Recently, I noticed a pretty interesting phenomenon in the community. Cedric’s article, “A BNB Startup Story Without Learning from Shandong,” actually went viral—million-plus reads—and in the bear market of today, where liquidity is truly running dry, that is not easy at all.
After reading it in detail, I feel that what really hits people isn’t any propagation technique, but that sense of sincerity. This market has been genuinely cold for more than a year. Price drops are only the surface; what hurts more is that confidence and liquidity evaporate in sync. The narrative-driven growth model has gradually stopped working, and many people have started to give up on themselves. You can hear all kinds of voices flying around, like “There’s no hope for crypto” and “It’s better to just ride on resources.” But Cedric used Flap’s actual growth data to show everyone that as long as you stubbornly go after PMF (product-market fit), you can still survive in this industry—and even run out ahead.
I went to look into the Flap project. It is a Meme token launch platform on BNB Chain, and its core logic is actually quite clear. Cedric and the team saw Pump.fun’s success on Solana, and realized that rebuilding user trust through a standardized launch mechanism could reduce token issuance costs and risks. But they didn’t simply copy. Instead, they were drawn to BNB Chain’s own ecological “soil”—its huge market base and active grassroots community, something other chains can’t really match.
The most interesting part is the three iterations Flap went through. From the initial model migration, to introducing the Uniswap V3 mechanism, to the standardized tax-token design, and finally upgrading into a developer co-creation platform. Every step was adjusted based on market feedback, rather than shutting the door and doing things in isolation. The team opened up the ability to split transaction taxes to external developers, so they could innovate on top of the underlying infrastructure, while the team still maintained control over core security. The way they balanced this was still pretty well done.
Another detail that left a strong impression on me is that Cedric emphasized Flap should not make judgments for the market, and it shouldn’t guide users on “what they should buy and what they shouldn’t.” That sounds simple, but in today’s environment, many projects are doing exactly that. He believes healthy interaction should respect the market’s choice mechanism. The platform only needs to stay active and communicate while ensuring safety—rather than using force to influence where things go. This idea actually reflects a more mature product mindset.
As for imitation, Cedric’s stance is also quite interesting: code can be Forked, but culture cannot. Instead of defending, it’s better to keep iterating. As long as you’re always one generation ahead of the market, competitors can only play catch-up. To some extent, being imitated still brings free brand exposure.
In the end, he mentioned that entrepreneurs need two things: enough love to support repeated trial and error, and low enough expectations to accept market “education.” This small team of fewer than 10 people went from winning hackathon projects to becoming one of BNB Chain’s most active protocols—thanks to nothing more than this “stupid hard work.” It sounds exhausting, but they feel happy doing it. That kind of state really is crucial for startup success.
To be honest, seeing stories like this in this cycle is quite satisfying. It really seems like there is still room for a startup approach that doesn’t rely on relationships and only relies on execution. Flap’s data growth also proves it. It feels like this is what Web3 should look like.
