New Project in the ZEC Space: Vitalik's Only Coin Purchase in Two Years

In a hot market, Vitalik has finally made a move after two years.

Last month, Vitalik invested 16 ETH (approximately $28,000) in the first round of CCA public auction of The Interfold on Uniswap. The last time he made a significant public investment in new project tokens or related assets was back in November 2024, when he invested 32 ETH (approximately $107,000) in the NFT public sale of the prediction market Truemarkets.

On August 19, $FOLD conducted its TGE, and subsequently surged over 7 times. We need to look at this increase in two segments. On August 23, $FOLD was listed on Upbit, instantly doubling its price and reaching a market cap of about $230 million. Before this, the narrative of "Vitalik bought it" was almost solely responsible for the price increase, as on-chain players formed a consensus around this narrative, driving the coin's market cap from about $28 million to a peak of approximately $140 million.

After the unexpected good news of being listed on Upbit, $FOLD did not continue to follow the market trend but instead fell back to the position it was in before the good news. Therefore, we can roughly say that the coin has returned to the value range of the narrative "Vitalik bought it":

In fact, the narrative of "Vitalik bought it" surrounding $FOLD is larger than one might think. This is a privacy-focused project, developed by Gnosis Guild, which is an open-source privacy protocol that allows multiple independent parties, who do not trust each other, to collaboratively perform verifiable computations and produce shared results without exposing their private inputs, relying on a single operator, or using trusted hardware.

A specific use case, for example, for a DAO, allows anyone to vote privately, with no one able to see any individual voting record, but everyone can verify the authenticity of the final voting results.

The encrypted data inputs are submitted to the protocol's encrypted execution environment E3, and each time a computation involving encrypted data occurs, an independent E3 is created. After the computation is completed, the E3 is shut down, leaving no data traces.

Nodes performing encrypted computations and decryption need to stake $FOLD to qualify.

Compared to ZEC, which is primarily a privacy-focused asset, The Interfold is a multi-party privacy computing protocol that allows each party involved in a task to complete the work without sharing their data. This concept feels quite hardcore when imagining actual use cases, especially regarding the necessity for privacy protection.

In terms of the ease of acceptance of the narrative, ZEC is straightforward: "a privacy version of Bitcoin, no one can see where my money goes." However, The Interfold is more complex to understand. Vitalik directly promoted this project on X at the end of May this year, and the reasons he provided for the recommendation indicate that it is not easy to comprehend...

At the dappcon in July this year, Vitalik also mentioned this project on-site:

Additionally, while Vitalik invested 16 ETH in the public auction, he has yet to claim the tokens from the sale, let alone sell them. Based on the above performance, it can be said that players are not concerned about what The Interfold can specifically be used for. They only need to know that this is a project that Vitalik supports, repeatedly mentions, and has personally invested in.

As for how this coin will perform in the future, I personally have an optimistic view. Firstly, it is difficult to compare with Vitalik's last participation in the prediction market Truemarkets, as the market environment during last year's $TRUE TGE was incomparable to now, and $TRUE was not listed on any exchange, big or small.

The peak market cap of $TRUE in full circulation did not exceed $20 million, while $FOLD currently has about 27% circulation, with a circulating market cap of approximately $27 million and an FDV of about $100 million. From the perspective of being listed on Upbit just a few days after its TGE, $FOLD seems to have room for growth.

Given that Vitalik personally supports the project with his own money, it can be assumed that he will not sell in the short to medium term. At least in Truemarkets, regardless of whether the current price is at a low point or at last October's peak, he has remained inactive. The narrative of "Vitalik bought it" for $FOLD will likely continue, especially since he keeps mentioning it, making the probability of the narrative shifting to "Vitalik sold it" quite low.

Secondly, although this project is a legitimate privacy protocol project, from a speculative standpoint, using a meme coin approach is not unreasonable. The positive factors we can list now include ETH's strength, the overall good market conditions, being listed on Upbit, and Vitalik's repeated mentions, all of which are attention-driven logic, betting that in a generally liquid environment, ETH will also be pursued to create its own popular target.

The technology and use cases themselves are quite difficult to understand, which also determines that for most on-chain players, the points that attract attention will not be the technology and use cases themselves, but rather the various attention-driven factors we mentioned above.

However, given the good earning effects across chains like Robinhood, BSC, and Solana, speculating on a target with a circulating market cap close to $30 million, especially on the currently less popular ETH mainnet, is hard to judge whether it is ahead of the curve or too niche. At this current position, while $FOLD has Vitalik's endorsement, the odds may not be that enticing.