Author | Qin Xiaofeng
Editor | Lu Xiaoming
Produced by | Odaily Planet Daily (ID: o-daily)
After the article was published, Ono founder Xu Ke responded by saying that the APP is not shut down, but is paused for upgrades; he personally bears all the losses of ONOT stakers. For details, click to read https://www.odaily.com/post/5139258
Li Xiaolai once stated in the "Recording Gate" that investment should be in "internet celebrity projects" to effectively capture traffic.
The "Blockchain + Social" project—ONO, gained prominence due to its founder's internet celebrity status, receiving tens of millions of dollars in funding from Li Xiaolai’s Xiong'an Fund, becoming a hot topic.
Some investors even established multiple funds to acquire shares in ONO tokens, indicating the project's popularity.
However, Odaily Planet Daily found that the once-glorious ONO project is now inactive.
The ONO project office has long been empty, with several executives leaving after the New Year; even founder Xu Ke has "started anew" to promote a new project; in addition, the ONO project has not updated its code since April of this year, and its namesake APP has also ceased operations since the beginning of this month.
Some fund investors are not surprised by the "death" of ONO and frankly admit they do not hold high hopes for "Blockchain + Social".
"Xu Ke and Sun Yuchen are worlds apart," some investors bluntly stated.
In the end, regular retail investors are the ones who pay the price in internet celebrity projects.
Internet Celebrity Projects, Big Names as Spokespersons
"Li Xiaolai mentioned before in 'Recording Gate' that investment should focus on internet celebrity projects with traffic." Investor Liu Peng explained his reason for investing in ONO, "Xu Ke was an internet celebrity before, so I invested in ONO."
The blockchain project ONO, which emerged in early 2018, focuses on "Blockchain + Social".
At that time, cryptocurrencies were booming, and the blockchain concept was also gaining popularity, with thousands of blockchain projects on the market. According to Outlier Ventures data, as of February 2018, there were a total of 1,286 blockchain projects worldwide.
Among the vast number of blockchain projects, ONO rose to prominence. From the moment of its birth, ONO became the center of attention in the market.
The project's explosive popularity can be attributed to the internet celebrity status of its founder, but it also benefits from the backing of blockchain big name Li Xiaolai.
The ONO founder, Xu Ke, was previously an internet celebrity before entering the blockchain world.
(Xu Ke's old photo)
Xu Ke's internet celebrity history can be traced back to 2012.
At that time, 17-year-old Xu Ke, dressed provocatively, remained calm while being interviewed by the media after an accident. Subsequently, Xu revealed she had driven under the influence, which quickly exposed her identity as a "rich second-generation" and set the internet ablaze. Xu's Weibo followers surged from a few hundred to over 10,000, and the "Accident Girl" was included in the Baidu encyclopedia.
Later, Xu Ke started dating OMG Esports player Ling Yao, but their relationship wasn't well received by Ling Yao's fans; some even uncovered revealing private photos of Xu.
Labels like internet celebrity and rich second-generation made Xu Ke a hot topic, which drew public attention to the ONO project. However, that alone was not enough; the later rise of ONO was significantly aided by blockchain big shot Li Xiaolai.
Since the project's founding, ONO has successively secured millions of dollars in Pre-A round funding from Li Xiaolai's Coin Capital and tens of millions in Series A funding from the Xiong'an Fund. Additionally, ONO received financial support from executives like Cheetah CEO Fu Sheng, Songhe Storm, Deer Capital, Huachuang Capital, and South Korea's KIP.
Li Xiaolai has publicly endorsed Xu Ke, stating, "Xu Ke and ONO are bound to be dark horses in the blockchain field."
Despite the backing of big names, doubts from the outside world towards ONO have persisted. According to reports from Deep Chain Finance, ONO’s 40,000-member Chinese Telegram community appears greatly inflated, suspected of community size fraud; additionally, ONO's WeChat community was previously a fake insider information group.
However, these negative news did not stir significant waves under ONO's strong promotional offensive.
After several months of heated discussion, in June 2018, ONO eventually followed the old path of blockchain projects—starting to raise funds for its ONOT token.
"For example, when we develop a DAPP, theoretically, we don’t need to issue tokens early on. This matter has nothing to do with token issuance." Xu Ke said this in early 2018.
As time passed, six months later, Xu Ke began fundraising for token issuance before ONO's DAPP had officially launched, seemingly contradicting her initial intention.
During the fundraising for the project, to highlight its value, Xu employed a hunger marketing model, limiting each investment institution to a maximum of 500 ETH (1.5 million yuan).
Liu Peng established four funds to invest in the ONO project, splitting his 2000 ETH into parts to invest through each fund (500 ETH per fund).
At that time, Liu Peng was still unaware of the outcome that awaited him.
ONO Stops Operating
"The ONO APP cannot be opened anymore, and I have tens of thousands of ONOT inside." In early July of this year, journalist Yao Yao complained to Odaily Planet Daily.
Since the launch of the ONO APP in July 2018, emotional blogger Yao Yao has used ONO as one of her content distribution platforms. After six months of operation, Yao Yao earned nearly 50,000 ONOT (valued at about $4).
"Now it has just shut down without any notice. Although the money is small, they are treating people too carelessly." Yao Yao complained.
Yao Yao also stated that although ONO was her content distribution platform, she did not consider it her main platform. "(ONO) sometimes looks like there are robot-like users, and many comments are uniformly 'You write really well' or 'Awesome', so it became useless later on."
Odaily Planet Daily investigated and found that although ONO's official APP has not been removed from the app store, it has indeed stopped services, making it difficult for users to log in.
(ONO login interface, blank for a long time, service stopped)
In addition to the APP stopping services, Odaily Planet Daily's on-site visit revealed that ONO's office address (new address: Beijing Puxiang Center) is also empty and has been rented out by the property management. The wall's sign faintly reveals the "ONO" symbol, indicating the former identity of the company to passersby.
(Actual photo of ONO's new office location)
Additionally, ONO had previously claimed to develop its own public chain, but the mainnet has never been launched. For the past three months, the ONO project has stopped submitting code on the open-source website GitHub, with only five code submissions recorded.
(GitHub screenshot)
While the public chain development has halted, ONO is also undergoing internal personnel changes. After the New Year this year, several high-level executives began to resign. However, interviewees remain tight-lipped about the reasons for their departures.
Furthermore, since June 21, the ONO official WeChat account "ONOofficial" has also ceased updating the ONO project weekly report. Previously, "ONOofficial" provided regular weekly updates. As of the time of this report, "ONOofficial" reappeared after three weeks of inactivity, but the weekly report said nothing substantial and did not provide an explanation for the APP's service cessation.
All signs indicate that the once-popular internet celebrity project ONO has stopped operating.
Starting Anew, Parting Ways
Before the ONO project had fully stopped operating, ONO founder Xu Ke attempted to start anew and develop a new project.
On May 16, ONO's parent company, Beijing Nuo Zhou Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Nuo Zhou Group"), announced the acquisition of the social network Cherry, with Xu Ke serving as CEO of Cherry, and the original ONO dApp development team merging with the Cherry development team.
At the same time, Cherry announced a new policy: a limited-time lock-up of ONOT to airdrop Cherry tokens (YT), at a ratio of 5000 ONOT: 1 YT.
(Screenshot of Cherry's official website)
"(The exchange rate) is one-tenth of the current price; Cherry (YT) has soared 1000 times." Xu Ke promoted YT.
At that time, the price of ONOT was only $0.0002, while YT later launched at an opening price of $8 on Bithumb. This conversion method is similar to the popular IEO (Initial Exchange Offering) in the crypto circle, where users can gain huge benefits, making them very willing to participate.
However, this seemingly sincere airdrop is filled with tricks.
Firstly, users are compelled to participate in the locked-up airdrop, and those who miss the event will have their ONOT locking period extended by three years (previously only one year).
Secondly, even if users participate in the activity, they will permanently lock the airdropped YT, which cannot enter secondary market trading.
Undeniably, this was a well-crafted marketing campaign that brought substantial traffic to the new project. Xu Ke previously stated that within 12 hours of the Cherry App's launch, active users approached 100,000.
Nevertheless, in this marketing event, the ultimate damage fell on the rights and interests of ONO users. The developments later became even more unexpected.
The honeymoon period between Xu Ke and Cherry lasted less than two months before abruptly ending. Their “love” was passionately reported by the media when it began, but it departed quietly, with no one paying attention.
Nuo Zhou Group announced on June 28 that Xu Ke had resigned as CEO of Cherry.
(Image from Tianyancha)
"(Xu Ke) thought she could shake off ONO and escape, but ultimately failed." Retail investor Zhang Chen said, "The worst part was that our exchanged YT was also taken back, and the assets shrank."
In a notice at the beginning of this month, Cherry stated that Nuo Zhou Group did not inject capital after the acquisition announcement, rendering the acquisition invalid; moreover, Cherry would reclaim all previously airdropped YT.
(Cherry announcement screenshot)
During the previous exchange event, Zhang Chen exchanged 4 million ONOT (at a unit price of $0.0002) for YT. Now, exchanging back to ONOT (at a unit price of $0.00009) would cause Zhang Chen’s assets to shrink by 50%. Zhang Chen tried to contact ONO customer service but did not receive a response.
After parting ways with Cherry, no one knows where Xu Ke and the ONO team have gone.
"An era has ended. Those who understand, understand." On July 1, Xu Ke posted a message that seemed to announce the official death of the ONO project.
(Screenshot from Xu Ke's social media)
Investors Reduced to Bag Holders
In June 2018, the ONO token ONOT began fundraising externally.
According to Xu Ke’s plan, the cornerstone round of ONOT accepted investments from institutional investors, capped at 500 ETH, with an exchange ratio of 1 ETH: 600,000 ONOT, setting the private placement cost at around 0.005 yuan; the ONOT would then undergo Dutch auction, with the starting bid price consistent with the cornerstone round.
As a result, at that time, Xu Ke promoted that ONOT consisted entirely of retail investors, with no whales involved in profit-taking.
However, after ONOT’s launch, the price trend left investors very dissatisfied.
On December 11, 2018, ONOT was listed on Kucoin with an opening price of 0.0000042 ETH (about 0.0025 yuan), which skyrocketed briefly before plummeting 50%, causing panic in the community.
(Image from Kucoin)
"To be honest, from a cryptocurrency standpoint, the launch did not break; selling at the launch could yield a 100% profit; however, from a fiat currency standpoint, it incurred a 50% loss." Investor Liu Zhun participated in the cornerstone round fundraising, investing 50 ETH (about 150,000 yuan), yet despite selling upon launch, he still faced significant losses.
In the following days, Xu Ke began live streaming daily to recharge investors' faith, but this still did not stop the price decline.
Investor Teng Fei invested 20 ETH in ONO, and after listening to Xu Ke's live stream, Teng Fei held on (HODL) until after this year's Spring Festival to begin selling.
"Looking back now, I feel so foolish for being swayed by what she said." Teng Fei said, "I lost tens of thousands of yuan; only after suffering losses do I understand, I blame myself for not being knowledgeable enough."
Teng Fei had once asked Xu Ke during a live stream if he should buy when ETH fell below 600 yuan. "She actually said Ethereum is useless; I believed it at the time. During the live stream, according to her, only Bitcoin, EOS, and her ONOT had value, while no other coins should be bought."
Ordinary investors were infused with faith by Xu Ke, while some experienced investors also fell for the trap.
As the cryptocurrency price plunged, Xu Ke issued a statement saying it was caused by someone maliciously dumping, and froze accounts related to ONO community member "Hotpot Person." Additionally, Xu Ke also warned investors in the ONO whale group that she knew everyone's addresses and instructed them not to maliciously dump; otherwise, their accounts would be frozen.
(ONO official announcement)
While stabilizing the big investors, Xu Ke also infused faith in them.
"Just like with contracts, you will look for various reasons to validate your judgment. In that state, I also believed this project (ONO) was indeed great." Liu Peng added.
However, after December 16, 2018, ONO officials ceased to publish any information in the big investor group, and investors began to fight their own battles.
What frustrates Liu Peng the most is that Xu Ke was secretly offloading her tokens. "After ONOT was listed, she purely used her mouth to pump the price and did not support it. Before the launch, she had already been quietly offloading on the side."
According to ONO's white paper, the team reserved 20 billion ONOT, yet the project side did not publicly disclose any sales activities.
Interestingly, despite the favorable announcement of ONO's merger with Cherry, it did not stimulate a rise in the token price. During the bull market, ONOT’s price continuously declined, especially with a recent surge in trading volume and falling prices, suspected of large investors offloading.
(ONO price chart, image from CoinMarketCap)
As of the time of this report, ONOT's price has dropped more than 90% compared to the private placement price. Moreover, the historical highest price also hasn't returned to the private placement level, and investors have been reduced to unfortunate bag holders.
Obsessed with "Social" as an Internet Celebrity
Besides being an internet celebrity, another identity for Xu Ke is that of a "90s entrepreneur," with a representative startup project being ERA.
Like ONO and Cherry later on, ERA was also a social software. The official introduction states that users can earn money by completing tasks posted by others while also making friends.
It seems Xu Ke is obsessed with "social," focusing her multiple entrepreneurial efforts in this area. Notably, TRON (Ripple) project founder Sun Yuchen has also previously ventured into the social field with a product called "Accompany Me."
However, angel investor An He is not optimistic about this choice. "The social field is no longer a blue ocean, and 'Blockchain + Social' is more of a pseudo-demand. From the outset of the entrepreneurship, the ending was already written."
An He believes that current social software focuses on solving a particular pain point, each with its own features. "Momo and Tantan focus on stranger socializing, SOUL is about making friends through voice... What about ONO? Its so-called reward mechanism offers less than what Toutiao or Baijiahao provides."
Choosing the wrong entrepreneurial track seems to be the core reason for ONO project's downfall.
Additionally, Xu Ke, as the founder, appears limited to promotional activities for the project, with a clear lack of capability.
Xu Ke’s earlier entrepreneurial project ERA received 12 million yuan in Pre-A round funding, led by Zhuhe Capital, with a valuation of 120 million yuan. However, the project ultimately failed, and the related product was removed from the app store.
The root cause lies in the project focusing only on publicity rather than product research, being accused of plagiarizing Ingress with a poor user experience. (Odaily Planet Daily notes: Ingress is a large-scale multiplayer immersive reality game based on geographic location.)
In the ONO project, Xu Ke's attention seems not substantial.
A browse through Xu Ke's social media posts reveals that most are about her daily outings, clearly portraying her as an internet celebrity with little focus on the project. Since the beginning of this year, of nearly a hundred posts, only about twenty were related to the ONO project.
Sun Yuchen, also an internet celebrity, appears to be more diligent. Opening his Weibo posts, almost all are about the TRON project promotion; he spares no effort in riding on trends and creating hotspots to increase his public exposure.
"Xu Ke is an internet celebrity, and so is Sun Yuchen. But there are many differences between Xu Ke and Sun Yuchen." An He commented, "Sun Yuchen frantically chases trends and makes calls, while Yuhong also creates buzz; only Xu Ke remains silent."
Everyone sees Xu Ke differently, leaving the impression on outsiders as "articulate," often expressing feelings and visions.
What kind of image does Xu Ke present in work and life? Many interviewees who have worked with Xu Ke did not provide comments.
Investor Liu Peng, who has dealt with Xu Ke, sees her more like a "female Jia Yueting."
During the ONO launch ceremony in 2018, as the speech was about to conclude, Xu Ke passionately shouted, "We are fighting not only to change the world but also to prevent the world from changing us."
"I thought Xu Ke was very articulate, similar to Jia Yueting, just missing the line ‘Let’s suffocate for our dreams’ at the end of the PPT." Liu Peng said.
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