"Don't Just Focus on Your Own Small Plot of Land"

It has been a long time since I wrote an article on the public account. As a newcomer to Web3, I have placed many Web3 articles on Mirror to avoid the risk of account suspension on the public account. Today is June 1st (though by the time this article is published, it will probably be the 2nd). I received a pretty good gift, enough to supply my furry friend with food for a while.

I have actually wanted to discuss this issue for a long time. Regardless of the time, people tend to think about this issue from the perspective of being vested interests. Is there an objective statement? There might be, but in my years of experience, I have not seen one. When different people describe various issues from an objective standpoint, you will get many different answers.

In the world of Web3, many projects incentivize early users, leading to the emergence of so-called professional players, commonly known as "wool party" (羊毛党). The wool party played a very important role in the early development of the internet. For instance, we used multiple phone numbers to grab coupons, which greatly accelerated the rapid growth of these products. Even after the coupons were gone, we continued to use food delivery, ride-hailing, and enjoyed affordable coffee.

These companies that rely on "wool" gained a large number of users and created excessively high valuations, eventually going public. So who will pay for these products? Will these users buy their stocks? When the stock prices drop, who bears the loss? It is still the product users, and of course, there are also many non-users who contribute nutrients.

This situation sounds a bit illogical. Users try to save money by taking advantage of the project parties, only to end up paying for the bubbles created by the project parties with the money they saved. However, the problem with Web2 data is that it can be fabricated. I just need to create some data to inflate the user numbers. I still remember a leader at a previous company asking me to fabricate some transaction data, which I refused. Of course, the cost of that was not fitting in well with that team. However, colleagues who were willing to participate naturally had smooth careers.

In the Web3 world, the cost of fraud is very high because all data is public. Theoretically, the cost for project parties to obtain data should be higher than in traditional Web2, and they should try to retain users as much as possible, even if there are some speculators among them. But the direction of the industry is becoming increasingly strange; project parties would rather mistakenly block real users than choose to retain them.

Later, a friend told me it was because there were no profits anymore.

If a cake is only so big, then those who have the right to distribute the cake must try to maximize their own interests. This reminds me of when I first entered the industry. Back then, we used web crawlers to scrape data from some websites, and we basically just grabbed whatever we could. Later, we had to frequently change IPs, modify some browser characteristics, and eventually deal with CAPTCHAs and bot verifications.

Why did we have to do this? Because there were no profits. I scraped your data, then created my own website. Your cost of obtaining data is higher than mine, so naturally, my profit is higher than yours, and you can't compete with me. Here’s a fun fact: back in the day, when we called Meituan's API, there was a special field in the merchant information called dp_id. I believe everyone knows what happened later...

However, in Web3, user behavior and data are all public; there are no so-called barriers, and everyone competes for users at the same cost. So how do we understand the cake? If no one is willing to buy Apple stocks, then Apple won't reach that market value. Without that market value, incentivized employees won't create good products, and without good products, we can't use them.

If a company is just trying to quickly divide its small cake and eat the biggest piece for itself, then incentivized employees will only want to cash out their assets as soon as possible, after all, no one wants to hold a depreciating asset.

But if you ask whether you are willing to share part of your assets with others, I think basically no one would be willing, even if it’s a depreciating asset. However, if you ask me whether I am willing to share my assets, I would wholeheartedly agree. You see, I am just this double-standard.

If you are the current vested interest, of course, you will try to maintain your own profits and compete even harder, like some so-called old money. When you are not the current vested interest, then you should try new money. When new money starts to encroach on old money, then you should choose to join them instead of just watching your own little plot of land. Just look at some people's statements from five years ago compared to now, and you'll understand.

It's like a few years ago when I often heard people say to me, "It's great that you can program; I can't, so there's nothing I can do."