An Essay by Ontology’s Marketing Director
It hasn’t been long since I joined the blockchain industry, but I have experienced numerous hardships in other fields, such as real estate, e-sports, new retail, pan-entertainment, and luxury goods. Since first joining Ontology, I have been determined to utilize my previous experience to bring Ontology to a higher level. During this process, it was inevitable that I would encounter different situations and problems with users, partners, investors, and teams. Therefore, I would like to take the opportunity today to share some of my thoughts with you, not as the Marketing Director of Ontology, but simply as a third party, as I analyze Ontology.
First, what is Ontology?
In my eyes, Ontology is a public chain. As a public chain, first and foremost, it needs to be public and serve the public, but, more importantly, its technology must be needed by the public. Throughout the development of the Internet, operating systems and programming languages, evolving into an all-inclusive existence has always been based on need and consequently demand.
Similarly, Ontology is also following this path of development, starting from a single point of data identity and data privacy, and finally forming a real public chain. But this process takes time. At this moment in time, I don’t know how long it will take from the first point to the public chain. Unfortunately, the team cannot play a decisive role in this; instead, it’s the invisible hand of the market. When the market shows significant demand, Ontology will move forward very quickly. However, when the market lacks demand, it may cause a crisis for the project. This problem may be caused by changes within the industry, a change in mass consumption habits, or a variety of other reasons. It is dangerous to assume all problems stem from Ontology itself. For instance, shortly before TikTok came out, there were similar products on the market, but at that time, mobile phone capability, Internet speeds, account systems, online shopping modes, and online payment did not support such a pan-entertainment ecosystem. There was no true demand for users, so it was impossible to develop a killer product like TikTok.
Second, what should a public chain be like?
In the previous section, I described my most basic understanding of Ontology. Next, I will continue to elaborate more about Ontology. This is not to show how good Ontology is, but actually to identify the room for improvement.
- Technology
In order to become a real public chain and meet the standards I have just stated, the most vital element is the performance of the chain; the underlying strength that supports its basic vision. The vision of Ontology is to provide each person with a data identity that belongs to the individual independently, namely through the ONT ID system. So, can the current or future iterations of Ontology support a multi-billion level user data interaction and ensure a good user experience? Is it possible for individual users or oligopolistic platforms to access it smoothly? In my opinion, there is no need to mention the technological side here. All projects should follow the white papers they put forth, put their feet on the ground, and fulfill their promises along the way. The first step is to achieve the basic technical reserves described in your vision. Although a project may fail at some points as they move toward the vision, it’s a road one must take, difficult and tortuous but with a bright future. If the core technologies are neglected or even abandoned because of goals too lofty, then I can almost guarantee that this chain will never become a true public chain, let alone one with a prosperous future.
But there is another problem. The so-called “basic technology reserve” must not be static, but instead, it must constantly adapt to market changes and try its best to address all possible business scenarios. This is actually the topic I find most interesting in the blockchain industry. One of the core concepts of blockchain is its “distributed” nature. A public chain, if making good use of distributed collaboration, will reach its end goal significantly quicker. While the Internet took decades to reach its current point, a public chain may not take so long.
Distributed collaboration allows community builders to come up with ideas, express those ideas, build the required technology, plan for the future structure of the technology, and then complete the final packaging. I must say that this is an efficient collaboration approach. A benefit of a core team is its ability to use technology and resources to achieve linear collaboration and achieve goals quickly. But the disadvantages are also obvious: innovation of technology is not enough. Talented community developers are needed, too. The combination of using different technical advantages and different living environments will enrich the needs of an industry in the future, thus breaking through the difficulties. I have always believed that a good idea is like a collision, a collision of different temperatures, different living environments or even different cultural backgrounds, often producing amazing sparks. From my personal perspective, the method I prefer to take when I do things is to crossover; that is, cross-border integration. In fact, I prefer not to read biographies of the so-called “successful people”. I believe it must be acknowledged that their chances of success may have be very different when you take into account their previous academic qualifications, work experience and life experience.
Objectively speaking, the technical aspects of Ontology are very solid. Founders or CTOs of many high-quality projects I have spoken with have told me more than once that Ontology’s technical team is one of the best and most powerful they have ever seen. These encouraging words are urging us to move forward. But this does not mean that the project needs to be totally dependent on distributed collaboration. The Achilles heel of the distributed collaboration is the control of efficiency, or the lack of control. Therefore, the best compromise is a project with a strong core team and a dynamic developer community, where ideas can be synthesized and distributed quickly, allowing the project explore and develop in the most agile way. If an idea is feasible, then a strong core team will join to complete product packaging and launching. Another disadvantage of distributed system is in the operation and marketing of products, which will be analyzed later.
Going back to the main point, I think from a technical perspective, the public chain must show the following:
1. Fortitude: The underlying technology must be safe with high performance;
2. Imagination: There must be infinite possibility in the development of underlying technology;
3. Dynamism: There must be continuous planning for further updates and integration;
4. Structure: As mentioned, a strong core development team combined with a multi-dimensional team of community builders is key;
5. Capability: The team must show a truly powerful level of thinking
- Product
Do public blockchains really need to have their own products? This seems to be a highly-debated topic among many blockchain projects. Some teams believe that providing technical structure and performance is what public chains should focus on; whereas others believe that there must be core ecological products, giving the example of the success of iOS being largely bolstered by the App Store. Some go further to say that having a successful core product is simply not enough; you also need killer apps, like WeChat and Alipay. Of course, some teams claim that none of these matter and that having white papers and tokens on the exchange is enough.
From my point of the view, the second idea is most interesting.
There is nothing wrong with the first idea of providing technical structure and performance but turning it into reality is a tall order. First, it must be pointed out that the blockchain industry, up until now, does not have a very high bar. So, when an oligopolistic competitor enters the arena, you will find that your technology and performance are nothing in comparison. You might say, using the analogy of bidding, the bid of the oligarchs will be much higher than yours. Furthermore, due to the tight correlation between blockchain and assets, people are generally reluctant to take the risk of choosing low-cost services. Think of it this way, would you store your valuable assets in a safe at a small store? It is simply too costly and difficult to build trust. In addition, the core logic of bidding is not to lower your price quotation, but to reduce or remove unnecessary costs. Therefore, when competing with oligarchs, there are almost no positives. They have a well-developed system of cost control formed in their traditional industry. In the context of the current blockchain industry, it’s fair to say that we would have no chance of winning.
The third idea of killer apps as well as a successful core product is not realistic. Most projects in the industry can’t develop a killer app overnight. It’s not that they are incapable of doing so, the problem is they follow misguided logic. The focus of a killer app is whether anyone uses it, or more simply providing convenience or solving a pain point. The user traffic-based economic model did not produce killer apps when it first appeared, but instead after that, as more and more users began using them. At this time, it was discovered that user traffic can be monetized easily. To illustrate this, I’d like to share an example I have heard since childhood. My uncle was very fond of stock trading when I was a child. As you may have heard, at that time, stock-trading was very much like today’s cryptocurrency market. No one could claim they knew everything about it. More often than not, a group of people would come together and discuss the market. But then, my uncle discovered a way of making a profit and consequently, made a fortune from it. At the time, when people traded stocks, many of them would gather at the stock exchange. Some people won, some people lost, some people were happy, and some were sad. But they had one thing in common, they all had to eat and drink. My uncle saw the opportunity and switched from trading stocks to selling lunch to traders. Later, just as today’s crypto trading, there appeared another model. When someone made some money from stock trading, he would come to my uncle’s stall and treat everyone there to a delicious chicken leg with people, in turn, wishing him to earn more tomorrow. The reason I tell this story is that the traffic is not due to the delicious and cheap lunch provided by my uncle, but something far more important.
The takeaway here is not to try and generate traffic, but instead, to direct it towards your product. In other words, acquiring traffic is a skilled task and throwing money at it won’t truly help you. Recently, there have been many peers or cross-industry experts asking me how the traffic economy should be formed and how to make a profit. But I feel everyone has got the wrong end of the stick in believing that they need to create traffic. Creating traffic is a huge false proposition; in my opinion, you cannot achieve it in industries that haven’t reached a certain level of industry barriers. What we should do more is convert traffic into its own product process as it passes by. Or, we should go and find free traffic.
The second idea of a successful core product mentions the importance of App Store to iOS, which I personally think is a suitable comparison for the public chain. But its model should be more inclined to distributed collaboration. At present, the strategy adopted by many projects is to give out rewards in a distributed manner to allow a person or a team to complete an independent app, go online and buy a lot of apps themselves or modify them to get them online. I won’t go into detail about buying an app. Let’s instead talk about why the distributed approach is unsuccessful: it’s too cumbersome. Killer applications are generated by iteration. The Taobao empire was not a one-off process. There were many difficult problems in the development process. I experienced the time when WeChat Payment and Alipay were doing ground promotion, and they were hardly surviving. Therefore, when its team and resources are lacking, it is not easy for an independent app to go online. However, if the threshold of development is very low and its easy to get started, there is still the chance to make a difference. So, imagine, if you build a unique App Store through the public chain, you can create an app in a distributed way, and share the benefits openly, transparently and efficiently. Will this model develop faster and become more attractive?
Take Ontology as an example, if Ontology uses ONTO as a carrier of an application store, or develops an ONT Store separately, developers around the world could connect directly through the ONT ID to form trust cooperation and distribute revenue rationally, which will be even more close to the target of Ontology. In such an environment, we would need more open-minded thinking to bring about breakthroughs and miracles. In fact, this is the core reason for the blockchain project stagnation. We are sitting on the most advanced or most reasonable distributed collaborative resources, but we are using the previous model of the Internet. We abandon our advantages and instead, trying to make use of our disadvantages. Therefore, it’s hard to be successful.
To sum up, in terms of product, my thoughts are:
1. The public chain needs to have products, but the form of the product should be a studio, a working platform, or even a factory;
2. The public chain should encourage the product to solve the pain points and optimize the product mode. It should not just be used for money realization so that it can achieve long-term development.
3. The development and design of the product must combine the characteristics of the blockchain, or the characteristics and vision of the blockchain, and should not be restrained to the logic of Internet products.
- Marketing
I didn’t want to talk about marketing because it is the area that I specialize in, and therefore, it could be easy to dig holes for myself. But I would be remiss not to mention it.
The marketing and operational approaches in the current industry, based on my observations and experience, leave me with little to say. Everything goes around with one purpose — to sell tokens. No matter how fancy the package is, the strategy is similar.
From my personal point of view, I think the only thing that needs to be done in terms of marketing is to help the project achieve the vision stated in the white paper. Many people will say that the realization of that vision requires selling tokens. However, this view is vulnerable in my opinion. If the user doesn’t know if your vision can be achieved, why buy your token? It’s would be like me promising to be the best marketing director in the world and then asking you to invest 10,000 BTCs. Looking at today’s landscape, investment bubbles, such as Uber and WeWork, have been burst mostly due to the above situations. People have become less and less hopeful about unfulfilled visions, let alone investing in them.
I think the basic criterion for marketing is not to carry out lead and suspense marketing. The progress of the project should be synchronized to investors and potential investors in real-time, and it should guide users to properly absorb and understand relevant information and subsequently grow with the users, rather than simply sharing positive news. I believe that if some of my peers, such as reporters who have interviewed me, or partners that I have talked to, read this, they may remember that I once said: if news of cooperation with traditional megacompanies is released easily and through PR, then in most cases, the news lacks authenticity and reliability. The bigger the cooperation, the more time it takes, paying attention to every detail, such as the signing of a confidentiality agreement.
Overall, my point is that the marketing of a public chain should help its technology and products gain the time and resources needed to be successful. I can say with certainty that the development of the public chain should continue to follow the signals of the market. Only when more people are educated through the market will there be infinite possibilities for the future. It doesn’t matter whether the public chain requires more ecosystem development or more token holders.
In addition, I have seen and listened to many presentations and speeches from projects at different conferences. I think some speakers may not have figured out who the audiences are, what they want to listen to and what should be shared. This is a waste of the investor’s money to some extent. Disclaimer: I also need improvement in this area.
So, from a marketing perspective, I think what we have to do is:
1. Introduce technology and help users gain more understanding to generate more distributed collaboration;
2. Help products enter a wider market, and then continue to improve and enrich the product matrix;
3. After obtaining market-wide recognition, user conversion is required. It is necessary to understand that only by continuously expanding the reach of users can we continue to promote the conversion.
Postscript
The purpose of writing this article is not to express cynicism, nor to speak at random. In fact, every word has been carefully considered. By stepping out of my role as a Marketing Director, I have been able to share a lot of my thoughts. But returning to reality: as an open platform with deep technical accumulation, Ontology is always ready to welcome people from all walks of life to join hands with us to contribute to the existing technologies and product models.
On this basis, we have opened up one of the largest non-profit university campuses in the global blockchain industry, without any promotion of commercial activities.
Starting from October this year, the Ontology Global University Workshop will be officially launched. The first workshop will be held on October 19th at Seoul National University, the most prestigious university in Korea. After, it will cover more than a dozen well-known universities across the Pacific Ocean in America. Next, the tour will cover Japan, Russia and even the continent of Europe. At the moment, the total number of workshops stands at 81.
I still remember when I was listening to the speech by our Founder LI Jun, he asked “How many technical waves can a person catch in one’s whole life? The rapid development of blockchain technology is on the cusp of something great.” Many college students or entrepreneurs have begun to notice this industry, following the ups and downs of the market, trying their hand at various dApps. The purpose of our Global University Workshop is to directly unveil this layer of mystery through courses on core technology development and business perspective analysis so that people will have a better and clearer understanding of the product, the technology, and its business models. I also believe that the resilience of students and people with different industry experience will make this industry more diverse and exciting.
This event will focus on:
1. Mastering the power of future core developers. College students, especially computer-related majors, will determine the future direction of blockchain technology to a certain extent, rather than the so-called KOLs on social media platforms today;
2. Improving the technology of the project, correcting product direction, and obtaining a real interface that can link reality and the virtual world;
3. Creating your own technical strengths and brand image. At present, it is rare to see in the blockchain industry that a real consensus is created. The establishment of consensus is based on the same collaboration platform and requires a shared tool. Ontology’s platform and its decentralized identity protocol ONT ID will show real consensus in the future;
4. Introducing more people to blockchain in a positive manner through the efforts of Ontology. We would be extremely proud If the industry could witness an overall improvement because of Ontology’s efforts.
The goals of this event are to:
1. Build a more dynamic and younger user community and vertical technical community;
2. Cultivate more efficient and easy-to-use ecosystem tools;
3. Attract expert and consultants from all fields and further penetrate the American market and even the global market;
4. to combine the iterative update and distributed collaboration of the Ontology core team.
We will use the following approaches:
1. Bounty Program + Angel Investment
2. Incubation Program + Consulting Services
3. Academic Study + Online University
Finally, I hope that more like-minded partners will join us, whether it is to support Ontology or myself. Your support for the Global University Workshop tour is much appreciated.
We will always strive for better.
For more information on Ontology’s Global University Workshop, please visit our official website: ont.io
Please feel free to contact us and share your ideas via email to contact@ont.io
