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Exclusive Interview: Unraveling the Portalcoin Phenomenon

BY Lorepunk

November 29, 2023

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last week, you’ve likely noticed a curious trend across crypto Twitter: Portalcoin.

This token, which claims on its X account that it will “onboard the first billion gamers into Web3,” says it was built with LayerZeroLabs, an omnichannel interoperability protocol. None of that appears to matter to the boisterous crew of degens that are farming the upcoming $Portal token, which, according to the team, will launch in a few weeks—after several week-long farming “seasons.”

How do you grind this token? On X, of course! You connect your X account to the grinding website—it’s a “game” called Crystal Dash—and earn points by making content about Portalcoin. Whether you make memes, write text posts, or even share and reply to another grinder’s posts, you’ll get points that increase your level. Once you get a few levels in, you’ll start getting rewarded with crystal shards. Shards can be fused for crystals, and crystals will be tradeable for your $Portal airdrop in a few weeks.

This sort of grinding-on-X meta has been one of the most visible and effective ways for a meme token to get the word out about their product, with Tipcoin, Memecoin, and others dominating our feeds during their grind periods—but Portalcoin’s visibility seems to have outpaced them all. Their clear, finely tuned gamification may be a part of it—and, of course, the average degen absolutely loves to pile onto a bandwagon, particularly when there is the promise of free crypto at the end of it.

For the anonymous creators of Portalcoin, evidence and experience from others in the gaming space led them to take this approach. “Portal’s mission is to become the biggest web3 gaming platform over the next few years, not only by creating a thriving ecosystem for web3 natives but driving mainstream adoption through partners. Awareness for any brand leads to growth, and socialfi is a mechanic that is uniquely suited to crypto, hence Crystal Dash, our gamified interpretation. UGC (User Generated Content) has been key for the exponential growth in gaming in the last few years, contributing to the rise of Roblox, Fortnite Creative, and others. The power of Web3 is that contributors can also become stakeholders and be rewarded for their creative efforts. Crystal Dash goes back to the first principles of UGC, encouraging the Web3 userbase on Twitter to get rewarded for creating fun, engaging content around Portal,” they explained to nft now in an exclusive written interview.

The open-ended nature of Portalcoin’s ask may also attract the meme makers and jokers of our space: one Punk grinding the coin made some AI art about it, as have many others. “I enjoy participating in new projects. I used AI to create a Portal coin-themed image to use in my post to break up the monotony of the other engagement posts on my timeline. It’s fun to see how others implement the engagement into their posts as well,” he told nft now.

economist’s AI art of portalcoin

The numbers are jaw-dropping: Portalcoin’s team told us that users have made over 1 million tweets about Portalcoin, with the meme token rising to number 7 on trending topics globally on X. Major players in crypto, from Gordon Goner to 9GAG’s Ray have joined in.

Others espouse more concern about Portalcoin’s marketing approach—even if you’re able to do whatever kind of post you want to farm the token, you’re essentially monetizing the goodwill and attention of your followers—members of your community—for an airdrop. “Portal is a reputation killer. If you are willing to sell your reputation for a small windfall…. Then it wasn’t worth that much to begin with,” Big Hugs Studio co-creator Jeff Excell told us.

This sentiment was echoed by photographer and community educator Sean Bonner, who used a classic meme to warn that Portalcoin farmers were likely to be unfollowed by their supporters, destroying the utility of their X accounts.

Even participants in other marketing and engagement programs have concerns. The anonymous Dorkis CTO known as FrankNFT, who is grinding /reach—a broader incentivized marketing amplifier for X that will also be releasing a token soon—saw Portalcoin posts appearing over and over in the r/each mission feed, where people grinding for $reach find the tweets they engage with to earn points towards that airdrop. “As a heavy /reach user, I could not miss it,” he said in an interview.

The oft-invoked fear of missing out, or FOMO, led him to join in with Portalcoin. “Imagine that the $Portal airdrop brings a lot of ETH…. and I just did nothing with it,” he explained.

But he also feels overwhelmed by the volume of Portalcoin content. “It’s just too much…it flooded crypto Twitter and /reach—there is hardly any other content that is able to pop out at the moment,” he said.

Will Portalcoin have any staying power? That depends far more on its promised utility as a gaming token than on its current dominance of our feeds; pure meme tokens don’t, generally, have a lot of staying power, according to Frank. “As a Solidity dev, I did help several teams to launch their coins… and guess what, they are all (or very close to) 0 now,” Frank continued. 

The Portalcoin team assures a strong utility for the coin with major game and marketplace integrations. “We have many exciting things happening, some which we can’t mention yet and others that we can. To start with we have a roster of fantastic partners from Layerzero, who are helping scale the Portal platform, to Magic Eden, who will be integrating $Portal into their marketplace, to mainstream Esports teams. The aspect I think that people will be most surprised by is our focus on mainstream conversion. We think there is a huge gap there, and our technology and strategy have resonated with many big brands. As the year rolls on, those will be announced. And, of course, at the core of Portal is our network of web3 games we’re working with. We’re solving a key pain point in the games industry which is distribution and accessibility. We’re proud to work with top games like Nine Chronicles and Space Nation to help drive success to their games over the coming year and beyond,” they told us.

“The aspect I think that people will be most surprised by is our focus on mainstream conversion. We think there is a huge gap there, and our technology and strategy have resonated with many big brands.”

portalcoin spokesperson

Frank thinks it’s unlikely that Portalcoin will be the last of this meta. “It is a crypto tradition that if something works, there will be copies. I just hope these three weeks will be over soon, and CT (and /reach) will return to normal operations,” he said.

What do the Portalcoin builders think of all the naysayers? “No matter what happens in web3, there are those that are positive and those that are less so. It’s the nature of the space. But the numbers speak for themselves–there are many more people who are having tons of fun, and many who aren’t playing but are enjoying the energy that’s being pumped into the market.” they said.

Disclosure: lorepunk is an advisor for /reach.

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