Three perspectives on Base: secondary investment analyst, independent researcher, and ecosystem developer
FC (Twitter @FC_0X0)
I just saw that Base's TVL has reached a new high of 1.7 billion, so I think it's a good time to talk about this today and 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 also told me at the time, but it was difficult for funds to buy it because we couldn't write memos and couldn't tell LPs that their community was good and that 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 research background and discovered Base's Alpha very early. Professor Liang looks at Base from a developer's perspective. Then Minta is looking at the secondary with me in our fund, and she may look at it more from a 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)
Base's TVL has risen rapidly since the beginning of March, from 400M to 1.8B, a 4.5-fold increase. In recent weeks, the number of 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, Base's Defi ecosystem has also had several large MC memecoin in the past two months, such as Aero, Extra Finance, Equalizer Dex, etc. $Aero and $Equal's income has increased by more than 6 times in the past quarter.
FC (Twitter @FC_0X0)
Please tell us how you came to pay attention to Base, and from your perspective, how did Base rise? In other words, what key points did it do 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 Coinbase's chain launch was still a big news at the time. I also have a friend who is an engineer for 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 didn't really emphasize DeFi, or what's different from most public chains is that his team really likes art or humanities, so they attracted a lot of non-cryptocurrency users like me, or non-yield-oriented players. They don't rush into various on-chain meme every day, but are more attracted by the development atmosphere or community atmosphere, which I think is quite different. So I pay attention to some Base, and also play 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 think, Farcaster, as a leader, has also gathered at least a lot of core players. In addition to some North American VCs such as 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@QiaoLiang3)
Teacher Jiang has actually summarized it very comprehensively. I would like to add a little bit, which is some of my perspectives as a Farcaster ecosystem developer. In fact, when Base first came out, everyone's impression was actually similar to what Teacher 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 reasons.
But when I paid attention to Base, I was actually a little disappointed at first. Because since the on-chain summer, it does not have a very rich ecosystem like other Layer1 and Layer2. 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, when Base was first launched onchain summer, it was more about NFT and culture. It felt very similar to Zora, which had many native artists and many cultural and commemorative properties. For these people, the minting of NFT was more of a consumption, like stamp collecting, bottle cap collecting, or commemorative purposes. The motivation for speculation was relatively weak. After a while, it felt like its volume was very small, and it did not have the initial expectation of rich applications like BSC.
But later on, I realized that what really makes Base powerful is its deep binding with Farcaster. Since it is separated from Base and Farcaster, I think a big challenge facing Layer 1 or Layer 2 is that it does not have the so-called platform stickiness, or the platform stickiness often comes from the financial attributes of the platform. This can be seen from the matrix we use to measure Layer 1/Layer 2. People often focus on TVL. This chain has a very high TVL, and we think it is pretty 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 the 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 the Coinbase Mafia mentioned by Professor Jiang. Dan and Jesse were colleagues before, including Linda Xie. They were all very familiar with Coinbase in 2017 and 2018. Including the recent Farcon in early May, Jesse also pulled the Base team to deeply support, show up, and go social. So this is a very unique point. I think the impact and characteristics brought by this are very far-reaching. Because Layer2 or Rollup are actually very homogeneous now, 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_0X0)
When developing on Farcaster or Base, will the ecosystem policies be different from those of other public chains?
Liang (Twitter@QiaoLiang3)
Compared with other public chains, Base’s model of directly giving grants often provides very little support, which actually causes some complaints from developers. For example, Farcaster did not mention the latest round. In fact, it received 30 million in the last round, and the team only had a dozen people, so it was not short of money. But when the developers of seven or eight clients met together, they felt that this was too outrageous. You have so much money but you don’t give any Grants. Recently, some Grants were actually given, but they were all given when you have already made something, and then I will give you more or less based on your influence. But as a developer, this kind of support is actually a kind of fire that cannot put out the fire. And including Base, it is not like other ecosystems that directly give grants or very large support to help you shout. It 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 it did well.
Successfully found the path and methodology for Alpha on Base
FC (Twitter @FC_0X0)
You have found different Alphas on Base, and the returns may be dozens of times higher. 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. Degen did participate, but I didn’t get hundreds of times the return like some group members. I actually put 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 LP in 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, that is, another application began to use Degen as its own ecological token, which turned it from a farcaster community token to an application token, which increased its value from 100 million US dollars to 300 million US dollars. There should be 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, and 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, such as 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 might 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 Base Memes have not returned to the high point in March. This is my personal experience of buying Base. I think early discovery is more important. If you don’t find it early, it is a safer choice to quickly increase your position when it changes its trend. After all, not everyone can get a high multiple in the early stage.
FC (Twitter @FC_0X0)
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 that 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 are using 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 KOL in Farcaster ecosystem. This feels quite special to me. But in fact, my attitude towards Twitter is that it is better to sell than to buy. After there are more shill on Twitter, I may think it is a selling situation.
FC (Twitter @FC_0X0)
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_0X0)
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 giving him money. To be honest, it is not likely that anyone will give money to 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 you don’t get on the bus, then I won’t get on this bus.
FC (Twitter @FC_0X0)
So, Professor Liang, from a developer's perspective, how do you capture Alpha?
Liang (Twitter@QiaoLiang3)
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 many product strategies that are completely different from many Memecoins on Solana. Conventional Memecoins are 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. 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 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 was using 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 the later CyberConnect, Lens, and Farcaster, which actually belong to this category. After we finished the first client, it actually supported Farcaster and Lens at the same time, and its positioning was similar to that of 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 its products 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 in Farcaster where people talked about speculating on coins, projects, and on-chain meme, 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 encrypted infrastructure and elements, 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 didn't say he wanted to issue a Memecoin. But when he woke up from a sleep, he found that about 200,000 dollars of ether had been minted in the contract. Then the community began to frantically pull groups for him to do things, and began to ask him as a project party. But he himself didn't want to do these things. Of course, he also did some operations to comply with the community's requirements, such as burning the remaining supplies or burning his administrator authority. But it didn't change the fact that he didn't 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_0X0)
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@QiaoLiang3)
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 be a rugged project. 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 community's 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_0X0)
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 Degen holder 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 Ethereum for Degen, and then use Degen to buy its key, so this was also a relatively strong pull at the time.
FC (Twitter @FC_0X0)
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@QiaoLiang3)
Actually, from a social perspective, I think it’s good to follow Mr. Luo (Twitter@0xluo). 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's called Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/ . This is a product that both Mr. Luo and I 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 Farcaster and Base related content.
Beyond Social, the possibilities of Base ecosystem
FC (Twitter @FC_0X0)
We will stop here for Alpha. Next, let's 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. One is the bottom layer of infra, which includes 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. They are actually developed based on Farcaster's friends, and they will actually be independently developed for C-end users. For example, you can see Kiosk now, and Recaster, which was just launched on the Apple Store today, is actually in this category. There are also some Base ecosystem games in the application layer. However, judging from the data, the overall users of Base are definitely still concentrated in Farcaster and Friend.tech.
Then the third category is community, NFT, and 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 we 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 gaming 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_0X0)
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_0X0)
So for 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 there are real people on Farcaster, and there are 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 buyin. 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 which one 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 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 can't 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 is that it rarely has the feeling of 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, so I don’t know whether it can be listed, this is the second concern. So overall, 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 outside of Friend.tech. Sofamon is one of the few things that can be played. And Mfer has never taken off. From a secondary perspective, I think it has been washed for long enough. The valuation is only 40 million. Any on-chain meme 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@QiaoLiang3)
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, don't 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 founder's 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 is actually a great opportunity to combine 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_0X0)
You just mentioned Farcaster’s adjustment strategy. Can you elaborate on it?
Liang (Twitter@QiaoLiang3)
This is the contradiction within Farcaster that I just mentioned. The founder built the community into an extremely halal community at the beginning. In his opinion, all the Degen, Onchain and Memecoin games are actually marginalized, subculture and niche communities. He is personally very resistant to them, including Degen. But without Degen, he would not have been able to raise 150 million yuan recently. Degen helped him attract traffic, 20 times the number of users or 30 times the number of monthly and daily active users. In his heart or in fact, he must be grateful for this product.
You have been working on a product for two and a half years, but your daily active users are only 1,000 to 2,000. Then suddenly, an ecosystem developer inexplicably creates a token and helps you increase your users by 50 times. But the direction he is pulling in is a direction and scenario that you did not particularly embrace before. So after your growth has increased 50 times inexplicably due to a new scenario, you adjust your strategy and say, "OK, now I have discovered it, I now admit it, I still want to make this billion-level social client and social protocol, but I realize that this crypto-native user is definitely my first wave of seed users, and I have to provide them with the gameplay and scenarios they like first, such as ponzi and memecoin, which are some scenarios they have to accept."
