Mable Jiang: Why Did I Create the Social Protocol Trends?

On July 17, Mable Jiang, Chief Growth Officer of Stepn's parent company FSL, announced her departure and the founding of the social protocol Trends.

Below is Mable's interpretation of the new Trends protocol:

I am excited to announce the founding of Trends: Trends is a social protocol anchored in value and dedicated to advancing the information finance frontier. At the same time, this is also a farewell to a journey: my full-time role at FSL has come to an end, but I will continue to support the company in an advisory capacity. I will write a separate article to reflect on this extraordinary journey.

Trends has received early support from numerous outstanding founders and angel investors, whose trust in the vision has not only driven us forward but also brought responsibility: Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, Solana Foundation Chair Lily Liu, Jupiter co-founders Meow & Siong, Kaito founder Yu Hu, LayerZero co-founder Bryan Pellegrino, Pendle Finance co-founders TN Lee, Drift Protocol co-founders Cindy Leow & David Lu, Jambo Technology co-founders Alice & James Zhang, Magic Eden co-founder Zhuoxun Yin and former CMO Tiffany, Multicoin Capital co-founder Tushar Jain, FSL co-founders Jerry Huang, Yawn Rong & CEO Shiti Maghani, Su Zhu, Bonk.fun core contributor Nicolas, Dragonfly Capital Partner GM, Folius Ventures founder Jason Kam, among others.

Through years of exploration of mainstreaming crypto applications, I have distilled three first principles:

· Every true Web3 innovation breakthrough stems from a significant reduction in friction for value transfer—2017's ICOs, 2020's DeFi Summer, and even 2023's Pump.fun have all proven this. The next wave of innovation will similarly come with a 100x increase in efficiency in value transfer.

· Tokens are fundamentally information containers, and social media has long been the most active market for information; if each post can be mapped to a token, information flow and value transfer will eventually merge as one.

· On-chain issuance and value transfer costs will continue to decrease, and the social scene is already prepared for this convergence.

Based on these thoughts, we have launched Trends: it will first serve as an on-chain curation layer for X (formerly Twitter), then expand to any open content such as TikTok, and eventually grow into a social protocol operated collaboratively by on-chain capital (internet capital). Each piece of content has its own curve, volatility, and tipping point; accounts that consistently produce or discover high-consensus content will accumulate tamper-resistant on-chain reputation.

AI is driving down content production costs to near zero. When views, likes, or even entire posts can be generated in bulk for mere cents, on-chain capital becomes the sole scarce and transparent true consensus signal. Trends bridges the gap from conviction to P&L: boosting engagement requires real money, and open protocols enable everyone to have equal participation opportunities.

In my view, this is what true "mass adoption" looks like: people's everyday actions carry economic weight. Imagine this, 1 like = 1 dollar: each click automatically buys along the curve, with the exit multiple pre-set. Opinion equals position, all in one go.

We are standing at the dawn of a new era.

We are defining a whole new asset class.

Molding new behavior has never been easy, but the trend is good.

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