Allowing users to become the masters of the network is the real driving force behind the project.
Last Friday night, the TON ecosystem AI infrastructure PinGo economic token PINGO was launched on the Gate.io exchange. After the start of trading, the PINGO token went through a period of oscillating upward trend after a slight adjustment, breaking the "habitual" trend of a large number of tokens reaching their peak as soon as they were launched. Calculated at a maximum price of around $0.25, PinGo's FDV reached about $250 million.
What did PinGo do right to prevent its token price from falling after its launch? Is there still room for its token price to rise in the future?
PinGo Fundamentals
PinGo is a Ton ecosystem AI+DePIN project, which aims to effectively utilize scattered and idle computing power, and provide computing power resource foundation for the development of AI models through DePIN and decentralized cloud solutions. Concepts cover the current popular AI, DePIN, TON, etc., starting from the Telegram ecosystem to accumulate seed users, gradually build the planned CDN network, realize decentralized storage and computing resource network, and enable AI training and development. (For a detailed interpretation of PinGo, please refer to (In-depth interpretation of PinGo: Entering the AI market from Telegram, a great dream of a decentralized computing network))
According to PinGo's official documentation, the PinGo core team has extensive experience in community and marketing. Most people misunderstand AI projects because the core team needs to have rich technical capabilities, but in fact, the core AI technology is completed by a few extremely talented geniuses, and at the application level, the operator of AI products needs to have sufficient capabilities to make the product known to more people and used by more people. PinGo's current team configuration perfectly demonstrates its operational capabilities.
In October this year, PinGo completed a round of financing, with participation from TFund, CGVFOF, K24Ventures, CatcherVC and LandScape Capital. TFund is a fund focused on investing in the TON ecosystem, which shows that PinGo has been recognized by TON ecosystem participants to some extent, and may receive more support from TON in the future.
In addition to financing, PinGo, which also has the DePIN concept, has also completed the sale of 10,000 NAS servers, which are the node machines for building the core CDN network in the project. For projects with the DePIN concept and that have completed hardware sales in the early stages, the most important point is that the project will not lack cash flow in the early stages, and there is no need to sell tokens to obtain funds for project development. Therefore, for PinGo, hardware sales not only completed the construction of its network core, but also solved the funding problem, killing two birds with one stone.
A highly community-based economic model
PinGo’s token economic model design is not original, but it is refreshing.
It can be seen from the token economic model table that investors account for 15%, the team accounts for 4%, and airdrops account for 1%. Half of the bulk of 80% is allocated to users for mining through various usage behaviors, and the other half is allocated to the builders of the CDN network.
A small amount of airdrops plus team and investor shares that take a long time to unlock, this design means that there are not many chips circulating in the market in the early stage of the token launch. Most tokens will only be produced slowly after actual use by users. In this process, actions such as establishing CDN network nodes also require the purchase of tokens for staking. This forms a balance between token supply and demand in the medium term, so that the token will not fall all the way due to too many chips unlocked in the early stage.
PinGo's economic model design has obviously been carefully considered, and it has also learned from the problems caused by a large number of projects that set the airdrop ratio too high in order to gain sufficient exposure in the early stage. If the airdrop ratio is set too high, although it may bring higher attention in the early stage, it is also likely to become the target of "short hunters", thus causing a continuous market crash after the token is launched and the airdrop is distributed.
If the team and investors account for too high a proportion, it will cause the market to worry about "VC coins". Even if the project itself is high-quality, it will choose to wait and see for a long time for fear of becoming the "taker" of capital. This will also cause the token price to continue to fall, further reducing investors' desire to buy, forming a vicious circle.
PinGo's token economic model design avoids these pitfalls, which just proves what I said above: technology is not the only factor that determines the success or failure of a project. Operations may be more important at some times. Due to the scarcity of early chips and the continued good market conditions in recent days, the price of PINGO may continue to rise, leaving no opportunity for those who are on the sidelines to get on board.
How will the price of PINGO move in the short term?
The author took two screenshots. The first one is the 2-hour K-line chart after PINGO was listed on Gate.io, and the second one is the 2-hour K-line chart after the DYM token was listed on Binance. The initial trends of the two are very similar.
As we all know, the trend of token prices often follows a certain pattern. As a market with insufficient liquidity and insufficient participants, the trend often follows similar patterns. Just like Bitcoin has fluctuated between 50,000 and 70,000 for half a year this year, the best basis for judging that it will hit a new high is that Bitcoin has never fluctuated in a relatively high price range for such a long time and then turned to decline.
Although this may sound a bit ridiculous, many times the simplest way of thinking is the best way to do things. When facing an immature market, we cannot always look at it with an overly rational mindset.
From my personal point of view, for a project in the field of AI, coupled with the careful design of the project team, a valuation of $100 million is obviously not the limit for PinGo in the current hot market environment. After the opening, the price of the coin did not show a clear downward trend. Judging from the current trend, I believe that the price of the token may still have room for growth in the future.
From the perspective of circulating market value, PINGO's current circulating market value is only a few million US dollars, which is even in a very early stage for Meme. For a project that has been recognized by institutions with real money, a circulating market value of tens of millions of dollars can be expected in the short term.
Recently, the prices of a large number of projects that have almost been "sentenced to death" have begun to rise without looking back. Ripple's token XRP has once again reached a new high after experiencing nearly 10 years of baptism. The number of PINGOs in circulation was small in the early stage, but the concepts it involved were rich enough, including TON, AI, DePIN, etc. Once a concept becomes the object of hype, the price of its token may show a very considerable increase, so investors must continue to pay attention.
