Dialogue with HAZE: How did GMGN become a paradise for Memecoin traders?

Editor | Wu Talks about Blockchain

Recently, the well-known grid trader HAZE was dubbed the "idiot who beats dogs" because of his account that lost $350,000 in meme speculation. In this podcast, we talked to him about the process of meme speculation and the professional meme on-chain tool GMGN that he co-founded. With the hot meme market, GMGN, an internal startup product, has become a hot project with very impressive daily revenue. Whether GMGN will create a "idiot index" based on HAZE's experience and its future development plan are also the focus of this podcast discussion.

According to @adam_tehc's Dune data panel, the on-chain MEME trading tool GMGN reached its current trading volume peak on November 17, with a single-day trading volume of US$72 million, second only to PHOTON (US$330 million) and exceeding BULLX (US$67 million). The product line ranked second, with a single-day fee income of US$710,000 and a single-day user number of 25,000.

Please note that the content of this article is the personal opinion of the interviewee and does not represent the opinion of Wu Shuo. Wu Shuo does not endorse any tokens or projects. Readers are advised to strictly abide by local laws and regulations. On-chain tools have great security risks, so readers are advised to use them with caution.

Why is HAZE called Memecoin "idiot"?

Colin: Hello everyone, welcome to this episode of our podcast. This episode is also with our old friend HAZE. He has also been popular on Twitter recently. This time it is a lighter topic. HAZE, can you first tell us why you are called the "idiot indicator" in Memecoin speculation? Tell us about it.

HAZE: Hello everyone, I am HAZE, and I am the consultant of the GMGN project. The so-called "idiot" is actually very simple, that is, constantly playing with local dogs on the chain, all kinds of rushes, big funds rush, and small funds rush. But I think that to break the inherent thinking, you still have to pay tuition. If you use some traditional secondary market takeover thinking, or the investment thinking of value coins to play Memecoin, you will basically be beaten to a bloody pulp. In the end, all the tuition fees that should be paid were paid to the chain, and became the liquidity of the major dog-beating groups. This is why 350,000 US dollars were lost. But this account was used for dog-beating at the earliest, which is a typical "tuition account". It is still making money recently. If you don't make money recently, you are really a fool, hahaha.

Origin and naming of GMGN products

Colin: I remember that when we talked before, Memecoin was not very popular yet, but you started working on this product? Can you tell me about the history of this product?

HAZE: That's right. Last year, because I like to pay attention to new products, my entire investment thinking system is product-driven. During the DeFi period, my investment was relatively smooth, but the performance of value coins has not been very good this year. So I have been looking for new narratives. But at the beginning, I saw the product UniBot. It solves the transaction speed problem of users on the Ethereum chain, allowing users to get the early costs of some projects in advance. I think this product solves some rigid needs of users and the business model is also very good. But after the experience, I always feel that products like TG Bot are definitely not popular user experience and somatosensory.

So at that time I was thinking, can we make a product with a good experience, which can not only allow people to quickly start projects, but also make the whole visualization and experience data intuitive and smooth. In July last year, there was an independent team who had the ability to do this, but they asked me, what should the product be called? I said, let's call it GMGN.

In terms of naming, I think a good name is half the battle. GMGN itself is a Crypto native thing in the on-chain community. I want to use some words that originated from the community language to name this product. I think GMGN is a very friendly, catchy and simple name. When playing with NFTs, people often used greetings such as GM (Good Morning) and GN (Good Night). So we hope that this product will provide community users with an excellent user experience and be a friendly and approachable product, so we named it GMGN. Our slogan at the time was: GMGN, Degen everyday.

This is a very native slogan. We hope that everyone can open GMGN every day, play on the chain, and make money at the same time. This is how the product positioning and name came about.

Migrating from Ethereum to Solana, the “rat trading” function has become popular

Colin: Since last year, how have you developed gradually?

HAZE: Actually, we first switched to the Ethereum chain. Because I am confident in this cycle of Ethereum. At that time, Memecoins such as MOG and emerging currencies such as BITCOIN (Harry Potter Obama Sonic 10 Inu) were all on the rise. I thought, can we do this based on the Ethereum chain? But in the process, I found that there are indeed some contradictions in the user sentiment, asset issuance effect, and transaction speed of the Ethereum chain. The original pursuit was fast in and out, high risk and high return, but its trading experience was not smooth enough and there were still problems. So at that time we began to consider whether we needed to switch chains. Our target chain options include Blur's Blast, Coinbase's Base and Solana.

In January, there was a wave of enthusiasm for Solana. After observing the trend of Solana, I felt that it was more appropriate to choose Solana. Because Solana is more mature and has existed longer than other chains. After team discussion, we decided to prioritize Solana, while taking Blast and Base as alternatives and fully supporting the multi-chain model. In this way, we entered Solana. However, we did not actually get any dividends from the BOME wave in March. Because the initial layout was still on Ethereum, it was not fully deployed on Solana at the first time.

Later, around April or May, after GMGN went online, I promoted it on Twitter, and everyone gave feedback that the dashboard function was very useful. Users can constantly dig out smart money addresses, analyze the operations of large holders, and conduct address research and data analysis. At this stage, we gradually accumulated some seed users. With seed users, the update and iteration of product requirements are closer to the actual needs of users.

What really made GMGN popular was the "rat trading" function. The inspiration for this function came from user feedback and our intuitive feelings. The on-chain asset data is so transparent, and we think that this transparency should be better utilized. Therefore, we launched the "rat trading" marking function. For example, when users are rushing to a project, what they care most about is whether the project has a rat trading. After we added this function, we can clearly mark which projects have a rat trading.

In April and May this year, after the "rat warehouse" function was launched, it further promoted explosive growth based on the original good reputation of finding smart money. Many users took screenshots in the community to discuss how GMGN marked the rat warehouse data, such as how many rat warehouse addresses a project had. This discussion quickly increased the popularity of GMGN.

With more users joining, our previous smart money address function has become more popular. We have clearly marked the address data and even matched some information on Twitter. There is also a function for users to follow and make notes.

Many users began to write tutorials, such as "I found a smart money address, how much money did this address make", and then shared how to use GMGN in depth for data mining. After such content was posted on Twitter, the effect was unexpectedly good. As a result, more and more creators created content based on GMGN's functions. Whether in Chinese or English, when searching on Twitter now, many high-view posts are using GMGN's bulletin board function. At this stage, GMGN's popularity began to really explode.

Recently, as the Memecoin market has become increasingly popular, more and more people are recommending GMGN. In the past few days, GMGN's server was overwhelmed 6 times in 4 days.

Colin: So it was down for a few days?

HAZE: Haha, yeah, yeah. The server traffic surged, and everyone was using GMGN frequently due to the high demand for Memecoin trading. At that time, our R&D team basically didn't sleep and was working overtime to expand the capacity, but it still couldn't keep up with the speed of user sprints. As a result, the server was overwhelmed 6 times in just 4 days.

This is totally unexpected. According to our operational experience, we have actually done a lot of redundancy in traffic data. We can only say that the popularity of the Memecoin market far exceeded our expectations, and it also proves everyone's affirmation of GMGN products. I would also like to thank all users of GMGN. It is your support that has led to this result. Of course, we will continue to work hard to optimize the server.

Colin: So what is the growth trend of the number of users now? Are there any significant growth milestones?

HAZE: You can check the overall data on the chain. Our data from the past two weeks shows that the transaction volume has soared by 600%.

Colin: What is the current size of the GMGN team? How many people are there?

HAZE: About 30 people.

Review security incidents on other platforms and optimize security plans

Colin: Recently, a product had a safety incident. What improvements will you make in terms of safety?

HAZE: There have been a lot of discussions about security incidents involving a certain meme product recently, and various analyses and evidence have been leaked on Twitter. From the current information, first of all, it uses plain text transmission for private key transmission, which basically shows that there is no security protection. From the theft process that was exposed, the funds were transferred one-to-one from the user address to the hacker address, indicating that the server was likely hijacked. Because the private key is in plain text, after the server is hacked, the user's private key is completely exposed, and the hacker can easily transfer funds.

In either case, security is the top priority for custodial platforms. For products like TG Bot, hosting user private keys is equivalent to hosting user funds. If you do this, you need to adopt a variety of technical means to ensure security, such as encrypting and storing private keys, establishing a sound internal control system, and ensuring strict isolation measures between business servers and secure storage servers. You also need to ensure platform security through offline solutions and real-time monitoring.

Assuming that funds are really stolen, the first step is to discover the problem as soon as possible and stop the loss in time at sensitive nodes. If the theft is small, the platform can also use its own income to quickly compensate users. Because there is no 100% safe system, the key lies in the ability to respond quickly and compensate users. These measures can allow the platform to achieve higher standards in security.

Our team has paid great attention to security from the beginning and has established a complete set of professional security teams. We have experienced the Internet wave, speculated on coins, seen large capital flows, and are well aware of the "Dark Forest Law" of the blockchain industry. We also understand that platform security is the most basic guarantee.

GMGN provides two user experience modes. One is the TG Bot mode, where the user's private key is hosted on the server to meet the strategy and speed requirements of advanced users. The other is that users directly connect to the GMGN website through plug-in wallets such as Phantom or MetaMask to interact with transactions. Each operation requires user authorization confirmation, which is relatively safer.

We have invested a lot of energy in both the front-end and back-end to continuously optimize security mechanisms. Based on the recent security issues of a certain product, we will further learn lessons and fill in the gaps. We will take a more cautious attitude to improve the overall security of the platform.

Future development strategy: stable services and continued penetration of hot narratives

Colin: Have you calculated the market share? What is the approximate ratio?

HAZE: In terms of the overall market share, we should be in a relatively leading position in the world. Our main competitor is Photon, which has an obvious first-mover advantage on Solana. It reaped the biggest dividends from the BOME craze.

Colin: So what are your plans for subsequent products and development strategies?

HAZE: Our product idea is very simple: first, ensure that the service is stable enough; second, pursue a faster and more extreme operating experience; third, carefully record the needs raised by users and continuously update them according to the importance of the needs. Our goal is to make the user experience smoother and smoother, which is basically the idea.

Colin: Are you worried that the popularity of Memecoin will decrease? Or, after the craze is over, will there be problems with the long-term sustainability of your product?

HAZE: I think GMGN started from the Memecoin track, but its essence is an on-chain product. Its positioning is how to keep close to the hot spots and trends on the chain, provide users with good trading opportunities, and help users seize the dividends on the chain. This is the core positioning of GMGN. Therefore, even if Memecoin gradually cools down or loses its current momentum, the key for us is how to judge what the next narrative hot spot is, and the team will consider how to quickly cut in.

It is not that we only focus on Memecoin, which is part of GMGN and the main part at present, but it is by no means the only part. I think in the blockchain world, hot spots switch very quickly and the speed of innovation is also very fast. Therefore, we cannot be biased or stand still. We need to try more, explore more, and find a good entry point. If it can solve the user's pain point, we will cut in and execute it. At the same time, we will constantly revise and adjust our cognition.

If you keep immersing yourself in your current comfort zone and do not break it, no matter what platform you are on, you may be surpassed over time.

Development details: "Stupid Wallet", segmented tracks, "Conspiracy Group" and trading experience

Colin: Got it, OK. Next, two friends will join the discussion, one is defioasis and the other is Yiyi. They have in-depth observation and practical experience in the Memecoin field and can discuss some issues with you in depth.

defioasis: I have a few questions. The first one is about the "dumb wallet" indicator. Is it possible to launch a tool similar to the reverse smart money, such as marking those wallets with extremely low win rates and buying at the high point?

HAZE: I think this is OK. If we have time, we can mark these wallets and list them as wallets with extremely low win rates. First, include me, hahahaha.

Colin: I think this idea is quite interesting, haha.

HAZE: Yes, many users who chase high prices often buy at the high point, and then the price starts to fall. So it can be used as an indicator to assist trading decisions.

defioasis: Yes, this may be a good sell indicator. Then the second question is, Memecoin is a big track, and it is divided into many sub-tracks, such as AI Memecoin and DeSci recently. Is it possible to optimize the plate classification and plate rotation functions in GMGN so that users can see the hot spots at a glance?

HAZE: The need for sector classification has indeed been mentioned. Some users do not trade on the Internet every day. They may hear that a certain sector is popular and want to buy some. At this time, providing an intuitive display of market value and price will be very helpful. We will consider adding these categories in the feature update.

defioasis: I have another question. GMGN has two entrances, one is TG Bot and the other is the plug-in wallet. Have you counted which of these two entrances has more users and more transactions?

HAZE: We haven’t done any statistics like this recently.

Yiyi: I have two questions. First, in addition to paying attention to smart money, the community is also particularly interested in two things: the first is to discover the "conspiracy group", and the second is to guess who will be listed on Binance. GMGN has strong data analysis capabilities, especially in the smart money area. So do you have any plans to further explore these related addresses, such as marking which addresses may be involved in conspiracy behavior?

HAZE: We have partially implemented this. We first launched the insider trading function, and later added the "fish" mark. We will mark suspected conspiracy wallets as "red fish", and the marking logic includes: operations on multiple wallets at the same time, consistent fund transfer behavior, etc. For example, I recently tested an address, and the data clearly showed that the address was a distribution address, marked as "red fish", and a red exclamation mark was attached.

HAZE: In addition, we also have a wallet distribution analysis function. For example, the distribution behavior of DEV wallets will be marked with a "sniper" icon. For the conspiracy groups mentioned by users, we will continue to identify and judge through on-chain data, but we will try to avoid subjective labeling.

Yiyi: I see. My second question is, can the K-line tool be combined with on-chain data? For example, I define a time window and want to know who is driving the price increase and who is making money during a certain main uptrend. Can this be used as a development direction for GMGN?

HAZE: We are currently more inclined to provide data functions that are common to large platforms. The requirements you mentioned are customized functions, which require more resources. Our current priority is to meet the most popular needs, but if more users raise similar requirements in the future, we will evaluate and consider adding these functions.

11: What is the focus of GMGN's next iteration? Will there be other features worth looking forward to?

HAZE: We already have a chip distribution function, as well as wallet annotation and scatter graph functions. The focus in the future will still be on improving the stability, speed and experience of the overall transaction. For example, the "wallet monitoring" function, which has been highly requested by everyone, will be expanded from supporting 100 wallets to 500. In addition, the monitoring push requirements of TG Bot and channels will also be optimized. Currently, GMGN's push function will be delayed when the number of users is too large, and we will prioritize solving this problem.

Our goal is to enable users to discover information faster, know trends faster, and complete transactions faster. Current updates are mainly focused on these core needs.