原文作者：深潮 TechFlow
原文来源：深潮 TechFlow
The bull market always makes people anxious, especially when the group of friends who used to laugh together suddenly soared with the "golden dog" (ace MEME), but it is not easy to find and hold high-quality crypto assets at an early stage, and there must be some in-depth thinking and research behind it.
With curiosity, TechFlow launched the "Alpha Hunters" column to interview those "Golden Dog Hunters" to see what "dog catchers" they have?
In the first issue, we interviewed LeftOfCenter (Twitter: @Eloisechou), a former editor of Chainnews, who is now in charge of content at Cobo Argus, who first bought the Farcaster ecological token $DEGEN on Base on January 20, and has held it so far, with an unsold one, and a return of more than 200 times from the highest price. But he doesn't see $DEGEN as a MEME token, otherwise he simply can't hold on to it for a long time, and here's the story of his early discovery of $DEGEN and his thoughts on the Farcaster ecosystem.
Tell us about yourself?
LeftOfCenter: My pen name is LeftOfCenter, and I used to be the editor of Chainnews, and I also worked as an investment researcher at D1 Ventures, and I am currently in charge of content at Cobo Argus. Since the end of last year, we've been trying to do a strategy weekly, and we've been covering Degen in three of the issues.
I bought Degen in multiple times, the first time I bought it was on January 20 this year, and at the current price of $0.04198, the return multiple from the lowest purchase price to the highest purchase price is about 15~205 times. Before I bought it, I had a Q1 airdrop, and I didn't sell one at the moment, but I lost more than 3 million DEGEN by providing LP Impermanence.
How did you first discover the subject of Degen?
LeftOfCenter: Found in the Farcaster Degen channel. At that time, Farcaster was still in the invite-only period, and the user activity on the platform was not high, and it was the Degen channel that brought the entire Farcaster's qDAU to fire. Before DEGEN, this channel also gave birth to several other meme coins, all of which died, some were ruged, and the first batch of airdrops from DEGEN was returned to these dead project holders, which can be regarded as consolation prizes.
I didn't join Farcaster early, but once I joined, I can't leave here, and I firmly believe that the new meta of this bull market will definitely be born in Farcaster.
How do you hold this target, and why haven't you taken profit until now?
LeftOfCenter: When I first decided to take a heavy position, I didn't put $DEGEN When memecoin is seen, DEGEN is supported by fundamentals and value, otherwise no one would dare to invest more than $1000 in a memecoin.
While this line of work is not a word for coins, the token distribution mechanism is underestimated, and $DEGEN is one of the few projects I've seen that do the best job of token distribution, bottom-up, low and high, which beats most projects in the market.
The issuance mechanism of $DEGEN token has a clear goal, which revolves around the builders on Farcaster, and achieves the maximum decentralization of the distribution criteria and distribution methods.
$DEGEN start a cold start on the Degen channel on Farcaster (which can be understood as Douban's group), and the initial target of the assignment is builders, creators, artists, developers, and content creators on Farcaster, and this kind of user is the most scarce resource in this industry. The most innovative thing about DEGEN is that the token distribution standard is not set by the official package, but the token distribution power is given to the early users of Farcaster, and the amount of token distribution that each user can get depends on the influence of these users on Farcaster, which not only achieves the maximum decentralization of token distribution, but also decentralizes the distribution criteria.
Mr. Pingfeng made an analogy: "DEGEN is like a group of people feeding each other with a spoon, they can only feed others, not themselves, and the amount of feeding depends on the influence of the individual on the platform. 」
I think the core of DEGEN is giving, and the amount of power given (DEGEN amount) does not come from money, but from social influence (social capital), given that it revolves around the Farcaster platform that did not have many users at the time, this social capital has not yet solidified, which means that every user has the opportunity to get the power to be rewarded and rewarded, and even if they don't, they can also be obtained through subjectivity. This distribution mechanism gives all users on the Farcaster platform a fair opportunity and space, which is a force and drive to break that is desperately needed by an already solidified society/system or crypto circle.
There are all kinds of tips on Farcaster every day, Farcaster active users can tip anyone's projects, ideas, artworks, articles, etc., or they can group tips, once a day by the community self-organized "Tip o' the Hat", will choose a worthy project to reward in a group, if you don't have time that day or do not have a good tipping goal, you can copy "Tip o' the Hat" Tips, such as one to fund relief efforts in Gaza.
The token starts fairly, the distribution is not too centralized, and the best efforts are made to distribute the token to the target user Builder, and the final result is that these productive artists and developers will build consumption and usage scenarios around the DEGEN token, which not only revitalizes a large number of project parties, but also allows DEGEN to have a new utility in addition to being used as a gas token, which can be expanded to more application scenarios, such as the Web3 short video website Drakula, Farcaster native prediction market games Perl and more. The above is a short 3-month result, and the future is promising.
I go home every night to open the Farcaster on the recharge faith, basically watching Degen "grow up", what I see is a steady, bottom-up, rooted in the community and reality of the crypto project, the project itself that solidifies the community gene is the most powerful fundamentals, and it is not so easy to be copied and pasted by capital, such a project is absolutely dominant in today's crypto industry, so there is no reason to hesitate and not quit halfway to take profit.
The above are all subjective feelings, and there are positive expectations that can be seen in the future, including the listing of mainstream exchanges and the upcoming arrival of FarCon from May 2nd to May 5th.
Finally, judging from the current market capitalization, DEGEN also has a lot of room to rise:
Source: https://warpcast.com/sathaxe/0x3a017ee5
As a memecoin, DEGEN's market cap can be compared to other leading memecoins.
As a proxy token, DEGEN can be benchmarked against Farcaster valuation and Base size.
As a memecoin with payment and tipping utility, DEGEN's market cap can be compared to Dogecoin, because twitter makes Dogecoin payments, while Farcaster, a decentralized version of twitter, corresponds to DEGEN.
As an L3 gas token, DEGEN can be benchmarked against L2 and even L1.
DEGEN is the most interesting experiment I've seen in this bull run so far, and it's a testament to "what the right incentives can create for the protocol and the ecosystem." As New Meta in this bull market, there is no upper limit on market capitalization. Because for a new meta, the previous valuation methodology and evaluation metrics are invalid.
Above, if such projects are not optimistic for a long time, I don't know what other projects can be won for a long time.
What methods and tools do you find for the "Golden Dog" (Ace Meme)?
LeftOfCenter: I don't use tools much in general, and I don't look at specific data because data can be faked. I prefer to do qualitative analysis, there are not many followers on the official account of a project, but in the attributes and components of these followers, I will silently draw tags in my mind for the Twitter users I follow based on different dimensions, and when I look at the project, I will make a basic judgment based on the attributes of these followers, and then judge whether it needs to be followed up continuously.
In addition, I think that the essence of looking at projects is to look at people, and I like projects that are backed by independent developers rather than capital, as has been the case with previous hundredfold projects.
In the end, everything is relative, including the good or bad of the project. To judge the strength of a project, my methodology is the relative advantage of the project in the overall crypto market at the moment, if it is "new" at the moment and has a low mass penetration, then it is worth paying attention to.
What is the logic of judging the "golden dog"?
LeftOfCenter: wild, community genes, small team, developer-oriented (the founder is a developer, independent and solo is preferred), non-large capital endorsement, etc.
Are there any new potential Golden Dog recommendations?
LeftOfCenter: As a retail investor with a small amount of funds, I personally like to follow the left-hand principle and never chase hot spots. I don't recommend what everyone knows, the following are the projects that I focus on and do not constitute investment advice:
FarCats, the first NFT on Farcaster, creator 0xen, is also the creator of Purpledao. Decentralized stablecoins DYAD, onchain gaias, and the upcoming swatches by jvmi. For more new projects, please follow the Cobo Argus Strategy Weekly.
Note: All of the above Farcaster should be replaced with Warpcast, the official client from the team behind the Farcaster protocol.