Learning from 500 Rejections: The Essence of Crypto Products on Solana

I have been experimenting and iterating in the Web3 world for nearly four years. During this process, I awakened from the illusion of infrastructure building.

Chain of Failures — The Trap of Complexity

In 2023, the industry’s hot topic was “Account Abstraction.” I immersed myself in SDK development within the EVM ecosystem, dedicating myself to ZK( zero-knowledge proofs) and rollup scaling.

The biggest mistake I made was equating complexity with reliability.

When VC firms asked, “What are the application scenarios?” I confidently listed zkML, zkIdentity, and zkVoting. But now, these solutions are hardly used. It took over two years and more than 500 rejections to accept the reality that great technology does not necessarily translate into useful products.

The conventional wisdom in the VC industry is equally dangerous. Believing that “infrastructure is the only path to success in crypto assets” led to failures in three different projects.

What Solana Taught Me

By 2025, I stepped into a completely different ecosystem. The Solana community holds a pragmatic view: “Meme coins are not important; revenue is.” Here, technical elegance is secondary; usability and practicality are everything.

From seven months of practice, seven principles for successful consumer crypto products emerged.

1. Why Target Generation Z

The demographic naturally open to new technology is young users. According to the Consumer Technology Association’s 2024 survey, 86% of Generation Z( aged 11–26) consider technology central to their lives — the highest in history.

They are not afraid to try new apps. Meanwhile, users over 25 tend not to adopt new methods unless there is a strong incentive. The psychological fact that social activity peaks at ages 20–21 is also important, making products aimed at youth more likely to go viral.

2. Incorporate “Viral Potential” into Your Product

Without a huge marketing budget, the product itself must become a marketing channel.

This is especially critical in crypto. KOL marketing is expensive, trust levels are low, and everyone expects rewards. Embedding reasons for users to voluntarily share with friends and communities allows growth without burning marketing budgets.

3. Immediate Response to User Feedback

When a user says, “I’ll switch to a competitor because this feature is missing,” that moment is a fork in the road. Once users develop habits with a competitor, it’s extremely difficult to bring them back.

Fix bugs within 2–5 hours. If multiple users request a feature and it’s feasible, implement it within 2–3 days. The key is to communicate to users that the change is based on their feedback. Offering rewards is also fine. During this process, users start feeling that the product is “theirs,” and this sense of belonging becomes the greatest asset in the early stages.

4. The Name of the App Is Extremely Important

My previous product “Encifher” was a name even investors misspelled. Later, I changed it to “encrypt.trade” — concise, memorable, and easy to share verbally.

The product name must be highly recognizable and naturally spread from person to person.

5. Continuous Improvement of Cold-DMs

Finding users is a grind, especially outside the current “hot topics.” When working on privacy products, I contacted 1,000 people via cold messages. Out of those, 10 responded, and only 3–4 actually cooperated.

Because the crypto community is full of scams, very few reply to DMs. A low reply rate is normal. The goal here is not to reach 1,000 users but to find 10–20 early adopters who understand the problem, are willing to try, and provide honest feedback.

Effective Cold-DM template:

• Start with a warm greeting
• Highlight (fundraising, trading volume, etc.) at the beginning
• Explain why you found the recipient
• Include a friendly call to action
• Follow up persistently

There is no perfect template. Keep iterating until you find an approach that works for your target users. These early users will become your strong support system and help you overcome initial bugs together.

6. Crypto Testing and Continuous Iteration

The crypto industry is constantly changing, and user attention spans are very short. Don’t just listen to what users say; observe their actions:

• What do they repeatedly do?
• What compromises are they making?
• What are people already happily paying for?( Many ideas sound great, but if users aren’t willing to pay, they won’t survive.)

Through crypto testing, bridging the gap between theory and reality is the key to success.

7. Simplify UI to a “Anyone Can Understand” Level

As a developer, you might see your product as obvious after hundreds of hours of work. But for someone entering the industry for the first time, it’s completely unfamiliar.

Avoid new jargon and complex processes. Minimize clicks. The core value should be clearly expressed within 5 seconds of opening the app.

Conclusion

Shifting from infrastructure building to user-centered consumer products is not just a strategic change but a fundamental shift in thinking. Speed of iteration, listening to users, and obsession with simplicity are more important than perfect technology. This operates on a completely different logic from B2B solutions. The path to success in crypto products is not beyond complexity but within simplicity.