Farewell to Pure Financial Narratives: New Trends in the Diversification of Web3 Applications

After experiencing several cycles of bull and bear markets, the Crypto world is entering a new experimental phase. Unlike the previous mainstream focus on financial instruments and on-chain infrastructure, more and more projects are now exploring lighter, more entertaining, and more social scenarios. This trend is particularly evident on Solana. With extremely low transaction costs and high on-chain performance, Solana is gradually becoming an incubator for the next generation of crypto products. Recently, Pudgy Penguins, Collector Crypt, and Pumpfun have gained significant attention as three typical representatives.

Pengu: A Transformative Breakthrough from NFT Collectibles to IP Ecosystem

As the NFT market falls into a “winter,” the traditional art trading model is losing its heat. In the face of this dilemma, Pudgy Penguins has chosen a completely different development path through its $PENGU token ecosystem: transforming NFTs into extendable intellectual property. Its core strategy is to create a brand symbol that can truly reach the real world by carefully shaping its image, deeply engaging with the community, and developing diversified derivative products, making NFTs no longer just static images stored in digital wallets. The ignition point of this IP value comes from the launch of physical toys, allowing consumers to seamlessly enter the on-chain constructed Pudgy World through the QR code on the toys. Parents think they are just buying an ordinary plush toy for their children, but unknowingly step into the world of Web3. The recently launched Pudgy Party game continues this concept, as it does not prominently showcase blockchain technology or Web3 elements, significantly lowering the entry barrier for users.

Source: Pudgy Party

This strategy subverts the traditional business logic of NFT projects. Previous NFT game projects often followed a closed development path: project teams created additional value for holders based on existing NFT collectibles, enhanced community stickiness through gamified experiences, and ultimately launched functional tokens to complete the ecological loop. This model essentially serves an existing niche holder group, with user scales typically limited to a few thousand people. Pudgy Penguins has adopted a completely opposite market strategy, building a conversion funnel that penetrates from the mass market to the core community: creating widely appealing game products → gaining massive user attention through quality content → converting game users into consumers of physical goods → ultimately guiding a small number of deep users into the NFT collectible field. The core of this strategy is to first capture the mainstream mobile game market, establish brand recognition through entertainment content, and gradually bring traditional internet users into the Web3 ecosystem.

Regarding the $PENGU token, its positioning is more like the stock of the Pudgy ecosystem; investors purchasing it are essentially investing in the future development potential of this IP, rather than based on the token’s utility. A series of market dynamics confirm the rationality of this value judgment: Canary Capital submitted a groundbreaking PENGU/NFT-themed ETF application to the SEC, and Sharps Technology, a publicly listed company focused on Solana digital assets, established a strategic partnership with Pudgy Penguins. These developments validate Pudgy Penguins’ potential for breakthrough development as a seasoned project in the new era, showcasing a successful case of NFT projects transforming from mere NFTs to comprehensive IP brands.

Collector Crypt: Turning “Card Drawing Fun” into a Profitable Business

As the popularity of NFT collectibles wanes and pure digital narratives become lackluster, Collector Crypt ($CARDS) did not settle for a simple “putting cards on-chain” approach but instead rebuilt the entire collectibles industry chain: transforming the vast offline TCG (trading card game) market into a “collectible finance” platform that integrates entertainment, finance, and high-frequency trading. Its core innovation lies in creating a standardized procurement and authentication system, combining a gamified card-drawing mechanism with tokenized investment channels, turning originally niche and low-frequency physical collectibles into highly liquid on-chain assets. Ordinary users do not need to become card experts to participate in the growth dividends of the entire collectibles track through the CARDS token. More cleverly, the platform has established a “drawing-recycling-repackaging” circular system, allowing entertainment consumption and capital flow to form a sustainable business flywheel. This approach subverts the traditional RWA project’s passive model of “custody on-chain, waiting for liquidity,” instead adopting a proactive strategy of “supply-driven, operation-driven.”

The power of this model comes from the organic combination of three key elements: a large-scale supply network, refined card-drawing operations, and tradable token exposure. The front end establishes supply advantages through weekly auctions and direct purchases worth millions of dollars, ensuring the platform can obtain the rarest and most valuable card resources on the market; the back end guarantees capital circulation with an 85%-90% discounted buyback, providing users with an exit mechanism and liquidity assurance; the middle uses a transparent probability mechanism and carefully designed prize pools to lower user entry barriers, making the card-drawing experience both exciting and fair. The result is transforming traditional collecting, a “slow business,” into a “fast turnover” entertainment finance product, satisfying users’ collecting pleasure and speculative psychology while building a robust unit economics model. Data shows that the platform’s monthly sales have surged from millions to tens of millions of dollars, with a clear and sustainable profit model. In a landscape where similar projects have generally not issued tokens, CARDS has become the only tradable asset in the market, and the team has achieved comparable revenue scale with financing far below competitors, fully validating its execution capability and business efficiency. The platform is currently expanding from a focus on Pokémon to diversification, with categories like Magic: The Gathering (MTG) and sports star cards already in planning, indicating that CARDS is expected to upgrade from a “Pokémon platform” to a comprehensive collectibles liquidity center covering hundreds of billions of dollars in the market.

Source: Collector Crypt

From One-Click Token Issuance to Live Streaming Finance: The Evolution of Pump.fun

Pump.fun is completely rewriting the “live streaming economy”: first, it productized the “Launch Coin” process with one-click token issuance, lowering the barrier to creating tokens and standardizing meme issuance; now, it directly ties attention and token trading together, allowing fans to no longer just be viewers but co-owners of your “broadcaster token.” Each live stream corresponds to a token; the more active the audience is in buying and trading, the more you instantly earn creator fees from each transaction, with on-chain instant settlement and almost no intermediary cuts. The result is a tighter flywheel: content explosion → new wallets influx → trading volume surges → creator fees skyrocket → more motivation to produce the next wave of content. Cases have already emerged: broadcasters like “bagwork” made about $150,000 in two days with a viral short video; while public live streams like “Feed The People,” which transparently donate income, can quickly establish trust and retention with traceable on-chain fund flows.

Source: Pump.fun

Unlike the “slow monetization” of platforms like Twitch and YouTube (which rely on subscriptions/advertising/brand deals, with high platform cuts, slow settlements, and algorithm bias towards top creators), Pump.fun operates more like a real-time “attention market maker.” Tokens turn fans’ emotions, dissemination, and retention into a public scoreboard of price and liquidity: holders will spontaneously bring in new users, spread clips, and complete tasks; broadcasters can design fee sharing, lotteries, and ticket benefits, operating a no-intermediary on-chain membership system. For creators, live streaming should be treated like running a startup: setting clear narratives and timelines, catalyzing weekly (collaborations, tasks, benefits), maintaining clean wallets and fair launches, and breaking through the “graduation” threshold to gain deeper liquidity and better pricing; for traders, strategy manuals are also taking shape—tracking surges in concurrent viewers, mentions on platform X, clip dissemination, Discord group joining, growth of on-chain holders, and optimizing LP depth and distribution, trading with “narrative + data.”

The essence of this transformation is merging the identity, emotions, and ownership of creators into pricing: your skills and stories are marketized in real-time, and fans and creators share the ups and downs, co-building the community. It will attract a large number of mid-tier and upper-tier broadcasters to migrate, as returns are transparent, payments are instant, and platform risks are relatively lower (rules are written into contracts, with less opacity); at the same time, it also comes with higher volatility and personal responsibility, requiring clear community guardrails to prevent speculative noise from consuming content quality. Ultimately, attention has always been valuable; Pump.fun simply makes it “more liquid, more programmable.” Creators who can continuously generate “moments the internet cannot ignore,” and traders who can read social and on-chain signals, will be best positioned to share in this wave of dividends; but please participate rationally and within your means. Risk warning: token prices are highly volatile, and related content does not constitute investment advice.

Paradigm Shift and Future Outlook of the Solana Ecosystem

From the IP breakthrough of Pudgy Penguins to the financialization reconstruction of Cards, and the creator economy revolution of Pump.fun, these three projects collectively outline the profound changes occurring in the Solana ecosystem, representing an inevitable trend of Web3 moving from technical experimentation to mass application. Ultimately, attention has always been valuable, collectibles have always had worth, and IP has always been monetizable; these innovative projects on Solana simply make them “more liquid, more programmable, and more financially oriented.” Creators who can continuously generate “moments the internet cannot ignore,” product teams that deeply understand user needs, and participants who can read social and on-chain signals will be best positioned to share in this wave of dividends. However, while embracing innovation, we must also remain rational; these new models bring opportunities but also come with higher volatility and uncertainty. Whether participating in IP investments, collectibles trading, or creator tokens, it is essential to fully understand their risk characteristics and act within one’s means. True value creation comes from deep insights into user needs and continuous product innovation, rather than short-term speculative hype.