I have heard before that the "advertising space" in the WLFI (World Liberty Finance) treasury can be purchased - the specific plan is that the project party subscribes to 5m-10m WLFI token quota, and then the person in charge of wlfi will use 20% of the investment quota to purchase your project tokens, and the other 80% to purchase BTC and ETH. At that time, we sneered and thought it was ridiculous; but when the middleman really came to the door with a proposal, I was the clown.
“No one told us that financing, like elections, requires paying homage.”
Just like a child who is ignorant of the world, when we launched ICO in 2017, we naively thought that financing was just about making a good product, promoting it on the forum (bitcointalk), and making an ICO address and publishing it. We spent the most time answering various questions from the community on the telegram group and bitcointalk forum, and working hard to make/implement the product. Later, I learned that you need to know OGs (many OGs back then are now called CTs), various advisors, find institutional platforms, mm market makers, exchanges, etc. - the price of joining this camp is to say no to the other side.
Taking sides and forming factions are inevitable in this new world that claims to "reshape the world's trading system."
There are rumors that if you had launched Huobi first, you would have had to wait for OK's IPO; if the Three O'Clock community had been full of calls for orders, then the VCs in Hong Kong would have collectively passed on your idea; if you had accepted Sequoia's investment, you would have basically said bye bye to BN Labs' investment, and so on.
Of course, I believe that these two-choice situations still exist, but as the industry becomes more mature and professional, factional disputes are gradually being eliminated in the face of interests. After all, in the face of the absolute advantage of the big brother occupying most of the market, the second/third/fourth brother can only put aside their prejudices and work together to get the remaining liquidity overflow.
"Everyone goes through this phase, seeing a mountain and wondering what's behind it." Ashes of Time
There is a theory in psychology that says that people have limited attention span, so they tend to label people/things in order to better distinguish them. When extended to web3, this label attribute is even more obvious, and it can be distinguished by market value, industry, function, and even the source of the investment vc and tge (whether it is the launchpool/launchpad of bn).
Everyone is trying to find a fulcrum, hoping to leverage the following functions including but not limited to: Trust endorsement Quickly identify the characteristics and narrative of the project Expectation management of the project
Through a series of label management, people can quickly establish a preliminary impression and the imagination space behind it (expectation management). For example, when a project is invested by bn labs, the first reaction of most people is the expectation of "listing on an exchange"; when a project is invested by a16z, the first reaction of most people is that it is a top-level project. It is nothing more than the brand premium behind these labels. The cross-over between big brands is probably based on similar logic.
The label sets the stage for imagination, and the rest depends on the readers’ free will and their vision for the future.
The logic of meme dissemination is similar. It starts with relying on a so-called "narrative" or "IP". The icon and origin should be well known to the public because the education cost and cognitive barriers are low enough, such as Elon, cz, and the president - because the label and name already explain a lot of things; because it has a legitimate origin, it is easier to enter the sight of the first wave of disseminators, and through their efforts (calling and recommendation), it enters the second, third or even more circles of dissemination, and gradually comes into the public eye.
That’s human nature. When one person says it, you probably ignore it; when several people say it, you probably sneer at it; when a group of people say it, you start to understand; similarly, when one person makes money, you probably think he’s lucky; when several people make money, you might go and find out; when a group of people make money, most of them will start to try. Don’t forget, when these people are the so-called “influential” KOLs, high-net-worth individuals, and they can plausibly list 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 for every penny they earn, and keep repeating the same idea in different words until these words touch the emotions of the onlookers.
"Individuals become more emotional and impulsive in a group, while rationality is submerged in the collective unconscious." "The Crowd"
Web3 is like an empire where dreams never fall, and spectators are trying their best to find the place where the next dream begins. The dream makers standing on the steps look at the spectators' accounts from afar, trying their best and racking their brains to take out the last coin in their pockets from the spectators' burning eyes.
Whether it is the prosperity on the chain or the new narrative upgrade, everyone knows that returning to value is the destination. Perhaps people are rebellious, especially those in the cryptocurrency circle, who always want to change their fate, just like knowing the laws of birth, aging, sickness and death, but hoping that they are the chosen ones who can be immune to this reincarnation. So, everyone is going through this cycle: from the initial doubts and confusion to the excitement after a small test. Then run into the market excitedly, and end up in a mess. Then I saw a similar plate again...
The opportunities we can see are probably illusions that the dream makers want us to see, and the wealth effect is the little red pill.
"I don't know how many times this has happened, we've been together and apart, but we can never get out of this cycle." "Happy Together"
Author twitter: https://x.com/agintender
