Written by: Guo Guo, SevenUp DAO
1. Project Overview
1、NOTCOIN
NOTCOIN is considered to be the first project in the Telegram ecosystem to "go beyond the circle". Since the beginning of this year, NOTCOIN has spread rapidly with its own meme attributes and brainless Tap-to-Earn gameplay. It has gained 5 million users within a week of its launch, with a peak daily active user base of over 6 million.
After the token issuance was confirmed, the market's feedback to NOTCOIN also exceeded most people's expectations. NOTCOIN's token $NOT was listed on many first-tier exchanges on May 16, and hit a new high of $0.021 on June 2. The total amount of $NOT is 102.7 billion, fully circulated, and the current FDV is approximately $1.99 billion, ranking in the top 100 in market value.
2、UXLINK
UXLINK, also built on Telegram, is a social platform and infrastructure that focuses on social interaction among acquaintances. Since its release in April 2023, UXLINK has become the traffic king of the new generation of social products with its unique Link-to-Earn gameplay. According to the project's official website, UXLINK has more than 7 million registered users from 190 countries and regions, and 100,000 groups can reach more than 8 million users. Recently, UXLINK completed the first phase of the NFT distribution event as a basis for the upcoming large-scale $UXLINK token airdrop and future tiered operations.
https://dapp.uxlink.io/
2. Mass Adoption Methodology
As an evergreen buzz word in the Web3 world, Mass Adoption is an issue that almost all application-layer startup teams cannot avoid. It is also the fundamental reason why tracks such as games, social networking, and RWA have attracted much attention.
Barriers surrounding Mass Adoption can generally be categorized into the following categories:
Institutional funds lack compliant inflow and outflow channels
The entry barrier for ordinary users is high and there is a lack of trust
Imperfect developer ecosystem
The infrastructure cannot support large-scale applications
Lack of investment targets that meet the public's tastes
Regarding the first point, we have witnessed the approval of the Bitcoin ETF in this cycle, and the listing and trading of the Ethereum ETF is just around the corner. Changes in the macro environment have made the call for the emergence of a true "killer application" in Web3 even stronger.
From a more intuitive perspective, the two core elements of achieving Mass Adoption are:
Lower entry barriers, usage barriers, and smoother products.
Positive externalities of user fission efficiency and ecological expansion capabilities
The following will be a comparative discussion of NOTCOIN and UXLINK’s methodologies in Mass Adoption.
First, let’s summarize the differences between NOTCOIN and UXLINK in Mass Adoption methodology.
1. Narrative ideas
1. NOTCOIN: Games + Memes
The game attributes are reflected in its play-to-earn mechanism
Meme attributes are reflected in the project name and blank white paper
Essentially, it is operated based on the idea of Meme, a traffic business under the attention economy.
2. UXLINK: Social Platform + Infrastructure
Build a new on-chain trusted social relationship based on Telegram's traffic pool and existing relationship chain
A new incentive layer infrastructure for on-chain trust relationships has been built within the Telegram user pool, rather than reinventing the wheel in vitro through Dapps.
The stickiness and retention of social attributes are far greater than those of games or earning platforms. UXLINK uses social networking as a starting point to expand other ecological cooperation with stronger stickiness and stronger distribution capabilities.
2. User Onboard
1. NOTCOIN:Tap-to-Earn
Integrated Telegram mini app for free and lightweight mining
The core gameplay is simple and direct, click the screen to earn coins
Other gameplay features include teamwork, points league, energy management, referral rewards, etc.
2.UXLINK: Link-to-Earn
Guide users to share the invitation link of "Join UXLink's TG Community" and invite users to earn UXUY points
Users can quickly build a real-world social graph of acquaintances on the chain through Link-to-Earn trust links
Social networking among acquaintances can easily spread from one-to-one to become the basis of group and network effects
3. Developer introduction
1. NOTCOIN: No external developers
The game code is open source, allowing developers to audit its workings
No external developers were involved
2.UXLINK: Actively introduce external developers
A large amount of social relationship data accumulated in the Dapp layer is provided to developers through the API of the protocol layer.
The AWC protocol can handle on-chain identity and asset relationships and assist AI models in behavioral analysis and recommendation.
4. Infrastructure
1.NOTCOIN: Telegram Mini App
2. UXLINK: Self-built infrastructure
The RWS protocol mainly solves the problem of social graph of acquaintances and can help developers achieve better recommendations and growth
The AWC protocol mainly solves the relationship between on-chain identity and assets, which can help developers better understand users and help AI models perform behavior analysis and recommendations.
5. Ecosystem Cooperation
1. NOTCOIN: Focus on Telegram ecosystem
Received public support from TON Labs and TON Foundation and integrated into Telegram wallet
Collaborated with Catizen (casual games), TonGifts (red envelope app), etc.
2. UXLINK: Extensive cooperation with DeFi, AI, GameFi, etc.
Cooperate with WEB3 wallets such as Binance and OKX to distribute UXUY points and NFTs
Released the "UXLINK Social Ecosystem Alliance" to further expand the developer community and third-party project cooperation, and its revenue and profits have grown rapidly recently.
6. Incentive methods
1. NOTCOIN: Fair Distribution + Full Circulation
Giving up ownership, 0% transaction tax, increasing decentralization and fairness
Full circulation as soon as it goes online
2. UXLINK: Tiered Operation + Long-term Incentives
Achieve tiered operations by issuing 4 levels of community NFTs
A large proportion of 65% of incentives are reserved for the community
Active users can obtain long-term incentives from UXLINK and projects within the ecosystem
7. Token Use Cases
1.NOTCOIN: Meme coin has no utility
2. UXLINK: Clear Token Empowerment + Deflation Expectation
Developers use $UXLINK to pay for protocols, data, and Dapp usage, of which 85-90% is allocated to community users
Users pay $UXLINK as transaction commission (1%-3%) and get airdrop/investment opportunities
Partners pay $UXLINK for customer acquisition help
Under the premise of limited supply, $UXLINK has clear and distinct usage scenarios and can form a benign deflationary model
3. On-chain data insights
Due to the uncertainty of the source and caliber of off-chain data, this section mainly compares the on-chain data of NOTCOIN and UXLINK. The on-chain data of NOTCOIN is on TON, and the main data of UXLINK is on Arbitrum/EVM.
1、Holders
Holders are a key indicator of the degree and potential of Mass Adoption, and a considerable number of holders is the basis of consensus. Currently, almost all cryptocurrencies with the highest number of holders have formed the Lindy effect and gained strong reputation in the community.
Pepe is currently the fourth largest meme coin in terms of the number of holders, second only to DOGE, SHIB, and MEME. Since the number of holders exceeded 100k for the first time in May this year, the price of Pepe has entered a good upward range.
https://bitscreener.com/Top-Cryptos-With-Most-Holders?t=overview&p=1
https://dune.com/wuligy/pepe-metrics
According to TON chain data, NOTCOIN had approximately 220,000 $NOT holders before TGE, and the number has steadily increased since listing, with the total number of holders now exceeding 1.6 million.
https://tonalytica.redoubt.online/public/dashboards/DdU5wpspip3RiIozMgVm2Tv8D9skZjSaNdMoumck?org_slug=default
Since UXLINK has not yet issued tokens, we use on-chain points and NFT holdings to estimate the future $UXLINK token holders. According to Dune data, UXLINK currently has over 4.4 million on-chain points and NFT holders, including more than 1.5 million NFT holders. Only high-quality community users who meet certain points requirements can mint NFTs to become NFT holders, and NFT holders can get airdrops 100%, so it can be considered that $UXLINK has about 1.5 million holders before listing, which is almost the same as the size after $NOT list. As time goes on, the number of holders before TGE is expected to be higher, becoming the airdrop with the largest number of people in history.
https://dune.com/uxlink/uxuy
https://x.com/UXLINKofficial
2. Active Users
We use $NOT TGE and the active holders of the following 5 days as an estimate of NOTCOIN's daily activity. We can see that the data shows an overall downward trend, from 500,000 at the beginning to 200,000.
https://tonalytica.redoubt.online/public/dashboards/DdU5wpspip3RiIozMgVm2Tv8D9skZjSaNdMoumck?org_slug=default
DappRadear data shows that UXLINK has more than 500,000 daily active users, 574,000 in 24 hours, 1 million in 7 days, and 3.8 million in 30 days, which is consistent with the official data. Since UXLINK has established a strong Web3 social network among users, and $UXLINK will continue to be airdropped to active users after listing, there is reason to believe that UXLINK will be able to maintain its user stickiness.
https://dappradar.com/rankings/social
https://dune.com/queries/3477817/5845084
3. Token Distribution
According to the official X account of NOTCOIN, the total supply of $NOT tokens is 102,719,221,714. Of these, 80,219,221,714 (78%) will be allocated to miners (Tap-to-Earn) and Voucher (NFT) holders, and the remaining 22,500,000,000 (22%) will be allocated to future ecosystem funds, development funds, etc.
According to the white paper information, UXLINK will adopt a dual-token model, including a utility token ($UXUY points) and a governance token ($UXLINK).
$UXUY points generation is based on the proof-of-link (POL) mechanism, without pre-minting, and users earn tokens by inviting others and contributing to the ecosystem. Rewards will gradually decrease based on time, network connections, and total network size.
The total supply of $UXLINK tokens is 1,000,000,000. 65% of them will be allocated to community contributors and developers (POW, Link-to-Earn & Build-to-Earn), and the remaining 35% will be allocated to investors, teams and project development.
IV. Conclusion
Whether it is STEPN, which was a Mass Adoption example in the previous cycle, or NOTCOIN and UXLINK, which have been on the stage of attention in this cycle, their outstanding performance in a short period of time is the result of taking mass adoption as the starting point of product design rather than a specific category. Specifically, STEPN and NOTCOIN are not game projects in the standard sense, and UXLINK is far from a modified version of Web3 Messaging product. Low threshold, fun and correct incentives are their common points, which are also the Mass Adoption genes deeply embedded in the product DNA. We expect that excellent products like NOTCOIN and UXLINK can infinitely shorten the distance between us and the mass adoption of Web3.