Thoughts and Confusions During the Coin Listing Process

Recently, our project is undergoing brand and mainnet upgrades while conducting a coin swap operation, thus we have been in contact with multiple trading platforms. As a project that has been building since 2017, we are quite familiar with these standard processes. In addition to the necessary compliance procedures and code audits, the main considerations are market budget, new user/traffic acquisition, and how to benefit existing users. The project side needs liquidity and new trading channels, while the trading platforms need users and trading volume; this is a mutually beneficial relationship.

However, after the business communication with the trading platform, the evaluation phase of the research department sparked some interesting thoughts. They raised several points that could lead to the rejection of coin listings or require an increased budget. I would like to share a few particularly interesting ones:

First of all, they believe that our data and popularity are insufficient, particularly reflected in social media and on-chain data. This makes me puzzled; as a professional research department, can't they discern the authenticity of the data? Some projects have social media data that is obviously anomalous, such as accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers, yet each tweet only has a few thousand views and very few comments. Similarly, the on-chain data of certain projects also appears unreasonable, for example, a single transaction hash containing a large number of transaction records, which is unlikely to occur among ordinary users. Especially in the field of AI data labeling, due to its inherent barriers and costs, large-scale labeling activities are unlikely to happen unless the costs are completely disregarded or the quality of the data is simply not a concern.

Secondly, they emphasize the importance of endorsement from investment institutions. However, as an established project for over 6 years, we have always relied on our own funds for development and have never accepted external investment. In our view, this purely community-driven model, free from venture capital control, should be commendable. Yet, in the eyes of the research department, this has instead become a manifestation of lacking institutional endorsement and being insufficiently orthodox. This perspective is indeed confusing.

The third question involves the token circulation and valuation. Our tokens have all been unlocked, and the market capitalization is equal to the fully diluted valuation, with nearly 70% of the tokens locked in validator nodes. The research department believes this could create significant sell-off pressure. However, in reality, most tokens are in validator nodes, and we are a purely community-driven project; who would sell off in large quantities? Moreover, we have already been listed on major exchanges, so if there were to be a sell-off, why wait until now? More importantly, sell-off pressure should be proportional to market capitalization, while we, as an AI data layer project with actual business, products, customers, and revenue, have a market cap of less than $100 million. In contrast, those projects that have a $1 billion valuation right after launch are more worthy of attention regarding their future sell-off pressure, right?

There are many points worth discussing, but I will not enumerate them one by one. I understand that professionals in research departments need to examine numerous projects daily, having their own perspectives and data dimensions, which involves a lot of expertise. However, the most basic ability to discern truth from falsehood and good from evil should not be lacking.

Unfortunately, it seems that operations such as traffic fraud, data fraud, project skin changing, airdropping to studios and then having market makers sell off, have become the basic tactics for projects to list their coins.

Sometimes I feel that early projects listing coins are very similar to venture capital, primarily valuing the background of the people and the team. If listing coins relies on these tactics and operations aimed at exchanges and venture capital, the long-term development prospects of these projects are worrisome.

As veterans in the industry, we are not unfamiliar with these techniques and methods. Our choice not to engage in them is not due to a lack of ability, but rather a reluctance to do so. Because these actions will ultimately benefit studios, gray markets, and manipulators, at the cost of new retail investors' funds, a shift in developers' focus, and the decline of the entire industry.

We have experienced bull and bear markets as well as storms, and we deeply understand the difficulty of maintaining our original intention. Sometimes, I really miss the partners I met during the ICO period in 2017/2018. Although the community was resource-poor at that time, the topics of discussion were all centered around how to improve efficiency and security, how to promote the market, and everyone working together when faced with hacker attacks, truly embodying the spirit of common development. Back then, introducing venture capital and listing opportunities on exchanges was done without charge, whereas now it often involves various kickbacks, referral fees, recommendation fees, and management fees.

I truly miss that pure era and how we used to be.