The ping team’s c402 mintpad didn’t launch last night, and the only thing available to mint was a seemingly worthless pass. A bunch of people who prepared USDC and held ping were left disappointed, and ping continued to plummet, now barely over 20m. The apology letter from the project team is just… honestly, after reading it, I just want to curse. 1. Self-deprecation? They view the unexpected popularity of PING as a mistake, claiming it misused the x402 protocol. It seems like they’re trying to say the original intention was just a simple protocol, but it accidentally became the meme leader on the Base chain, causing the community to FOMO. 2. A lot of people were waiting to mint last night, but even minting that pass crashed the website. The project team’s capabilities seem pretty amateurish. 3. Mintpad said it’s delayed and will restart later. That pass is an SBT with no value, but it might grant investment opportunities or priority minting rights. Anyway, it’s all pretty vague. The project team didn’t seize the opportunity of ping’s “overwhelming success” to capitalize on the traffic and hype. This delay will probably lead to its downfall. I’m still optimistic about dreams becoming the x402 leader.