Author | Wu Blockchain
This episode's guest Haze discussed the development and future plans of GMGN. Haze shared GMGN's case of using technical optimization to help users avoid risks and achieve profits during the TRUMP coin craze, and analyzed the reasons for the scarcity of blockchain product entrepreneurs in the Chinese-speaking region, such as high technical thresholds, high investment, and high risks. The team adheres to the elite culture and adopts a flexible and efficient small team model to deeply cultivate the Chinese-speaking market, while planning to complete performance optimization and new feature development around the Spring Festival of 2025. Haze reviewed the confusion and persistence in the early days of entrepreneurship, emphasized the importance of personally testing the product, and reminded users to pay attention to the security of on-chain operations to avoid fund losses due to fraudulent applications.
Please note: The guest's views do not represent the views of Wu Blockchain. Wu Blockchain does not endorse any products or tokens. Readers must strictly abide by the laws and regulations of their respective jurisdictions.
The audio recording is generated by GPT, so there may be some errors. Please listen to the complete podcast:
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GMGN's Recent Performance, Daily Revenue Exceeds $1.5 Million
Colin: Welcome everyone to our podcast. This time, GMGN's Haze is joining us again, and he is also our old friend. Last time we recorded an episode, it was a few months ago. During this period, GMGN should have made some progress, right? Why don't you first report to the audience and readers what new progress your team has made in the past few months.
Haze: Hello everyone. I remember the last time we recorded the podcast was about three months ago. The progress during this period is actually quite consistent with our team's internal time management approach. We usually calculate progress by day, week, month, and quarter, and rarely use half-year or annual units for planning. So based on the records of the past period, the entire product, including user reputation and quantity, has made good progress.
There were also relevant data to reflect this, such as during the TRUMP coin craze, our daily revenue exceeded $1.5 million. These achievements are indeed inseparable from the support of users. In fact, we have always focused on product development, and the final achievements are completely due to the trust and help of users.
Eastern Traders Gained Significant Profits on the Day of TRUMP Coin Listing
Colin: This TRUMP coin, you just mentioned that you missed the craze that day because you were taking care of your child. But I saw on Twitter that many people were showing off their profits, including GMGN users who had obtained considerable profits. From what I've seen around me, almost everyone who was able to buy these TRUMP coins on-chain hardly lost money, it's just a matter of earning more or less. But later when buying on exchanges, especially on major exchanges, the probability of losing money becomes very high. Can you introduce some of the situations you observed that day? Did you also get a lot of feedback from friends that they made relatively large profits using your tools?
Haze: Yes, I think the launch of TRUMP coin was indeed a historic event - the President of the United States actually issued a coin. I didn't participate myself, which is quite a pity, and I'm also very regretful. This is not because of the money-making problem, but because it is a historic event. If I could have participated a little bit, I feel it would have been a very special life experience. But there are some things in life that have to be given up, and that day I really had to take the child out.
However, when I got home, I found that the heat had already exploded that evening. Product traffic, user activity, and various data all showed explosive growth. Many GMGN users posted their profits on Twitter, and I forwarded them one by one. Among these users, many people earned tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. In comparison, those who only earned $1 million felt "too embarrassed to show off", which just shows how exaggerated the wealth effect was.
This wave of TRUMP coins not only drove a significant increase in the on-chain wealth effect, but also achieved a real breakthrough effect. Whether it's the issuer's global appeal and influence, or the wealth stories on the chain, they have brought about rapid dissemination and spread. People spread the word, and many "wealth stories" were born.
Some of the data and stories are particularly interesting. For example, a foreign KOL bought TRUMP coins early, but it wasn't until TRUMP coins were listed on major exchanges that he bought in bulk. As a result, he cut his losses in just a few days, losing $2-4 million. The wealth effect of this wave of TRUMP coins was mainly grasped by on-chain trading enthusiasts in the East.
In comparison, many Western on-chain traders missed the best timing, did not get early tokens, and ended up cutting their losses, with losses reaching the millions of dollars. Especially on centralized exchanges (CEXs), since the coin price was already at a relatively high level when it was listed, if they didn't do short-term swing trading but held it as a faith coin, they may still be in a loss position now.
How GMGN Avoids High Slippage and Trading Failures
defioasis: Like some users mentioned on Twitter before, some people used Photon to buy coins and were squeezed to zero. So why won't GMGN have this problem? How do you manage to be faster and more stable, and help users buy at better prices?
Haze: Well, this is mainly because we have made some optimizations on the technical side and have been continuously investing. For example, our nodes are globally distributed, and we try to match the servers closest to the user's location to improve the trading speed. In addition, we have also invested a lot of resources in trading nodes, such as building our own nodes and multi-node backups, completely "arming our users' infrastructure to the teeth" to ensure that the trading nodes will not have problems. This way, users' trading speed can be said to be at the industry's top level, basically able to complete on-chain transactions within one second.
In addition, we have also made special optimizations in pool matching and anti-squeeze mechanisms. We have dedicated operations personnel for real-time monitoring to prevent fake nodes from suddenly going offline or other problems that could cause users to match small liquidity pools. These problems may cause users to bear high slippage or even be directly squeezed to zero their funds.
Of course, it's impossible to completely avoid being squeezed, but we try to minimize such situations. For example, a user once bought $40,000 worth of coins on Photon, but was directly squeezed to only $1,000 left; or in the TRUMP coin wave, some platforms matched very small liquidity pools, causing a user who had profited $70,000 to eventually sell out and only have 0.5 SOL left. These problems are mainly related to the stability of the pools, anti-squeeze nodes, and trading nodes, which actually expose the technical shortcomings of some platforms.
So we continue to increase investment in these areas, deploy more personnel, optimize the trading nodes and user matching mechanisms, to ensure a smoother and more stable trading experience for everyone, while further improving trading speed.
Eastern Users Focus More on Trading Tools and High-Intensity Trading Habits
defioasis: Just now, Haze, you mentioned that Eastern users and Western users performed very differently in this wave of TRUMP coin craze. Basically, some Eastern KOLs made the bulk of the profits, while on the Western side, there was almost no voice. Do you think this is mainly due to the use of bots, or are there other factors that have led to this East-West difference, allowing Eastern traders to gain more profits?
Haze: Well, I think the MEME coin trading on the chain has now entered a stage of professionalization and high-intensity investment. Eastern traders are usually more inclined to use some more advanced trading tools, combined with data analysis, and they will also sit in front of the computer very diligently, capturing opportunities through Twitter and other information flows. Through long-term, high-intensity trading, they have cultivated a keen sense of the market, able to judge which projects are worth participating in and which ones cannot be touched.
Here is the English translation of the text, with the specified terms translated as requested:This experience and intuition is very much like playing poker. You have a hand of cards, and after sitting at the table for a long time, you will feel that some cards can be played and some cards need to be abandoned. This kind of feeling cannot be formed by momentary emotions. Western traders, on the other hand, are often much simpler, as they may trade out of interest or emotional reasons, which in itself does not have a high probability of success.
In addition, the release time of the TRUMP coin was also crucial. According to Singapore time, it was released around 10 am, while in the US it was 8-9 pm on Friday. At this time point, the diligent Eastern traders had already woken up and started their day's trading, while the Western traders were likely in a state of relaxation or rest on Friday night. This time difference also gave Eastern traders a great advantage.
So, from the perspective of trading habits, diligence, and the arrangement of token issuance time, the huge profits of this wave of TRUMP coins were mainly captured by Eastern traders. Of course, I don't think this is simply a matter of luck, but the result of long-term high-intensity trading of Memecoins. To do trading like them, they need to use tools like GMGN, while maintaining long trading hours and constantly depositing their trading skills and experience on the chain. In this way, when opportunities like TRUMP coins appear, they will have the intuition and confidence to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth and ultimately reap huge profits.
Colin: Yes, what you said is very important. The people who really make money are those who have undergone long-term training. Without long-term practice, it is difficult to cultivate that kind of trading intuition. This intuition is irreplaceable by rational analysis, and can only be accumulated through long-term on-chain trading, so that you can dare to take a large position and hold it at critical moments.
Haze: Yes, especially for projects like Memecoin, which do not have traditional product support. So using traditional valuation systems or rational thinking cannot judge it. Only by trading Memecoin on the front line for a long time will you know which coins may explode, what prices they should reach, and even know that they may be listed on exchanges like Binance, Base, and Robinhood due to market demand. These are key points that you can bet on a cycle, but these judgments require rich experience.
In the trading process, you may have experienced missed opportunities, as well as successful lessons and experience accumulation. These will help you seize opportunities at critical moments. I think the TRUMP coin wave is just the process of realizing the long-term cognition and experience. Overall, there are indeed obvious differences between the East and the West in trading Memecoin, in terms of habits, diligence, and the depth of using trading tools.
Analysis of the Reasons for Users' High Returns
defioasis: The last question is about data statistics. Have you ever counted how many addresses have made millions through GMGN? Because there was data previously showing that on the TRUMP chain, about 28 addresses made over $10 million, and there were more than 400 addresses that made between $100-$1000 million. I want to ask, among these 400+ addresses, how many used GMGN to get over $1 million in big profits?
Haze: I haven't done specific statistics on the addresses that made $1 million, but in the case of those who made over $10 million, there is an interesting set of data. Previously, a KOL did a profitability ranking, listing the top 10 Memecoin traders, and 50% of them were GMGN users. In this Top 10 profitability list, 50% of the people used GMGN.
I haven't had time to look closely at the specific address distribution, but from the screenshots circulating in the community, I roughly scanned and it also seems to be around 50%. These statistics are mainly from the Chinese-speaking area, and most of the Top 10 are also GMGN users.
defioasis: Okay, I've also seen this data before, it's really impressive. Most of the high-income earners seem to be in the Chinese-speaking area, and many of them have achieved these results through GMGN.
Team Culture and Expansion Plans
Colin: Okay, Haze, I want to ask, what is the current size of your team? I remember you mentioned about 30 people in the team three months ago, has the number increased?
Haze: It's still around 30 people, not more than 40 yet. Our team has always been more inclined towards an elite culture, where one person can do the work of 10 or even 20. Some people who can't keep up may be eliminated, and we will bring in more outstanding people. Because in the on-chain field, it's more about chasing hot spots, no one can guarantee that what you're doing is a century-old business, and you may need to research new directions or layouts at any time.
The "large headquarters-style" team model is suitable for large organizations, but we want to maintain the flexibility of a small boat, so that we can quickly adapt to the changes of the waves. So we don't want to turn ourselves into a "giant ship" team, but more like a special forces team.
Colin: I understand, so your strategy is not to rapidly expand the team size, but to maintain professionalism and a focused product positioning, right?
Haze: Yes, that's our core philosophy. In fact, when competing with opponents with resource advantages, we may feel overwhelmed, but we believe that it ultimately comes down to individual capabilities. If a person's ability is strong enough, they can leverage a single point or event to pry open the entire team and achieve a breakthrough.
We've also experienced this in the entrepreneurial process. So our requirements for team members are deep cognition and specialized capabilities. Each member must be able to do the work of "10 people" or even "50 people". We don't think team size is a disadvantage, but rather see it as an advantage to be lean. At the same time, we don't rationally distinguish between life and work, but hope the two can naturally integrate.
Colin: I understand. Then there's one more question, now that your reputation is very high, I suppose there are many VCs approaching you. Do you currently have any financing plans, or have you made any judgments about your own valuation?
Haze: We currently have no financing plans, mainly because we are too busy, and we haven't had time to consider these things. We are focused every day on user needs, fixing some small bugs, or optimizing the product. Sometimes I really wish I had a tool to pause time for a month, so that we can get everything done and then continue running. This would greatly improve the user experience. The current focus is still on continuous improvement, optimization and iteration of the product.
Difficulties and Plans for Overseas Market Expansion
Colin: We've actually discussed this before, you mentioned that the position of the Chinese-speaking area is relatively stable now, and you may want to expand to some overseas markets next. Now, do you have confidence in expanding overseas? Or what difficulties might you encounter in this process?
Haze: Well, "going out" is definitely something every team will consider. In fact, we have been doing overseas market expansion, it's just that we haven't put in particularly great efforts to specifically push it forward. The reason is that the Chinese-speaking market is a relatively comfortable zone for us, and we are more familiar with user needs and market environment here. While in overseas markets, compared to the Chinese-speaking area, our familiarity will be slightly weaker.
So our current task is to do a good job in the Chinese-speaking area first, try to meet the needs of users here as much as possible, and then further develop the overseas market. As for the overseas market plan, we have actually been paying attention and making efforts, it's not that we are completely stagnant. The Chinese-speaking market has indeed developed very quickly, and it has performed more prominently in our overall layout.
However, from the very beginning, we have been operating with a global vision, and our business expansion model is also globalized. It's just that relatively speaking, the achievements in the Chinese-speaking area are more dazzling.
Confusion and Turning Point in the Early Startup Days
Colin: I understand. I remember that before the Memecoin craze came, we met a few times, and at that time I felt your state was quite depressed, and you weren't as excited as you are now. It's been about a year since your product became quite successful, right? It should have started around June or July last year. In the year before that, was the pressure or sense of confusion particularly strong for you?
Haze: Yes, that's right. In the early days, we did experience a lot of pressure and confusion. At that time, our product was not yet successful, and we were still in the exploration and development stage. There were many uncertainties, and we often felt lost and frustrated. However, we never gave up and continued to work hard, believing that as long as we persisted, we would eventually find the right direction.
Here is the English translation of the text, with the specified terms translated as requested:Haze: Yes, the team has actually been doing this for over a year now. How to put it? When you feel a track may take off, it's like buying a coin - you think it will go up, but it just keeps going down, even oscillating at the bottom for a long time. That's the worst psychological state, getting lost in confusion, reflection, and uncertainty. I feel GMGN was in such a state in its early development.
At the time, the entire track didn't really take off, and the market sentiment didn't either. Looking at the data every day, you'd have doubts: is this track too small? Can Memecoins really take off? I wouldn't say it was despondency, but it certainly wasn't exciting enough, and it felt really tough because we had no idea when the breakthrough would come. I can only say we persisted based on our own judgment. Although in that state, I've always been very confident in the product itself, because it can indeed solve some pain points.
Colin: I remember you mentioned before on the show that to test the product features, you lost over $300,000 trading Dogecoin on GMGN.
Haze: Yes, that's right. In fact, I was the first major trader on GMGN. I took $350,000 and traded various coins through GMGN, constantly testing the functions, experiencing whether the product could really solve user needs, and also verifying whether our trading speed was fast enough and could be competitive in the industry.
At that time, I didn't have the confidence I have now, because all the knowledge hadn't been validated by the market yet. So I was constantly reflecting and self-doubting, and was also afraid of leading the team into a pit. But recently, when chatting with the product manager, I joked, "Look, this time I didn't drag you into a pit, right?" You could say this is a kind of relief from the confusion.
Analysis of the Scarcity of Blockchain Product Entrepreneurs in the Chinese-Speaking Region
Colin: Haha, it's really not easy to have made such a successful product after more than a year of effort. It's quite touching. But I have a question - looking back, you'll find that entrepreneurs doing blockchain products in the Chinese-speaking region or Chinese region seem to be particularly scarce. Apart from you, maybe the OKX wallet is also a decent product, but most blockchain products are still led by overseas teams. What's the reason for this? Are Chinese entrepreneurs more used to making centralized products?
Haze: I've also thought about this question. I think there are a few reasons. First, the development speed of blockchain products is very fast, and the uncertainty is very high. At the same time, blockchain also has very high technical requirements. For example, when you do blockchain products, you need to consider security, stability, and constantly respond to new technologies and new trends, which places very high demands on the team.
For example, for a startup team, the blockchain field requires long-term and large-scale investment of energy and funds. Just take GMGN when we first started - the data server alone could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. For a regular small team, this cost is very difficult to bear. I remember a user on Twitter sent me a private message saying their team had also done similar data products even earlier than us, but in the end they had to give up because the server cost was too high. GMGN eventually found the opportunity, but in this process, many teams were eliminated or failed for various reasons.
In addition, the blockchain field itself is rather "Degen". If your team is not deeply involved in the user group, or if you yourself are not a very "Degen" person, you may not be able to understand the pain points of users, or even understand what they are talking about. So I feel the threshold for blockchain products is indeed very high, both for ordinary users and for teams. To do blockchain products well, you must have a very strong belief in the future of this field, and be willing to keep investing on the front line. But if you don't have this belief and long-term investment, many teams may choose to give up.
In addition, teams in the Chinese-speaking region usually prefer to do things with relatively higher certainty, such as business models that have already been validated. Because these projects are safer, with lower risk and higher margins, they don't need to take so much risk. Like the OKX wallet product, it also enters the blockchain, but is more focused on being a custodial asset wallet. We are more focused on the field of fast trading speeds and helping users get low-priced tokens earlier, so our track is actually a bit different. But overall, the high risk, high threshold, and long-term investment requirements of blockchain are one of the main reasons why Chinese entrepreneurs are less likely to enter this field.
GMGN's 2025 Plan
Colin: I understand. So for the new year, have you already made any plans for 2025? Or are you still focusing on quarterly progress, as you mentioned before? After all, you just launched the APP in the past three months, which should be an important milestone.
Haze: In the past three months, we have indeed done the APP, which is currently under review in the app store. But at the same time, there have also been many scam apps, such as some fake APPs embedded in web pages, which will let users enter their private keys and then steal their funds. Even more outrageous is that these fake APPs are constantly rising in the rankings of tool-type apps, like yesterday they were at 156th, and today they've already reached 116th. On the one hand, this shows that there are a large number of users who want to use GMGN, and on the other hand, it also reminds everyone to be extra careful about security when operating on the blockchain. I suggest that users verify with GMGN's official staff before trying, to avoid being scammed.
Colin: From this perspective, I think you should expand the team size appropriately. For example, now the online support is almost entirely on you, which not only takes up a lot of your time, but also makes it difficult to take care of other things. If you hire some customer service staff who are active on Twitter to maintain the community, wouldn't that be better?
Haze: That's true, I've also tweeted about similar ideas before. Now the customer service is mostly handled by me, while the product manager is responsible for the official Twitter and community operations. Although this work model is very tiring, the gains are actually quite large. Because you're always on the front line, you can directly feel the needs and feedback of users, and this sense of touch is very important. Of course, there is physical and mental fatigue, but this may also be a difference between our team and other teams.
Colin: But I still suggest adding some manpower appropriately, otherwise as the scale gets bigger, things may become increasingly difficult to handle.
Haze: There are indeed some repetitive or certain tasks that we will consider expanding the team to share in the future. But in the current state, we still insist on a lean and efficient approach, maintaining the flexibility and clear-cut style of the team.
Colin: In fact, a friend mentioned before that one advantage of centralized exchanges is that they have a huge customer service team, maybe hundreds of people, which makes users feel more user-friendly. While blockchain products rely more on users learning by themselves, which may have some shortcomings in user experience.
Haze: That's right. Blockchain users and centralized exchange users are very different. Blockchain users have stronger self-learning abilities, so customer service alone cannot solve their core needs. This is also one of the reasons why we haven't invested too many customer service resources so far.
As for the 2025 plan, we actually don't have a particularly long-term annual plan. We are currently divided into two stages, before and after the Chinese New Year. Before the Chinese New Year, our main task is to optimize performance, and at the same time launch a native APP to test speed, slippage, and other core experiences. The current APP is an H5 page embedded in the trading, and we will optimize it to a native version before the Chinese New Year.
After the Chinese New Year, we will launch some new features, which are decided based on user research and feedback, and I personally find them very interesting. The time points before and after the Chinese New Year are based on user needs, and we don't take a break for the Chinese New Year, so the development work will continue from now on.
Colin: I see, your time planning is indeed shorter, focusing on responding to market changes at any time, rather than making particularly long-term plans, right?
Haze: Yes, our product is more about short-term planning, like what to do in the next month or even the next week, and prioritizing it to get started. Because the market changes too fast, something new may pop up next month, and too much advance planning will require constant adjustments, so we tend to focus on weekly and monthly progress. This is our logic.
Views on Competitors and Maintaining Advantages Through Product Experience
Colin: I understand. Are you worried about other competitors? After all, now that you've achieved some success, there should be a lot of imitators appearing.
Haze: I believe that competition is inevitable, and the key is for everyone to compete in terms of product strength and depth of understanding. Because users will ultimately only choose the products that truly "satisfy" them. So the core is who has a better product experience, stronger functionality, and a deeper understanding of user needs.
I am not afraid of competition. There will always be pioneers and latecomers in every track, which is unavoidable. The key is whether you can surpass everyone in your most core areas.
