What I'm Reading This Week (2025/03.02-03.08)

Table of Contents

• Trends
• What I Am Reading
  • 1. NFT Marketplaces on Sonic
  • 2. I’ve built my first successful side project, and I hate it
  • 3. Anna’s Archive ISBN Visualization Contest Results

Trends

Many conferences kicked off this week, including Trump’s crypto summit, leading to extreme market volatility.

What I Am Reading

This week, I’ve been learning about NFTs and DeFi-wrapped GameFi on Sonic, particularly petroleum.land.

The NFTs I bought have no liquidity and are now stuck in my hands. I regret not buying Derp when I first heard about it—if I had, I would have made $10,000 by now.

I also missed out on the early high-yield DeFi project, Shadow. Now, due to FOMO, I jumped into petroleum.land, but the game token $OIL crashed rapidly—it didn’t even last a day. Many people are panic-selling their in-game production tool NFTs at a loss. No wonder this game failed on Arbitrum—its mechanism is flawed, and switching chains won’t save it.

Sonic gives me the same vibe as Ethereum three years ago—DeFi and NFTs with utility are everywhere. I’m not sure how this will play out, but I’ve put most of my assets into it.

From now on, I need to focus on early-stage information, aiming to catch projects at the Mint phase.

Recently, Binance’s new coins are still caught in controversy. Market maker GSR is doing one-sided market-making, directly dumping GoPlus and Myshell.

1. NFT Marketplaces on Sonic

• Krown Labs Marketplace
• PaintSwap

2. I’ve built my first successful side project, and I hate it

• Project Origins and Success:
  In 2020, the author developed a TradingView script that automatically drew “harmonic patterns” to assist in technical analysis for stock trading. After launching, the project generated over $15,000 in revenue.

• Sales Strategy:
  The author purchased the most expensive TradingView membership and released the script as an “invite-only” product while accepting monthly and yearly subscriptions via Gumroad. To promote it, he first released limited-feature free scripts and created TradingView “Ideas” posts and a YouTube channel to showcase the paid script’s functionality. He also offered a one-week free trial.

• Customer Issues & Fraud:
  As the user base grew, the author received a flood of emails, including feature requests, inquiries, and even demands for free access or source code purchases. Some users requested unrealistic features or even investment advice. The author also faced PayPal disputes and fraud cases where stolen credit cards were used for subscriptions.

• Burnout:
  Maintaining the project alongside a full-time job became exhausting, especially with constant customer inquiries. Even though he no longer used the scripts himself, he still had to provide ongoing support.

• Attempt to Sell the Project:
  The author tried selling the project on IndieMaker and Transferslot, but due to its niche technology (PineScript) and specific platform (TradingView), the sale was unsuccessful.

• Automation Solutions:
  To reduce workload, the author automated several processes, such as integrating Gumroad payments with TradingView access, managing subscriptions via a Telegram bot, and handling trial requests through an online form with a Python script.

• Mindset Shift & Passive Income:
  Over time, he disengaged from the project, only handling user requests on weekends. While revenue decreased, the project still generates around $200 per month in passive income, which he finds more manageable.

• Key Takeaways:

  • Maintaining a product requires significant time and effort—launching is just the beginning.
  • If a side project isn’t genuinely enjoyable, setting boundaries is crucial to avoid burnout.
  • Platforms like Gumroad simplify tax handling for global sales.
  • B2C (business-to-consumer) sales are challenging due to varied customer demands.
  • Being customer-friendly is important, but one must also guard against abuse.

3. Anna’s Archive ISBN Visualization Contest Results

• ISBN is the unique identifier for publications.
• Anna’s Archive is currently the world’s leading open-access book project, born from the crackdown on Z-Library and other similar initiatives.
• Anna’s Archive offered a $10,000 bounty for the best visualization of its ISBN data. The goal was to illustrate what books exist globally, how many have been archived, and which books should be prioritized next.
• The competition received an overwhelming response with numerous creative submissions. Initially, Anna’s Archive planned to award first, second, and third prizes but expanded the prize pool due to the high quality and quantity of submissions.

Winners:

• First Prize ($6,000):
  phiresky – Praised for its flexible visualization options, speed, smooth performance, simple implementation, clever mini-map, and comprehensive explanations.

• Second Prize ($3,000):
  hypha – While less flexible than the first-place entry, its macro-level visualization was highly appreciated, especially its use of space-filling curves with borders, labels, highlights, panning, and zooming. The asymmetric nature of these curves might aid spatial memory.

• Third Prize ($500 each):

  • maxlion – Recognized for offering multiple view types, particularly its comparison and publisher views.
  • abetusk – Noted for fulfilling many needs, especially a well-loved comparison feature.
  • conundrumer0 – Stood out for its impressive flexibility, balancing powerful features for advanced users with ease of use for casual users.
  • charelf – Although more basic, it featured unique elements, such as displaying how many datasets cover a specific ISBN to indicate popularity/reliability, along with an opacity slider for effective comparison.

Additionally, several “Notable Ideas” were highlighted, featuring innovative functions like skyscraper-style rarity representation, real-time statistics, annotations, unique map views, filters, color schemes, heatmaps, dataset toggling, beautifully designed labels, a scale bar with book counts, and multiple sliders for comparisons.