Internet Capital Market: Breakthrough or Speculation?

The Internet Capital Market ( ICM ) serves as an alternative to traditional financing models, allowing entrepreneurs to raise funds directly from the community through tokenization, bypassing the cumbersome venture capital and IPO processes. Platforms like Believe App are driving this transformation on the Solana blockchain, where users can easily issue and invest in projects with simple operations on social media.

Despite the issues of regulatory gaps and low project thresholds in ICM, it still has strong potential for widespread adoption, especially in promoting Web3 through a simple user experience and viral marketing. To achieve long-term development, the ICM platform needs to establish a founder accountability mechanism, optimize the token economic model, build DAO governance, and realize real utility to shift from short-term speculation to a new paradigm of capital formation.

In traditional Capital Markets, entrepreneurs often rely on expensive and time-consuming IPOs or venture capital. This model is inefficient, lacks openness, and leads to misalignment of incentives between creators and supporters. ICM aims to address these core issues by providing a more open, direct, and highly participatory financing channel.

The leading platform of the ICM ecosystem is the Believe App on Solana. It allows founders to issue tokens through simple social media interactions, attempting to disrupt traditional venture capital models. Believe's success is attributed to the influence of the Solana ecosystem, a streamlined user experience, and a clear narrative and vision. Compared to its competitor Clanker, Believe has a distinct advantage in user-friendliness and growth potential.

However, the ICM model also faces many challenges. Founders are not held accountable, tokens are disconnected from the underlying projects, and narratives can easily be abused. Many so-called "project tokens" are essentially still worthless meme coins.

To avoid becoming a short-term speculation, the ICM platform needs to optimize its economic model, establish a DAO mechanism to enhance transparency, and build deeper practical value. This includes promoting meaningful community governance, establishing a system for continuous accountability for founders, and integrating real-world application scenarios, among others.

The real value of ICM lies in its ability to attract a large number of Web2 users without requiring deep Web3 knowledge. If it can continue to develop, it has the potential to become a platform for driving project incubation and value creation, rather than just another meme launch platform. Achieving this goal requires the joint efforts of the platform, founders, and community.