Welcome to the Web3 meat grinder: your money, the project party's dreams, are all KOL's trophies.

This article utilizes the POM consumer decision model to analyze why KOL ( opinion leaders have far greater influence in the Web3 world than the efforts of the project party themselves, becoming the key to the success or failure of a token. This article is derived from an article written by Chain's Old Wang, organized, translated, and authored by Foresight News. (Background summary: ZachXBT exposed over 200 crypto KOLs' fees and wallet addresses, without noting that they were receiving paid promotions!) (Background supplement: Introduction to Bitcoin investment: exchange operations, Auto-Invest methods, and safe custody techniques) In the world of Web3, hundreds of new tokens are born every day, and many tokens quickly drop to zero. This market is full of opportunities but also riddled with traps. A core question lies before all participants: How do users decide which token to buy in an environment flooded with information and high risks? The classic consumer decision model proposed by Stanford University marketing professor Simonson - the POM model - provides us with a perfect analytical lens. This model posits that consumer choices are primarily driven by three forces: P )Personal, personal preference (, M )Marketing, brand marketing (, and O )Others, influence from others (. I often use this model in the Web2 marketing field. Once, while serving a leading fast food chain that wanted to run a breakfast promotion campaign, I pointed out based on the POM model that consumers care more about what they drink in the morning than what they eat; therefore, the key message should focus on beverages, which ultimately achieved very good conversion results. Today, when we apply this model to Web3 investment, we find an even more interesting picture. So, who decides the next 100x coin? Let's analyze token investment decisions using the POM model. The first force )P(: Personal Preference - “My belief, my code” In traditional consumption, personal preference )P( is whether you prefer green tea or black tea, whether you are loyal to Apple or Android. In Web3, this preference is equally deep-rooted but more complex in expression. It manifests in: Technological beliefs and ecological preferences: Many seasoned players are “Bitcoin maximalists” who only believe that BTC is the true decentralized asset. Others are “Ethereum builders” who firmly believe in the future of its smart contract ecosystem. Some are supporters of Solana or other public chains because they prefer its high performance and low gas fees. This preference based on technological understanding and past experience forms the cornerstone of their investment decisions. A “die-hard” Bitcoin supporter is hard to persuade to buy a centralized exchange platform token through advertising. Risk preference: Your personal risk preference determines your “battlefield.” Are you willing to seek overnight wealth in the casino of meme coins, or do you prefer to hold blue-chip assets ) like ETH( steadily, or specialize in researching utility tokens with practical application scenarios? This preference is intrinsic and hard to change easily from the outside. For the project party, understanding the target user's “P” is crucial. A developer-oriented L2 project must focus its promotion on technical documentation and performance advantages, rather than flashy marketing slogans. This is about “catering to preferences.” The second force )M(: Brand Marketing - The project party's “official narrative” The marketing )M( from the brand side is the information that the project team directly conveys to the market. In Web3, “brand” is the project itself, and marketing activities vary widely: White paper and roadmap: This is the most basic “product manual” for Web3 projects, defining the project's vision, technical architecture, and development plans. A logically rigorous and grand vision white paper is key to attracting early supporters. Official partnerships and endorsements: Just like Sumida River Coffee inviting Xiao Zhan as a spokesperson, if a Web3 project can announce partnerships with top exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, or gain investments from well-known VCs like a16z, Paradigm, that itself is the most powerful marketing signal. Market activities: Carefully designed Airdrop ) airdrops(, token staking rewards, and online AMA )Ask Me Anything( events are means for the project party to actively influence user perception, aiming to “make users listen to the brand.” However, in the spirit of “Don’t Trust, Verify” ) prevailing in the Web3 domain, the pure “M” force is often questioned. Users are inherently wary of the project party's self-promotion. The third force (O): Influence from Others - The “sacred judgment” of KOL advocacy If P and M are foundational, then “influence from others” (O), especially the advocacy of KOLs, is the decisive force that ignites trends. This is amplified to the extreme in Web3. A KOL with hundreds of thousands of followers can make an obscure token surge tenfold or even a hundredfold in just a few minutes with a single tweet on X (Twitter). Why is the power of “O” so strong in Web3? We can explain it using Simonson's three decision dimensions: The importance and risk of the decision: Buying a bubble tea for 4 bucks has nearly zero decision risk; you can be easily influenced by marketing (M). But investing in cryptocurrency may risk losing all your principal, which is a high-risk, high-importance decision, akin to undergoing eye surgery. In such cases, you naturally seek the opinions of “experts” or “experienced friends”—namely KOLs. Uncertainty: Web3 technology is complex, the authenticity of projects is difficult to discern, and value assessment models are still immature. The immense uncertainty leaves ordinary investors feeling confused. KOLs' analyses, interpretations, and “advocacy” provide a form of psychological certainty, becoming a “crutch” for ordinary people to place their bets. Degree of popularization: Although everyone's investment portfolios are different, in certain communities ( like meme coin communities, NFT player communities), the points of focus and sources of information are highly convergent. When everyone in a community discusses a coin recommended by a KOL, the strong social proof and FOMO emotion compel you to participate as well. Therefore, in the balance of Web3, KOLs hold the heaviest weight. Looking at the three forces together, we can conclude: For assets like meme coins, their value is almost entirely determined by O ( influence from others), supplemented by P ( personal gambling nature). The project party's own marketing (M) is often secondary, or even nonexistent. For infrastructure and application tokens, decisions are a composite of P, O, and M. You need M ( from the project party) to build a solid foundation, you need P ( investors) to recognize the technology, but whether it can “break out” often still requires O ( KOLs and communities) to ignite it. “Absolute Value” tells us that the influence of third-party powers is becoming increasingly strong in the era of action networks. In the dark forest of Web3, which integrates finance, social interaction, and technology, this trend has been pushed to its peak. The project party must understand that merely having good technology (M) and catering to user preferences (P) is not enough. In this era, trust is the most…