Original Title: Déjà Vu: Zora's Flywheel

Original Author: dpycm

Original Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

Disclaimer: This article is for reference only and does not constitute any financial advice. The author of this article holds personal investments in the mentioned token. Any views expressed herein are the author's personal views and should not be taken as a basis for investment decisions or as investment advice or recommendations.

Why does Zora give off a familiar feeling—and why that feeling is a good one.

This strange feeling is like you've already experienced what is happening now to some extent.

I am sure everyone has experienced déjà vu at some point in their lives—whether it's a quote, an event, or a simple interaction.

Strangely enough, I had this feeling again recently when reading about Zora's flywheel. It immediately took me back to October 2024 when I first read about the Virtual Economic Flywheel—deja vu.

Will Zora repeat history this time?

SocialFi

As early as August 2023, with the rising discussions on consumer applications in the Cryptocurrency Twitter community (CT), we witnessed the emergence of Friend.tech. Participants invested in keys of their favorite Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) in exchange for access to private chat rooms, participation in price speculation, and airdrop opportunities.

However, after a failed token launch, users dwindled, and Friend.tech quickly faded from people's sight.

Was SocialFi's emergence too premature? Or was its underlying mechanism insufficient to attract organic users? More importantly, as cryptocurrency gains more attention, will consumer applications once again become a hot topic?

Zora

https://zora.co/

Unlike Friend.tech, Zora is an on-chain social network similar in function to Instagram. Its uniqueness lies in tokenizing every profile and post, allowing creators to directly monetize from their content.

Zora Creator Profile: https://zora.co/@chloe

How It Works

$ZORA Flywheel

$ZORA Flywheel:

· Each profile is tokenized

· Every post you make is tokenized

· Every post you make is paired with your Creator Coin

· All Creator Coins are paired with $ZORA

Each transaction incurs a 3% fee. This helps creators earn from every transaction on their posts or profiles.

3% Fee

The fee model is designed to benefit all stakeholders.

Advertising

https://paragraph.com/@socialgraphventures/zora-the-thesis

Advertising is a crucial part of social media. Zora is pioneering the peer-to-peer advertising market, enabling the implementation of micro-targeted advertising strategies. If Zora can execute effectively, it has tremendous profit potential.

Tokenomics

The total supply of $ZORA tokens is 10 billion:

· Community Incentives: 20%

· Airdrop: 10%

· Liquidity: 5%

· Investors: 26.1%

· Reserve Assets: 20%

· Team: 18.9%

https://support.zora.co/en/articles/4797185

Unlocking

· Airdrop, Community Incentives, and Liquidity: A total of 35% will fully unlock on April 23, 2025, during the Token Generation Event (TGE).

· Team and Investors: Locked for 6 months post-TGE, followed by monthly linear vesting over 36 months.

· Reserve Assets: Locked for 6 months post-TGE, followed by monthly linear vesting over 48 months.

This means that on October 23, 2025, the team and investors will unlock for the first time.

Fundraising

https://cryptorank.io/ico/zoraco

Zora has completed three rounds of fundraising, with the largest raising $50 million, reaching a valuation of $6 billion. It is worth mentioning that as of the time of writing this article, ZORA's Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) is $8 billion, about 33% higher than the valuation from the last fundraising round.

Price Trend

Looks familiar? That's the Virtual price trend.

Despite being listed for only a few months, $ZORA went through a period of low interest and activity—almost like a "seller clearance" washout. However, through the integration of its core application and the driving force of the flywheel effect, $ZORA is once again gaining momentum and gradually regaining market attention.

Team

Social Graph Ventures gave a great summary of this team:

· The team comes from a Coinbase background, has maintained rapid growth, and focuses on building a unique experience that combines native crypto and Web2 native UX.

· They have advanced the field with new concepts such as bond-curve-based pricing coins, content-based tokenization, and recommendation mechanisms. Zora has demonstrated a willingness to openly experiment and rapidly build, qualities that we value as the team explores new social, creator, and profit mechanisms.

· Jacob Horne - Co-Founder and CEO, former Coinbase product manager, responsible for driving Coinbase's two most outstanding product lines, USDC and Coinbase Ventures. He focuses on Ethereum and DeFi integration. Jacob is renowned for his deep thinking on cryptocurrency market design, NFTs, and creator monetization. He is a public face of Zora, frequently sharing the vision and latest updates through interviews and AMAs. He previously worked on a crypto fashion project and has been involved in Zora's development since 2019.

· Dee Goens - Co-Founder, former Coinbase marketer, a veteran of the early NFT movement and creative community. Dee played a key role in shaping Zora's early ecosystem partnerships and community strategies. He is dedicated to enabling minority creators and emerging digital cultural groups to use Zora.

· Tyson Battistella - Co-Founder and CTO, Zora's Head of Engineering. Tyson also previously worked at Coinbase, overseeing smart contract infrastructure development. He designed many of the protocol components currently used by Zora, including its minting tool and L2 integration. Zora's token has raised $60 million in funding and recently received approximately $600 million in investment from Haun Ventures. According to the team, Zora's "development path" will continue for years to come.

Reflection

With a strong flywheel model, intuitive UI/UX, support from the Base team, and favorable bullish market conditions, I believe Zora can continue to rise through the reflexivity effect.

Price increase → Increased interest in Zora → More activity → Price increase.

Remember when CT unanimously agreed that Coinbase was the best on-chain retail onboarding choice? (We're all shouting consumer apps!!)

Now, with new Base app integrations, Zora is in an excellent position to benefit from this wave of user adoption—if it really comes. Just as Friend.tech attracted attention, Zora will do the same. This usually starts with curious content creators and KOLs creating profiles to ride the wave, and then this reflexivity will continue to rise.

An independent team is gradually building Zora's infrastructure: terminals, bots, sniper tools, and more. Meanwhile, traders have already started actively engaging in profile and content transactions. All of this inevitably brings to mind the early 2023 SocialFi frenzy, hinting at a new wave on the horizon.

That being said, I do have some concerns—mainly about whether SocialFi still maintains enough narrative power. We have seen its performance in the early stages of this cycle, so it might not feel as fresh or exciting. In contrast, as early as the fourth quarter of 2024, Virtual perfectly aligned with the mainstream.

https://dune.com/zorateam/coins

Compared to the TGE period, Zora's metrics do not look ideal, but after the recent price surge, they have started to rebound. The market is forward-looking, and we need to be forward-looking as well—not only predicting the current state but also anticipating potential future directions. Therefore, I believe that as the reflexive cycle progresses, the metrics will continue to improve.

A good narrative does not start with 100% consensus

I remember during the initial release of the Virtual token, I shared my theory and promoted it loudly. Many participants hesitated simply because it was not on the Solana platform. This was followed by a lot of panic, uncertainty, and doubt. But just a few weeks later, with the emergence of strong participants and broader acceptance, the price skyrocketed exponentially. The current era inevitably reminds me of that period.

Condition > Narrative

Overall, I believe the investment is sound, and the specific position size depends on individual judgment. Despite $ZORA surging over 700% in the past week, I still think there is room for further upside in the coming months.

It only takes one prominent creator to ignite the frenzy.

Hope you enjoy this article, cheers!

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