Author of this article: Bit Big Pig
Disclaimer: This article only represents personal thoughts and does not constitute investment advice. Don’t believe in the theory of instant wealth through contracts. There is no such thing as instant wealth in the currency circle.
0x01 Those “king-level” projects in history
There used to be several very hot king-level projects in the currency circle, and they all had one or more of these characteristics: star technical teams, top venture capital institutions, gorgeous entrepreneurial backgrounds, and grand development blueprints. At that time, some people compiled the so-called The list of "King of Heaven" projects is as shown below.
In addition to the above "King-level" projects, some people have sorted out the following so-called "Kings".
In the two pictures above, basically all projects are in a state of half-death and chronic death. In fact, in these two pictures, only ICP (Dfinity) truly contains the characteristics of star technical team, top venture capital institutions, gorgeous entrepreneurial background, and grand development blueprint. The others are basically over-promoted by the project side’s marketing team.
The real "king-level" projects should be these: EOS, Algorand (ALGO), Dfinity (ICP), FileCoin (IPFS), Polkadot (DOT). Today we will analyze Aptos from the fate of those "king-level" projects Is it worth the investment?
0x02 The current situation of the “Kings”
Project: King-level project "First Brother" EOS
Attribute: public chain
It is definitely not an exaggeration to say that EOS is the "big brother" among the king-level projects. From June 26, 2017 to June 1, 2018, the EOS fundraising cycle was one year, and a total of US$4.2 billion was raised.
In the 2017 ICO boom, EOS had many selling points: Blockchain 3.0, Ethereum killer, million-level TPS, etc. BM, the technical leader of the EOS project, is known as: the technology giant who has quarreled with Satoshi Nakamoto. Niu, the only genius who has successfully developed 3 blockchain projects.
At that time, a large number of inspiring brainwashing quotes were popular in the EOS community. Here are some excerpts for everyone to laugh at:
"You don't need that much, 1,000 EOS is enough. You will find that you don't need that much money in your life."
"EOS itself has no risks. The biggest risk of EOS is that if you think there is a risk, you may not be able to hold it."
"I don't think ETH will become a rival to EOS. The goal of surpassing ETH is too small for EOS."
"The listing of EOS on the exchange is not a benefit for EOS. The listing of EOS on the exchange is a benefit for the exchange."
"Everyone is an EOS currency lord. Holding 100 EOS in the future will be just as cool as holding 100 ETH now."
However, a large number of problems also emerged after the EOS mainnet went online. The first is the anti-human registration method. To create a wallet for a conventional blockchain project, you basically just click the "Create" button and then record the mnemonic phrase. EOS is created through methods such as "mobile phone number/email creation", "activation code creation", "transfer creation" and "friend creation". If you want to create an EOS wallet, you have to find a friend who has already created an eos wallet. Help you do some operations.
Then there is the anti-human "system resource" staking and leasing design. For conventional blockchain projects, you only need to know the wallet address to transfer money. However, if you want to transfer money or do some operations on EOS, you have to pledge the resources of CPU and NET. When you create an account, create a smart contract, transfer, purchase resources, mortgage, redeem, vote, etc., you need to use RAM to store data, so in addition to pledging the two performance resources of CPU and NET, you also need to Have RAM as a storage resource.
Are you confused? It doesn’t matter, let’s talk about the historical price trend of EOS directly: On the day it was launched on the exchange in 2017, EOS once rose from 6 yuan to 39 yuan, and then plummeted to 9-12 yuan. It lingered for a long time, and the lowest dropped to over 100 yuan. It costs 3 yuan a piece and reached a record high price of about 150 yuan a piece in April 2018. The current price of EOS has been stable at 7 yuan for a long time.
From the above information we will get a terrible fact: if you have been holding EOS for several years, then you will miss the entire bull market in 2021.
Current situation: The project is half dead, the EOS community has lost a large number of users, the founder BM's credit is bankrupt, the transaction volume is sluggish, there is no enthusiasm, no innovation, the ecology on the chain is lifeless, the github code was last updated in July 2022, and the final Releases version is in In August 2021, the team has abandoned this project. Another point is that many emerging wallets do not support the EOS public chain.
Summary: dying slowly.
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Project: Algorand(ALGO)
Attribute: public chain
As a rising star in the public chain, Algorand is led by Sivio Micali, the winner of the Turing Award in Computer Science and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It bills itself as a high-performance, next-generation blockchain because it solves Bitcoin's well-known scalability issues while maintaining security and decentralization, with many calling the project "Blockchain 3.0."
In June 2019, the Algorand project team actually launched a five-year Dutch auction. This move was an obvious money trap. Algo’s all-time high price was $4 on June 20, 2019. In other words, if you have been holding ALGO for several years, you will miss the entire bull market in 2021.
Current situation: Project development is still relatively active, but the project has lost its popularity and innovation, and its popularity is extremely sluggish.
Summary: There is a high probability of entering chronic death.
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Project: Dfinity(ICP)
Attribute: public chain
Dfinity, invested by a16z, aims to build a supercomputer in the blockchain, an infinitely scalable decentralized cloud, and break the data monopoly of traditional unicorns. It is a star blockchain project in Silicon Valley. Dfinity’s initial goal was to benchmark Ethereum and build a blockchain platform with more optimized performance than Ethereum. Later, the vision was changed to an Internet computer in the blockchain era.
In May 2021, the Dfinity mainnet was launched, and the token ICP was subsequently listed on exchanges. The three major exchanges + Coinbase were launched simultaneously overnight. On one of the exchanges, the price of ICP was once pulled to US$2,800, and the full circulation market value instantly reached US$1.32 trillion, exceeding the combined market value of all cryptocurrencies such as BTC and ETH. Even when the price fell back to $200 the following week, the full-float market cap exceeded $90 billion. Subsequently, the price of ICP has been falling all the way, and the current price is 5 US dollars.
Holding Dfinity’s token ICP does not count as missing out on the 2021 bull market, but with the current popularity and comprehensive level of Dfinity, its story will be difficult to continue into the next bull market.
Current situation: Dfinity took 6 years to launch its mainnet. It started ecological construction during the bull market in 2021. The code submission status on github is pretty good, and there will be submissions in December 2022. So the current situation is pretty good.
Summary: It is developing normally, but it is speculated that it may be abandoned by the market in the next bull market.
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Project: FileCoin(IPFS)
Properties: storage
Filecoin is a distributed storage project based on IPFS. It raised US$257 million in June and August 2017 respectively. The project valuation exceeded US$2.5 billion. It ranked second in the cryptocurrency market value list at the time, second only to BTC. . Investment institutions include Sequoia Capital, Union Square Ventures, a16z, Stanford University, etc.
IPFS is a decentralized and distributed network protocol. In HTTP networks, data is usually concentrated on a single server or data center. The IPFS network encourages everyone to enter their own storage resources to help users save data.
Filecoin (FIL) is an incentive system running in the IPFS network and is a reward for users.
At that time, Fenbushi Capital, Du Jun, Bao Erye and Wang Feng were named the four "order calling" kings of Filecoin by some media. The market FOMO sentiment was ignited, and the secondary market valuation of Filecoin token FIL was speculated to exceed 40 billion US dollars. . Although the Filecoin mainnet was not yet online at the time, a variety of Filecoin mining machines emerged in the market and were flooded with a large number of funds under the guise of IPFS/Filecoin.
Current situation: The code submission status of IPFS on github is very active, and the price of Fil has also been shining brightly in the 2021 bull market. It reached the highest point of US$237 on April 1, 2021, and the current price is US$4.5. IPFS technology is indeed cutting-edge. Fil's design of the token economic model is actually not as reasonable as that of the rising star Arweave (AR), but IPFS has become an important basic measure in the blockchain field. Many NFT projects use IPFS as storage.
Summary: The project is operating normally, and the IPFS system has become an important infrastructure in the blockchain field. Although Fil's economic model is embarrassing, there should still be a chance to break through the previous high in the next bull market.
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Project: Polkadot (DOT)
Attributes: public chain, cross-chain
Dr. Gavin Wood, the founder of Polkadot, was once the CTO of Ethereum. He is one of the people who knows Ethereum technology best and has made many milestone contributions to Ethereum. The Polkadot project is a next-generation blockchain protocol designed to support multiple chains in a single network. It can connect multiple blockchains into a universal network. Polkadot can connect the networks together, unlike Bitcoin. The network just runs independently on its own.
To put it simply, Polkadot is a public chain + cross-chain project, with the goal of realizing the interconnection of everything.
Current situation: Polkadot's code submission on github is very active. Polkadot also shined in the 2021 bull market, rising from the crowdfunding price of US$0.3 to US$55 on November 4, 2021, and the current price is US$5.8. Polkadot’s technical concept is very advanced, but because it is too advanced, some technical designs will be too complex and not as simple as Cosmos. Moreover, Polkadot’s slot auction mechanism also raises the threshold for project parties to operate on the Polkadot network. It’s suitable for civilian projects, but why should star projects use Polkadot’s network? This is another issue that needs to be discussed.
Summary: The project is operating normally, but the concept of Polkadot is too avant-garde and the technology is too complex. However, the next bull market should have the opportunity to break through the previous high.
0x03 New King Aptos
Attribute: public chain
Aptos is composed of members of the Diem project team of Facebook's stable currency project. The Aptos project has received investment from top institutions such as a16z, Binance Labs, FTX Ventures, and Coinbase Ventures. Aptos aims to build a more scalable blockchain, using the Move programming language, aiming to serve billions of users and meet the needs of large enterprise customers as early as possible.
In layman's terms, Aptos is a high-performance public chain project. The project is supported by many top investment institutions, and the ultimate goal is to reach 100,000 TPS. But if no one uses Aptos, it will be useless even if TPS reaches 100 million. If you have to pursue TPS, you might as well choose EOS.
We analyze the investment value of Aptos through several dimensions.
Technical dimension: I have not seen the implementation of relatively cutting-edge technologies such as IPFS and Polkadot. Even if it is something as awesome as Dfinity that is difficult to implement, it seems that Aptos really cannot boast in terms of technology.
Economic dimension: On-chain governance voting, staking tokens to obtain income. (How is it different from Polkadot? There is no innovation)
Institutional dimension: Almost all top institutions have invested in Aptos, but I don’t think this dimension has much reference value. After all, there are many return-to-zero projects invested by large institutions.
Promotion dimension: It was very popular when it first came out, but now it has started to cool down. The number of followers on the push is average, and the number of people discussing on Discord is quite large.
0x04 Summary
The list of so-called "king-level" projects in the past has basically either been reduced to zero or half-dead, and two of the other five true "king-level" projects are almost gone. By analyzing the Aptos project, we can see that Aptos is just an ordinary public chain project supported by many top investment institutions. Do you think it's worth holding for the long term?
