Build in Bear Markets? AMA with Octopus Accelerator — Base Camp for Web3

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Omnity Network

8 min readNov 8, 2022

Twitter Spaces: AMA with Octopus Accelerator

There’s no question that we’re in the middle of a crypto winter. But builders are gonna build. And did you know that a lot of great projects are born in bear markets? Axie Infinity, Near Protocol, Uniswap, etc. They were all born in the last crypto winter. That’s why it’s important to spot and support projects with great potential even in the crypto winter.

The good news is that applications for Octopus Accelerator Winter Batch 2022 are now open. Octopus Accelerator is an accelerator powered by Octopus Network that focuses on supporting Web3 startups. In an AMA held November 4th, Woori, the manager of the Octopus Accelerator Program, introduced Octopus Accelerator and answered some questions from the community.

Check out some excerpts from this AMA below or you can listen to the full episode on Spotify.

Please introduce yourself.

Hi, I’m Woori. I’m a self-taught programmer and designer. I studied economics in college and worked at a variety of tech companies, such as MySpace and Uber. I love creating things, from dreaming up crazy unconventional ideas, to actually building them out. So, the Octopus Accelerator is the perfect playground for me!

I get to work with dozens of Web3 projects every few months. This has allowed me to see some patterns in early-stage Web3 projects and teams, what works and what doesn’t. I keep updating my mental model and trying to distill that for new Web3 projects so people don’t make the same mistakes and level up faster.

What is Octopus Network?

Octopus Network is a multichain network born to bootstrap and run appchains. By providing flexible, leased security, out-of-the-box interoperability, one-stop infrastructure, and a ready-to-be-engaged community, Octopus Network is unleashing an innovation wave on Web3. So that’s like the official answer. The dummy version is that it allows anyone to build their own blockchains without having to worry about validators and all of the stuff that guarantees their blockchain security.

What exactly is appchain?

Appchain stands for Application-specific blockchain. So let’s break that down. First of all, it is a blockchain. So, you’re building your own blockchain. But it’s different from a general blockchain in that it’s application specific, which means one blockchain runs one application — your application. So, you put those two concepts together — application + blockchain= appchain.

Why should we develop an appchain when we can deploy smart contracts instead?

First, appchains are more flexible. Unlike smart contracts, appchains allow developers to customize their applications in terms of governance structure, tokenomics design, and even underlying consensus algorithm, mostly thanks to Substrate.

Second, appchains can evolve quickly with legitimacy. Those two are usually difficult to balance, speed of evolution and legitimacy. It’s much easier for an appchain to reach an agreement on protocol upgrades than smart contracts. That means projects built on appchains have a much better user experience compared to smart contracts.

Now, last but not least — cost. That is definitely an important element, too. One of the costs of running a blockchain project is gas fees. So if you’re running on Ethereum, there are plenty of places where you have to pay gas fees.

In addition, the Octopus Network reduces the cost of launching appchains from millions of dollars to only a fraction of that cost. So, for those of you who know about the Polkadot system, where they do slot auctions, it’s usually in the 10s of millions of dollars during a bull market, and millions of dollars to win a slot right now. But with Octopus Network, you get pretty much the same thing for your needs, but at 10 to 100 times less cost. This is how Octopus Network helps Web3 to happen faster.

Why is the Octopus Accelerator Program known as a basecamp of Web3?

Exactly like you said — the Octopus Accelerator Program is a basecamp for Web3 because we provide a series of courses in tokenomics, crypto regulations, fund-raising, product design, community building, branding, etc, all the useful skills that will help Web3 startups succeed. And we also provide grant and financial support for Web3 projects with the potential to bootstrap — altogether 1 million dollars per year.

Courses are held quarterly, followed by a Showcase Day event to select the top five appchain projects and provide them with up to $250k in total rewards per batch. The Octopus Foundation will directly fund 20 appchain projects through the Octopus Accelerator Program each year, granting them up to $1M in total rewards per year.

Projects that successfully pass the process may also receive tech support and strategic partnerships, as well as the network effects from the Octopus ecosystem and Near ecosystem.

At Octopus Network, our mission is to unleash a new wave of innovation for Web3 by offering the best infrastructure to Substrate-based appchains. As part of this mission, the Octopus Accelerator Program is committed to helping founders start the next big thing in Web3.

Who is the Octopus Accelerator Program For?

The simple answer is any project that is a Web 3.0 application can apply. There are only a few exceptions. Number one, we do not support private chains. So, your chain has to be a public chain, meaning it has to launch, it has to be permissionless, etc. It can’t be like a Whatsapp project that JP Morgan built, which is like a private chain.

Besides that, as long as the project is decent, like no illegal stuff, we welcome them to apply. But going through the Accelerator does not guarantee you a spot to present on Showcase Day where we select 10 projects to pitch against each other.

Specifically, we are looking for two types of projects. The first type are Substrate based applications. Substrate is the development framework developed by Parity. If you build something using Substrate, Octopus Accelerator is the perfect Accelerator for you.

Please allow me to do a little bit of promotion for Substrate. If you’re not building on Substrate yet, I highly recommend you check that out. By building an appchain on Substrate, your application will be guaranteed processing power as well as saving on gas fees. So, you will be able to pay your validators or your gas fees in your own native token.

And a great example of that is Crypto Kitties with the Flow blockchain and Ronin Network for the Axie Infinity. These two projects migrated off of general blockchains onto their own blockchains. With that, they were able to scale and provide a really good user experience. So, if you guys haven’t explored building on Substrate yet, we highly recommend that and we think maybe the next wave of the crypto bull market will be these kinds of appchains leading the way to the multi-chain world.

The second type of project that we’re looking for is EVM-based GameFi projects. In general, we are very supportive of GameFi projects. Other than that, you’re welcome to apply, go through the Accelerator, meet other members of the Accelerator, learn from the mentors, etc.

When is the deadline for applications and when will the Octopus Accelerator Program winter batch start?

Applications are open until November 11th and the Program will start on November 14th.

Can you introduce the mentors and the courses for this winter batch?

The mentors come from three major groups. The first one is the core team of Octopus Network. We have Louis. He’s the founder of the Octopus Network. He’s a senior blockchain researcher and a tokenomics wizard. Louis will help you and give you some pointers in that direction.

We have Vivi, and she’s an expert in Web3 branding. And then we have Aaron. He is an early member of the Octopus Network and the head of the Octopus community. He’s built several successful Web3 communities in Southeast Asia and America, etc. And you have me. I’m a product designer, which is half designer and half technical.

And the second group of people we have is our Octopus investor DAO members. These are people who are financially invested in the Octopus Network and the ecosystem of appchains. They include 7X Ventures, D1 Ventures, and Big Brain Holdings among two dozen or so VCs and crypto funds.

The third group of mentors we have is the appchain CEOs. We have five live appchains and several in the auditing and booting stage. And these are started by some amazing founders and CEOs including Pandu, co-founder and CEO of Debio, an appchain for medical and bioinformatics services & data, and Danny, founder and CEO of Myriad social, a decentralized social networking platform.

What works and what doesn’t, when it comes to building a Web3 project?

I’ve seen over 500 applications over the past year, and I’ve read over 500 pitch decks. And to be honest, I think a large majority of those pitch decks were a little bit repetitive. So let’s say if NFT is the hot thing, all of a sudden, we’ll get 50 to 100 NFT applications. If Metaverse is the hot thing, it’s like 100 Metaverse things. If DeFi is the hot thing. It’s like 100 DeFi applications. That happens in every batch.

So, I’m quite curious to see what kind of applications we get from this batch as well. Because it’s crypto winter. There’s no big theme like DeFi summer or NFT summer. I’m just curious to see what people are building right now.

I think perseverance is quite important. Entrepreneurs should have real faith in their businesses and ideas instead of following what others are doing. But I think being flexible is also important. That creates a little bit of a conflict, right? You have to balance that.

There’s a really good book I read recently called Think Again. It says that the ability or the key characteristic of smart people and successful people was not their ability to just think, it was their ability to think again. So, if you had a hunch or a great idea, let that be challenged by yourself and your users. There’s no shame in thinking again, and making your ideas better, even if that means completely changing them 180 degrees based on logical reasoning.

I think be flexible with your idea, but be stern with your goal. Whatever you were trying to solve in the beginning, if you found there’s a big problem bugging you, you want to solve that. You should persevere in solving that, but how you solve that can change.

Also, I think generally the pain point or the problem that Web3 companies are trying to solve is usually unclear. Everyone gets bogged down with the details of technology, for example, what platform to build on. But what is the problem that keeps you up at night? What is the problem that will satisfy your entrepreneurial urge to solve? If you can articulate that, then everything else fits in more naturally. So, the problem should be put first. People should be able to understand what problem you’re trying to solve, and what technology you use to solve it is second.