Project party must read: Learn how to do market through collective mindset with Shi Yongxin.

In 1981, 16-year-old Shi Yongxin entered the almost forgotten Shaolin Temple. At that time, there were only 9 monks in the temple, struggling to make a living through farming and incense offerings. The turning point came a year later: the movie "Shaolin Temple," starring Jet Li, exploded nationwide, and the ancient temple became the focus of public attention overnight.

Shi Yongxin accurately captured this "mental dividend". He did not invent kung fu, nor is he the most skilled martial artist, yet he accomplished a groundbreaking brand positioning: he deeply ingrained the mental imprint of "Shaolin Temple = Chinese Kung Fu" into the minds of a global audience.

In the following decades, he systematically organized martial arts classics, promoted performances abroad, engaged in cultural dissemination, and created commercial licensing. Starting from a religious site, he transformed Shaolin into the global entry point for "Kung Fu awareness." More importantly, this awareness goes beyond mere "cultural influence" and ultimately translates into real monetary value: tickets, IP, real estate, intangible asset management... Awareness has become the entry point for business.

This is the power of the "collective mindset": when you leave a clear and unique label in the minds of users, you qualify to tell stories, set prices, and exist in the long term.

How significant is the relationship between collective mentality and Web3 projects?

You might ask: what can a monk who has built a brand at the Shaolin Temple for forty years teach Web3 projects?

I show you Shi Yongxin not because he understands live streaming or cultural IP, but because he has accomplished something that almost all Web3 projects strive for but very few achieve: establishing the definition of a keyword in the minds of global users.

Web2 focuses on business, of course considering market share, that is, your user proportion in your vertical track. Because traditional business, whether in terms of valuation or the business itself, cannot be separated from the direct competitiveness in the market after the product is launched. As for Web3 projects, I personally believe that the "collective mindset ownership" of the project greatly surpasses the "practical market share."

However, "follow the mindset of the community" is not an empty phrase; it runs through every stage of the project from 0 to 1, especially at the critical point of TGE. After TGE, with liquidity established, the operational logic of the project will change completely. You are no longer just telling stories and attracting followers, but rather facing the real market's pricing, arbitrage, and competition. This transformation is very drastic; if you are underprepared, all the initial hype and expectations could quickly collapse within a few days.

Therefore, the project team must think ahead: what kind of user mindset should you seize before the TGE? What narrative should you tell? What position should you place yourself in the minds of users?

Next, let's discuss in detail.

How should the project team build a 'community mindset' before the TGE?

For most Web3 projects, TGE is the first time to stand on the stage of the public market. However, what truly determines success or failure actually happens before TGE. This stage is your golden window to seize the minds of users. It not only concerns whether the token can be successfully launched, but also whether you can use this "collective attention moment" to plant a cognitive label in users' minds that can be remembered for a long time.

How you clarify the project's positioning, solidify trust, and stabilize expectations during this period will determine whether you can attract truly valuable early participants. Otherwise, what you may end up with is not a launch, but an end.

I usually suggest projects that have not yet had their TGE to conduct a "mental three questions" self-check first:

1. Which Tier do you belong to in the minds of users?

Are you a leading player in this track? Or a marginal project? Behind this is actually a very realistic formula:

User's recognition of your project's Tier = Expected value of your TGE = Willingness to invest how much time to follow you = Your actual data performance, etc.

Your actual data performance and user engagement are often the external results of users' subjective perception of whether you are "worth betting on." These do not entirely come from what you have done, but more from how you "appear to be in which tier."

2. What do users actually remember about you?

This may be the most commonly overestimated aspect by Web3 entrepreneurs. Many teams present their projects with tight logic and clear structure, but after listening for twenty minutes, I still find myself asking, "So what is your breakthrough point?"

Reality is harsh. In this market where attention is incredibly fragmented, countless projects are promoted every day, and you shouldn't expect users to truly understand you. They will only remember the few keywords that can evoke associations and generate emotions. Therefore, you must simplify and distill all content down to three things that users can "take away": easy to remember, able to spark the imagination of making money, and related to future explosive potential.

Speaking human language is the most lacking ability in most projects.

3. Can collective trust hold steady?

How to create a project that is trusted by users? This is the easiest point to overlook and also the layer that can be most easily breached.

Even if you are technically strong and have great storytelling skills, once users begin to question your persona, team, or behavior patterns, trust will collapse, and their mindset will automatically unmoor.

The collapse of trust is often not due to major issues, but rather the accumulation of seemingly trivial matters. For instance, a user asks a question and receives no response, and after asking several times, it remains unanswered; rewards that were promised are delayed indefinitely without any explanation; there are individuals in the community starting to question, yet the team collectively remains silent or responds coldly with "We will discuss internally"; sometimes, even when the project appears to be well-presented externally, there are whispers behind the scenes that "this is just a round of arbitrage."

Each of these matters may seem insignificant, but it is this feeling of "saying one thing and doing another" that can gradually undermine the initial trust of users, especially that group of early supporters. They were once your most valuable asset, those who genuinely believed in your story, but once a crack in trust appears, they will be the first to leave and the least likely to return.

Just as when the world mentions Chinese Kung Fu, most people's first reaction is not Wing Chun, Baji, or Tai Chi, but rather: Shaolin. Wing Chun is not bad, but it hasn't welcomed its Shi Yongxin. You need to be the one who establishes a collective mindset for the project.

After TGE, the project officially enters the "financial asset" status.

After the TGE, the project is no longer just a product, vision, or story, but has become a financial asset with a price, liquidity, and secondary trading. Whether you are valuable, worth buying, or can increase in value, begins to be verified in the most public and cold manner.

The first change is in the user structure. Those early users who once accompanied you in discussing ideals, testing networks, and actively participating in the community have also undergone a transformation. They are now both users and traders. A larger wave of traders has just entered the market. They are not here to "listen to your stories," but to ask a more direct question: "Does this coin have the potential for profit?"

Web3 rarely has "irreplaceable products." Even if you perform 20% or 30% better than your competitors, as long as the coin price remains stagnant and the market lacks volatility, you will still be quickly abandoned. Users will not give you time and patience to grow; they will immediately chase after the project that "seems more likely to rise."

Therefore, the project team must answer a question directly: Why would others want to buy your coin?

Behind this, it actually corresponds to three typical user mental models:

🌞Low-level player: My product is good. User: Whether it's good or not doesn't matter, anyway, I'm not afraid to buy.

The most common mentality for these types of projects is: "We have leading technology, a good product experience, and a serious team." But the market will not reward you just because you work hard.

Users' reactions are usually: "No matter how well you say it, is there volatility? No? Then I'm afraid to buy."

This is a typical case of "separation of product value and financial value." In Web3, there is only the product, and without price elasticity, it cannot support user trust. You may be a builder, but in the eyes of users, you are just a "coin without expectation difference."

The reality is that product experience is no longer a scarce commodity, but the price expectations that can capture attention are.

So you need to understand: you think you are building a product, but in fact, you are competing for the mental entry point of financial sentiment.

🌞Mid-level players: I have good news, I'm pumping the price. Users: I'll speculate in the short term, and I'll run away as soon as I profit.

Most Web3 users are short-term speculators. They do not aspire to co-build in the long term, but as long as you have price pumps, rhythm, and favorable news, they will come in to participate.

They are neither believers nor community evangelists. But as long as you create "tradability," they will come in for a round.

This is not a bad thing. On the contrary, it shows that you have "activity". Users know that you are a project that can make swings, and even if they can't hold on tightly, it's worth keeping an eye on.

As long as you can successfully pump a few times, the market will start to assume you are a "promising" coin. Your token will be added to users' watchlists, and there will be a group of people specifically waiting for your next move.

No one follows → Someone participates → Someone is waiting, this is the gradual process of establishing the "price elasticity mindset" in Web3.

🌞Advanced players: Let users feel that "this coin is worth holding, once sold it won't be possible to get back on the train"

The most ideal, yet the hardest mindset to establish among users, is when they actively choose to hold onto your coin while liquidating their assets. What comes to their mind is not 'Can I make quick money?' but rather: 'This project, I might still need it in the next round.' 'This coin, once it goes up, I might not be able to buy it back.'

To reach this level, the project must establish a complete "trust × expectation × feedback" loop and meet at least four conditions:

·The project's long-term direction is clear, and the narrative will not jump back and forth.

·Product progress is rhythmic, and users can see hope;

·The project team has good news, and the coin price is not weak.

·The price of the coin is resilient, able to create an emotional elasticity of "even if it goes up, there’s still something to talk about, and if it goes down, it can still be pulled back up;"

This token may not skyrocket every day, but users know in their hearts that "you are an asset worth participating in for the long term," so they will naturally hold, spread, and maintain it.

SUI: A Real Case of Mental Reversal

Let me take a recent coin that I put into a long-term target: $SUI. Let's break it down.

SUI boasts a luxurious team (the product research team of Facebook's Meta project), and its primary market valuation of several billion dollars has indeed become an object of FOMO for major investment institutions. To be honest, in the early stages of TGE, I thought SUI's performance was not good, and the overall sentiment in the community was that the project team was arrogant and disconnected from the community. It wasn't until a year and a half ago that SUI suddenly realized the importance of the community, continuing to promote the ecosystem while also engaging with the community. I won't say much about the secondary level due to regulatory issues.

Everyone knows what happened afterwards. Suddenly, SUI became "Little SOL" in the market's mindset. It entered the list of assets that users are willing to hold for the long term.

In fact, Sui has already experienced two events this summer that tested market confidence: first, the ecological project Cetus encountered a security incident at the end of May, resulting in approximately $223 million of liquidity pool being exhausted; second, at the beginning of July, a large amount of 44 million tokens, worth nearly $200 million, was unlocked, making it one of the largest releases of the entire quarter.

According to the usual rhythm, such a series of negative events should have led to a price collapse and a breakdown of community sentiment. But the result was the opposite: SUI not only was not abandoned by the market, but instead surged to $4.39 the day before yesterday, reaching a new high since February this year, becoming one of the most actively traded projects in the sector.

Why did it hold up? The key is not only that the Sui team did not shy away from negative situations such as the hacking incident, but rather that they quickly took responsibility. What is truly important is that Sui has gradually changed users' perceptions of it over the past year, transforming its originally criticized image of "arrogance and indifference" into one of a "trustworthy and long-term bet" project.

Taking the ecological project Cetus as an example of an attack, although this risk was triggered by a third-party smart contract, Sui is not directly responsible. However, the team did not shift the blame; they not only immediately suspended the relevant contracts, froze two involved wallets, and collaborated with Sui validation nodes to initiate a vote, but also worked with the Sui Foundation to arrange a loan to raise compensation funds to promise "full compensation" to the victims. In the end, 90.9% of the validators voted in favor of releasing the $162 million in frozen assets, and the compensation plan was successfully passed.

The whole process is transparent, swift, and highly efficient, which has also made the outside world realize, not just once, that this team can withstand pressure and is willing to take responsibility at critical moments.

What it demonstrates to everyone is: as long as you establish clear mental anchors in the early stage and continuously deliver after the TGE, the market will give you time and space.

Trust is the only direction I'm willing to bet on.

Many projects come to me for marketing, but the number of projects I collaborate with has always been very few. It's not that I have high standards; rather, I am only willing to invest my time and credibility in trustworthy teams.

Before I decide whether to assist, I will conduct a complete project DD. There are only two core criteria for judgment: Is this team trustworthy? Does its community believe in them?

If even a little bit is not established, no matter how beautiful the narrative is, I will choose not to cooperate. I don't think I can rely on a marketing campaign to improve the project, and I certainly won't entrust my trust to an irresponsible team.

Because ultimately the core competitiveness of a Web3 project is not the technological barrier nor the amount of financing. It is whether you can leave a clear, credible, and worthy position in the hearts of a group of people.

This is the collective mindset, and it is also the true game-changer of Web3.