From a 600 million valuation to an on-chain casino, Zora, the former second-largest NFT platform, has launched a new coin

Author: Lawrence

What we are going to talk about today is a big news that has made the entire crypto community go wild – Zora, the NFT platform that once claimed to “make Internet creations free and valuable”, has finally announced on Twitter that it will issue coins!

This operation simply makes the leeks both excited and nervous. After all, those who have been in the cryptocurrency circle know that whenever a project launches a coin under the slogan of “community co-building” or “ecological incentives”, a familiar smell of leeks will always float in the air.

But this story is much more exciting than ordinary dog ​​projects. It not only involves the capital game of Coinbase’s direct forces, but also staged a magical plot of the official personally playing “token werewolf killing”, and even made the entire industry start to think:

When every tweet can become a cryptocurrency battlefield, are we witnessing a Renaissance on the blockchain, or are we watching the roar of the leek harvester?

1. Zora’s history: From an NFT fan to a social media fanatic

To explain the scheme of this coin issuance, we must first take a look at Zora’s underwear.

Back in 2021, the hottest currency in the cryptocurrency circle was not Dogecoin, but NFT. Two former Coinbase employees slapped their thighs and set up an NFT platform called Zora, with a slogan that was loud and clear: “We want artists to make money while standing!”

The beginning of this story sounds very positive, right? In the early days, they did do some tricks:

For example, it helped the digital fashion brand Saint Fame with DAO governance and organized a virtual fashion week; it also issued TAPE tokens to musicians that can be exchanged for physical tapes, and even did something cool like “buy an NFT and get a concert ticket for free.”

At that time, Zora was simply a utopia for Web3 literary youths – until they discovered that they could not even make back the electricity bill for the servers by selling digital artworks alone.

So starting from 2023, Zora completely turned evil. First, it took advantage of OP Stack to build its own Layer2 network, which reduced the gas fee to a bone; then it suddenly changed its style and transformed the product into an “Instagram on the chain” – here, you can automatically generate ERC-20 tokens by posting a tweet, you can mine by liking and commenting, and even cursing can be monetized.

This trick is absolutely amazing!

In the past, artists had to work hard to draw pictures and make music, but now, if any passerby posts a photo of his lunch, the system will give you 10 million “Braised Beef Noodle Coins”, and the creator can also charge a 1% commission from each transaction.

What’s even more fascinating is that Zora has also created a “token social network”: the more tokens you hold, the brighter the golden border of your personal homepage will be, turning cryptocurrency trading into a QQ show.

With this combination of “everything can be tokenized”, Zora has snatched a piece of meat from OpenSea. By 2024, they have raised more than 60 million US dollars, with a valuation of 600 million US dollars, and are backed by top institutions such as Coinbase Ventures and Paradigm.

But anyone with a discerning eye can see that when social platforms start teaching users how to trade cryptocurrencies, the time has come for the sickle to be unsheathed.

2. Coin Issuance Drama: Top VC’s Guide to “Scientific Pig Farming”

Sure enough, on March 3 this year, Zora officially announced that it would issue ZORA on the Base chain, with a total of 10 billion coins.

On the surface, the distribution plan seems very “conscientious”: 10% is airdropped to users, 20% is used to incentivize the ecosystem, and 5% is used for liquidity.

But if you look closely at the terms, you’ll find something fishy—65% of the tokens (company treasury + team + strategic contributors) will be unlocked after being locked for 6 months.

Translated into adult language:

“The leeks will charge first, and we, the major shareholders, will come back to close the net in half a year.”

What’s even more outrageous is the official statement: “ZORA is not a governance token, it is purely an entertainment coin and its holders do not have any rights.”

This is equivalent to telling you clearly: what we are issuing is not stocks, but casino chips.

But do you think that’s the end? Zora took two more snapshots:

The first deadline is March 3rd, rewarding old investors; the second deadline is April 20th, attracting new investors.

The result is that in the past two months, the transaction volume on the Zora chain has skyrocketed by 47%. Countless people have been posting frantically on the platform to increase interaction, and some people have even used scripts to mass-produce junk content such as “Good Morning Earth” and “Constipation Today”.

The most magical thing is that some traders have calculated that if you want to be in the top 30% of the airdrop, you need to interact at least 21 times. So there are professional teams on the platform, helping people to like and comment, with prices ranging from 50U to 200U.

This wave of operations made me call myself an insider – it turns out that the “community incentive” of Web3 is to let users spend money to buy robots to refresh their data.

3. Base’s “God Assist”: The official personally played Werewolf

Just as the leeks were going crazy over Zora, another protagonist came on the scene: Jesse Polla, head of the Base protocol.

This guy has been frequently releasing “Content Coins” on Zora since February this year, such as tokenizing meeting minutes, putting community announcements on the chain, and even tokenizing Vitalik’s documentary trailer.

According to him, this is to promote the on-chain Renaissance of “content is token, token is content”.

But the public has sharp eyes – on April 17, Base’s official Twitter account suddenly released the “Base is for everyone” token on Zora, and the market value instantly surged to 17 million US dollars, and then plummeted 90% within five minutes.

This plot is more exciting than a roller coaster:

3:12 Official coin launch, KOLs collectively call for orders

4:30 Market value breaks through the sky

4:35 Whales sell off, prices drop to the lowest point

5:00 The rights protection group has been established to the 28th

Facing the anger of the leeks, Base officials responded calmly: “We are not selling coins, this is just an art experiment~”

What’s even more outrageous is that Jesse Pollak added: “When I issue 1 coin, they say I’m Rug, when I issue 10 coins, they say I’m hyping, and when I issue 100 coins, they will understand that this is the future of new media.”

This translates to:

“You country bumpkins don’t understand high art, you deserve to be leeks!”

But the magical thing is that this farce made Zora completely out of the circle. As the “Base is for everyone” token soared 10 times the next day, more leeks rushed into Zora crying and shouting, fearing that they would miss the next “official dog”.

At this moment, the Zora team is probably laughing out loud in their bed – this wave of zero-cost marketing is more effective than buying CCTV ads.

4. Sickle or paintbrush: What exactly is Zora painting?

Seeing this, some viewers may ask: Is Zora making such a big fuss just to make money?

We have to be objective and say that this matter cannot be simply dismissed.

From the perspective of product logic, Zora is indeed innovating:

• ​​Breaking the dimensional wall between NFT and tokens​​: Using the ERC-20z standard to turn pictures and videos directly into tradable assets, solving the NFT liquidity problem
• ​​Reconstructing the creator economy​​: Automatically issue coins for each piece of content, turning likes and reposts into “productivity”
• ​​Social financialization​​: Changing Weibo’s hot search list to a currency price ranking list, completely releasing the gambling instinct of human beings

But the problem is that when all content becomes a cryptocurrency, the Internet becomes Las Vegas.

Last August, on-chain detective ZachXBT turned his investigation report into Zora tokens, intending to do a performance art, but the tokens were hyped up to $14 million. He was so scared that he tweeted overnight: “I really didn’t mean for people to speculate!”

This story tells us: In Zora’s world, even anti-fraud propaganda can be turned into dog coins.

Even more frightening are the technical loopholes:

Since Zora’s liquidity pool is fully automatically deployed, any content token can be traded as soon as it goes online. This gives sniper robots an opportunity to take advantage of it – they can detect new tokens in milliseconds, first pull the price to attract followers, and then instantly dump the price to make arbitrage.

In other words, issuing coins on Zora is equivalent to giving heads to the robot army.

5. Leek Survival Guide: How to survive three episodes in the on-chain casino

Finally, here are some tips for those who want to buy ZORA tokens:

• ​​Beware of the unlocking period bomb​​: 65% of tokens will be unlocked after half a year, and the team’s selling may trigger an avalanche
• ​​Beware of social media scams: 90% of likes and comments on the platform are fake
• Stay away from “official dog”: 90% of the 27 tokens issued by the Base team have been returned to zero
• When a project says “this is not a financial product”, it is 100% a financial product

In the final analysis, Zora’s coin issuance drama is not only a fireworks show of the Renaissance on the chain, but also a mirror that exposes the greed of human nature.

When we are ecstatic or devastated by a tweet on Zora, maybe it’s time to remember that old truth:

In a casino, the only person who can always make money is the one who sells the chips.