the Wang Feng Ten Questions Live/Web Threesome column to carry out further discussions and look at the issues surrounding Social Fi and even Game Fi and the Layer 2 network ecology moving towards the large-scale application stage from different perspectives. possibility.
The Chinese Web3 world needs free-flowing dialogue, triggering thinking and participation. From now on, every bi-weekly, I will participate in a Web3 three-person talk show with developers and investors who are deeply involved in Web3, as well as opinion leaders who are active in the community. Two special guests are invited in each issue.
Introduction to the guests in this issue:
1) Wang Feng (Xiaoyin)
The founder of Element, CEO of Linekong Interactive (HK) Group, and former senior vice president of Kingsoft Software, has been involved in anti-virus software, online games, encrypted media and NFT trading markets.
2）Cryptowillaim.eth
Former head of commercialization of Tencent game platform. He was responsible for the joint distribution of over 100 games and P 11 product operations. He is currently a family fund manager, a long-term holder of BAYC, and a grassroots grower of FT. In one month, the Key price reached the top 14 in the world. .
3）Christian Li
A big collector of NFTs born in the 2000s. He was the top FT player a week ago. He has already obtained over 300,000 FT points. He is an undergraduate student in the Department of Philosophy at Peking University and loves modern art.
The following is a transcript of the conversation:
1. Look at the emergence of the new generation of KOLs after 2000
F：Thanks to the Binance Chinese Live channel for inviting me to organize and co-organize a Wang Feng Ten Questions Live/Web Threesome dialogue program that will be fixed in the future. This is the first issue. Discussing the most popular FT at the moment, both of them are popular figures in the FT world, especially Christian. On Twitter, he is already a new generation KOL born in the 2000s with soaring influence in the currency circle.
In fact, the three of us have some intersections with each other. William, who came from Tencent, and I are colleagues in online games, and Christian and I are alumni of Peking University. I studied for a masters degree at Peking University Guanghua School of Management in 2003. I never thought we would get together again because of FT.
William and I met twice at the Web3 event at the University of Hong Kong, and we both hit it off. We talked about games and the NFT market. In fact, he asked me to participate in FT very early, but I didn’t listen to him. After I joined more than ten days ago, Only then did I realize that the Key he forged was already blue-chip level. William recommended me to Christian. By the way, how did you two meet? What is your previous experience in the cryptocurrency space? I feel that William wants to start a business and return to gaming, and Christian plans to focus on being an investment partner.
C：William and I met during the bull market at the end of 2021. We were in the same investment research and currency speculation group at the time. Since then, we have been communicating on industry topics, such as our respective ideas about NFT and GameFi, and we also helped introduce friends and resources to each other. In the past two months, after FT became popular, based on our common interests and wanting to promote and share it with everyone in the Chinese community, we have had more discussions with each other.
When William first started playing FT, we bought Keys from each other and went through the process from 0 to 1 together. At present, there are not many top KOLs in China who can be serious and well-organized. I am very happy to be able to play with them. This time, he also invited me to participate in Mr. Wang Feng’s dialogue. I am very grateful.
Regarding my previous experience in the cryptocurrency field, I am mainly deeply involved in the NFT field. I have also invested some money in this track. I have made many friends by participating in many communities. I am one of the few people who still persists silently and continues to buy the bottom after the bear market. In addition to blue-chip projects such as Shigecang Monkey and Azuki, he also invested in some NFTFi projects. Later, he became a partner of Little Ghost because of his like-mindedness, and together they built a Web3 trend brand that can truly lead Mass Adoption.
W：Christian and I met a few years ago in a currency circle group hosted by a friend, and we communicated with Christian a lot during his previous entrepreneurial projects. I felt that he was not only a rich second-generation rich man, but also a very good person. Thoughtful young people.
I probably won’t start a business as a Founder in the Web3 field. The risks in this field are relatively high whether it is related to legal affairs or the level of responsibility for one’s own users. But I will always pay attention to the cutting-edge entrepreneurial market through incubation and investment.
Talking about experience in the crypto field, I bought my first BTC in 2013, but I stopped paying attention because of my studies. The year before last, I missed DeFi Summer because I was obsessed with working at Tencent, and since then I have been deeply involved in NFT transactions and ecological research. At the same time, I also started to incubate some game projects, invested in some first-level Web3 Funds and studios, and did some secondary trading-related learning (I am also looking at the opportunities for compliant Web3 in Hong Kong).
F：What is the most important project you have been involved in this year before FT?
C：In addition to the NFT field, I am currently mainly responsible for the investment of NextGen Digital Venture together with two other partners. We are a hedge fund just established this year. We mainly engage in secondary market transactions of GBTC and US stocks. Under the difficult market conditions in the past six months Achieved pretty good results. Of course, the most rewarding experience is growing up with friends in the industry as a leek, experiencing and participating in transactions, arbitrage and early investment in various projects on the chain.
W: Obtain ARB and SEI airdrops, participate in the Ordinal craze, build a BTC position, and invest in the establishment of a hair-raising studio.
2. The first intimate contact with FT/Why are you here?
F：Wliiiam has been working in product operations at Tencent. What was your initial impression of this product?
W：There is nothing noteworthy about the product, like Fetion in the early years. However, influenced by the early platform operation experience, I immediately noticed the FT distribution model, which bypassed Apple and Google stores, and even bypassed enterprise signatures. This is a very smart approach and is very conducive to distribution, but it also limits the upper limit of development.
In addition, I was also attracted by the concept of price going up and down the stairs together, which is a very new asset pricing issuance method. At the same time, I was also shocked by Christians points, which may be the key factor that finally attracted me to play.
F：I got involved in FT relatively late. I would like to know when you got involved. Do you remember whether you entered the game before Paradigm invested, or after it invested?
W：I got into Paradigm after it was clear that I was investing in it, and even before there were early movers in the market, I decided to go big. I admire Christian for this.
C：The first time I came into contact with FT was in the first week after the product was launched. At that time, I saw several KOLs publishing product-related information. At first, it felt like a local dog project, so I opened a small account and tried it briefly without directly investing a lot of money. .
After the airdrop in the first week, FT announced the news of financing from Paradigm, which was explosive news at the time and attracted a wave of new users. My personal account also started operations at this time.
Of course, looking back now, even after the financing news was announced, there were still not many users participating, because the transaction volume was very small, and the TVL seemed to be only more than one million US dollars, including my own account, which stayed around 0.2 for half a day. , what impressed me most was that the top ranking ones were well-known overseas Vs such as Cobie and Ansem. Some of the current leading KOLs, such as Levi and Dingaling, have generally not been noticed. For example, when Levi’s Key was 0.7, I only watched a small amount of it. We bought and became good friends with each other. When Dingaling was still at 0.4, he and I started buying keys from each other.
F：What the community is generally looking forward to is seeing news about FT’s new round of financing? possibility?
W：Leave some valuation space for our 1.5-level takeovers. I think FT’s current leading position has been established and it may not need the capital effect. What is more important is how to improve product capabilities and gameplay, as well as currency listing and market making. For example, whether there can be the issuance of derivative assets, the trading of derivative assets, and the common market of derivatives tracks.
Of course, these all need to be carefully considered. From the perspective of project returns, many projects do nothing more than do a lot. Maybe all the possibilities we are imagining for Racer (the founder of FT) are just our own imagination. Maybe he will just lie down and airdrop, occasionally update the UI and performance, and then do the next thing related to the economic system. This may be the right rhythm, but everyone is betting money on it, and they definitely hope to see more changes. This is actually a very different flow experience between Web3 and web2 projects.
F：There is an increasingly trending phenomenon in the market. Whoever raises more money will play with him, and whoever has a big institutional brand behind him will follow him. This is also the case on the second-tier network. Whoever gets more money will play with him. Participate more, otherwise even petting the cat will feel like a waste of time.
Let’s also talk about airdrop expectations. Many peoples investments and transactions end up betting in anticipation of airdrops. Even 100% of the income from transaction procedures can be used to purchase more people’s KEY.
Have you heard about it? Racer, the founder of FT, withdrew all the fees. Racer’s personal account earned 278 ETH and also contributed 278 ETH to his FT protocol income.
Christian, I heard that the airdrop rules are constantly changing?
C：Let me first review the reasons for participating in FT. I made several decisions at that time, which are relatively wise now. First of all, after in-depth experience and research, I instinctively thought that this would be the next phenomenon-level project this year. I also wrote a paragraph in the circle of friends to call on everyone to experience it together. Based on my past experience in participating in DeFi projects, this type of model is destined to bring a good risk-benefit ratio to early participants, so I directly transferred more than a hundred ETH to the account and started buying my own and other people’s keys.
Since then, the price of my personal Key has stayed in the top three of the rankings for a long time. Although the rules for airdrop points were not announced at that time, I think the essence of this type of product is to attract more TVL and transaction volume, so it will definitely be rewarded Holder is the main one.
I should be the first person in FT to try to spend a lot of money to buy myself, creating a gameplay (which was later restricted). Based on my judgment on the product, I decided to place a heavy bet, and the effectiveness of this strategy was later confirmed.
I remember that I scored 100,000 points in a single week and accumulated a lot of advantages in the early days. If I still want to get these points now, I may need several times the funds and energy. The interesting thing about FT is that it changes the points rules every week, which also causes you to adjust your strategy and follow up in time, but I think the basic principles remain unchanged.
3. Trading is social/Tradeoff from the perspective of classic economics: the slope of the bonding curve and the scope of social relationships
F：FT must have new features and gameplay. Many people think it would be great if social media had a simple design like Twitter. In fact, there is a big difference between social networking and social media. The former is participated because of its powerful functions and rich gameplay, while the latter is participated to express free opinions. Whats more, the FT bonding curve mechanism has a double-edged sword effect. It quickly pushes up the price of popular keys. It does not encourage content creators to be more oriented towards reaching the public, but instead acts to curb it. This is a typical TradeOff phenomenon in economics. List the three things you think the FT team did most successfully and the possible shortcomings.
C：I mainly talk about three feelings.
First, the most successful part of FT is the model. I have seen too many SocialFi products, and FT’s model is very simple, which can easily cause FOMO especially in the early stages. But this is actually a double-edged sword. For example, FT has recently faced a growth bottleneck. The price of top KOLs is too high, making it difficult for new players to buy again.
Second, FT breaks through the old SocialFi thinking, which is to copy a Twitter and then add NFT certification or DRC 20 to revitalize the product. At present, these have basically been falsified. The highlight of FT is that it directly uses the power of Twitter, which is similar to Unibots use of TG. At present, building applications on the basis of a large ecosystem is still a more reasonable choice, eliminating the cold start part, which is crucial.
Third, and something that is easily overlooked by everyone, is that FT successfully leveraged a large number of KOL resources, especially in the early days to obtain a big V like Cobie as its platform. This is very rare and is also a demonstration of the strength behind it. Of course, its own attributes are destined to be a product that can obtain a large amount of traffic at a low cost. This is what many Crypto projects need to learn, that is, how to obtain attention and users in the most cost-effective way, especially in a bear market where all existing users are in the case of.
Regarding the shortcomings of FT, the main reason is that the product experience has never given everyone a bright feeling. For example, its architecture causes the interaction process to be stuck, and the current economic model may not be enough to sustain growth in the long term. I think these need improvement.
W：Let me also talk about my feelings, starting with the advantages of FT. First of all, the extreme Ponzi of FT maximizes the encouragement of early participants (the price of early Key is extremely cheap), resulting in a very explosive project.
Secondly, the clear points, airdrop expectations and time points are much more conscientious than many PUA users’ public chains and projects. (Teacher Wang Feng’s Element, please don’t PUA us in the future, please)
Finally, FT has a very simple contract structure. After security incidents occurred in Stars Arena and Tomo, we found that the most valuable thing about FT is that there has not yet been a particularly big security incident or a panic-inducing security incident.
After talking about the advantages, let’s talk about the shortcomings. There are also three points. First, function development is slow and performance optimization is poor. It often cannot be opened on the mobile phone and the waiting time is too long, which greatly affects the user experience. This is where improvement is most urgently needed. In addition, there are relatively few new ideas and things, and it feels like the project team has less communication and interaction with everyone, and I don’t know what they are thinking.
Second, regarding the matter of preventing BOT, FT did not come up with some more effective ways to prevent BOT, but left it alone. I think there should be a way to do something. The BOT ecology has hindered many people from entering in the next step, or some people have been snatched away by BOT after entering. After fans take over, the account trading system is messed up, which affects the motivation of many people to continue to participate.
Third, the handling fee is too high. If the handling fee is lower, or if the creators are rewarded more, there will be more different ways to play.
4. Cheats for my friends/KOLs in FT to book a room (KEY)
F：I have been participating in FT for a month and a half. Some people compare FT to Kaixin.com in the currency circle. I feel the same way, but the radius is not that big. In 2008, many of my online friends were added through Kaixin.com. I remember that I added the main backbone of the Internet company in a few days and became friends with many of them. After Weibo started, this relationship was quickly transferred away. Where are your friends from in FT? What is the ratio of old and new friends? By the way, tell me what you think is the general portrait of the current FT crowd.
C：The ratio of my friends in FT is exactly 50/50. Half of them are friends in the circle who have a good relationship before, especially in the early stages of gaining their support; the other part are people who were completely unknown to each other because of FT and mutual Hold.
Regarding the general portrait of the FT crowd, I think they are the most precious and valuable users in the Crypto field. First of all, being able to accept this product means having the ability to try new products and have the courage to place bets. Especially the heads are basically KOLs, entrepreneurs, and investors who are very important in the Crypto field. These people not only have the funds and strength , and has appeal in itself.
W：Most of my friends come from the currency circle, some of whom I have known for a long time, some of whom I have admired for a long time, and some of whom I have known before but have never done any projects together (because of FT, we have a certain sense of relationship with each other. It’s also considered working on projects together. When people’s behavior is linked to economic interests, the essence will be seen faster). Of course, there are also friends like Teacher Wang Feng. We have had some interactions, but we have not had the opportunity to communicate in depth. In summary, the ratio of new friends to old friends is 8:2.
I have previously tweeted about the FT classification, which divided FT users into the following categories:
1) Investors. Jason from Folius participated in FT at a very early stage and output a very professional value calculation of Airdrop from an investor’s perspective. They participate more from the perspective of industry research and investment;
2) Giant whale. Especially NFT whales like Christian will prefer to enter FT, because everyone will pay for NFT for product logic such as community and social networking, and their understanding of FT will be faster;
3) KOL. They have a fan base of their own;
4) Hair-raising party. Such people participate in mining;
5) Trading party. traders including robotic scientists;
6) FT Native (just starting to appear). For example, Levi and I all started to rise to prominence on the FT platform and were finally noticed by everyone. I think this is also an important innovation point of FT and the important underlying logic that Web3 products should have, that is, the redistribution of social resources and attention - seizing the first-mover advantage in the new Web3 world and seizing social resources in the traditional world ( including money, social relationships, etc.). Therefore, the explosion of DeFi is because many people have become rich; the rise of NFT is because many people have established the advantages of the community. The popularity of FT gives grassroots people like me the opportunity to be seen by everyone. In the future, how to evaluate whether a copy disk is awesome or not depends on whether the top players have changed. If it is still the traditional big Vs and FT who have established a first-mover advantage, then it will explain the mechanism and There is no innovation in gameplay.
The next new hot spot will definitely be the entry of people from traditional fields. Old Money is all FUD, and some people entered regardless of FUD to establish a first-mover advantage, and then ignited market sentiment through explosive narratives and features. Maybe Old Money just entered the market or missed it completely. Those with the first-mover advantage will have a say and build more say. I hope to see more projects like this come up, this is the big opportunity.
The current explosion of FT lacks some big names in traditional fields. It is similar to when Curry bought monkeys. If Trump, Musk, or some celebrities participate in FT, although they will not be said to operate well, they will definitely bring about a strong circle. External attention and higher TVL.
The other is the new killer capability, just like when WeChat launched voice input, drift bottles, nearby people, and red envelopes. Each awesome capability update brought a huge number of users, so web3 has the corresponding capabilities. Product functions may also include some financial capabilities and attributes, etc.
F：I saw Levi, who was number one on this week’s list, actually bought 3,000 Keys. I guess this is related to his view that the airdrop policy will increase the weight of the friendship radius.
Seeing the entry of big V, the battle before the operation was unprecedented. Twitter was eagerly waiting for it. After a short operation, it became a robot and the target of Flipper. So, is it possible to create a new character just like playing World of Warcraft? When you reach level 40 and find that it is useless, you can create a new character? Disaster!
Because this Key is bound to your real ID on Twitter. At this time, if you have tens of thousands of fans, you wont care about your existing personality. This is one reason why many big Vs don’t have such high Key Prices after they come in. Among them, there are limiting factors such as the market participation energy behind it. Do you two have any secrets? For example, how do you plan for fee income and investment?
W：I regard the handling fee as everyones trust in me. I basically still use 33 to increase the Key price and draw. The only imitation disk I have tried now is Tomo, and I spent all the handling fees to buy my own Tome Key. I don’t view this part of the income as income, I just want to give back everyone’s trust.
In addition, to sum up, I think the biggest secret is the timing of entry. Why do you say that? Because if I was asked to open a new account now, apart from using some studio logic to create accounts in batches and support each other, as an ordinary player, I don’t know how to play this version now. When we come in, we casually buy friends we know and IDs we are familiar with. Anyone who is willing to play will enjoy the price increase as the TVL of the platform grows. Among them, those who participate seriously and are willing to spend more, their Key may become Blue chip. When the TVL of the platform is growing, any strategy is basically correct, including Flipper, which also has a lot of room. So I once thought that TVL growth would be the North Star indicator of FT at this stage, but after experiencing it, it seems that handling fees may be? Actually quite confusing.
FT will still have 1 to 2 waves before the airdrop. I am very much looking forward to the application of Tokenomic after the airdrop. I will seize these opportunities to come in and play, follow the trend, and find a profit method that suits me.
C：My secret is also very simple. When building, select more stable users. I hold a lot of my personal Keys, which are generally very stable. Other Holders are also mainly those with good character, structure, and strength. For example, William and I buy Keys from each other to support each other. This is very important. Many people will change the Key at will (3, 3) later. Once there is a Rug later, it will collapse and cause a lot of losses to themselves. So the secret is to choose well-organized friends when making friends, and do it well yourself. Dont give up your reputation and accumulated things just because of a small immediate profit. I have said from the beginning that I will not sell my Key in advance, and I will leave time for everyone to sell it first.
Many people raise their own prices for cutting leeks. I despise doing this, especially when everyone has their real names. This will lose the trust of many friends. I hope that in the end everyone can get a lot of airdrops from FT because of Hold. Although in the end the wool comes from the sheep, at least I think this investment logic is more reasonable and is something that everyone is willing to accept. I will not be friends with such people, let alone approve of this kind of behavior, by trying my best to PUA and play all kinds of Ponzi to cut off the people around me.
5. Value differences/another cognitive misunderstanding in social Fi
F：I noticed that a lot of people were tweeting about disengagement. Even criticism and ridicule.
Many people are worried - they are afraid of being cut by friends, which will be embarrassing - they are afraid of being cut by friends, which will hurt their feelings.
In fact, I feel that the more elites who have successful experience in the past, the more doubtful this issue is, and the more troublesome it is to understand it. So much so that I saw an FT fan (0x masiwei) saying, Dont look at the keys of the three types of people easily. , investor, founder and beauty”. How do you handle FT friendships? For example, are you embarrassed to sell your KEY?
C：I made it clear to my friends at the time that I would not take the initiative to sell my Key. Because my own buying cost is very low, and I also care about face, I never take the initiative to sell to other friends. It is relatively difficult for me to face this problem. From a traders point of view, of course I am very unqualified for doing this, but I think that in the industry, we should pay a little more attention to gains and losses. I still mind if I lose my reputation and image for a small profit.
Of course, there is an exception, because some of my positions are mutually traded (3, 3) with other people. If someone who holds each other violates this principle and sells my Key first, then I will definitely also Being able to sell has nothing to do with friendship, but a contractual relationship. Relatively speaking, everyone agrees with the rules. Even if it happens, it will not affect the friendship. This is something I can accept.
W：It still depends on the purpose of participation, that is, what is the original intention of playing FT? Only by playing with the original intention unchanged can you get better results. For example, if you just want to play trading, you can open a new account and specialize in trading. This will avoid the embarrassment of buying and selling friends. I just want to make friends here, run Twitter at the same time, and then mine to get secondary income. I will not sell to the friends I want to meet or 33 friends, unless someone else sells me first.
Be more magnanimous and have a clear understanding of the source of profits. What I have always advocated is that profits come from the airdrop secondary market. For me, the money I invest in buying Key now is used as consumption. When I calculate profits, I don’t treat the current Holding Value as profits, and I don’t care too much about the rise or fall of the Holding Value. The most important thing is to look at the points and It just depends on how much blood you can get back with the points.
Maybe for some partners with relatively small positions, after making a profit, they saw other opportunities and sold their friends keys. I think this still needs to be explained clearly to friends in advance, which is generally understandable.
In addition, when choosing targets, many people have basically determined their own goals. Investors, founders and beauties may bring their own traffic, so many of them are attracted by flippers, so the price is extremely unstable. The reason is very simple, that is Whatever you want to do, what kind of target will attract you.
6. Review the history of WEB2 social evolution/those people and things
F：Since it is social, sooner or later it must be on the social topic list.
You might as well make this prediction. Once a major social topic arises, a supported X promoter may passively raise the Key price high enough to serve as public support. It may also completely ruin the market. Such events often become so-called hot searches on the Web2 social stage. No matter good or evil. I rather think this is a big risk for public figures running FT products. How does William view this risk?
W：Just like Su Zhu (the founder of 3AC) was caught and Racer (the founder of FT) withdrew cash, they will be severely punished. If you bring in your own traffic, you will be exaggerated. If you say that you must do it seriously, you will also be expelled. Such an effect illustrates the subtlety of FT, which presents a persons social identity, corresponding social behavior, and whether he sincerely does things to the world through a simple price. Financializing social life can really reflect all kinds of phenomena in the world like a magic mirror. It can only be said that it is a risk but also an opportunity. It breaks the one-way output and one-way socialization of some traditional big Vs, gives more opportunities to the grassroots, and also gives these fans the power to use money to loudly FUD these people. Of course, investment itself is risky, so everyone should invest with caution!
F：Back to the level of product and business competition. FT will certainly face stiff competition. Whether active players can keep up with the new gameplay is what active players should be more concerned about. I think KeyHolders should be more concerned about this issue than asking how the KOL itself will operate next. If not, that takes the product to another twist.
Referring to the experience and lessons of Kaixin.com, which became popular overnight in the Web2 era, it quickly disappeared from the stage because its gameplay and operations could not keep up. Of course, there was no Web3 and no airdrop at that time. We cannot simply make empirical analogies.
However, in the Chinese social media market, from QQ, Weibo, WeChat, Momo, Kuaishou to Douyin, there are actually products that play the role of rising, iterating, falling behind, and changing.
Chen Yizhou has been involved in social networking twice. He was the boss of the Wangxing school network, which everyone knows as Renren. In fact, when he returned to China, he was the first to register university alumni (acquired by Zhang Chaoyangs SOHU). After buying it, he was very depressed. Before 2007, I was very familiar with him when I was still at Kingsoft. I often went to his house to chat until midnight. Five years ago, I invited him to be a guest of Wang Feng for ten questions. He said frankly: I have been socializing all my life. Not only did I regret copying Kaixin.com, which hurt both sides, but I also regretted that every time I encountered a strong enemy, Tencent, I accepted my fate of not being social. Concentrate on investing. However, Zhang Yiming obviously does not believe in this evil. TikTok has changed its approach. The era of short videos is here.
There is also the issue of the company’s genetics. A few days ago, on my way to Africa, a friend who was mining with me asked me. Xiaomi was so successful at the time, why did MiLiao start so early but was overtaken by WeChat? Ignoring the fact that Tencent QQ had a huge social user base under the historical conditions at that time and was ready to enter the mobile terminal at any time, if we look at the essence, there is another obvious difference. Putting aside comparisons other than technical capabilities, Xiaomi mobile phone learns from the integration of Apples software and hardware products In business, the approach emphasizes the brand more, while Tencent has pure Internet genes, and its management attaches great importance to operations. What I want to remind you is that the operation of social products is very important. On the social stage, the cake is too fat and too tempting. If the popularity continues like this, more open rooms and even voice and video, more selective trading curves, and more agile airdrops may have to be rolled up.
7. Watch FT’s imitation disks and the killers who are eager to try
F：When playing the FT platform, I always feel that there is a flavor in it. There is an old saying: Yesterday you ignored me, but tomorrow you will be unable to flatter me. The price mechanism of FTs bonding curve makes it impossible for late entrants to bear the key price. From this perspective, it is difficult to say that FT is a satisfactory social network, let alone social media. Instead, it is the square of Stars Arena, which is a bit like social information streaming media (FEED).
Back to talking about FT. When FT moves slowly and becomes quiet, new opportunities will come. What improvements and expansions do you think should be made on FT products? There is no harm without comparison. In fact, we can discuss how to treat FT’s imitation disks and killers? here. Christian can tell me more.
C: Regarding the issue of FT imitation disks, I actually look at it with a very open attitude. Excellent projects will continue to emerge, but it is impossible to surpass FT, at least in a short period of time. From the perspective of everyone’s consensus on the original creator and the endorsement of institutions such as Paradigm, FT must be the most worthy of investment and expectation.
There may be good products that truly achieve long-term transcendence by providing value propositions, but this is a matter of long-term construction and cannot be accomplished because it has a better economic model than FT.
There should be at least dozens of competing products on the market now, and many teams have directly approached me hoping to cooperate and asked me to open an account. My own participation is very limited. I believe that most users have the same considerations. One is whether the team has a certain endorsement, and the second is whether the product is excellent. Regarding the latter, the only FT competitor I currently have some money invested in is Stars Arena.
Participating in Stars Arena, firstly, because the product form is different from FT, the information flow setting and the experience atmosphere of group chat are the best, and secondly, the team structure is larger.
One problem that too many competing product teams don’t realize is that the entire model is centered on creators. FT can charge a 5% transaction fee. People have this qualification, but latecomers are unlikely to make people pay stupidly. of.
In particular, some products even deploy a large number of robots themselves, buying all the top KOLs first, and then trying to attract users to take over. I personally despise this kind of behavior, and it is even less likely to last long. Whether the entire model can ultimately be established depends on whether influential KOLs are willing to continue operating. Simply registering an account will not bring any effect.
When it comes to ongoing operations, it involves profit distribution. How to set up your transaction fee sharing and what functions can bring new demand and income? These are all things to consider for a new product. You must believe that everyone is smart. Whether they are KOLs who make money or ordinary people who spend money, they will measure whether your team has a long-term mentality. Even the slightest short-sighted and greedy behavior will reflect back on you. on the results. Therefore, I am willing to experience new products, but whether it will cost a lot of money and time will be carefully considered.
F：Some people also say that latecomers to the market have also given opportunities to new players participating in FT. For example, if I fell behind in FT, I would simply find the next station and go to newly opened games, such as Stars Arena and Tomo, to find my advantage. Whats your opinion?
W：You must play imitation games, but your investment must be controlled and you must understand the source of profits. If you dont know where the profit comes from, you probably are the profit. After participating, you still need to think and analyze. The result of my analysis is: I am very optimistic about imitation disks derived from the FT ecosystem rather than direct imitation disks; there must be comprehensive innovation in the model, analogous to the asset innovation brought by FT (Tomo and the Vote of a previous imitation disk are one, but not The key is that there is no strong value support); it brings breakthroughs in terms of user value and usage.
The types of FT imitation disks that are promising in the future: one is Social GameFi derived from Social relationships; the other is a place to issue assets through AMM, such as the NFT platform where AMM trades NFT (replace the relationship between people and things, and do projects based on Key derivatives, providing liquidity based on AMM); the third is a new logical disk for asset class innovation, asset issuance innovation, and asset trading innovation.
Maybe an Amazon merchant store could be used to capitalize? Maybe there could be a game in the form of an LP pool battle? Maybe ContentFi is new thinking? We have already been Fied by things: social accounts, running sports, entertainment games, payment transactions, and there are still some high-frequency scenarios (such as e-commerce and content experiences) that have not yet been Fied. We can think from these perspectives.
In addition, whether there is a new group of content creators and a new core traffic owner appears. This is one of the criteria for me to judge whether a new game is awesome.
C：Let’s talk about the innovations that I think are worth looking forward to. Can there be more segmented functions based on Crypto users, such as dismantling them in essence? The needs of existing users are very pure, or they are airdrops, or they are trading, and some individuals will have some investment research and technical discussion needs. I haven’t seen any of the existing series of products launch functions targeting these, such as better promoting everyone’s creation and sharing of information. Are there any functions that are combined with DeFi or display boards in terms of transactions? How to break the independence of the ecosystem is a question. Important question, you can refer to some projects on TG, start from the source, and make some combinations. Only in this way can real retention be generated after Ponzi. Especially in the current competitive landscape of various public chains, whether SocialFi can bring benefits to other projects in the ecosystem. The effect of attracting traffic and supporting each other is worth looking forward to.
8. Compliance and supervision/SocialFi opens a new era of Tokenize for everyone?
F：In short, the crypto industry’s past asset release model for mass market investors was ICO/IEO/INO. It is not easy for ordinary people to participate in the issuance of any type of crypto-assets.
As we all know, no matter who releases ERC 20/ERC 721 assets in any way, even if it is a free airdrop, there will always be a compliance blade at the throat. In FT, a person becomes a medium of exchange for an analog currency, a cryptoasset, by providing a room key. So, does this significantly reduce the risk for regular people to participate directly in cryptocurrencies? Can everyone Tokenize?
W：This model is still relatively early, and the work is relatively simple. Although it is said to be simple, I feel that there is still a question mark as to how long this model can survive.
C:I may have the opposite opinion from many people, and think that you should be cautious and pay attention to your behavior. Some people have been raising these questions since the birth of FT, including why not many KOLs participated in the first two weeks. It is because everyone is worried about regulatory risks.
From a personal point of view, I do not want to regard my Key as a financial product. From the beginning to the end, I have not promised excessive profits or other financial behaviors with Holder. It is not oriented to domestic users, and I have never tried hard to force or seduce people to buy. Comparatively Buddhist. I think that if your stuff is valuable and people feel reassured and are willing to buy it to make friends, there is no problem. But if you use that kind of pyramid scheme to deliberately create FOMO and let everyone go for it, it is especially profit-oriented. , the entire platform has changed. We should still maintain an exploration-oriented mentality and don’t just think about making other people’s money.
As a users mentality, it is your own choice to exchange time and liquidity for future token airdrops. Whether you buy it or not is your own choice. This kind of investment decision is reasonable and will not infringe on the interests of others. So I also hope that more people will be aware of this matter and stop deliberately hyping and cutting leeks. This can actually protect the price of their own rooms in the longer term.
Everyone Tokenize is a neutral behavior, and it depends on the final result: whether you want to cut leeks, or whether you hope to find more like-minded friends in this way.
9. Further imagine new gameplay derived from Social FI
F：It is very possible for SocialFi to play with the tipping model and gamification. The best scenes on the social stage are often accompanied by games. In the early years of Facebooks inception, San Francisco-based social gaming giant Zynga quickly became a parasite on it, launching games like chess and card games, and mini-games that could better cure the boring embedded environment of the social system. William, how do you see the potential for FT to drive gaming?
W: Simply put, I think FT has the right people in the right place at the right time for social games. The right time (there are no competing products in the market, but the market is looking forward to good GameFi products) + the right location (there is already a mature social relationship chain and successful products) + the right people (a large amount of funds have been deployed, and the airdrop is expected to be full). FT provides social games. The most precious thing is its chain of relationships. Many people may not know the charm of relationship chains, but Tencent was able to take off in the era of web games and mobile games largely because of relationship chains. You can see which friends are playing and which are not, and you can directly invite them to play. It is very helpful for the fission distribution and social gameplay of the game.
Now all data related to Key is open and transparent, which in Web2 is like making the relationship of our WeChat friends public and allowing game manufacturers to use it as they please. Coupled with the current group of core blockchain players, FT is in the grassroots stage, and they are tired of playing imitation games. If there is a social game at this time, it will also have the endorsement of some capital and some airdrops. It is expected that by making full use of the existing data and information of FT, I think the probability of success will be very high.
In addition, I just mentioned that FT has realized the production and issuance pricing of brand-new assets. I have been thinking about one thing recently: why GameFi may be a false proposition, because when the consumption scene Game becomes the financial scene GameFi, the excitement brought by finance The happiness is far greater than the happiness brought by the game (even if the game is very fun), and players pay more attention to the rise and fall of assets than the happiness they can get in the game (growth, collection, socialization, sense of honor).
On the other hand, these skins, equipment, and props in the game are originally assets in Web2, but they are just assets that are not on the chain. Strictly speaking, chain games are not the release of some brand-new assets, and they may be considered RWA tracks.
Based on this, can we conversely come up with a concept - Fi-Game, by issuing some new Financial assets, using game play to make finance more game, rather than using finance to make the game more financial.
This may sound a bit convoluted, but in fact, if FTs Key can have some social gameplay logic such as stealing food and grabbing parking spaces, and cooperate with Keys trading and possible pledge and loan capabilities, it will actually be a first-class game. Fi-Game has assets and then games. To make GameFi, we first make a game and financialize part of the game. Fi-Game is to first have financial assets, users and scenarios of financial gameplay, and then combine the current user attributes and scenarios to make the game. Here are some recent thoughts on games and assets.
10. SocialFi takes over DeFI/NFT and promotes the Layer 2 ecology towards the application chain
F：Layer 2 ecosystems like Base are very willing to see FT launch products like this. The stars of last year’s Arbitrum include the decentralized derivatives trading GMX and the game Treasure DAO (Magic), a DEX and a GameFi. Their market performance was very impressive, and they all have high hopes. Arbitrum’s TVL still maintains its first position in the Layer 2 market, driven by key applications such as these.
Arbitrum has been slow to move this year, and its market momentum has been suppressed by the open strategy launched by OP. Among them, in the OP Stack camp, there is Base of the Coinbase ecosystem. I believe that FT chose their ecosystem because they have figured out the optimal roadmap for the future. opBNB, which is also based on OP Stack, also has the guardian of Binance Exchange. It depends on how they play their cards next. I guess there is a high probability that Binance will find a product to join the battle. On the second-tier network, whoever launches SocialFi first, and whoever can develop a successful GameFi platform-level project, will have a decisive say in the future ecology.
Some investors are worried that Layer 2 will become a ghost town after the airdrop ends. However, FT and more subsequent social networking and games have moved from the concept stage to the implementation stage, adding greater room for imagination to this problem. Can the second-layer network have the opportunity to truly become an application chain because of FT?
C：I very much agree with Mr. Wang Feng’s idea that the future focus of Layer 2 must slowly switch from performance and narrative to actual ecological construction. A large number of Layer 1 “ghost towns” have false market values and no real ecology and liquidity. This is what everyone has seen.
In 2023 and 2024, most of the market will still be dominated by Layer 2, including several star projects that have also been launched on the main network. From the perspective of an investor and user, Layer 2 has indeed improved the interactive experience and reduced everyones costs, but it is still not enough and falls short of improving the ecosystem.
At present, the two leaders of OP, Arbitrum and Optimism ecology, are doing well. Recently, Arbitrum’s Arbitrum War for ecological projects, including the possibilities contained in OP Stack in the future, I feel that it is far ahead of other Layer 2s.
SocialFi will definitely become an important part of Layer 2 in the future. There is no doubt about this. We can already see it from major public chains supporting their own ecological projects, and it is very effective so far. For example, I am now involved in Stars Arena. Previously, except for GMX and Trader Joe, I didn’t use Avalanche very much. However, the new project has brought new users and hot spots, and they are all high-quality users, not just hair-raising. Robots are better at this.
Of course, as I mentioned before, products like FT alone cannot complete the ecological closed loop. I also encourage more entrepreneurs to take a longer-term view and design their economic models and product openness to be more integrated. Public chain ecology, this must be the next opportunity.
In the future, a large number of applications will definitely be built on Layer 2 or even Layer 3, but it cannot be the result of strong competition like now. I guess there will be a few chains that will eventually gather most of the traffic and funds.
In addition, I think some recent popular narratives are worthy of attention, such as making better use of liquidity through Intent-Centric. Even with so many chains, automatic switching and seamless transaction processes can still be completed, or in other words, Aggregating orders and assets may be the next direction.
The era of public chain volume performance and endorsements will pass. In the future, public chains may even be like various DeFi applications, creating more gameplay through economic models and benefit distribution to attract more users and currency holders. I also look forward to seeing more interesting attempts, and the next cycle should be more application opportunities.
Just kidding, the teams of major public chains should be starting to get anxious now. Everyone should be even more anxious than primary investors to research and look at projects and choose the right partner. Otherwise, when the next cycle comes, it is very likely that after the coin issuance, it will be all over the place. In the end, you will have a lot of money scraped from the secondary market and don’t know how to spend it. You will have some empty numbers, but you will lose the real value of the blockchain. An opportunity to make a contribution to the industry and leave a mark in history.
W：Facts have proven that SocialFi can indeed drive up currency prices, but the core logic is still a matter of attention. But for ecological growth, not one product or concept can support a chain with such a high valuation.
In fact, I have an opinion to share about this. Some people say that it is not the next instant noodles that will defeat instant noodles, but takeaway. It is not the next WeChat that will seize WeChat traffic and user time, but Douyin. Therefore, I think if other ecosystems can only copy but have nothing new of their own, no determination to start a new narrative, and no ability to grab new attention, I will think that these people really have no dreams.
