Interview: Nathan, Founding Partner of 7 UpDAO
Guest: Haze, Co-founder of GMGN
This conversation was conducted by Nathan, co-founder of 7 UpDAO, and Haze, co-founder of GMGN.
Nathan: What kind of experience did you have before founding GMGN?
Haze: I didn’t have an undergraduate degree. Before I entered the Crypto industry, I worked in a very small place. To be frank, I didn’t have any dreams at that time. I just wanted to make money. At the end of 2017, I accidentally saw news about Bitcoin. At that time, I didn’t know what it was used for, but I thought I could buy some. Then in 2018, I joined a quantitative trading company that did grid trading and started to learn on my own. The first tutorial on grid trading in this industry was written by me at that time. There was a note-taking product called Jianshu, and I published some tutorials on it, but unfortunately I can’t find it now because it has been blocked.
Nathan: There are rumors in the market that GMGN is backed by Pai Network. Does this mean it was incubated by Pai Network?
Haze: Not really. GMGN is an independent project. Maybe because some of GMGNs early employees, including me, had worked at PieNet, the industry had a misunderstanding. I worked at PieNet for about three years, doing user growth, operations, and customer service. I felt like I had done everything except writing code.
Nathan: How did the idea and project establishment process of GMGN begin?
Haze: In June 2023, we started working on GMGN. The name GMGN means good morning and good night . But when we were looking for a direction, we also discussed other things. At that time, the inscriptions in the Bitcoin ecosystem were very popular, and some friends asked us if we should do something related to BRC-20?
At that time, there were already some teams in the market making tools such as BRC-20 wallets, but my first feeling was that we should not do it. First of all, inscriptions do not solve anything. They have neither cultural appeal nor spiritual connotation. They are nothing more than engraving something in the Bitcoin block. Secondly, its transaction experience is too poor and too slow. The transaction efficiency and asset issuance efficiency are poor, which leads to a big problem of asset liquidity. If the efficiency is not good, your bubble will not be big. This is the same as the NFT in the previous cycle, and it will eventually die slowly.
But the core of the currency circle is still around asset issuance and trading. After excluding the inscription direction, I discussed with our product manager that it would be better to make products related to Meme coin in the Ethereum ecosystem. Therefore, in June 2023, the first chain that GMGN connected was Eth, focusing on the entry point of smart money tracking. But everyone knows that Ethereum has never really risen, so we started to switch to Solana in March 2024.
Why did you switch to Solana? Do you remember the Silly Dragon coin in January 2024, the DePin-like Mobile in February, and Bome in March? I have participated in (buying) these coins. I have the experience of voting with money. I determined that the capital sinking and the outlet of Meme coin will eventually occur on Solana, so I discussed with the team. In fact, they also did a lot of research at that time, and our internal cognition was consistent.
Nathan: When you switched from Eth to Solana, did you consider any potential risks when making the decision? Are there any risks that you didnt expect?
Haze: Actually, we struggled internally, mainly because of the time cost. We were worried that if we spent another two months developing to switch to Solana, but Solana also failed, what would we do? This would be a big blow to morale. But what convinced us in the end was that after working on Ethereum Meme for so long, all the hunters on the chain we saw were not as strong as the momentum in the Solana ecosystem, so we made up our minds to do it.
Nathan: What are the major natural growth and explosions that GMGN has experienced from its inception to the present that have made you feel strongly that, well, we made the right bet this time?
Haze: First of all, after switching from Ethereum to the Solana ecosystem, it has been growing steadily overall, which is the first step to a successful decision; secondly, we launched the rat trading function in July and August 2024, which made us feel obvious natural growth and explosion. At the same time, Pump.fun also became popular; then, in November 2024, Binance launched ACT and Pnut, which also helped the education of the on-chain market.
Nathan: I feel that your product iteration logic is bottom-up, that is, starting from how product tools can satisfy user pain points, and finding the priority of iteration; if a large company makes similar products, it may become top-down to do product planning, first emphasizing how to make product transactions smoother, how to code modularly to make the product look more structured and extensible, rather than grasping user pain points to iterate in small steps.
Haze: Yes, this is also related to the genes of our team. We dont think of doing big things on the first day. We think that we should make something that users really need, can use, and can fill their needs. Another reason is that we dont have many resources and dont have the ability to support doing something big on the first day.
Nathan: How many people were there on your team at the beginning? How many people are there now?
Haze : At the beginning, there were 9 or 10 people; now there are more than 30 people, basically all of them are product and technology. Internally, I am the co-founder, and our product manager is the CEO and founder. He is in charge of products, and I am in charge of sales and branding. We dont care about anything else, and we dont have the energy to do it.
Nathan: What are you doing in terms of proactive operations and growth strategy?
Haze: We accurately found the Kols and the community of beating dogs and recommended GMGN to them. Because this resource is what I have accumulated in the past. I am a front-line beating dogs myself. I know which Kols are really powerful. We know some people in the NFT era. But we are not contacting them to promote rebates. Because they all have a strong ability to make money, they dont need to make money by rebates. What they care more about is whether using your tool can help them make more money. So the focus of our cooperation is whether we can help them make more timely iterations of their needs.
Nathan: Have you ever thought about what the ultimate form of GMGN will be? At what stage is GMGN currently in the process of moving towards its ultimate form?
Haze: We don’t think much about the “ultimate form” because the changes on the chain are too fast. We only think about what features to iterate next week. When our team is working on this thing (GMGN), all the points revolve around whether this function can be launched and whether this thing can be done. If I think it can be done, but the product team thinks it can’t, we will argue about it and then see whether it should be done.
Nathan: What do you think about the income structure? Will you issue coins?
Haze: We currently have only one source of income, which is transaction fees. If we need to face more intense competition in the future, we will consider whether we need to engage in a price war. But at present, this is not the focus we need to consider changing.
As for the coin issuance, to be honest, we are still discussing it internally and have not yet formed a final opinion. If we issue coins, one thing we are more worried about is whether users will pay more attention to the price of the coin and ignore the use of our products. If the stickiness of the product becomes insignificant due to the coin issuance, we think it is not worth the loss.
Nathan: What have you learned from the battles between NFT trading platforms in the past? Although NFT is now a sunset.
Haze: Whether it is OpenSea, Blur, or several other competing platforms at the time, I think the core problem is not the issue of issuing coins, but the self-degradation in the face of user needs. You can choose not to issue coins, but you have to change the product, and you have to attach great importance to user needs. In fact, when users are used to a platform, it is difficult to attract them. How degraded do you have to be to force users to leave? Another example is that the earliest derivatives exchange in the currency circle is BitMEX. When I was trading in coins, it had that interface. I remember that someone in the community suggested whether the interface could be changed or whether an APP could be put on it, but they didnt care, and watched them go from the leader of derivatives trading to the very end now. When we look at every innovator or leader on the cusp, the degeneration comes from no longer paying attention to user needs.
Nathan: How do you think you should keep yourself and your team hungry? In addition to GMGN, what other products and opportunities have you been paying attention to recently?
Haze: I think you have to keep paying attention to new things and don’t be biased. Just try out anything that is relatively new. If you happen to find that it can solve the user’s pain points, then you should try to make one.
In addition to GMGN, I am more concerned about the Payfi field. I think cross-border payment of cryptocurrency can solve big problems, but I havent figured out which landing form is the most correct, and which entry point is the most important? At present, it is difficult and needs to be thought about again, but even if you dont do it yourself, it is a cool thing if you can figure this problem out and get an answer.
Nathan: When do you think on-chain transactions will exceed CEXs transaction volume? What is your big prediction for the industry in the next few years?
Haze: I think the next four years will be the best four years for the Crypto market. Trump, as the President of the United States, issued a coin, which is also a disguised recognition of the legitimacy of Crypto. It is no longer a gray industry. In addition, Elon Musk, as a Crypto enthusiast, interacts frequently with Trump, which is unique in the history of the cryptocurrency circle. Therefore, the four years of Trumps administration are a very golden four years, and also the four years with the best liquidity.
The current transaction volume of on-chain assets is $130 billion; in November 2024, this figure was only $40 billion, and it surged from $40 billion to $130 billion in two months. In the next year, the transaction volume of on-chain assets is likely to exceed $1 trillion, which means that when it exceeds the transaction volume of CEX, there will be more wealth effects.
Nathan: By the way, what year were you born in and what’s your zodiac sign? Besides work, what else do you usually do?
Haze: I was born in August 1987, a Leo, and have been in Singapore for four years. When I took the MBTI test two years ago, I was an i person. Now, after work, I like to bask in the sun, sweat, and play tennis with a coach.
