Sleepy the Ghost: NFT startups don’t need to deliberately avoid financial attributes

0x13(Sleepy)

23-11-05 11:27

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Original source: SevenUpDAO Overseas Returnees Association

Editor's note: In this conversation, the founder of Little Ghost shared his personal experience, his understanding of the NFT industry, the "Little Ghost" IP he created, and how to make it a successful NFT IP. The world of NFT and Web3 is constantly evolving, and the "Little Ghost" project is a typical example. In this era of change, sticking to the original intention, embracing new opportunities, and building a business model with long-term sustainability may be the key to success.

This is a recent conversation we had with Sleepy, the founder of the NFT project "Little Ghost". The reason why I wanted to chat with Sleepy is that I saw a different quality in Sleepy from most Web3 practitioners. He looks quiet on the surface, but he seems to have a stubborn side in his heart, with strong internal explosiveness and criticality. In the cold winter of NFT, many people began to look for more speculative and new concept narratives to do, but he has been working hard on this track for his original IP. This kind of determination is not produced by inertia and fatigue, but by persistence in a deep and cutting-edge thinking mode. This not only touched me, but also made me eager to open the door through dialogue and find out. ——26x14 (Co-founder of 7Up DAO) 26x14: I am very happy that Sleepy is a guest at 7UpDAO. Let me first talk about what is the constellation and MBTI personality test? Yes, we start with gossip.

Sleepy: My zodiac sign is Cancer, INFJ personality, I am more introverted offline, and my personality is more emotional.

26x14: One of the things I really admire about you is that you can always stick to the NFT track. When the NFT market is already so bad, you are still doing "Little Ghost". Have you really never doubted the NFT IP? What supports your sense of belief?

Sleepy:First of all, I want to say that Little Ghost should not be called an "NFT project". It's like when you go to an art gallery to see a work of art, you would say it's a Baroque painting, not a canvas. NFT is just a container, a medium. When defining a project, we should start from what's in the cup, so the Little Ghost we're doing has always been an "IP project".

The second point is that what we are doing now actually has little to do with the Crypto bear market. Most of the feedback we get actually comes from our exploration of Web2. Our penetration into Web2 is actually quite smooth. Many brands, commercial real estate, and Web2 people have also begun to recognize and love our IP, which actually brought us a lot of positive feedback. We really didn't doubt the "NFT IP" thing, because the progress we have made exceeded our expectations, and we can also see that this road can be taken. We are not a team that is eager for quick success and quick profit. We hope to achieve sustainable development and run a real business model. In the past, we actually had many opportunities to make a few fortunes in the Crypto industry. For example, when the Aptos and Bitcoin ecosystems were hot, the ecosystem leaders contacted us and wanted us to issue a set of assets. However, after weighing the pros and cons, we did not issue them because we knew that these seemingly earned money, but the issued assets were debts issued, which would make us face more problems, such as how to maintain the floor price. We were also worried that these uncertain risks would affect the foothold of our IP.

In addition to the positive feedback mentioned above, the things that support the sense of belief are actually the character of our team. Get it in a proper way.

26x14: What do you think has changed in NFT from the past to the present and to the future? What is the "unchanged" part? Why does the Crypto community need it?

Sleepy: It's still the same as what I mentioned above. NFT is a cup. I think this will not change. What changes is what water will be in this cup. I think the most important feature of NFT is written in its name, non-homogeneity. Crypto and Web2 have actually been two worlds that have been developing in parallel. If we simply compare homogeneous tokens to various types of money, everything in the world that cannot be combined and exhibited is NFT, such as the artworks and music that we are more familiar with, and then our ID cards, graduation certificates, driver's licenses and other documents, and then bank accounts, insurance, financial products, etc. NFT technology will greatly enrich the composition of the Crypto world and is also the basis of Mass Adoption.

26x14: Is NFT the reason why you entered this circle? Tell me about your story of entering the crypto field?

Sleepy: When I was studying financial auditing in college, my teacher talked to me about how blockchain technology is applied in the financial auditing workflow. It actually planted a seed at that time. I also became very interested in the concept of trustlessness at that time. Then after my internship in college, I felt that I was not suitable for financial auditing, so I started to think about whether I could come to this industry to have a look. It happened that Rhythm was recruiting writers at that time, and I also thought that working in the media would help me understand this industry as quickly as possible. So even though I had not participated in any Crypto projects at that time and my understanding of the industry was only at a very basic technical level, I still went for the interview and successfully joined the company. Later, under the leadership of the editor-in-chief of Rhythm and the person in charge of the newsletter, I gradually became familiar with this industry and discovered the gem of NFT.

I first got to know NFT because I wrote a newsletter reporting that Vitalik Buterin made a formula manuscript into NFT and auctioned it. I felt that this thing was different from any project in the industry that I knew about during that time. It was too special, so I began to focus on this big track.

26x14: What was the inspiration for the creation of the IP "Little Ghost"? Has the idea of the ultimate form of "Little Ghost" changed from what you thought it would be at that time?

Sleepy: Little Ghost was born on the way to and from work during the epidemic. During that time, not only myself, but many friends around me were more or less affected on the mental level. Closure, death, unemployment, etc. brought more pressure and uncertainty to urban young people, so I wanted to heal myself through creation and cartoon IP, help me vent my emotions, and even further influence more people, so that everyone's mental state can return to the previous state, and regain self-rediscovery and pure social interaction.

I think the so-called "ultimate form vision" has not changed, but it is becoming clearer and clearer. We are gradually building a community with our mark, extending the little ghost from the avatar to a new image and gradually spreading it outward through the influence of the cooperative brand. We are moving towards our ultimate form step by step.

26x14: Cognition is polished and grown in practice. What do you think are the detours in the past? Which ones are the right ones?

Sleepy：I think what we didn’t do well enough was that we deliberately avoided financial attributes at the beginning, but in fact, this industry is built on finance. We chose to deliberately avoid it, but we may not fully utilize the acceleration effect that Crypto brings to the start-up IP. I think Azuki did the best in this regard. Maybe the understanding of the industry was not sufficient at the beginning, and it was too polarized. In fact, we should find a way to balance it and make good use of financial attributes to make IP gain greater acceleration.

I think that adhering to long-termism is the right thing for us to do. Don’t think that this industry only rewards short-term traders. Long-termism allows us to gain the most important credit and reputation in this industry. We always believe that this will allow us to gain more material and spiritual wealth in the future.

26x14: What are the perceptions that you think everyone thinks should be like that, but in fact it is not like that.

Sleepy： What we are talking about now is not the next form of Web2. In fact, I have always felt that the transition from Web2 to Web3 is not as "urgent" as the transition from Web1 to Web2. I have only had a vague perception until I had an epiphany a few days ago after communicating with a practitioner. Web3 should be AI, not blockchain. Blockchain and Web2 were born almost at the same time, and they are two completely different development directions, rather than a progressive evolutionary relationship. This also explains why Blockchain Mass Adoption is so difficult, while AI has completed Mass Adoption in one go with ChatGPT.

26x14: What does NFT IP look like? In your opinion, it is considered successful? If you want to make it, what kind of team do you look for? For a successful NFT IP, what percentage of each link is product, marketing, and doing things? To make this thing happen, is there a core rope, that is, if you grab this rope, you can basically run out?

Sleepy: Creating a trend is considered a success, including trends in revenue growth, trends in influence growth, etc. I think there is no ceiling for IP at present, even Marvel and Pokémon still have room to continue to grow, so I think it is very important to continue to expand the growth trend.

As for the team, we don’t need everyone to understand and have participated in Crypto projects. We should find more members with rich experience in Web2. They know better how to communicate and deal with Web2 partners, and have also experienced stronger training in content operations.

I think it is better to say that it is better to use the rope to hold a few horses and let them run in one direction than to grab the rope. It is necessary to find the key figures in design, BD, and operation. After having these three key figures, it will be more stable to do a good job in execution.

26x14: What is the most question you think about when you close your eyes every night?

Sleepy: I will pull myself out of the work state a few hours before going to bed, and I don’t want to think about work at all. Entrepreneurs need high-quality sleep to maintain their energy (laughs), but I can get what you want to ask. What I am more anxious about now is actually the commercialization. Although there is also the expectation that "it will take some time to run through commercialization completely", because we all know that an IP wants to gain a foothold, just like a brand wants to occupy the minds of consumers, it takes time and cases to accumulate, so precipitation time is necessary. I understand this matter rationally, but I am still very anxious emotionally. Everyone wants to succeed earlier and faster.

26x14: Have you ever thought about what you want to change about yourself?

Sleepy:I actually want to change from an I person to an E person. I am now an information portal for the team. Many people who want to cooperate will come to me, including some investors who are more inclined to come to me to learn about the project. I am actually like a social switch now, and there is a limit on the amount of social power I can have every day. I can be as social as an E person when I am working, but it will be very tiring and I need to recharge.

Another point I think I need to learn is how to talk about how grand things we are doing in a more exciting and contagious way. Since I have been working hard, I may talk more about practical things. I am not very good at conveying some metaphysical events, plans, and opinions, which may be somewhat contrary to what everyone in the circle likes to hear.

26x14: It is November now, and the year is about to turn over a new page. Do you still remember what you made for yourself at the beginning of the year? Have you accomplished it yet?

Sleepy: I rarely make wishes, because wishes can easily become my annual OKRs. Dreams are fun. They require you to imagine, but you have to be down-to-earth to realize them. So I usually just keep walking steadily. As long as the road is right, there will always be a day when I reach the end.

26x14: How far has "Little Ghost" progressed before you would consider making another one?

Sleepy: IPs may be new, but they may not necessarily be in the form of NFTs. After Little Ghost has established itself, the promotion of IPs may require a matrix to break through the bottleneck, and the cold start of the entire ecosystem has actually been achieved through Little Ghost NFT. Subsequent issuance of NFTs may be a matter of diminishing marginal returns and will bring more risks. So from the perspective of "making the next NFT project", I may not make the next one. I would rather hope to capture the created value into Little Ghost NFT and use a market-oriented approach to bring this already marketed IP to a higher position. If we want to launch other IPs, there is no need to marketize new IPs to disperse the value of Little Ghost NFTs, but to continuously make Little Ghost stand higher to boost the status of other IPs in the ecosystem.