Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, has two cats: Mochi and Toshi.
$TOSHI and $MOCHI are two cat coins on Base. T caters for devs, M appeals to users.
The perfect flywheel spinners you may think. Nope, their communities seem to have beef with one another. Really? Come on!
Isn't web3 meant to usher in the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible (Charles Eisenstein)? Yet when I read how both communities dunk on each other in their respective echo chambers on Telegram, I am more reminded of adult football fans acting like juveniles!
I was first muted once in the Toshi TG for mentioning the orange cat complementing the blue one, and then banned completely (for celebrating the capital rotation into ETH and Ethereum-related coins incl. 'both cats' on Jan 14 when the BTC ETFs were approved). CANCEL = NOT COOL.
No hard feelings, but since then I lost my interest in Toshi. I check the Toshi TG via my partners account from time to time, and what stands out is how salty the tone of some Toshi Maxis sounds at times; it is so salty you can top-up the Dead Sea with their tears! They seriously criticise orange as cheap copycat and that blue has the OG NFT collection on base! Hello - was the iPhone first?
Meanwhile, over in orange cat Telegram (where I am daily), some folks can't resist calling Toshi NFTs ugly and obsess about "flippening" $TOSHI. To be fair, the tone here is less aggressive/salty, yet this is not quite artful participation either imho:
Toshi NFTs don't need to be cute as Toshi is about helpful developer tools catering for the Cambrian explosion of projects, d'apps and token when it's base szn. I am glad they didn't use their treasury on famous Pudgy Penguins artist Antoine Mingo (which is what Mochi did to create the Mochimon NFT collection). I want them to focus on making their DeFi tools the safest on base, because that gets more users here, which might in turn buy more Mochi token. Simple.
Flippening is some of the dumbest memes ever created by crypto people: it perpetuates rivalrous thinking that brought us the current system so many of us claim they hate. Plus, had Ethereans not focused on flippening Bitcoin in the last cycle...the UX might already be 10x better...and now some fans of the second born cat on base are focussing on de-throning the OG in terms of market cap. Don't.
Don't compare yourself with who someone else is today, compare yourself with who you were yesterday (Jordan Peterson)
It took me way too long to grasp this piece of wisdom. Whilst there are species in nature with recognisable similarities, it is also true that every human is unique; what I learned from biohacking is that the only sample size that matters is:
n=1
I think that applies to cat coins too. Whilst roaming the same land, Mochi and Toshi play in their distinct niches:
Toshi = B2B
Imagine blue cat being animated and speaking in the voice of Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburn): Please new dev, come my way, I will make your project on base safe and sound. Our cool tools are rock solid and will make your users and investors trust you and your token.
Mochi = B2C
Imagine orange cat being animated and speaking in the voice of a female voice of your choice: Please new user step into the web3 wonderland. You don't need to be scared, we are friendly here. Our tamamochi game shows you what is possible on-chain and what to watch out for: there are some bad guys, but mostly on other chains, not on base. Oh, and the cat is cute.
I own both tokens and I think both projects are bloody brilliant. I wish both cats to win their own game and become the apex animal their chosen niche. Then they can fulfil their evolutionary potential: to bring the masses to base.
One more thing: I wouldn't been entirely surprised if we found out is some of the rivalry is somewhat staged and scripted, like the kayfabe agreements in wrestling...
In the spirit of BOTH-AND I minted this water bottle with both blue and orange cats today on this amazing project that form within the substrate of the emerging creator economy:
