Reviewing 14 popular projects: From 0 to 1, what did they do right?
Original author: Zixi.eth (X: @Zixi41620514)
Key points:
The team background of most projects is good, and there is no grassroots team.Either a Ph.D., a university teacher, or a serial entrepreneur. And Western teams account for the vast majority. 【Excellent team】
In current or future head projects, what they will do at the beginning will most likely be unique.This is something that everyone may not be able to accept or understand. [Advanced prediction of the market]
Obtaining financing from leading institutions is the only way to take off.You may not be able to succeed if you get it, but if you dont get it, there is a high probability that the ceiling is not high. 【Reliable Institutional Endorsement】
For lnfra projects, the core competitiveness across cycles is whether one or two trump projects can be produced in the public chain.In the early days, the launch of public chains did not rely on ecology, but when the wave recedes, only public chains with real ecology can transcend the cycle. Infra project parties must pay attention to ecological construction. Ace projects are the real competitiveness that enables public chains to transcend cycles. For product project developers, once the product becomes big, they can expand downward and become a public chain. [Ecology is the core competitiveness in the mid- to late-stage]
Whether it is a product or a public chain, it must solve a pain point in the market, and its own solution is unique and definitely not a copycat.【Innovation】
1. Avalanche
The team has a good background + the technical means are unique, so the financing ability is strong, creating a good ecosystem
2021 is undeniably copycat season, especially the second half of the year. As Ethereum reached 4000+, the mainnet gas fee was too high, and there was no L2 at the time, so users and funds began to overflow from Ethereum to other L1s. The biggest puller at that time was Solana. Since it was a bull market, the market was still looking for other targets, so the market’s attention gradually fell on Avax because:
1.Avalanche has a great team.CEO Emin Gǔn Sirer: Computer scientist and associate professor at Cornell University. Sirer developed the Avalanche consensus protocol underlying the Avalanche blockchain platform and is currently the CEO and co-founder of Ava Labs. He was an associate professor of computer science at Cornell University and former co-director of the Initiative on Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts (IC 3). He is known for his contributions to peer-to-peer systems, operating systems, and computer networks.
2. Unique technical means. It can be said to be the earliest modular idea.Using XCP three chains, X chain is used to create and trade assets, C chain is used to create smart contracts, P chain is used to coordinate validators and subnets, and gossip avalanche is used to confirm consensus. At that time, it seemed that the brain circuit was very big, and it was a very good idea.
3. Because of 1+2, the financing ability is very strong.In 2020, it completed 12 million in private placement and 46 million in public placement. In September 2021, the foundation raised US$230 million, and in November the ecological accelerator raised 18.5 million. The strong financing ability combined with MMs pull offer allows retail investors to see, understand, and believe in the teams endorsement, so retail investors buying orders are extremely strong.
4. At that time, avalanche had the flagship project Defikingdoms in its ecosystem.This was a very creative DeFi+GameFi project at the time. It used beautiful graphics of the game (not bad) to express the meaning of DeFi. Later, DFK changed from an ecological project to Avalanches Appchain. This project made avalanche famous. . Secondly, there are also good projects such as GMX, traderjoe, etc.
2. Fantom
The soul figure leads the public chain to the peak and also to the bottom
The soul of Fantom is AC. AC is an old DeFi OG and the founder of Yearn Finance, Phantom, etc. YFI has created a thousand-fold myth in the bull market, so the communitys expectations for AC are so high that the community calls him the father of DeFi.
1. There is no need to say anything about the team, AC is the face of Fantom.
2. Fantom raised 40 million in ICO in 2018. In the 21-year bull market, there were three consecutive rounds of financing, with Alameda investing 35 million, Blocktower investing 20 million, and Hyperchain investing 15 million. After experiencing a major correction in May.
The reason why FTM is so prosperous is:
1.AC has been calling for orders, and everyone believes in AC.
2. A lot of money has been raised, so Fantom has the confidence to spend 370 million tokens (approximately equivalent to 200 million US dollars) to stimulate ecological development, and DeFi on the chain is developing rapidly.
Why Ftm started plummeting at 22:
1. Ftm starts because AC is the cofounder, and will return to zero because AC leaves. The lack of soul figures causes the community to lose confidence in the community;
2. The ecology is very ordinary, without any innovation, basically all defi, all copycat.Big projects in the currency circle are all unique. Its just that the ugly ones are unique or the beautiful ones are unique, but neither one is copycat.
3. Solana
Development has experienced ups and downs, hackathons have created project miracles, this bear market has come back to life, and the ecosystem is unique.
It was very difficult to raise funds for Solana in the early stages.Despite the strong team background, it was not easy to raise funds in 2018-19. In a market that is increasingly wary of high-performance public chain stories, Solana had to compete with other projects. At that time, Solana was not widely known by the market. However, through persistence in its product and a pragmatic approach, Solana gradually attracted the attention of investors.
During the development of Solana, there was a key disagreement, which involved the strategic choices of the founders of Multicoin and Solana. As an early investor, Multicoir insists that Solana needs to be listed as soon as possible to build brand community consensus. At the same time, Solana’s founders hope to launch a stable and reliable mainnet first. This decision ultimately proved to be correct, as it laid the foundation for subsequent cooperation with SBF, which was looking for a high-performance public chain to work with.
Several key reasons for subsequent changes from 0-1:
1.SBF’s participation played a decisive role in the rise of Solana.SBF not only invested in Solana, but also led his team to develop the Serum project based on Solana, which greatly improved Solanas visibility and legitimacy. Later, it was even rumored that 70% of Solanas TVL was supported by the SBF team.
2.Solana’s hackathon project has created many miracles.Through hackathons and various incentives, Solana cultivates an active developer community that fuels the growth of its ecosystem. Subsequently, Top projects such as Magic Eden, Stepn, and jito appeared.
3.Solana, in the hands of SBF, uses pull disk to create miracles. The wealth effect is the best marketing tool.
4. Despite experiencing the subsequent collapse of FTX and significant price fluctuations, Solana still maintains its developer ecosystem and community activities. Through continuous incentives and hackathons, Solana continues to improve its infrastructure and stimulate the development of more innovative applications, further promoting The prosperity of the ecosystem demonstrates its resilience and is the key to its ability to survive this bear market.And we have seen on Solana that its ecological development is gradually different from that of the Ethereum community, especially the collective migration of DePIN to Solana.
Good endorsement + the wealth effect of market pull + the existence of SBF has attracted many developers and ecological projects. And because of its high performance, Solana has attracted many unique ecological projects.
4. Terra
Because of the dual-token spiral structure of the ecology + high interest rates take off, and also because of the ecological spiral structure of death and return to zero
Terra went from 0-1 for a few key reasons:
1. In terms of team, Do Kwon graduated from Stanford and has a good team background. Moreover, I am very active on Twitter and am very good at causing trouble.
2. South Korea’s national chain is extremely fomo in South Korea.Korean VC, 3AC, etc. took off because of Terra, and also returned to zero because of Terra. The financing is also quite good, raising US$77 million in two rounds.
3. In terms of ecology, Luna+UST relies on the arbitrage mechanism and supply and demand to adjust and stabilize prices, while LUNA serves as the stabilizer of UST and became the most eye-catching dual-currency algorithm stablecoin system on the market at that time. The interaction between the two formed Forward spiral.Terra also subsequently launched the important DeFi project Anchor, which provided an ultra-high current yield rate of 19% -20%. It was once touted as the gold standard of Crypto passive income. As a highlight, it attracted a large number of investors and laid the foundation for the future. Thunderstorms set the stage. Everyone is calculating every day how many days Terra’s money can still pay 20% interest.During the bull market, UST became the third largest stablecoin with a market value of US$18 billion, and LUNAs market value reached a maximum of US$41 billion. Its ecological payment project Chai is also pretty good. Chai once received a US$45 million investment from SoftBank.
Once the market reverses, the positive spiral will turn into a death spiral:
3. In 2022, the cryptocurrency market fell as a whole, causing investors to transfer funds from other cryptocurrencies to UST to obtain high interest, making Anchors deposit scale much higher than the borrowing scale, resulting in a huge balance of payments. In the early morning of May 8, 2022, LFG was withdrawing US$150 million of UST liquidity from the UST-3 Crv pool in preparation for the formation of the 4 Crv pool. An address suddenly sold 84 million UST, seriously affecting the 3 Crv pool. Afterwards, multiple whale accounts began to continuously sell UST on Binance, causing UST to briefly unanchor.
As the reserves gradually depleted, the markets confidence in UST began to waver, and a large amount of UST was sold, causing the price of UST to further destabilize. In order to stabilize the price of UST, a large amount of LUNA was issued, causing the price of LUNA to plummet, forming a so-called death spiral. In order to prevent Luna and UST from plummeting, LFG needs to sell the treasurys BTC and other tokens, causing the market to plummet. Luna and UST brought down the entire market.
Good tokenomics (actually bull market ponzi) + unique ecology create Terra. But Tokenomics also caused the collapse of Terra. If the ecosystem can keep up, will Terra not collapse?
5.Arbiturm
The first team to talk about OP L2 + The bull market has received huge amounts of financing and created an excellent ecosystem
Arbitrum went from 0-1 for a few key reasons:
1. The team offchainlabs started working on L2 in 2018 and completed the angel round in 2019. It is one of the earliest L2 teams. The teams first-mover advantage is extremely obvious. Then in April 2021 and August 2021, two consecutive financing rounds totaling US$140 million were completed.The team’s technical background has a clear first-mover advantage.
2. The earliest and earliest batch to go online on the OP L2 mainnet,September 21 is in a bull market. It is relatively easy to accumulate users and the ecosystem, and it is easy to accumulate first-mover advantages in the ecosystem.
3. Because we raised a lot of money, we have money to work on the ecosystem and attract developers.
4. The airdrop went very well and created a large wealth effect in the early bear market in March 2022. Unlike Starkware, which saw its DAU drop by 90% after its airdrop, Arbitrum did not lose much DAU after its airdrop.
5. There is a trump card project in the ecosystem, GMX.I won’t go into details about how awesome GMX is. During the bear market, it rose 100% against the trend. It is an innovative idea to use spot dex to make perp dex. GMX contributed a large number of users and transactions to Arbitrum in the early days.
Good team background + leader of the story——》Easy to raise funds——》Launch the mainnet at the “right time”——》Because we have raised a lot of money, we can give money to developers——》Until a trump card project can Stand up and support the public chain.
6. Celestia
Clear positioning, but weak ecology
Celestia went from 0-1 for a few key reasons:
1. Celestia tells a good story. As the first project to propose a modular blockchain network, Celestia adopts a modular design to separate consensus and execution and provide DA services. At its inception, there were few modular blockchain and DA-focused solutions, so Celestia had few direct competitors. This provides Celestia with a unique market positioning.
2. The establishment of Celestia coincides with a period when the market is clearly moving towards greater scalability and efficiency.It addresses the market demand for higher performance Layer 2 solutions by providing a solution focused on data availability. Celestia is ideally suited as the data availability layer for Rollups. It allows Rollups to push state execution off-chain and rely on Celestia for consensus and data availability, thereby improving overall scalability.
3. The team is good. Mustafa is the co-founder of UCL and Chainspace, which was later acquired by Facebook.
4. Celestia’s ecological construction is weak. But I chose to join the cosmosecosystem,The subsequent airdrop rewards of Stakingtia will be very rich. Therefore tia has certain value support
7. Berachain
Luna 2.0, can the three-token model reshape Luna’s bull market growth miracle?
Berachain is getting a lot of attention now (after all, it hasn’t taken off yet), so I’ll briefly talk about it:
1. Although the team is anonymous, it is an old OG that has been in the currency circle for 15 years. In 2021, I issued a Smoking Bear NFT. After experiencing defisummer, I deeply realized the importance of liquidity to the public chain, so I launched Berachain.
2. It is also because the team background should be good, so it was able to obtain 42 million in financing from polychain and hackvc during the deep bear period in April 2023.
3. Although the story told by the entire chain still serves defi (taking the sword of the previous dynasty to kill the officials of this dynasty), the token design is very exquisite. The three token designs bera/honey/bgt are similar to luna/terras left foot and right foot. fashionable.The interest rate design of Luna/UST is very imaginary and relies on Anchors lending interest rate difference. Learning from the failure of Luna/UST, Berachain’s three-token model may be able to effectively mitigate (not avoid) the dual-token death spiral. Referring to Lunas crazy surge in the bull market, the market naturally has high expectations for Berachain.
8.Axie
A special product in the epidemic era, a tool that Southeast Asian users rely on for survival
A few key reasons why Axie went from 0-1:
1. The impact of the epidemic at that time caused the daily income of Southeast Asian users to be very low. The P2E model created by Axie has changed players expectations for games, transforming them from a recreational activity into a possible source of income. The key point is that the income is not low.Thanks to the background of the bull market, more and more players are joining the game, currency prices are rising, and weekly profits can reach 300-400 US dollars at their peak. In areas with unstable economies or affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, this kind of model provides a new revenue opportunity. Games not only provide entertainment but also give players control over the tools of production by allowing them to participate in economic activities, which is particularly attractive to players in developing countries.
2. As the leader of blockchain games at the time, in 2021, with the strong support of various community associations and investment institutions, Axie Infinity’s daily revenue and number of active users reached its peak, and its market share accounted for nearly half of all blockchain games. 2/3. During this stage, game revenue and token value reached historical highs. AXSs market capitalization peaked at US$10 billion.
Returning to zero is also very simple. There are no positive externalities in Ponzi games, and the results are all returned to zero.
9. Eigenlayer
It is in line with the general direction of user funds plus leverage, and DA is well combined with restaking.
The story of Eigenlayer from O to 1 can be understood as:
1. This story is halal enough,At the beginning of 2022, when the entire ETH staking ratio was less than 5%, we dared to talk about a subdivided track.
2. As a PR-type CEO, Kannan can attract the attention of VCs.
3. The Eth staking ratio is gradually increasing visibly to the naked eye, from 0 to 30% of eth staking in 3 years.
4. Eigenlayer’s star ecological project is EigenDA. The story of Restaking can later be combined with DA. The modular blockchain’s DA has become one of the best use cases for restaking.
5. Because 1+ 2+ 3+ 4, VC is willing to pay. And this also meets the needs of Ethholders, constantly increasing leverage and improving liquidity.
10. Merlin
The core figure + wealth effect creates community unity, and the subsequent TVL volume is also very clever.
Merin has basically taken off now. I can briefly talk about the factors:
1. The founder’s background is very nice.Through many offline communications, I can understand my thoughts on entrepreneurship over the past 10 years. I have raised a lot of money in the past, have high self-awareness, and have a deep understanding of the community. I will be a very, very good team in the rising market. .In addition, the founder also has a very charismatic personality. He dived into the ordinals ecosystem in March 2023 and has been actively optimistic about it very early.
2. Community unity.The community of BRC 420/Merlin is indeed very united and religious, but also because of the money made on the blue box. The factor that unites the community is the consensus created by the Miracle Pull at the Blue Box. The subsequent blue crystals and music boxes have very good wealth effects.Use the wealth effect to complete a quick cold start and establish a user group.
3. Ecological support. With a certain building in Singapore as the core and several subway stations as the radius, a circle of ecological project parties has gathered, and everyone is supporting each other. Therefore, the ecological growth is very fast.
4. The method of selecting TVL threshold is very clever.In addition to BTC Staking, the head inscription + 420 NFT can be pledged for TVL, so the TVL book value is very large.
5. Because of 1+ 2+ 3, financing is quick.Moreover, the founder understands MKT and branding very well, so he launched it at the right time, creating the largest BTC L2 on the market.
11. Blur
After thinking through the core of the NFT market is MM and giant whales, through continuous tokenincentive incentives
To understand why Blur can go from 0 to 1, you need to understand that there is only one core competitiveness of NFT Mktplace or exchange. It is not whether the product is good-looking or easy to use, but how to attract Makers. Only after having Maker can we have Taker users and be able to talk about product experience.
So what does Blur do:
1. Use pending orders (Maker) and Bidding (Maker) to attract different makers and give them Token rewards. And the only ones that can use tokenincentive are blue-chip NFTs. This is also easy to understand. The vast majority of NFT trading volume is blue chip NFT, and the final destination of non-blue chip NF 7 is zero. A large number of blue-chip NFTs are still in the hands of whales and MM, and retail investors actually don’t have much in the hands. Therefore, the core is to serve the MM and whales of blue-chip NFT well. Retail investors are not important at all.
2.Token incentive mode is different from X2Y2 and Looksrare. X2Y2 Looksrares direct vampire drop is a one-off and really doesnt mean much.Continuously using tokenincentive to attract whales and MM to provide liquidity is one of the core factors for Blurs success.
3. Others are small things, product-related, such as being able to trade in batches, making an aggregator, etc., but this is not the key.
12. BAYC
The earliest NFT member club, building consensus through celebrity effect
BAYC can be understood from 0-1 in the last cycle as:
1. People with BAYC NFT automatically become members of an exclusive club. This community provides a new way of socializing and creates a strong sense of belonging;The strong BD of the project party has attracted a large number of investors and collectors, including many celebrities, which further increases the exposure and appeal of the project; in the context of the NFT bull market, BAYC has launched a unique business model to bring NFT owners The decentralization of IP rights allows holders to use their own IP to create and sell products to further promote BYAC;With its unique artistic style and strong community utility, BAYC achieved the status of a cultural icon in a short period of time in the NFT market at that time.
2. BAYC was launched at the height of the NFT craze and also took advantage of the market’s high interest in emerging digital collectibles at the time. Subsequently, through social media and celebrity influence, BAYC quickly established strong brand recognition and community. YugaLabs continues to expand the BAYC universe, including new NFT projects and game launches such as MutantApe Yacht Club and Bored Ape KennelClub, further increasing revenue and continuing to increase membership value and community participation; and partnering with Adidas to launch the AdidasxBAYC NFT.However, some people believe that BAYCs model requires constant new additions and capital inflows to maintain its value. This has led some people to call it a monkey universe scam. However, this was also a dilemma that the currency market was gradually entering a bear market at that time, and NFT was difficult to break. one.
BAYC’s gradual decline in this cycle can be understood as:
1. The question of what exactly NFT is used for is still not solved. And during the bear market, YugaLabs did not provide many airdrop benefits to the community.
Thirteen, little penguin
On-chain and off-chain marketing combination punch + pull plate to bring little penguin back to life
The little penguin can be reincarnated in this cycle, which can be understood as:
1. The project has already been reset once in 2022, but because the picture is really cute, Lukaz decided to acquire it
2. The NFT story at that time was mainly Onboarding web2 user to web3, hoping to replicate BAYC.Investors believe that Little Penguin can acquire a certain amount of outside users by using toy retail off-chain + NFT marketing airdrops on the chain.
3. Because Lukaz acquired Little Penguin, he has a lot of chips on hand. Combined with market makers, it is easy to pull the market and establish consensus.
4. Users outside the circle learned about crypto and Little Penguin through extracurricular toys. Users within the circle re-recognized Little Penguin because of pull offers/airdrops. Therefore, Little Penguin came back to life in the second half of 2023 and once flipBAYC.
14. Friend.Tech
Using tokens to quantify personal social value is an amazing idea
The growth of Friend.tech from 0-1 can be summarized simply as
1. Did something that no one could do before - quantify personasocial value. In the Web2 world, limited by payment channels and compliance issues (the crime of illegally opening a casino), there is no way to launch/use similar products in large quantities. But in the crypto world, the best way to make money is to issue new assets. Therefore, FT solves the above problems very well. Everyone can issue their own key and use E standard + quantitative curve to quantify a persons social value. In the most simple and simple ICO, how many people can buy and sell keys depends entirely on the individual. branding. The brain circuitry of the product is amazing.
2. Although the product experience is not good, the website is often crashed, and creating an account requires gas, which is mutually exclusive within the circle, there is no denying that this is a phenomenal product.
Judging from the interaction volume in the figure below, FT is basically foggy. The reasons are:
1. The model is not long-lasting and is completely cut off from each other within the circle. A considerable proportion of everyone’s gaming money has to be given to the FT project side, and the rake is too high. Stepn can at least tell a story about positive externalities, but FT cant even tell a story about positive externalities.
2. No new features were developed in the future, and it was over after making money. If the team can add some new gameplay in the future, such as putting it on web2, advertising, and taking some positive externality measures, there may be a different outbreak.
3. The Token mechanism is introduced too late. Without token incentives, it will be difficult to sustain the mutual cut.
If we refer to blurs continuous token incentive method, can FT be sustainable?
