⚠️⚠️⚠️ A must-read series for project parties — Learn how to market through collective mentality by following Shiyongxin.
In 1981, at 16 years old, Shiyongxin entered Shaolin Temple when there were only 9 monks, barely making a living by farming and incense offerings. In 1982, the film 'Shaolin Temple' starring Jet Li became a huge hit, bringing the once-forgotten ancient temple back into the public eye.
Shiyongxin's sensitivity allowed him to seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity 🌟; he did not invent Kung Fu, nor was he the strongest fighter, but he completed a historic mental binding: in the minds of global users, 'Chinese Kung Fu = Shaolin'. 🧠 From nothing to something, he began systematically organizing martial arts classics, founded a boxing research institute, promoted performances abroad, film licensing, and cultural publicity, gradually transforming Shaolin Temple from a religious site into a global cultural symbol.
And this mental positioning eventually translates into real money 💰: temple ticket revenue sharing, cultural industry companies, intangible asset management, IP licensing, real estate development... Shiyongxin not only occupied the cognition but also secured business. He used 40 years to turn a dilapidated temple into the 'pricing gateway' for global Kung Fu.
🧠 This is the power of collective mentality; occupying users' minds grants you the qualification to tell stories, set prices, and be remembered.
What is the relationship between collective mentality and Web3 projects?
The reason I want you to see Shiyongxin is not because he does live streaming or talks about IP, but because over decades he has accomplished one thing: occupying the definition rights of a keyword in the minds of people around the world.
This is the easiest point for Web3 projects to overlook, but it is the most essential to learn.
📈 Web2 is about business, of course, looking at market share, that is, your vertical track and the proportion of users. Because traditional business, whether in valuation or the business itself, cannot be separated from the direct competitiveness in the market after the product is launched.
I believe that in Web3 projects, the 'collective mental ownership' effect greatly exceeds 'practical ownership rate'. 📊
But 'focusing on collective mentality' is not an empty phrase; it runs through every stage of the project from 0 to 1, especially at the critical node of TGE. 🧱
As I have always emphasized, the period before and after TGE are two completely different stages.
After TGE, with liquidity, the operational logic of the project will change completely. You are no longer just telling stories and attracting attention; you begin to face real market pricing, arbitrage, and games. This shift is very drastic; if you are unprepared, all the heat and expectations from the early stages may quickly collapse within days. 💥
Therefore, project parties must think in advance: what kind of user mentality should you seize before TGE? What narrative should you tell? How should you position yourself in the minds of users?
Next, let's discuss in detail 👇
🚦 How should TGE collective mentality be handled? Project parties self-examine.
Before TGE, it must be the best window for project promotion. TGE revolves around building recognition of the project based on the user community to gain attention and participation before TGE. It is also a good opportunity to lay the foundation for the product.
The three elements I believe are essential before TGE are 'solidifying trust, clarifying positioning, and managing expectations'. If these three aspects are not solid, then TGE is usually not a starting point, but an endpoint.
So what kind of mentality should be occupied before TGE? I suggest you self-examine three things:
1. What is the Tier of your project in the minds of users?
Your Tier in the user's mind concerning your track = TGE expectations = how much time and energy users are willing to invest in your project = your actual performance data, etc.
2. What do users actually remember you as?
I have encountered too many founding teams who introduced highlights for 20 minutes, and I finally shook my head and said, 'Users don't care.' Everyone comes to Crypto to make money, so the logic is very simple. Either you provide users with opportunities to make money through product services, or your project must be attractive enough for users to believe it has potential to make money.
In an incredibly fragmented focus market, countless projects promote every day. Don't expect users to truly understand you. Please distill your project into no more than three highlights that users can remember, easily understand, and relate to your future explosive potential.
In plain language, this is something 80% of projects fail to achieve. ✍️
3. Is collective trust the foundation of everything?
How to create a project that is trusted by users? This is the most easily overlooked point and also the most easily penetrated layer.
Even if you have strong technology and an impressive narrative, once users begin to doubt your persona, team, and behavioral patterns, trust will collapse, and the mentality will automatically unmoor.
Trust collapse often isn't due to major issues, but rather the accumulation of seemingly trivial matters. For example, a user asks a question and no one responds; they ask several times but it falls into silence; there was a promise about when to distribute rewards, but it keeps getting delayed with no explanation; someone in the community starts to question, and the team collectively plays dead or coldly says, 'We will discuss internally'; sometimes, what looks like a well-articulated project is rumored to be 'just a round of arbitrage'. ⚠️
Each of these matters seems insignificant, but this feeling of 'saying one thing and doing another' can gradually pierce the initial trust of users, especially those early supporters. They were originally your most valuable assets, sincerely believing in your story, but once a crack in trust appears, they exit the fastest and are the least likely to return.
To summarize, if your project has not yet had TGE, you can self-examine based on the above guidance and summarize what your user's or market's (i.e., collective) mentality really is.
Less is more, just like how when the world thinks of the most authentic Kung Fu, they think of Shaolin Temple. It's not that Wing Chun is not powerful, but Wing Chun has not met its Shiyongxin.
After TGE, the project officially enters the state of 'financial asset'.
After TGE, the project officially enters a state of 'having price, liquidity, and secondary trading'.
At this point, the biggest change is: the project is no longer just a product or vision, but a financial asset.
First, your user composition has changed. Early spiritual or product supporters have transformed into users + traders, while a large number of other traders have begun to flood in. They do not care what you can do in the future, nor do they care about your roadmap; they only care about one question: Does this coin have a chance to make money?
Reality is harsh. There are very few in Web3 who are 'irreplaceable products'. Even if you do 20% or 30% better than competitors, if the coin price is not elastic and there are no secondary market movements, the market will quickly abandon you in pursuit of the story that seems 'more likely to rise'.
Therefore, project parties must seriously answer this question: Why would others buy your coin?
🌞 Low-tier player: My product is good. User: Whether it's good or not doesn't matter, anyway, I'm not afraid to buy.
The secondary mental framework of this type of project is: 'Separation of product and financial value'.
This is the biggest difference between Web3 and traditional entrepreneurship. There is no ceiling in the industry, nor is there patience for you to grow. No matter how good your product is, without the cooperation of financial attributes, you cannot break through the cognitive barriers of the market.
In this industry, product experience is not a scarce resource; attention is. If the coin price does not move, they may not even know who you are, let alone use your product.
You think you are deeply focused on your work, as a builder; but in the eyes of users, you are just an 'asset without expectation difference'. Sorry, not participating.
🌞 Mid-tier player: I have good news, I will pump the price. User: Just a short-term speculation, I will run as soon as I profit.
Most users in the industry are essentially short-term speculators. If you haven't gained their trust but at least provided the market with a reason to speculate, they will still participate. However, participation does not equal recognition; they will buy and run, not stay to build with you.
This is not a bad thing. On the contrary, it indicates that you at least have some activity, your coin is 'tradable'. Even if users do not plan to hold long-term, they know you have market potential and are willing to come in for a while.
After achieving effective price pumping once or twice, price elasticity will gradually rise. By that time, users may not yet trust you, but they have started to pay attention, putting you on their watchlist, waiting for your next move.
🌞 High-tier player: Make users feel 'this coin is worth holding, if I sell it, I won't get back on board'.
The highest level of mental occupation is when users organize their wallets and prepare to reduce their holdings, they will leave your tokens in the 'next round'. 🚀
To achieve this, it relies on four core feedback loops:
The project's long-term direction is clear, and the narrative does not jump back and forth;
Product progress has rhythm, and users can see hope;
The project party has good news, and the coin price is not weak.
The coin price has resilience, forming an emotional elasticity of 'if it goes up, there is more to discuss; if it goes down, it can still be pumped again'.
Such tokens may not rise every day, but users know in their hearts, 'You are an asset worth participating in long-term', and naturally will hold, spread, and maintain.
SUI: A real case of mental reversal.
Take one of the coins I recently put into long-term targets: $SUI. Let's break it down.
SUI boasts a luxurious team (the production and research team for Facebook's Meta project), and its valuation in the primary market of several billion dollars has also made it a FOMO target for major investment institutions. To be honest, I initially thought SUI's performance wasn't good during the early stage of TGE; the overall sentiment in the community was that the project party was arrogant and disconnected from the community. Until a year and a half ago, SUI suddenly realized the importance of the community, continuing to push for the ecosystem while also engaging the community. Not much to say about the secondary layer due to regulatory issues.
What happened afterward is known to everyone. Suddenly, SUI became 'little SOL' in the market's mental framework. It squeezed into the list of assets that users were willing to hold long-term.
In fact, Sui had already experienced two events this summer that tested market confidence: First, at the end of May, the ecological project Cetus encountered a security incident, leading to the depletion of about $223 million in liquidity pools; second, at the beginning of July, a large amount of 44 million coins, worth nearly $200 million, was unlocked, being one of the largest releases of the entire quarter.
According to the usual rhythm, this series of negative events should have led to a price collapse and community sentiment breakdown. But the result was the opposite: SUI not only was not abandoned by the market but instead rose to $4.39 yesterday, reaching a new high since February this year, becoming one of the hottest projects in the sector. 🔥
Why did it withstand? The key is not only that the Sui team did not avoid negative situations such as hacker incidents, but rather quickly took responsibility. What’s truly important is that over the past year, Sui has gradually changed users' perceptions of it through action, slowly reversing the originally criticized image of 'arrogant and indifferent' into one of 'trustworthy and worth long-term betting on'. 💪
Taking the ecological project Cetus as an example, although the risk was triggered by a third-party smart contract, Sui is not directly responsible. But the team did not shift blame; they not only immediately suspended related contracts and froze two involved wallets, but also collaborated with Sui validation nodes to initiate a vote, and worked with the Sui Foundation to arrange loans and raise compensation funds to promise 'full compensation' to the victims. In the end, 90.9% of voters supported the release of $162 million in frozen assets, and the compensation plan was successfully passed.
The entire process is transparent, swift, and highly executable, which also makes outsiders truly realize: this team can withstand pressure and is willing to backstop at critical moments.
It demonstrates to everyone that as long as you establish a clear mental anchor in the early stages and continue to fulfill it after TGE, the market will give you time and space.
Trust is the only direction I am willing to bet on.
Many projects come to me for marketing, but I have been very selective about the projects I cooperate with. It's not that I have high standards, but I only want to invest my time and credibility in teams that are trustworthy.
Before I decide whether to assist, I will conduct a complete project DD; the core judgment criteria are only two: Is this team trustworthy? Does its community believe in them?
If even one point is not valid, no matter how beautiful the narrative is, I will choose not to cooperate. I do not believe I can help the project improve through marketing, and I will not place my trust in an irresponsible team. 💬
Because ultimately, the core competitive advantage of Web3 projects is not the technological barrier, nor the amount of financing. It is whether you can leave a clear, credible, and worth-repeating position in the minds of a group of people.
This is collective mentality, and it is the real winning factor in Web3. 🏆
