Recently had a meal with a friend who does short video sales.
Last year he chased six trends: first selling anti-hair loss shampoo, then switching to private label small appliances, and in between messing around with near-expiration snacks. He was busy every day until two in the morning with traffic, product swaps, and holding orders. What was the result? The return rate hit 40%, and he got blacklisted by two supply chains.
After drinking too much, he said one thing: 'I've chased every hot product, but never made solid money on anything.'
Instead, at the entrance of his hometown's vegetable market, there's an old man selling soy milk. Just one stone mill, one original flavor soy milk, and he won't even add sugar for you. He doesn't set up stall in the rain and takes breaks during holidays. Every morning at six o'clock, he starts grinding, and before eight, it's all sold out. Some people ask him to add red dates, add walnuts, and sell it packaged nationwide.
The old man waved his hand: 'I can’t grind that much, nor do I understand those. I just need to boil this pot of soy milk a bit thicker, that's enough.'
You see, in this era where everyone chases trends and switches tracks, what truly gives you a sense of security is precisely those things that you can 'hold onto'.
For example, @Pixels Pixels.
Many people at first glance: pixel farming? Isn’t it just a happy farm on the blockchain? I thought so at first too. But after playing for a few months, I realized that the brilliance of this game lies precisely in - it doesn’t compete with you on flashiness, it competes with you on endurance.
Pixels transitioned from Polygon to Ronin, not just casually moving house, but rebuilt an economic model. Task system + energy limitations, sounds simple, but it solves the major challenge of GameFi: how to prevent tokens from becoming 'paper money' that people mine and run away? Pixels relies on giving you tasks every day - check in, water, socialize, harvest vegetables. You are not mining; you are 'living life'. Tokens circulate within the ecosystem, not directly from the mining pool to the exchange.
What excites me the most is that piece of Land.
You have a piece of land; it's not just an NFT, it's your tangible means of production. You can invite others to farm, and share the output. To put it simply, you are the 'small boss' on this pixelated land. I know a guy who bought two plots of land, goes online every day to harvest vegetables, occasionally collects some 'rent', and he calls it 'digital landlord', which is much more stable than trading coins.
And there's that cross-protocol skin system - whatever blue-chip NFT you have in your hand can become the corresponding character in the game. The first time I saw my fat penguin carrying a hoe working in the field, I laughed for half a day. This is the experience that Web3 should have: assets are not locked in a wallet gathering dust, but are truly playable.
What impressed me the most was its 'stability'.
Now every day a bunch of new games pop up, each shouting about a revolution. And the result? Three days of heat, a week of cooling off. What about Pixels? Pixel style, slow pace, even a bit rustic, but its daily active users are shockingly stable. Thousands of people log on at the same time every day - not to mine and sell, but because they genuinely feel 'my piece of land needs watering'.
Back to that old man at the beginning.
He never chased after trending products, never did live streaming, and never thought about selling nationwide. He just tended to a pot of soy milk for over twenty years. And what was the result? Those friends who changed six or seven categories and went through three rounds, he is still here, and his business is getting better and better.
Pixels may not make you rich overnight, but it gives you something extremely precious in this circle:
A nest you can slowly guard. A self-sustaining plot. A game that doesn’t play Ponzi with you. A digital corner where you don’t have to wake up in the middle of the night to check the market.
Stop always busy switching tracks.
When the wind comes, only those who have truly taken root can hold the fruit.
See you in the field.