Author: Nancy, PANews

The once-bustling crypto world has long since become a relic of the past. Narratives have become ineffective, projects are rapidly exiting the market, token prices remain under pressure, liquidity is constantly fleeing, and the difficulty of starting a business has been repeatedly increased. The trend of a crypto winter seems irreversible.

In this atmosphere, a long article titled "A BNB Startup Story Without 'Shandong Studies'" unexpectedly went viral in the crypto community, allowing many practitioners to feel a long-lost sincerity and rare passion.

The protagonist of this long article is Cedric, the founder of the token issuance platform Flap Protocol. Recently, PANews interviewed Cedric, who shared the original intention of writing this viral article and reviewed the real entrepreneurial journey of how a grassroots team abandoned impetuosity, relentlessly pursued PMF (product-market fit), and ultimately achieved growth in a sluggish market.

A victory for meritocracy; Product-Market Fit (PMF) triumphs over "Shandong Studies".

As the golden age of crypto Twitter (CT) fades, Cedric's long article has unexpectedly broken out of its niche amid a bear market with persistently dry liquidity.

"Of course I hoped more people would see it, but when I was writing it, I expected only a few hundred thousand views. It ended up exceeding a million, which completely exceeded my expectations," Cedric recalled in the interview.

The reason this article became a hit is not due to its dissemination techniques or narrative packaging, but rather to the sincerity it presented, which injected a glimmer of morale into the period of stagnation.

Over the past year, the crypto market has been in a continuous downturn. The price decline is merely a symptom; the deeper change lies in the simultaneous depletion of liquidity and confidence. User activity has decreased, new funding has slowed, and the lifespan of startups has been continuously shortened. The growth model that once relied on narrative and emotion-driven approaches has gradually become ineffective, and the market as a whole has begun to cool down.

In this environment, some leading figures in the industry chose to leave, while many more entrepreneurs wavered in their confidence. Voices such as "There's no hope in the crypto world," "It's better to flatter the big shots," and "Starting a business is less effective than leveraging resources" began to circulate frequently. Furthermore, the so-called "Shandong Studies" were amplified in this pessimistic crypto context, used to satirize the industry's unspoken rules. Especially within the Binance ecosystem, it was believed that only by mastering relationships and resources could one have any chance of growth.

In Cedric's view, this was more like a pessimistic interpretation of the industry amplified by emotion. Therefore, Cedric chose to write about his real entrepreneurial experience.

In his view, despite the noise in the world of crypto, the underlying logic remains Meritocracy.

At that very moment, Flap, which he founded, had just experienced a significant period of business growth, with substantial increases in key metrics such as interaction volume and token creation, making it one of the most active protocols on the BNB Chain.

"To this day, I have never met He Yi and CZ, nor have I participated in any so-called 'high-level gatherings'." Cedric also admitted in the article that he had felt it was unfair, but these emotions did not make him back down; instead, they became the driving force to get things done.

This authentic narrative, which relies solely on execution rather than connections, unexpectedly struck a chord with the market's emotional pain points. It uses verifiable data to show the market that even in a downturn, as long as entrepreneurs focus on Product-Market Fit (PMF), it is still possible to survive and even succeed in this industry.

This article not only resonated with the community but also significantly boosted Flap's brand, resources, and trust. Following its publication, Binance founders CZ and He Yi followed Cedric and the project account, proactively establishing contact and introducing them to more ecosystem resources.

For Flap, this "being seen" also became another form of upward social interaction.

A small team of fewer than 10 people recognized the grassroots strength of BNB Chain.

If we turn back the clock a year, Flap was just an early-stage project with three people who won an award at a hackathon. Today, it has grown into a small team of fewer than 10 people, with a clear product roadmap on the BNB Chain.

Before officially starting his business, Cedric had already been exposed to and purchased Bitcoin while studying in 2017. Afterward, he worked on public blockchain projects and pursued further studies at MIT's Sloan School of Management. After graduating, he chose to directly engage in Web3 entrepreneurship and launched Flap.

The launch of Flap also benefited to some extent from Cedric's long-term observation as a veteran player in the blockchain industry. He and his team have participated in DeFi and NFT projects on Ethereum, Solana, and other platforms, and have also participated in various hackathons.

The explosive popularity of Pump.fun became a turning point for Cedric's entrepreneurial endeavors.

In Cedric's view, Pump.fun's real solution wasn't just about issuing Meme coins, but rather significantly reducing issuance costs and rebuilding user trust through a standardized token issuance mechanism. Previously, on-chain token issuance was costly and risky, deterring users from participating in on-chain transactions. However, with standardized issuance mechanisms and structurally constrained risks, users became more willing to complete transactions on-chain.

When the Pump.fun team abandoned its attempts on the EVM chain and focused on the Solana ecosystem, Cedric and his team realized that since no one had systematically done this well on the EVM, why couldn't they try it?

Ultimately, Flap positioned its product as a Meme token issuance platform on the BNB Chain. However, the team valued the ecosystem itself more than a simple replication model.

In Cedric's view, compared to Monad, which has a clear technological advantage but a relatively small user base, or Base, which has a strong developer culture but a weaker grassroots presence, BNB Chain boasts a massive market base and an active grassroots community. For entrepreneurs, community and users are a million times more important than fancy technical jargon.

“Here, you don’t need to do too much upward social networking; just solve the users’ problems, and you’ll have the opportunity to grow,” Cedric pointed out in an interview, adding that BNB Chain has room for development where the market determines the outcome.

In terms of product positioning, Flap aims to address the long-standing security and trust issues that plague on-chain users. Cedric points out that there are still numerous contract design flaws on the chain, and even cases like the "Pigsy" scheme, causing ordinary users to shy away from new tokens.

Flap employs a dual-mechanism design to incorporate complex gameplay elements such as tax tokens into a relatively secure and controllable contract system, thus providing boundaries for innovation. Under this premise, developers have greater freedom in designing mechanisms, and users, trusting in the platform's security, are more willing to participate and experiment.

In Cedric's view, what Flap does is not to make choices for the market, but to provide a relatively safe infrastructure for innovation, which can enable more creative mechanisms to emerge and allow real users to participate while ensuring the underlying security.

Three iterations to overcome setbacks: Entrepreneurs need to be passionate enough and lower their expectations.

Simple replication may bring short-term popularity, but it is by no means enough to support a project to survive from 0 to 1.

In an interview, Cedric revealed that Flap's growth was not achieved overnight, but rather through three key product iterations.

Initially, the team simply wanted to migrate the Pump.fun mode from Solana to the EVM ecosystem. However, at this stage, their understanding of market demand remained vague. Subsequently, the team attempted to introduce Uniswap V3-related mechanisms, which was a first among competing products at the time, but due to its small scale, it failed to make a splash in the market.

The real turning point came during the second iteration. The team noticed a large number of users on the BNB Chain who were enthusiastic about playing with tax coins, a practice also popular on other chains. Therefore, Flag decided to standardize and secure the tax coin mechanism, integrating it into the launch platform. Developers began designing buybacks, profit sharing, charitable donations, and even more complex financial structures around these taxes. The trust issue that users were most concerned about was also alleviated in this process.

The third iteration transformed Flap into a platform more geared towards developer co-creation. The team opened up its revenue-sharing capabilities to external developers, allowing them to innovate more based on Flap's underlying contracts and infrastructure. During this process, the core protocol layer and overall security remained firmly under the team's control, but more market-driven ideas were realized.

In addition to product iteration, Cedric emphasized that platforms need to exercise restraint when interacting with the community, especially avoiding making judgments that replace the market, such as guiding users on "what to buy and what not to buy." Once a platform assumes the responsibility for choice on behalf of the market, it not only needs to be held accountable for the results, but incorrect judgments could also harm the entire ecosystem. In his view, healthy interaction should respect the market's own selection mechanisms, maintaining communication and activity with the community without interfering with pricing and decision-making, rather than using the platform's power to influence market trends.

Regarding the rapid imitation of his products, Cedric believes this is the norm in business competition: "Code can be forked, but culture cannot; the skeleton can be copied, but the soul cannot."

In his view, it's better to continuously iterate than to defend. As long as you're always one generation ahead of the market, competitors will only ever be followers. In a sense, being imitated is actually a form of free brand exposure.

Despite the current low point in industry confidence, Cedric still believes that Web3 has fertile ground for long-term entrepreneurship, provided it's not about speculation or dependence, but about finding genuine market needs and responding to them with products. For entrepreneurs, at least two qualities are necessary: first, sufficient passion to sustain the long and iterative process of trial and error; and second, sufficiently low expectations to be prepared to learn from the market and adjust direction as needed.

Perhaps it is this kind of "hard work" that has allowed this small team to emerge from the downturn. "Our team works very hard every day, but we don't feel it's a painful thing. Even when we're very tired, we feel happy," Cedric said. This state of mind is crucial for growth and entrepreneurial success.

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