Interviewer: Rahim Mawani, Head of Community Growth at Silly Dragon
Interview: Peng SUN
Original source: Foresight News
On Halloween in November 2023, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko appeared at the Solana Breakpoint 2023 conference in Amsterdam in a "Silly Dragon" costume, and then on December 5, the memecoin "Silly Dragon" was officially launched on Solana. From the initial 0.00002875 USDT to 0.15 USDT, SILLY has increased more than 5,200 times in more than 20 days.
However, the Silly team is not satisfied with just being a memecoin, but wants to develop Silly Dragon into a powerful cultural movement. This cultural movement also temporarily stopped the rise of SILLY in January. In the past two months, SILLY once plummeted to around 0.019 USDT, and the Chinese Silly Dragon community has never recovered since then.
However, the SILLY market has improved in recent days and is currently fluctuating between 0.05 and 0.06 USDT. At the same time, Foresight News also invited Rahim Mawani, head of community growth at Silly Dragon, to conduct an exclusive interview and asked him to tell us what the team has been doing in the past two months, how the ecological construction is going, and where it will go in the future.
1. From Cosplay to Memecoin
Foresight News: Could you please introduce yourself and your team members? What are you responsible for? What were you doing before Silly Dragon? How did you all come together?
Rahim Mawani: I’m Rahim, Head of Community Growth at Silly Dragon, responsible for growing our brand through strategic partnerships within the Solana ecosystem. Prior to this, I served as the Community Lead for Solana Collective, the global ambassador program of the Solana Foundation.
I found out about this project from my friend David, a core contributor to Silly Dragon who helps with community events and other collaborative projects that benefit Silly. Other core team members include SillyDev, co-founder and Chief Development Officer, and SillyDragonRed, COO. SillyDragonRed oversees everything and works with anonymous artists to control our art and design. We met on Twitter and agreed to help the Solana community grow.
Foresight News: What do you think is the reason for Silly Dragon’s success in achieving a 230-fold increase in value in December? Apart from the Chinese lunar year of the dragon, what is the meaning of Silly Dragon in Western culture?
Rahim Mawani: The inspiration came from Solana co-founder Anatoly (also known as Toly), who cosplayed Silly Dragon at the Solana Breakpoint conference during Halloween; then on November 8, 2023, he wrote on Twitter: "year of the silly dragon."
After that, Toly began to recognize us, pay attention to us, and retweet our tweets. His support promoted the attention and support of other elites in the Solana ecosystem. Silly Dragon is full of positive energy and very inspiring. People all over the world can resonate with it. It is the Solana mascot. Of course, we also believe in Chinese astrology. The East and the West have the same cultural magic and appeal. Let us work together to bring good luck to the world.
2. More than a Meme: Silly Dragon’s Cultural Movement
Foresight News: You said on Twitter that Silly Dragon is not just a Memecoin, but is developing into a cultural movement and a community-oriented social financing program. Can you elaborate on this? Why did you choose to shift from Memecoin to building an ecosystem and doing projects?
Rahim Mawani: Yes, Silly is inseparable from Toly, and we will always be a memecoin, but we are developing into a movement and expanding into other areas of the Solana ecosystem, such as NFT, Metaverse, VR, DeFi, etc. We also plan to enter GameFi. The ultimate goal is to expand SILLY Dragon to the entire Web3 ecosystem, and it all starts with Solana.
Foresight News: Will Silly Dragon replicate Pudgy Penguins' successful IP-based route, focusing on "brand" and cultural peripherals to expand its market influence? Compared with other memecoin and NFT projects, what is Silly Dragon's biggest advantage?
Rahim Mawani: Think of Super Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog, both classic characters from popular games. Silly Dragon is indeed not yet recognized by the world, but it is too early to discuss this now. As we integrate with the Solana ecosystem and game development develops, the Silly brand influence will get better. Our 8888 PFP NFT will take longer because we are integrating new features of token extensions, and hybrid DeFi will give our small pictures better liquidity.
We will not copy or imitate any project, what we have to do is to continue to innovate and become the leader of the Solana ecosystem and the entire Web3 world. We have a collaborative growth mentality. Among the many cats and dogs, you will notice that there is only one dragon, that is SILLY. This year is our "Year of the Dragon".
Foresight News: What is Silly Dragon's short-term and mid-term roadmap? Which areas will it focus on? Does it have any financing plans?
Rahim Mawani: In the near future, we will focus on improving brand influence, marketing, merchandise and increasing content creation. We also hope that the Silly Dragon community will be happy every day, enjoy the good times and spread positive energy. We are preparing strategic cooperation to promote the overall growth and development of the brand and Silly movement.
Long term, we are developing a cutting-edge Web3 mobile game and exploring the AR/XR space to incorporate new interactive space technologies into Solana Mobile games. This is consistent with the Solana ecosystem’s goal of bringing 1 billion users to Solana.
At present, our priority is to increase community participation through fun and unique events. At the same time, we do plan to find existing market makers or new market makers and VCs to raise funds and better develop Silly Dragon DAO.
Since the community owns nearly 100% of the supply and has access to liquidity pools, Lianchuang has repurchased a portion to develop Silly Dragon. In addition, we will work with partners and Solana Foundation grant programs to expand.
Foresight News: What progress have you made in building the ecosystem in the past two months?
Rahim Mawani: We’ve made a lot of progress during the past few months of pullback. We launched the Zebec Instant Card for SILLY holders, which can be withdrawn via Visa or Mastercard. We sold all 3333 Tolys Dragon heads on 3Land with our partner Indiglow Studios, which can be traded with SILLY. We also launched our own SILLY NFT marketplace on 3Land. In addition, we also worked with the Back an Underdog and Metaplex teams to airdrop cNFTs to the Solana Mobile community.
Hey Wallet also integrated Silly Dragon, allowing anyone to send SILLY on Twitter through Solana. We also received support from teams such as Orca and Kamino Finance. With the support of Toly, we became a validator node for the Solana network. On the Solana Mobile Chapter 2 leaderboard, Silly Dragon is one of the main contributors, ranking 11th.
We are currently busy launching our new website, releasing new decks and roadmaps, and we also partnered with Tensor, an NFT marketplace on Solana, to host a Chinese Lunar New Year of the Dragon themed party in Toronto.
Foresight News: Can you introduce Silly Dragon's metaverse project SILLYVERSE and how you use SILLY tokens to mint the entire metaverse as an NFT in Apple Vision Pro VR? At the same time, what is the relationship between the two? How can ordinary users participate in the experience?
Rahim Mawani: SILLYVERSE is an initiative we launched with our partners at 3 Land, where the community is able to mint, build and design their own metaverse through SILLY, with the opportunity to showcase designs and win cash prizes.
We attended the Solana event in Utah and met with other members of the Solana Foundation and the MarginFi team, who experienced our XR version of SILLYVERSE for the first time on Apple Vision Pro. We also used VR to cast one of the projects and made a video to show it. In addition, we will launch Sillyverse on a new website so that users can buy it.
Foresight News: Toly said 2024 is the Year of Silly Dragon, and the Solana Foundation also invited you to develop the GameFi game on Solana Mobile. So how will the Solana Foundation support the development of Silly Dragon this year? What breakthroughs will the combination of GameFi and Solana Mobile 2 bring to the Solana ecosystem?
Rahim Mawani: The Solana Foundation is very happy to provide us with various resources, assistance or guidance, and help in game development. We also plan to apply for game development grants. The Solana Foundation will continue to share support and guidance with us in technical development, marketing, and business development. At present, we have not received official public recognition. In the future, we hope to introduce AR/XR in Solana Mobile mobile games with our partners at Indiglow.
Foresight News: You have launched a variety of NFTs. What will be the utility of these NFTs in the future? How will they empower the ecosystem and users? What do you think of NFTFi?
Rahim Mawani: All of our NFTs are unique and have their own utility, and some are just collectibles. Chibi NFTs are a series of 50 rare animated PFPs. We have a "Dragon Avatar" for the 3 Land metaverse. The Sillyverse is a customized world. The red, green, and gold pocket dragons are royalty rewards for active collectors and traders, and may also be redeemed for benefits in the future for our early supporters. Other cNFTs airdropped to various communities are souvenirs and gifts for POAPs who attend events.
We also have a 3D NFT gift for the SILLY whale, which will be announced soon. Silly’s final NFT series will be the 8888 PFP series, which I just talked about.
NFT is our on-chain brand, and each digital asset means the expansion of Silly's business. In any case, the Silly Dragon community has a bright future, and we are exploring ways to integrate our NFT.
Foresight News: There are many Chinese elements in your Chibi NFT. For example, what is the meaning of "Chibi"? Will there be more Chinese elements in the PFP and games you plan to launch in the future?
Rahim Mawani: We are very willing to learn more about Chinese elements from the community, and welcome everyone to put forward creative ideas in our discussion area. Chibi means a small and cute style, which is a form of animation.
We are also very willing to incorporate more Asian elements in upcoming PFP and games, because Chinese culture is exciting and can resonate with traditional art.
3. “Remaining authentic is the most valuable thing”
Foresight News: SILLY has been weakening in the past two months, and the confidence and activity of the Chinese community have been significantly affected. Many people joked that they hope you can "do more market making and less work", but I noticed that there are more than 30,000 SILLY holders. What do you think about this issue? What actions will be taken to boost community confidence?
Rahim Mawani: Over the past period of time, the number of SILLY holders has actually increased to 32,000 due to the airdrops we made to cNFT holders during our Dragon Year event.
We are not interested in pump and dump tactics, instead we are running a naturally inspired movement driven by veterans, regardless of how low the current price is or the harsh feedback from the Chinese community.
The Chinese community really needs to understand what we are doing. No one is leaving and we are always building. I believe that our efforts will soon be reflected in the price. When you pull up the price, the community's confidence will naturally increase. There is a saying that goes: Success may not be achieved by me, but the effort will not be in vain.
Foresight News: You said that your team now has only 5 people, and you are working on more than 100 projects. Can you handle the busyness? How many hours of sleep do you get every day?
Rahim Mawani: We are hiring and expanding the team. So many projects are not something that can be completed overnight, and we will prioritize the most influential ones at the moment. Therefore, we are not overloaded with work, but a combination of work and rest. I rest for about 6 hours a day, and spend 1 hour doing yoga, Qigong, meditation or fitness. Since joining Silly Dragon (10 days after the project started), I work about 16 to 18 hours a day, and always believe in "SILLY to a BILLY"!
Foresight News: I see that you have ambitious plans in various fields such as DeFi, GameFi, Metaverse, NFT, etc. Judging from the current market situation, it is challenging to survive in any of these fields, let alone excel. With limited team resources, how do you plan to stand out in such fierce competition?
Rahim Mawani: We have abundant resources and can access the smartest people on the planet. We have everything. We hope that Silly Dragon can bring more happiness to everyone. We hope to share unique ideas and will maintain a positive, open, innovative and cooperative attitude to attract high-IQ and high-EQ development teams, project owners and designers. At the same time, we will make more efforts in the fields of AR/XR, mobile and games to maintain our own brand characteristics.
No one can take away what belongs to us, and staying true to ourselves is the most valuable thing.
Foresight News: Finally, what do you think is the future position of Silly Dragon in the Solana ecosystem? What impact will it have on the Solana ecosystem?
Rahim Mawani: Silly Dragon is the totem of Solana, which symbolizes luck and happiness. SILLY will represent the future of Web3 mobile games. As a leader in XR cutting-edge space technology, it will combine the digital dimension with the real world and bring 1 billion active users to Solana.
