Source: Twitter @YeruiZhang

In the past year, I have written many articles. Today I am taking advantage of my free time to put these loose texts together and give an overview of what is happening in the market and how. I should make a review, this will also be my top CT for the next period of time.

First of all, I want to emphasize the two main core indicators that I look at in this cycle:

The first is the reach rate, which is called Attention in English. I think this indicator can be benchmarked. The existence of Narrative in the last cycle. Due to changes in the market structure, VC/TVL, which VC relies on for survival, has failed to set the expected + market maker opening pricing, and the price game has returned to the simplest buying game. So how to reach more communities and more retail investors? Converting them into buys is something all projects need to think about. So I put forward the concept of conspiracy and conspiracy at the beginning of this bull market.

This long article was written in early November. It starts from defining the concepts of conspiracy and conspiracy, and then uses Cheems as an example to explain the most basic method of gaining attention and increasing reach rate. The recent Yap by Kaito is the best demonstration of this logic, especially when they changed the content discovery model of CT.

The other is the quality and speed of issuance of ecological assets. At the beginning of the year, I mentioned that the ecology needs assets to unite the community. ETH relied on Eigen at the beginning of the year and DEFI at the end of the year. Base recently relied on Virtual, throughout SOL The theme for the whole year is MEME. After all, the best community model in the currency circle is similar. In 2021, all public chains and DEFI33 disks found their core group of users through the increase in currency prices and mutual brainwashing of the community, and then spread outward. Most projects that can be calculated using PS/PE lack the possibility of reaching 10 billion, and there is a ceiling for mathematical problems that can be solved with a pen in the currency circle. The core reason why public chains are immortal is that you don’t know which faith community or popular ecology will appear on a given day.

In the currency circle, assets are king, and whoever can incubate more and higher-quality assets faster will occupy the center of market discussion. From the perspective of the public chain, if ETH is a long movie , then SOL is short video. Although the former may be very popular, in the era of large traffic, no one can distribute assets faster than the Douyin model. The more you publish and get more user contacts, the closer you are to success.

We have talked about the solution to VC coins before. I think the next focus is on two parts:

1. The only one that can generate market appeal at present is A16Z, and there is no other. , real money, A16Z represents oversized checks and exaggerated valuations. Only with money can we expect to pull the market, and only with exaggerated valuations can we attract the market's attention. Therefore, except for the A16Z project (note that it is not the CSX incubator!), the focus of all other projects should be how the project builds the community and how to gather community strength through the Social farming Pitch exchange.and the performance after the opening (whether it benefits the community and becomes the last person to hold the bottom) to observe the success of the project. These three points require the establishment of a large number of communication channels with the community and reaching more new community implementations. There will be many new projects coming next. If we cannot effectively reach new users, the experience of taking over the projects will not be good.

2. Pay attention to who among the projects that have successfully reached the community can establish the asset issuance system fastest and most effectively, and then press the calculator desperately, because the initial project of ecological issuance is to gather popularity through the ecology. , is to release a lot of resources to support, to put it bluntly, it is the PVE stage. Seize this opportunity and make money before there are not enough people pressing the calculator.

After talking about VC coins, let’s talk about the hottest MEME in this cycle. First of all, my logical basis is that MEME is no longer just MEME:

1. From now on, MEME will not be a flash in the pan. It is a returning asset issuance method and community cold start method, returning to the essence of Crypto. something.

2. MEME has evolved into a new way of launching assets. Assets may continue to iterate, but the essence of Crypto is to launch more assets and find more interesting angles. Hype cannot be underestimated. A valuable new asset, from this perspective MEME will be difficult to stall.

3. The MEME ecology has entered the next stage of group operations. Whether it is AI16Z, Virtual or Bio's http://Dao.Fun, these big brothers have evolved from a single-point Application layer to Infra is the stage of the new generation of Infra.

First of all, let me talk about my change of mentality. I used to be unfavorable about Meme and Pumpfun, but within a few months they slapped me in the face and I spent a lot of money. I took some time to make a summary. I think the development path of Meme is this, and I don’t necessarily welcome everyone’s corrections.

1. The earliest Meme must have been posted by the ecology itself. Back at the end of 2023, the earliest Bonk appeared was bound to the SOL mobile phone, and Silly dragon was closely related to the Christmas theme. Foundation proofing is similar to the earliest ETH DEFI in 17 years.

2. The second wave is Dev in the core circle. At the end of 2023, the price of SOL’s local currency soared, and the ecology of top value coins such as DEFI exploded. The community began to look for new assets. Here are some DEV who were deeply involved in SOL in the early days. Start sending MEME, including Wif and so on. The launch of core DEV is similar to that of ETH DEFI in 2018-19.

3. In the first wave of MEME cycle, MEME generally rose under the leadership of PEPE from February to March. WIF emerged in the SOL ecosystem and quickly reached the 3B position, raising the ceiling of the entire ecosystem. , then Bome and Slerf's two representative "speed passes" (generally referring to extremely exaggerated short-term gains) have locked external Degen funds into the SOL ecosystem. The first wave broke out, similar to DEFI Sez.

4. The most important thing about Pumpfun is that it set standards through standardized hair styling tools. It was the first to release cats and dogs on a large scale, such as Michi. Then before and after the election, they cleverly seized the hot spots and issued a batch of 10-100M assets through assembly line operations, among which Pnut was a good example. A large number of various types of assets have brought a lot of popularity. When the popularity is enough, DEV will be more willing to issue new assets, and the ecology will begin a positive cycle. It can be said that Pumpfun led to the second wave of explosion, similar to the situation of ETH DEFI in early 2021.

5. The SOL foundation began to move away from meme, and began to incubate AI track projects in October. Subsequent Tiktok and Desci tracks have corresponding projects. Especially in the AI ​​​​track, from Goat to Ai16Z, etc., MEME has gradually become a distribution method rather than just an asset itself. Everything can be Meme. Meme maps an open source/unlicensed/and outside the circle can be used without permission. Seamlessly connected asset representation form. What is issued through Pump Fun is not just Memes, but also a large number of AI research results and tokenized displays of open source projects, becoming a new permissionless asset form that has been sublimated. This wave has sublimated from the DEFI2.0 craze in 2021 to the level of benchmarking ICO.

When MEME reaches stage 5, the creativity of the market is infinitely opened up, because this liberates a group of wild developers who were not within the mainstream discourse system. Or, in the system where VCs have dominated the discourse in the past two years, this group of people cannot effectively obtain VC financing because they have no resources and no connection, so they can only develop silently. But under the premise of the wave of big assets, they adapted faster and seized the opportunity because of the wild. For example, Virtual was the first to catch up when the AI ​​Agent story happened, and thanks to its accumulation on the Base chain, it became Base's number one ecosystem. Similarly, Base is also a chain that is not taken seriously in the VC system. If there is no currency in this chain, first of all, stakeholders cannot hold positions. Secondly, compared to the sky-high price incentives given by OP and ARB, BASE cannot give even a dime of Grant, so it can only Collect something that no one wants on the market. But it is the chain that is not optimistic under traditional logic + the developers that are not optimistic under traditional logic + the excellent retail base of the Base chain that makes Virtual a myth.

MEME is not necessarily a fair issuance because there will be conspiracy groups and strong bankers to control the market, but the gameplay of MEME is the same as that of ICO, giving the community and retail investors an opportunity to collide with the existing interest systems.Yes, this is the core reason why everyone is willing to play MEME.

I don’t think this batch of MEME ecosystems have reached a plateau. I think that in the next three to six months their valuation system will be able to benchmark against public chains. On the one hand, they have become powerful. , all have their own ways to reach more users, such as AIXBT for Virtual, and Shawm's CT for AI16Z. In addition, they can attract a large number of teams that were originally frustrated in Crypto, but have the ability and understanding to build an ecosystem. To issue MEME through this kind of ecosystem, in fact, only good enough creativity and an understanding of market hot spots are needed. Isn't this the Iphone moment when the Infra technology stack is set up and waiting for developers to come? It seems to me that Mass Adoption has arrived.

How to get involved?

1. First of all, for players who don’t have enough time and have a lot of money, I think the gameplay of these MEME ecosystems will be very similar to the public chain ecosystem, except that the indicators that everyone saw before were TVL, but Nowadays, there are more virtual indicators such as voice volume and Mindshare. This is where new tools such as Kaito's Yap are very valuable.

2. Then there are players with ample time and small funds. Since they judge that opportunities on the chain will continue to exist, it is very important to participate in early opportunities, try to understand the narrative, and follow the flow of Smart money. Here I I am more optimistic about GMGN. As a new generation of on-chain exchange, it combines the monitoring of icons, Smart Money and the rapid execution of transactions. It is a very good dog-fighting tool.

When I write this, I will have some expanded thoughts. I cannot guarantee that it is 100% correct. It is for reference only.

1. Today, when Infra is saturated, only three types of VC projects can survive. One is to guide the mainstream market narrative, such as Polymarket, and the other is to provide services for the existing on-chain ecology. For example, Pump Fun, the last one can convert users from outside Crypto into Crypto. The second and third scenarios and PMF will be very important, and it will be difficult for those with simple narrative to survive.

2. The issuance model of MEME is to better gain market attention through the opening critical attack, because there are more benefits to be divided, but because in the early stage the currency price determines the mood , once the operation is not careful, everything will be lost. This is also the reason why it is very difficult for a 30M level MEME to hit 100M. The corresponding VC project only needs to obtain a buy order from the exchange because it is priced through VC when liquidity is insufficient. There is a big difference between the two. The former is difficult at the beginning and easy at the end, while the latter is easy at the beginning and difficult at the end.

3. More wild developers will join the team in the future, and they may even attract many big guys in the open source Web2 community. After all, who doesn’t want to make quick money? At the same time, more technical projects will be launched in the form of MEME, perhapsAfter success, introduce the VC part.