Recently, the project is undergoing brand/mainnet upgrade + token swap, so we have been in contact with major exchanges. We have been building from 2017 to today, and these standard processes are relatively clear. In addition to the corresponding compliance procedures and code audits, the rest is nothing more than market budget, how many new users/traffic can be brought in, how to make existing users get dividends, etc. The project party needs liquidity and new trading venues; the exchange needs users and trading volume. This is understandable.
The interesting part is that after a brief communication with the business department, it was time for the research department to make a judgment. They raised several points to reject our listing or to increase the budget because some conditions were not met. I will just pick out a few interesting points to talk about.
The first is that our data and popularity are not enough, which is specifically reflected in our insufficient social media data and insufficient on-chain data. Then they gave us several examples of projects in the same track. I was wondering, you are all in the research department, researching projects every day, can't you tell the truth and authenticity of the data? Come on, an account with hundreds ofk Twitter followers, but only a few thousand views of tweets and less than 10 comments. You tell me this is true? Then the on-chain data is a transaction hash that contains n transaction records. Are all the retail investors in your project experts? Everyone can connect to the RPC interface to package transactions? This is obviously unreasonable, right? Especially for professional AI data, data labeling itself has a threshold. It is unlikely that a large number of labelers will label the same set of data at the same time, especially since the cost of subsequent data verification and cleaning is higher than the labeling itself, so it is even more impossible, unless you don’t care about the cost at all or your purpose is not for the data itself.
The second is the endorsement of investment institutions. Most of the current projects (except meme) need the support/blessing of major VCs. But as an old project, from functionx in 2019 to PundiAI today, it has been more than 6 years since its establishment. We have always used our own money to build it and never took a penny from the outside. From the perspective of "old people" like us, don't you think this is a good thing? Purely community-driven, no VC control, and emotionally, this is a very "emotional" thing? As a result, in the eyes of the research department, this has become a synonym for no endorsement from an orthodox institution, no legit, and no popularity. I don't know how to say this...
The third is the circulation and valuation of tokens. From 2019 to now, all the coins have been unlocked. Our mc = fdv, and nearly 70% of the tokens are locked in the validator nodes. Then the big guys in the research department said that the pressure of this market crash is very high. I wondered, not to mention that most of the coins are in the validator nodes, we are all pure community boards, who will come to crash the market? Secondly, our old coins have not been listed on the big exchanges. After 6 years of going around, where should we go to crash the market? Thirdly, the size of the market crash pressure is proportional to the market fdv. Our market value and fdv are less than 100m. An AI data layer with business, products, customers and income is only 100m. Why don’t you look at those fdv 1b projects that have been online for a short time? Their market crashes need more attention, right? No, their later market crashes need more attention, right? !
There are many more points to complain about, so I won’t go into detail. I understand that you research experts have to look at many projects every day, and you all have your own opinions and data dimensions, and this involves a lot of professional knowledge, but at least you have to distinguish between what is true and what is false, good and evil, right?
I don’t know since when, traffic bribery, data bribery/falsification, project reskinning (I have even heard of founders reskinning?), airdropping to studios and then handing them over to mm for shipment, etc., have become the basic operations for projects to be listed.
Sometimes I feel that listing coins, especially some early-stage coins, is very similar to venture capital. What is being invested in is the foundation of the person/team. If listing relies on these to exchanges and to vc methods and operations, then the future development of these projects is really worrying.
We have been in this industry for so long, we have heard of these tricks and methods. It is not that we cannot do it, but we are unwilling to do it. Because these things will only benefit the studios, gray industries, dealers, etc. in the end, and the cost is the money of new retail investors, the shift of the focus of builders, and the decline of the entire industry. (P/S: To be honest, these airdrop tricks are all left over from our past)
We have seen bull and bear markets and storms, so we know that it is not easy to keep our original intention. Sometimes I really miss the friends I met in the ICO in 2017/2018 (many bosses I knew at that time have retired). Although the community at that time was poor, the topics we talked about every time were how to improve efficiency/security, how to push to the market, and how to get support from all sides after hacking, etc., and how to develop together for win-win results. At that time, introducing a VC and the opportunity to list on an exchange were all free (10,000 sentences omitted here), but now there are all kinds of kickbacks/introduction fees/referrals/management fees.
I really miss the pure us back then.
