Mainstream exchanges launched trading pairs at the first moment. Ape’s market value once exceeded 4 billion US dollars. Well-known game developers announced cooperation, and traditional powerful media such as “Times” also quickly announced that they would accept Ape to pay subscription fees.

On March 29th, 499X invited Ruby as the Founding partner of Incuba Alpha, Xiao as the Investment Director of HashKey Capital, Sandra as the Partner of Astro Girls Society and Research Analyst @nansen, Antonia as the Project manager of Republic Crypto, and Anh as the Founder of BlockACE to discuss "will the NFT projects launch a token become a new trend? "

 Anh: The question one is the project community of the profile for picture, the PFP, literally is very important. So can you all share how do you judge the community quality of an NFT project?

Sandra:  I think community can be formed or generated in a few different ways. But for Astro Girls, I think we really focus on 1 to 1 interactions. We want to make sure that everyone feels comfortable and confident that they can ask the team members anything. And I think that something very special about  in our project, which is more so that we wanna make it a very comfortable and genuine ecosystem. So it's like when you come into crypto, there's so many barriers to entry first of all, and sort of like when you want to break into crypto as well, if you don't have a strong personal network, it's very hard to break in. That's sort of like in line with elementary ship program and on boarding initiatives that we're setting up, and one way to facilitate that 1 to 1 interaction and a very personal and close interaction is that we're always active on our discord, and anyone can really reaches if they want to, we want to make it a very genuine space to foster personal relationships as well with our Astro Girls’s holder. We wanna make it so that the team of an all women focused team as well, we're all there to sort of support new people that want to come in. This is just something that we've been doing from the very start. So I think that's something our community really appreciates as well from us. And I think community also comes in both ways.  So we're really trying to build that relationship grown up.

Ruby: So there's several aspects when we're looking into the NFT projects. One is definitely who is in the community, like one center was representing like Astro Girls. There's a lot of people could be gathered around this concept. We are expecting to see that Girls interested in Web 3 and wanna get connected was the entrepreneurs in the investor within the group to coming into the space. And that would be a good point for us to evaluate whether the whole vision of the NFT fits who is into the community, as will be weird to see that if some people just wanna go and trade things coming into the community. So this is one if the vision of the NFT fits whether who is the people within the community.

Second is about the roadmap. So we're going to see how the community is going to expand themselves along the road was the people they gather together. So we see some of the NFTs trying to expand into the game, few some of the NFT trying to expand into the fashion field. If the founder and the core community members face their vision and face the milestone they are going to achieve as another criteria going to look into.

The third is about how the arts going there. But I see now, this is not the key criteria we're looking into.

Community, definitely the key. Because it's gathered the social value. I see that in the first place that NFT gather the social value of the people who holds it.  Second is about their vision, like all are they going to grow themselves along with the community. Third is about either the core community members of the community, they have the capabilities to achieve the milestones they are related. They are trying to achieve along the way of their road map.

Xiao: So from the opinion of an institutional investor, so we will judge the community from several perspective. One is how big is the target user or potential user of the whole PFP, for example, like for Bored Ape, maybe it has huge user base behind, because  it's breaking the crypto circle like they can reach the mainstream users or even in the Bored Ape into a real IP, so it has more possibility and more potential users. No matter how big is the community right now, it has a very huge potential in the future.  This will be a judgmental for a high quality community.

And another thing is, what's the fundamental things like Ruby just mentioned, was the story of the NFT and what's the road map, and what's the future plan? For me, I care a lot about the story behind the NFT. For example, some PFPs are especially for women, and some are really artful something like flower girls, I really like the paint. So the NFT itself should be some special features, like how can they be different from other PFP, so this is the more thing I care.

And also, I will look into some basic numbers of the communities, what's the user number right now? And how active is the community right now? So some basic numbers, like how many interaction of the Twitter or how many interaction are in the Telegram group. If the group are really active, I will say this might be a potential investment target for me.

Antonia: First of all, when I joined an NFT community, I would go to the MIME channel or fan art channel, or I would check their music videos on Tik Tok, Youtube, no matter on this court already like any other social media, I will check whether there are recreations that are made by their fans to express their love or to express that they just wanna spread it in any other media or type. I think the power of fans should be vibrant in a quality community. If your community don't have enough creators. I think you should think about why your community don't have enough creators. Maybe you don't provide tools, or maybe you're not open enough to encourage people to recreate your organ to spread it. I think like most of the NFT communities, they have this issue that.  they are cool, but I don't see many recreations, and I personally really value at this point.    

For me, I personally really like BAYC, crypto carbon community. I think they are top two, in my opinion, not Punk. And I don't see many recreations based on Punk, but I know that their IPs and companies and teams and partnerships around Punk.

Sandra: I think sort of like our project comes in both ways. So we're sort of trying to leverage the platform for our artists, our artist is actually from Shanghai. So we started chatting and she mentioned that she really wanted to break into the NFT space as an artist. And so that's the first part of the project, which is sort of to leverage NFT platform on Twitter or more generally other social media as well. And I guess in terms of like the artwork as well, we wanted to showcase her artwork in the crypto space and sort of help her build that platform through Astro Girls as well.

And I guess the second part would be the utility of the NFTs. The utility comes in a few parts, right now, we are launching a membership program where our holders will get to connect with different notable women in space. And I think when it comes to like on boarding, a lot of times we focus on the bigger picture. But I think these small interactions are catalysts to really affirm people's decision. To come into Web 3. And I think through membership program, we're also launching a 10 week education program where we sort of teach our holders a 0-to-1 type of course. We're gonna start with DeFi and move into NFTs, we'll also move into sort of how blockchain work as a whole.

Anh：Since the BYAC’s NFT liquidity already risen sharply, do you think when it leads to the outbreak of the entire NFT head project? And also do you think there is any possibility that it will choose to launch its own token in the future?

Xiao: I think for most of the NFT project, they're all definitely follow the step of Ape and issue their own token, especially for those PFP projects. For some smaller ones, issuing token is somehow for them to attract users. But if there's no future plan and no more utility to support the NFT or support the token, I think issuing a token will be end of this project. But for some bigger projects or maybe stronger team, if the team has a solid plan like how to add more value on the NFT, for example, like how to make them real IP instead of just a meme. If the the team can do something like this, or maybe to attract more users from traditional industries or maybe attract more celebrities hold this NFT or hold this PFP, maybe this kind of project will have a more potential. And in this case, issuing a token makes more sense. A token for them is just to enhance the community and enhance the consensus. So in this case, issuing a token will has value to this project. Otherwise, it's just just making profits and exit.

Ruby: I think most of the PFP projects will launch token in the short period. I think it's very critical for those PFP teams to think about when are they going to issue the token. We can see that Ape doing pretty good was there NFT projects by reaching a lot of new users, there's most of them are not the crypto users. When they are reaching to some of the NBA or pop stars trying to let them to hold Bored Ape and put them onto their social media is actually a free marketing for the whole community, and it attracts a lot of non crypto uses into the space which the NFT themselves capture the value of the social groups. And Ape is a token trying to release the liquidity of the community over there. So that was a success of operation because the project has been operate for quite long. The consensus was in the communities strong, the base, the people know Ape whether they hold it or not, they know it, and the awareness of the projects very strong within the market. So when they release the token, it was a strong liquidity over there, the market we're going to have a strong capital flow to go after this. They even have already larger story telling us that are going to big metaverse over there. And a lot of games coming around the IP of like the Yuga labs family. This is a success way to operate the project, because the consensus around the base asset, which are the NFTs are very strong. But for those projects where coming really early, they still need a lot of time to create communities consensus around IPs which are the NFTs. And it might not be good for them to issue the token regularly, because I'm from the financial background, maybe easier to have a matter from here that we see Yuga labs as a real estate operators. So that will be success in the Ape token will be a really good representative of the treasury assets within the company and also the derivative value of all the users and projects within their hands. But if the projects is going really young, there's not very strong assets within their treasury, issuing token means they're the assets are getting to the liquidity too early and maybe a damage for the community by that time.

Antonia: I think it might lead a round of ball, like the ball led by the NBA, Flow and DeFi projects. After BAYC, there will definitely be many more projects trying to learning or trying to issue cryptos, because they may not even know what is crypto, or they don't have many base knowledge about crypto, but they start NFTs metaverse is Web 3, like so many entrepreneurs who have no idea on layer one or DeFi, but they are trying to or they are contacting me and ask how to govern your community with an NFT. I think somehow NFTs are the same with cryptos in these communities, because they don't know cryptos and they have to govern their community, or they have to design their projects around the NFTs. Sometimes NFT is FTs, they are not non fungible tokens, they are fungible tokens, but with different contract, they are not found with tokens contracts or something. And I think there definitely will be an NFT goal. I think it's a good opportunity for NFT community leaders to learn about crypto, whether they launch a token or not. Because BAYC is like a teacher, like to teach them that you can use your community to launch cryptos and do more things like this, and you can market making or you can liquid providing and to import the whole system and all of the functions of DeFi to NFT communities and to educate more people to Web 3.

Sandra:I think it really depends on sort of like what the utility of the token is in the end of the day, and what the long term use case of the token is, I think BAYC had this plan a very long time ago, they launched the Ape token and they're hinting the utility as sort of like the in-game currency, which will be used in the metaverse game that they are launching later this year. For BAYC, I think that definitely built a very strong community base. And obviously, they've gained immense traction in the space, building out this platform for themselves. And their community is also very self sustaining. So I think the liquidity as a whole wouldn't be a problem. If smaller NFT projects were to launch a token, this might be a major barrier for holders later on. And also, I think a lot of projects might hop on the trend, because that's just how the space works. When you have a project that is very successful, and launches a token, for example, like the Ape token, a lot of other projects will come and follow. I think that's just the general mentality of people in the space and how the space actually works. But I think for our project at least, we're not planning to have a token anytime soon, that's not in the plans at all.

Anh: In the future, will NFT be the main business or a form of membership card for the project party? How to define a development model of NFT in the future, and what is its evolve process?

Antonia: I think it is already a symbol of membership like I ring down like rock radio and many other more, once you buy their NFT on opensea or any other where you have access to their discord or you have the access to their future road map. But on how to grow your community, I think I agree with Sandra that it depends on how you define the utilities of your token or the NFT, I think it's part of the product design and your community is your product. Speaking of products, there will definitely be several major types of NFTs in the near future, like, first of all, membership NFT or excess tickets. And if you like, pass card NFT or Irene Dao in the NFT.

Second of them is gaming items like Shoes in Stepn. Third of them is IP shares, as it bears, and they will represent a series of comprehensive entertainment functions that are still unknown to be designed or to be sure. But I'm really expecting the third type of IP shares synthetic, because I know like lots of the influences or kols, they are planning on these kind of projects, and they are trying to make this fun in metaverse.

Xiao: I think there has to be more utilities attached to those NFTs, not just collectables or is not just a badge. So we need to think what's standing behind the membership. Maybe there's a community and this group of people, they have something in common. And maybe they have a same culture background. So there's some possibility to commercialize those common things of this private group or public community. I will think there are some more possibility of the utility of NFT itself. First of all,  many NFT shows the utility just like fungible tokens.  For example, especially in gaming scenarios, so many players they will buy a lot of NFT at a floor price. If this players is also an investor, so in this case, the NFT is just like fungible token. So if they buy a lot of NFT or similar NFT at a similar price, this non fungible token, somehow, just like fungible token, I will say in the future, more and more NFT will show this feature as well.

Some NFT will show the future of securities as well. Putting aside the regulatory issue, we need to affect that some NFT, they do has the same utility as shares. For example, if you hold this NFT, you can get a dividend or you can get a share of the whole project revenue, or maybe you have token insurance expectation of these projects. The NFT will also be something like shares for you to get the future token or future share of the whole Dao. I'm guessing there will be more type of utilities in NFT space. And sometimes they can be a combination of this whole utility.

Ruby: I've seen that the NFT like Web 3 identity. They are not only like unlocks to turn you to, they was in the crypto community or Web 3 community. We're seeing a lot of integration outside of the crypto world as well. For example, was in some of the casinos in the Southeast Asia is trying to accept that holders or the Punk user super VIP, and some of the luxury brands are also mapping the existing identity of their vip system to the NFT holders. So we're expecting to see. So when you form that identity within the Web 3 group were identity on chain, we're seeing a greater trend, the outside of the crypto world. They are accepting this identity, and this is an identity could unlock, some special privilege was in the real world as well. So super bullish on NFT.

Sandra: I think obviously, the space is still very new, and we're obviously still very early into the NFT scene. We've seen a lot of breakthroughs just this year itself late last year, and sort of like this space is constantly growing. I think this will also open up a lot of additional opportunities later on. But I think right now, we've been seeing a lot membership NFTs as well. And I think this is also something that Astro Girls is driving for, sort of like having a very exclusive scored and sort of helping the community that way. I think it's very important to sort of just know what the use cases are for your NFTs, if you're planning to launch one, and sort of seeing where the market is as well. But more generally like I'm also super bullish on the NFT. I think for beginners who are wanting to break into crypto, I think NFT is also a very viable method to enter. And obviously we've been seeing that with sort of like newer collections as well, they are bringing in people who might not know a single thing about crypto, but they know about NFTs. So I think in that case as well, it opens up a lot of opportunities later on, especially with like the intersection of entities and DeFi. We're seeing a lot of like NFT landing, borrowing platforms as well. But more generally like variable issue NFTs and sort of the opportunities that NFTs will provide in the future.

Anh：Which type of NFT asset has better attributes, native NFT such as Ape, virtual land or NFT cast by famous IP, how to define their value?

Xiao: I think now there already several top projects like crypto Punk and Bored Ape. I don't think these examples can be 100 % copied in the future. For future project, I would say there has to be some differentiation. For example, like crypto Punk is more like Bitcoin, is a pretty crypto native. And Bored Ape is somehow like a traditional IP like Disney. So for future potential top project, there has to be more differentiation. I will say Bored Ape is a very good example of PFP issuing token, but for the other things, maybe the token price will be good, but it's not another legend, because after all, it's a follower. And also for the followers, they need to have a as strong team as for Ape is, like they have a lot of plan behind the pictures like breaking the crypto circle, but I don't think other project can be as successful as Bored Ape was.

Ruby: I think it's too early to choose between like PFPs or virtual land or like IP, and each of them will have their own user, because we're still so early. Maybe if they're like 100 million people users coming into the NFT space where we’re still only capturing one of out, almost below 10 % of the total users. But it really depends on how they operate. As I said that for the PFP NFTs, the key is the community and the culture around the community and how you represent the culture and the spirits of the community weather on NFT and virtual road map. And if you're trying to build a virtual land, so how is the social platform is going to be built upon your virtual land, are you going to introduce a lot of like game team into your landscape, and are you going to build up the social networks for some specific land around the land. This is super important what is the utility of the line would like to be? And are there any good financial instruments to be supported around the virtual land? And for the IPs, they definitely have their users as well. So their question is, how are they going to bring their original user of the IPs into crypto? They are used to be the consumers of the IP within the Web 2 world, how are you going to bring them onto Web 3? And how are you going to lead them to get used to how the game is play within Web 3?

Sandra: I think NFTs in terms of like land assets, I think that's one thing that I'm looking at personally. There are huge opportunities there, looking into general like macro trend. We're sort of seeing that PFPs are still gonna be here in the next 2 to 3 years maybe. I think it's just a very viable way to sort of showcase your identity, their PFPs, and I don't think that it will go away anytime soon. But more so I think we're gonna see more projects coming in and sort of proving their place in the space as well. Personally, just looking into these assets, not really looking in too much at the moment.

Xiao: Actually looking for more broadly, NFT, for example, like financial assets, something like a bonds, because every bond is different, especially for the interest rates or for the maturity. Or this bond can also be something like a locked tokens. So this kind of asset should also be an NFT. So I personally more interested in this kind of asset instead of pure collect bones or personal profile pictures. I will personally pay more attention on financial NFTs.

From the remarks of the guests, we can understand that the NFT projects issue a token will basically become a hot topic and mainstream in the next period of time.

But we must also realize that the success of Apcoin is based on the premise that BAYC already has a huge community and star support, and the accumulated consensus supports the transaction volume and market value of Ape.

Will all NFT projects replicate Ape's success in the future? This problem still needs to return to the fundamentals of a project, including the construction of project community, the application of ecological, the token model design and etc. Investors should treat it rationally .