Dialogue with Shil.me Founder: What will the Web3 version of Linktree be like?

Written by: Zhu Enmin, Kit, Chain Catcher

Interviewees: Gokhan Egri & Henry Jin, Founders of Shil.me

After the Bored Ape Yacht Club ignited the NFT market, NFTs have become a track that both crypto enthusiasts and outsiders are eager to participate in. However, given that the crypto industry is still in its early stages, besides trading and displaying avatars, how else can NFTs be utilized after ownership? This has been a perplexity for many NFT enthusiasts and observers.

In 2022, the emergence of Shil.me provided an answer to the market. As an NFT interaction platform, Shil.me offers a bio-link solution to display NFTs and digital assets from the entire Web3 ecosystem, enabling digital asset collectors to engage meaningfully with their digital assets. In simple terms, the Shil.me platform aims to allow people to showcase, share, trade, and manage NFTs.

In June this year, Shil.me completed a $1.2 million funding round, with investors including OpenSea, Folius Ventures, and the Chinese company Xiaohongshu, sparking considerable interest in the project among industry insiders. Its founders are two graduate students from Harvard University: Gokhan Egri and Henry Jin, who is notably a Korean-Chinese entrepreneur from Hong Kong.

Recently, Chain Catcher invited Shil.me founders Gokhan Egri and Henry Jin for a dialogue. In nearly an hour of conversation, they introduced the story behind the founding of Shil.me, its business model, development plans, pointed out the differences between Shil.me and Linktree, and shared their thoughts on the Web3 user experience and the future of NFTs. Below is the full dialogue.

Chain Catcher: Please introduce your experiences entering the crypto industry and the story behind founding Shil.me.

Gokhan Egri: My entry into the cryptocurrency industry stems from the fact that if you look at the internet, it has democratized the way information is accessed and shared. We see that cryptocurrency is having the same impact on finance. New DeFi protocols are democratizing finance and implementing financial incentives. So I think that’s what’s interesting about cryptocurrency, and it’s definitely what piqued my interest, and as far as I know, Henry is also interested in this.

The reason we are interested in building this industry and the Web3 part of cryptocurrency is that initially, DeFi in cryptocurrency was generally created by large teams, more like a way to accumulate wealth or trade rather than something that could be built upon. But later, during last year’s NFT summer, many new things emerged, and a lot of people were building very cool things. I believe Web3 is a space where you can truly build, and to this day, I personally still think Web3 is the best field right now, filled with smart people and aligned incentives, which is why we entered this space and founded Shil.me.

Chain Catcher: How did you two meet? How did you come up with the idea to create Shil.me?

Henry Jin: Gokhan and I are currently graduate students at Harvard University. So far, I have completed a year of study, and Gokhan has completed two years. We met about a year ago in a Harvard dorm, initially just as friends, studying similar computer science courses, sharing similar interests, having meals together, playing ping pong, and discussing entrepreneurial ideas. In December last year, we both independently developed an interest in Web3 and NFTs, but we didn’t know that the other was also interested. In January of this year, we discovered our shared interests and decided to work together.

Chain Catcher: What does Shil.me do? What problem does it aim to solve?

Gokhan Egri: In short, we essentially want to bring meaningful interactions to the entire Web3 and NFT space through Shil.me. Our motivation for founding Shil.me was seeing NFTs continuously appearing in popular large communities, but the things that could be done with NFTs were very limited, and the user experience was poor. That is to say, it seems magical, but behind it are cumbersome and strange things. The things you can do with NFTs are mainly based on digital assets, which can be bought, sold, or held in wallets, but there’s no way to interact with these assets.

The founding of Shil.me is to solve this problem, enabling you to interact with these assets and engage with your identity in the Web3 space. We hope Shil.me becomes a place of real significance where every entity in Web3 can come in, create a page and room, where people have communities, and where many things can be done in the future.

Chain Catcher: Is it possible that there will be other types of assets in the future, rather than just the current PFP model?

Gokhan Egri: This is an important part of Shil.me's vision and a reason why investors are willing to support us early on. We have also been thinking about PFPs and NFT artworks because 99% of the existing space is filled with these. In the future, asset classes will be very diverse, and many things will be tokenized as NFTs, with many digital assets existing in NFT form. Therefore, we want to ensure that Shil.me provides a way for people to interact with and track their assets.

Chain Catcher: Shil.me aims to create a Web3 version of Linktree. More and more projects are using Linktree as their homepage. What needs does Linktree meet for projects, and what needs does it fail to meet for Web3 projects?

Gokhan Egri: Shil.me is essentially a Web3 version of Linktree. We are largely mimicking Linktree and greatly admire how Linktree gained its initial users, how it marketed itself, and how it attracted all the opinion leaders. Compared to Shil.me, Linktree’s advantage is its influence; many celebrities use Linktree. This is both a good and a bad thing. It means Linktree has its own standards, and it is a community designed for Web2, doing things in a Web2 way. Our main advantages compared to Linktree are threefold:

First, we are trying to create something that is native to Web3; Linktree is essentially not native to Web3. Perhaps Linktree can allow some Web3 elements on it, but it can never become a fully Web3 company because it is a company valued at over $1 billion in the Web2 space. We are starting from a Web3 native perspective, expanding on collectibles and NFTs, which is a major advantage.

Second, while Linktree does offer some customization options, they are mainly for linking things, jumping from one place to another, and clicking a link takes you elsewhere. But Shil.me has powerful display and aesthetic presentation features, with a good user interface and user experience. We are working to create a room that is aesthetically meaningful and enjoyable; the core value of our team is to build out-of-the-box, aesthetically meaningful products, which is a significant selling point.

Third, perhaps our biggest advantage is that Linktree is designed to allow users to jump from one link to another in just a few seconds, so all you have to do is click to enter Linktree and then jump out, with the ultimate destination being elsewhere. There isn’t really any interaction to be had on Linktree. The reason for this phenomenon is that the giants in Web2 have already occupied the major platforms and created network effects among users, so Linktree cannot truly compete with Instagram. For Web3, a major opportunity is that these large platforms are also huge consumer ends. What Shil.me is doing is linking things from Shil.me to other places, such as Opensea and Magic Eden. A highlight of Shil.me is that you can interact with things on the platform, creating a better user experience.

Chain Catcher: Will you be more focused on B-end or C-end? What differences will these two aspects have in the display needs for NFTs?

Henry Jin: Until now, Shil.me has been focused on individuals. However, in our plans, there are some projects to achieve a smooth transition to organizations. For example, we can allow multiple people to manage and display a room, which will be a collective page produced by everyone. We also plan to release some tools, such as voting tools, to make it easier for DAOs to engage with communities and for DAO members to interact easily in various forms.

Chain Catcher: What are Shil.me's short-term or long-term goals?

Gokhan Egri: We will conduct user interviews to understand what users want in this space and what is currently lacking. We have already seen that one of the missing elements is display; users want to showcase their items in a beautiful and sophisticated way, seeking a way to interact with other users in the space, rather than interacting on Twitter, as Twitter is not built for Web3 client interactions. People want a dedicated place where they can see someone’s wallet, their interactions in the world, follow them, engage with them, and see their identity in this world. This was the first thing we did when building the Shil.me prototype in January and February.

We will soon launch the Shil.me Feed feature, which will show what’s happening in the rooms you follow. Did the number of people you follow increase or decrease? Did they change their URL? Did they follow someone? Do you need to react to someone? These are major selling points of user relationships; people want to know what those they follow are doing. We will strive to refine this area before December. Our roadmap also includes recommending users based on similar collectibles and some very cool features, but we will really strengthen the relationship-building aspect after December.

Users also want to trade in their own rooms rather than using centralized markets like OpenSea or Magic Eden. To this end, we will launch a market feature supported by OpenSea in December, where people will be able to trade directly on Shil.me using OpenSea’s infrastructure without using any third-party services. By the end of December or mid-January, when we conduct our seed round financing, we will complete these projects for individual users.

In the next two years, we will build strong features related to collectibles and DAOs. Our roadmap will not predict market trends, will not forecast whether PFPs will still be popular in a few years, and will not predict whether classic series will fail; what we are building is amazing, powerful features and the best user experience in this field. Thus, no matter what the next hit in Web3 construction is, it will be built on Shil.me. That is our mission.

Chain Catcher: What will be Shil.me's revenue model? Is there a token issuance and decentralization plan?

Henry Jin: We have two types of revenue options. The first option is selling features or NFTs. NFTs could be membership and general community NFTs that grant users certain privileges or features, or provide users with premium access across our platform. We have already done some work for this and plan to mint our first NFT collection to reward early users. Additionally, we plan to sell certain wallpapers as premium features, allowing users to choose various backgrounds in the page settings, and we are contacting artists to help us create cool, dreamy, and attractive backgrounds to sell directly on the Shil.me platform.

Another option is to sell tokens. We call it "Shill to Earn," which is part of the larger "X to Earn" model. Over the past year, "Play to Earn" has become very popular, being the easiest way for cryptocurrency to penetrate beyond the blockchain space. For us, we propose "Shill to Earn," rewarding users for interactions. If users can drive traffic to an NFT project page by showcasing a certain NFT project’s page using Shil.me’s Linktree features, they should be rewarded by the NFT project for the traffic generated. Another source of revenue is ICOs, promoting tokens and waiting for appreciation.

Chain Catcher: What do you think is the biggest problem with the current Web3 user experience? What methods can improve the user experience in Web3?

Gokhan Egri: Whenever we talk to users or anyone in the community, the main issue discussed is the clunky user experience. Web3 is still in a very early stage, and the user experience is very poor, with the greatest protocols written by the smartest people wrapped in very clumsy, counterintuitive user interfaces that make it unusable. Shil.me wants to provide a smooth and streamlined experience; one of our main tasks is to make the user experience comparable to Web2. We hope Web3 can be built on web, mobile, and eventually VR, providing the best experience. We also believe that Shil.me will establish a truly streamlined, clean design that allows users to interact with blockchains, NFTs, and all their belongings.

We realize that we are not only building UI but also potentially setting the standard for excellent UI in Linktree. What we are doing is establishing the standards for user experience and user interface in Web3. In this very early stage, Web3 is still finding its place in the crypto industry, and as more talent joins, there will be more users, more data, and more iterations, leading to better user experiences and improvements across the board.

Chain Catcher: In June of this year, you completed a $1.2 million pre-seed funding round, with investors including Folius Ventures, which focuses on investing in Chinese communities in the Asia-Pacific region, and the Chinese company Xiaohongshu. How did you impress the investors from Xiaohongshu?

Gokhan Egri: We hope to build products in Web3 that can compete with Web2 companies that have network effects, so we really need to collaborate with companies that have user growth experience. We were very excited to talk with Xiaohongshu investors; we admire their product vision and appreciate their marketing approach. What impressed Xiaohongshu investors about Shil.me was likely our product vision, as we view Web3 with a realistic attitude. We believe that generally, Web3 will continue to exist; it is a great opportunity to democratize digital assets and digital finance. We are currently building things for art, and in the long run, everything we do is to make it useful for what is built in Web3. For example, digital assets, as long as they are built in Web3 or built in the next 5 to 10 years, we will be able to meet their needs.

Additionally, Xiaohongshu investors were also impressed by Shil.me's lightweight nature. We can provide a lightweight, simple, and frictionless user experience. Xiaohongshu may also be considering incorporating some Shil.me pages into its platform, allowing NFT sales to be completed through Shil.me associated pages on Xiaohongshu’s platform. But ultimately, the real reason Xiaohongshu joined is that they see us as realists in the Web3 space; we are not chasing trends or putting on airs.

Chain Catcher: Henry, as a developer with an Asian background, how do you view the cultural differences faced in entrepreneurship?

Henry Jin: Cross-cultural differences are indeed important factors when penetrating markets; designing products should benefit the development of different cultures and facilitate cultural connections. I think an open mindset is crucial; the key is to communicate with people, to fundamentally understand cultural differences, and to be willing to adapt products to fit different markets. Conducting user interviews, adopting a scientific mindset, using data, obtaining qualitative evidence, and forming partnerships are essential. If you try to impose something that works locally onto other places, it may not necessarily succeed.

Chain Catcher: During the crypto bear market, what advice do you have for other crypto entrepreneurs?

Gokhan Egri: A fundamental viewpoint is that cryptocurrency and its core products are very strong. Individual markets, bull and bear cycles are only temporary; it’s essential to build something that truly benefits the community, which requires digging in and finding the value in the ecosystem. We will always find value, and people will eventually accept it.