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

Why Zora feels familiar - and why that feeling is good.

This strange feeling is like you have already experienced what is happening to some extent.

I am certain that everyone has experienced a sense of déjà vu at some point in their lives - whether it's a famous quote, an event, or a simple interaction.

Strangely, I had this feeling again when I recently read about Zora's flywheel. I immediately recalled the feeling when I first read about Virtual's economic flywheel in October 2024 - a sense of familiarity.

Will Zora replay history this time?

SocialFi

As early as August 2023, with discussions about consumer applications heating up on the crypto Twitter community (CT), we witnessed the rise of Friend.tech. Participants invested in keys of their favorite KOLs in exchange for access to private chat rooms, price speculation, and airdrops.

However, after the token issuance failed, users quickly dispersed, and Friend.tech quickly faded from people's view.

Was the emergence of SocialFi too early? Or are its underlying mechanisms insufficient to attract natural users? More importantly, as cryptocurrency gains more attention, will consumer applications become a hot topic again?

Zora

Unlike Friend.tech, Zora is an on-chain social network similar to Instagram. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that each profile and post is tokenized, enabling creators to directly monetize their content.

Zora creator profile: https://zora.co/@chloe

How It Works

$ZORA Flywheel:

· Each profile is tokenized

· Every post you publish is tokenized

· Each post you publish is paired with your creator coin

· All creator coins are paired with $ZORA

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

The fee model is designed to benefit all stakeholders.

Advertising

Advertising is an important component of social media. Zora has pioneered a peer-to-peer advertising market, allowing for micro-targeted advertising strategies. If Zora can effectively implement this, it will have enormous profit potential.

Tokenomics

$ZORA token total supply is 10 billion:

· Community Incentives: 20%

· Airdrop: 10%

· Liquidity: 5%

· Investors: 26.1%

· Reserve Assets: 20%

· Team: 18.9%

Unlocking

· Airdrop, Community Incentives, and Liquidity: Totaling 35%, will be fully unlocked at the Token Generation Event (TGE) on April 23, 2025.

· Team and Investors: 6-month lockup after TGE, then linearly released monthly over 36 months.

· Reserve Assets: 6-month lockup after TGE, then linearly released monthly over 48 months.

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

Financing

Zora has completed three rounds of financing, with the largest round being $50 million, valuing the company at $600 million. It's worth noting that as of the time of writing, ZORA's fully diluted valuation (FDV) is $800 million, approximately 33% higher than the previous financing valuation.

Price Trend

Looks familiar? This is Virtual's price trend.

Despite being online for only a few months, $ZORA has experienced a period of low interest and activity - almost like a "seller clearance" shuffle. However, through the integration of its basic application and the drive of the flywheel effect, $ZORA has once again gained momentum and gradually returned to market focus.

Team

Social Graph Ventures provided a good summary of the team:

· The team has a Coinbase background, maintaining rapid development and focusing on building unique experiences that combine crypto-native and Web2-native UX.

· They have driven the field forward with new concepts such as bond curve-based quotation coins, content-based tokenization, and referral mechanisms. Zora has demonstrated a willingness to experiment openly and build quickly, which are qualities we value in teams pursuing new social, creator, and monetization mechanisms.

· Jacob Horne - Co-founder and CEO, previously a product manager at Coinbase, responsible for driving Coinbase's two most outstanding product lines, USDC and Coinbase Ventures. He focuses on Ethereum and DeFi integration. Jacob is known for his profound thinking about cryptocurrency market design, NFTs, and creator monetization. He is Zora's public face, often sharing vision and updates through interviews and X. He previously participated in crypto fashion project development and has been building Zora since 2019.

· Dee Goens - Co-founder, previously a Coinbase marketer, is a veteran of the early NFT movement and creative communities. Dee played a key role in shaping Zora's early ecosystem partnerships and community strategy. He is committed to enabling minority creators and emerging digital culture groups to use Zora.

· Tyson Battistella - Co-founder and CTO, Zora's engineering lead. Tyson also previously worked at Coinbase, responsible for smart contract infrastructure construction. He designed many of the protocol components currently used by Zora, including its minting tools and L2 integration. Zora 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.

Thoughts

With a powerful flywheel model, clean UI/UX, Base team support, and favorable bull market conditions, I believe Zora can continue to rise through reflexivity.

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

Remember when CT consistently believed Coinbase was the best choice for on-chain retail entry? (We were all shouting about consumer applications!!)