Produced | Odaily
Editor | Hao Fangzhou
Produced | Odaily
On the afternoon of April 22, BlockArk & ArkStream Capital and Odaily co-hosted the "Bull Cycle of Long Run in the ascendant - ArkStream Capital brand conference".
The press conference gathered well-known investment institutions at home and abroad, high-quality DeFi projects, and outstanding developers of the technology ecosystem to discuss the investment methodology of the encryption industry in the new cycle, explore new tracks, and jointly discover new opportunities and new ideas in the encryption market. ArkStream Capital combines the advantages of BlockArk cryptocurrency investment bank to give the project comprehensive support in terms of governance model and market growth. (Click to watch: https://play.yunxi.tv/pages/f846b38115cc484393eabeb710c255a6?openId=oY3Tsvic6lm4BHKkHJFAlnLd0NG4#/）
Su Ye, partner of ArkStream Capital, gave a keynote speech on "From BlockArk to ArkStream: Strategic Layout under the Long Bull Cycle".
Su Ye said that the opportunity for the launch of BlockArk's sub-brand ArkStream Capital is that we are at the beginning of a long-term bull market. ArkStream Capital can bring the professional experience of traditional finance to encrypted finance and provide more professional services.
He explained that after the Internet industry bubble burst in 2000, with the improvement of business models and the increase of landing scenarios, the Internet ushered in a 20-year bull market. Analogous to the development of the Internet, the encryption market has also entered a long-term bull market after 2020.
This round of long-term bull market has three major characteristics: first, the change of the token valuation model, from a story-driven confidence market to a valuation based on products, users, and TVL; second, the primary market continues to be hot, and a large number of Innovative projects emerge and obtain financing; the third is the irreversible positive inflow of talents and capital, representative cases are the entry of traffic from outside circles such as Tesla and the NBA.
Su Ye reminded that the long-term bull market does not mean that the market will not fall and pull back, but it is difficult to see another two years of long bears.
The following is the shorthand of Su Ye’s speech, organized by Odaily, enjoy~
Hello everyone, I am Su Zhi from ArkStream Capital. The topic of today's speech is "From BlockArk to ArkStream: Strategic Layout under the Long Bull Cycle", which is divided into three parts:
First, review the development of BlockArk in the industry from 2017 to 2020.
Second, why do we think we are currently in a long-term bull market?
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1. From 2017 to 2021, how did BlockArk go in four years?
Let me briefly tell the story of our initial establishment in 2017.
In 2017, the industry entered an unprecedented bull market. At that time, my other two partners and I were in Shenzhen, and many global projects came to Shenzhen for roadshows. We have participated in dozens of roadshows and read a lot of white papers, so we got to know each other and founded BlockArk in September 2017.
From its establishment in 2017 to 2019 for more than three years, BlockArk has positioned itself as a global integrated marketing agency. At that time, we found that the Chinese market accounted for more than 50% of the global market, and there were a lot of overseas projects to be announced in the domestic market, but they could not achieve better growth in China. So we choose to use this as an entry point to provide services for overseas projects.
During this period, we served many well-known overseas projects, including decentralized storage Bluzelle, Ankr Network, Band Protocol and so on. BlockArk is also the first partner for these projects that have just entered the Chinese market, helping them with strategic planning and providing marketing services.
To sum up, in the past four years, we have mainly done three things in the industry:
1. Global Growth Network.As a project party, technology development is the core part. However, Token, which is a combination of technology and finance, must circulate in the market, be recognized by the market for its value, and expand a wider network. Therefore, it is essential to grow the network.
Growth network, including the market strategy in the long-term development from the project fundraising stage to the listing stage, including what channels to finally obtain effective and high-yield growth, and finally rank among the top 200 in market value.
In the past four years, BlockArk has accumulated complete experience in integrated marketing and growth hacking, which can help the project achieve better growth, which will be explained in detail later.
2. The context of paradigm change.Our "paradigm change" means that the underlying logic of the entire industry has undergone important changes in the past few years.
In 2017, the focus of the project was to solve the problem of the public chain; in 2018, after the market entered a bear market, transaction mining represented by Fcoin and Dapp represented by CryptoKitties appeared; in 2019, the appearance of IEO changed the form of fundraising , to level the primary market with the secondary market; in 2020, DeFi and algorithmic stablecoins will appear; in 2021, NFT will become hot. This is the growth change of the entire paradigm of the industry.
Maybe many friends know us not through the projects we serve, but through communities and charging groups. In the past few years, in addition to our role as an integrated marketing agency, several co-founders of the company have also invested in market projects in an individual form, so our control of the frontier of the market is very accurate. Including this round of DeFi, algorithmic stablecoins, and NFT, we are one of the first institutions in China to seize it, which depends on the experience we have accumulated in the past four years.
3. Talent and consultants.There is a saying in this industry that your success rate will gradually increase the longer you stay. You can see that the companies and projects established in 2017 can really live to 2021, and there are less than 3% of the market in the market. After the test of time, the companies that really survive will make great progress in terms of partners and talent pool.
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2. Why do we think we are currently in a long-term bull market?
Through integrated marketing and time accumulation, BlockArk has achieved the top three positions in the entire market. Many friends will ask, why did we choose to launch our fund brand ArkStream Capital at this stage of the market?
Our core theory for launching this brand is: the underlying paradigm of the market has changed, and we are at the beginning of a long-term bull market.
I have recently communicated with many capital partners about this idea, and I have also received a lot of controversy. Next, I will focus on the theoretical basis and characteristics of the long-term bull market.
The crypto market has been in a very volatile situation for the past decade. For example, it rose sharply in 2013, fell silent in 2015, entered a bull market in 2017, and entered a bear market again in 2018... Now it has entered a new round of bull market. Regarding when to enter the bear market again, today I will not give a direct answer, but regarding the changes in the entire industry, I will analyze from the bottom for everyone, and tell you how we view the development of cryptocurrency in the 12th year.
When it comes to blockchain and cryptocurrency, what everyone is more familiar with may be the Internet 2.0 wave we have experienced in the past, that is, this round of technological revolution based on the traditional Internet and mobile Internet. I believe that many friends have heard a theory: the technology maturity curve, which describes an emerging technology from its inception to becoming a widely used technology. It needs to go through five stages, as follows:
(1) Technology Trigger: Technology has just emerged, corresponding to the leftmost side of the curve;
(2) Peak of Inflated Expectations: the peak of technology, corresponding to the highest point of the curve;
(3) Trough of Disillusionment: the period of disillusionment, the bursting of the bubble, and a very low period;
(4) Slope of Enlightenment: recovery period;
(5) Plateau of Productivity: product maturity
Compared with the development of the traditional Internet, the Internet bubble reached its peak in 2000. At that time, Nasdaq Internet companies did not have any business model and no income. Just because they brought the name of the Internet, they had a price-earnings ratio of hundreds or thousands of times ; In 2001, the Internet bubble burst in Nasdaq and fell to the bottom; since then, the Internet has begun to recover, and it has gone through a long period of 20 years (excluding the 2008 economic crisis).
The root of Changniu lies in the fact that Internet business models and top-level applications underwent huge paradigm shifts around 2000. Including companies such as Sina, Baidu, and Tencent, their business models have changed from being simple in the past, purely user-only network, without commercial realization, and actual social production value, to games, social networking, knowledge payment, mobile Internet (Douyin and other applications) ) Application-based Internet 2.0 industry. Therefore, the entire valuation has changed from hyping the price-earnings ratio before 2000 to now judging the future potential, user network effect, and growth potential of an Internet company through the price-earnings ratio.
In our opinion, 2020 is the biggest turning point for the crypto market.
Before 2020, the main innovations of cryptocurrency in the past ten years were built around the underlying infrastructure, which can be understood as the foundation of the industry, but there are no users, income, or business models under the foundation, so it cannot be valued. Until 2020, DeFi really began to explode, and a lot of DeFi was built on the Ethereum-based infrastructure.
For example, Uniswap has grown from a daily trading volume of less than 2 million US dollars in May 2020 to an average daily trading volume of 1 billion US dollars, and the number of users has increased by a hundredfold. These DeFi applications are profitable, and its economic model can be compared to banks, stock exchanges, derivatives markets, etc. in traditional industries.
Therefore, we believe that in 2020 the industry will truly enter a recovery period. It is characterized by the gradual improvement of the underlying facilities, the emergence of commercially available applications, and changes in the valuation model. I also concluded that there are three characteristics of a long-term bull market.
1. Changes in the Token valuation model.
Before 2020, it can be simply called a confidence market. The stronger the technology and market blow, the higher the valuation. After 2020, valuation will be more based on horizontal benchmarking of products, users, TVL and market application prospects. For example, a valuation model that everyone often uses now evaluates DeFi through TVL and liquid market value.
Second, the primary market continues to be hot.
It can be compared to the Internet industry. Although there was a round of economic crisis in 2008, the technology, innovation, extension, establishment of new companies, and innovation of models in the entire Internet industry have not stopped. In our view, the cryptocurrency market is also entering a new decade-long bull market. A long-term bull market does not mean that the market will not pull back and fall. What we mean is that innovation in this market will continue to take root and sprout, and it will not be like the one-to-two-year trough in the market in 2018 and 2019. The continuous innovation will be reflected in the continued enthusiasm of the primary market.
3. The irreversible positive inflow of talents and funds.
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3. What does the new brand ArkStream Capital hope to bring to the industry?
Next is also our focus today, why should we release our sub-brand ArkStream Capital? What difference are we going to make to the industry?
Before answering this question, let me answer two other small questions:
First, why do we want to do ArkStream Capital?
Second, what difference will ArkStream Capital bring to the industry?
The reason why we do ArkStream Capital is that we believe that the investment paradigm at the bottom of the industry has fundamentally changed, and the valuation model has changed to be based on users, products, and business models.
Speculation has begun to transform into investment. We can transfer our professional investment experience in the financial field to cryptocurrency, which is also a longer-term layout.
The second question, with so much capital in the market, what difference will ArkStream Capital bring to the industry?
This is a very interesting topic, and it is also what they are most concerned about when we interact with many projects.
ArkStream Capital is a sub-brand of an integrated marketing company and a growth company incubator. The positioning of our fund has three main value points:
1. PMF and growth path design PMF refers to the degree of integration between products and markets.Everyone has experienced the bear market in 2018 and 2019 and knows very well that there are many projects that lost their market position in the long-term wave because they did not grasp the market demand well. A very typical example is EOS.
At the same time, the market performance of the project comes from consensus, which is multi-factor oriented. In addition to the fundamentals of the project itself, marketing is another important point. Most of the project parties are doing projects for the first time, and they are more pushed by the market, and there is no way to have a top-level complete market design right away.
ArkStream Capital will provide the following assistance for investment projects: First, we will adjust the product direction of the entire product direction, combined with our research in the frontier market; second, on the growth path, we will help the project design a complete set Growth and market strategy, following our experience in integrated marketing over the past four years and the best growth cases. As an example, we invested in a project called AIOZ, which focuses on dCDN. It has a very systematic marketing strategy and a high-ROI channel strategy. It has a performance return of nearly 400 times at the beginning of the market, which is basically the best performance in the entire market this year. one of the projects. The success of this project is not only due to its own products, but more due to the design of its entire growth path.
2. Global partner network.
Before I came to the crypto market, I worked for Accenture, a global consulting firm. One of their most important parts is to help companies open up a global partner network.
For the project side, there is only one public offering in your life, and your Pitch channel and your partner largely determine which echelon you are in the market. The partners here include: upstream capital; midstream exchanges and distribution platforms; downstream service providers, influencers, media, marketing partners, communities, and network co-builders.
For four years, BlockArk has brought together project parties and capital parties from all over the world, including players in the entire chain. We will empower our projects through our global partner network.
3. Track research report.
Friends who have survived the bear market in 2018-2019, I believe that everyone has been questioned by many other industries, or because of the currency price, we also have some doubts about our own industry. But those who can really go on are those who firmly believe that digital currency, blockchain and Web3.0 will eventually be recognized and developed by the mainstream.
As an investment institution, in addition to accelerating the development of projects and helping them become top projects, another very important part of our mission is to share research results and opinions with the mainstream market.
Therefore, we now publish an industry observation report every month, mainly for research on different tracks. In the past, we released industry research on algorithmic stablecoins, as well as track players on Ethereum 2.0 and forecasts for the entire industry. After that, we will have various track studies. It is more about thinking from the top level of the industry what the future development of this track will be like, which players will become the priority competitors, and in which direction the industry will eventually develop.
We hope that as a capital, we can share some of the most cutting-edge observations in the industry with other partners in the industry, including participants in the secondary market in front of the screen, so that everyone can have a deeper understanding, let the mainstream market recognize us more, and let more Talent and funds focus on the crypto market, which is our long-term mission.
The above is the main content of my keynote speech today, thank you for listening.
