Re-recognize @SignOfficial : Observing the Iteration of Investment Logic from "On-chain Identity"
Friends, today we won't talk about abstract concepts, but let's discuss the project @SignOfficial ($SIGN ). If I had to summarize it in one sentence, it's not about some "hundred times coin" or "divine technology," but rather it placed a big bet: taking the matter of "proving who you are" completely from real life to the blockchain.
To be honest, in the past, when I looked at crypto projects, I focused on the usual three aspects: Is the technology good? Is the team reliable? How is the token economics? But after researching Sign, I slapped my thigh hard—I realized my previous framework missed the most critical element: who is this thing actually selling to?
Look at Sign's two business lines; the contrast is simply outrageous:
ToB business (TokenTable): exclusively sold to crypto project parties. Just sending out a tweet can attract customers, easily signing over 200 deals and raking in 15 million USD in revenue! This rhythm is short and quick, with cycles measured by "weeks"; it relies on product experience, and the biggest fear is having others copy the code.
ToG business (Sovereign Infrastructure SignPass): specifically sold to national governments. Goodness, just getting Sierra Leone online took nearly a year from contact to implementation, and the deals in Thailand and the UAE are still in the works. This sales cycle is measured in "years"; the barriers rely entirely on political and business relationships, and the biggest fear is spending a lot of time without ordinary citizens using it.
Now I get it! From now on, whenever I see a new project claiming "we are building foundational infrastructure," I will not first ask about the technical architecture but will first ask: Who are your customers? How long does it take to make decisions? Because this determines how much money the project will burn, how many people it will exhaust, and also determines the timeline the market should use to assess it.
Many friends often criticize Sign for being "too slow to land" or "full of cooperation intentions" with a ToB perspective. But have you tried looking at it from a ToG perspective? Even the famous Palantir took 17 years to make money from doing business with the US government, while Sign already had positive cash flow in its fourth year. Using ToB's short measuring stick to gauge ToG's long-term projects is quite unreasonable!
So, in this research on Sign, my biggest takeaway is actually not just understanding a new target but completely upgrading my own project evaluation "underlying operating system"! What do you all think? Feel free to chat in the comments.
