Original article by Phil Jacobson
Compiled by / Odaily Planet Daily Golem (@web 3_golem)
Several years ago, we developed Vector, a mobile-first social trading application for on-chain assets. Our business grew incredibly fast, skyrocketing from zero to a peak of over $20 million in daily trading volume, with the product's cumulative trading volume reaching approximately $1 billion. In the first few months after launch, as growth accelerated, our user retention resembled that of a social network more than a traditional trading app—which was precisely the form we originally aimed to create.
However, by the end of 2025, we sold the company to Coinbase.
Since then, I have been watching how Fomo took a product with a similar vision in a different direction and achieved exceptional execution. They successfully broke through the CT (Crypto Twitter) circle, attracted a massive number of new users into the on-chain world, and recently surpassed $100 million in daily trading volume.
Seeing their success doesn't make me think "that should have been us." On the contrary, I think their achievement is remarkable. They embraced the product philosophy we deeply believed in, focused it on a market we never truly tapped into, and realized that vision on a scale far beyond ours.
The whole process fascinates me, and I can't help but imagine that in some parallel universe, perhaps we too might have taken a completely different path...
All Interesting Products Initially Look Like 'Toys'
Vector's birth actually stemmed from the Solana NFT marketplace, Tensor.
Before joining Tensor as its COO, I participated as an angel investor in Tensor's only funding round when the project had almost no market share. By the time I officially joined, Tensor had become the dominant NFT marketplace on Solana, once commanding over 80% market share with billions in trading volume.
About the second day after I started, Ilja approached me, saying something along the lines of: "We're not sure about the future of the NFT space, but we think the next wave will be Meme coins, so we're planning to build a product for that."
Our insight wasn't just that Meme coins would be the next hot asset class; we believed the bigger opportunity lay in "social trading."
Trading behavior inherently has a social component. The GameStop saga and the WallStreetBets community are clear examples. More people are investing on their own, and increasingly, they are taking action based on trusted individuals online rather than traditional financial advisors or institutions.
The crypto space makes this behavior even more visible. There are always people on X who catch important trades early—Ansem is a great example, heavily promoting Solana when it was around $8. If you trusted his call and acted on it, you could have made incredible returns.
The problem is that discovering an opportunity and executing a trade are often completely separate processes.
You might see someone you trust post about a token on X or a Telegram group, decide to get in, then search for the correct contract address. On mobile, the actual execution experience is terrible. You need to open your Phantom wallet, open a browser, go to Jupiter, connect your wallet, paste the contract address, verify the token, set the trade size, and finally execute. For Meme coins, time is money. By the time you finish all these steps, the opportunity might be gone.
Therefore, we firmly believed that social signals and trade execution should be integrated within the same product, with the distance between them reduced to as close to zero as possible.
Chris Dixon, founder of a16z crypto, famously posited that all interesting products start out looking like "toys." That's how we viewed Meme coins—they were the "toy" that could bootstrap a social trading network.
Our long-term vision went far beyond that. As more mainstream assets moved on-chain, this network would naturally extend to those assets. Once you have the users, the social graph around trading and alpha, and a superb execution experience, the jump from Meme coins to stocks or other assets becomes less high, especially considering the increasing on-chain movement of these assets themselves.
Sure, stocks are typically backed by real businesses while Meme coins often aren't; but there are growing signs that the actual trading of both is remarkably similar.
The GameStop event was an extreme early case, but this behavior has become increasingly common. Look at the trading of memory chip stocks, next-gen cloud services, or hyperscale cloud providers—these trades are highly social and heavily driven by narrative and momentum.
Leopold Aschenbrenner is a recent prime example. He built immense credibility through his unique insights on the trajectory of AI. Now, investors closely watch and mirror his positions in companies like Bloom Energy, CoreWeave, and Micron. His reputation and conviction have become part of the information people use to evaluate and execute these trades.
Some of these investment theses will prove right, some won't—only hindsight reveals that. But it's clear that the informational layer around investing has become social.
We believed the behavior pattern most intensely exhibited in the Meme coin space wasn't unique to it; it was an amplified version of a broader market trend.
What It Feels Like to Achieve Real PMF
The simplest way to explain Vector, or Fomo, is as a combination of Instagram and Robinhood. The core element of Instagram is photos, TikTok's is short videos, and for Vector, it was charts.
Upon opening the app, users first saw a social feed. When someone shared a trade, users would see a real-time chart of that token, with buy or sell actions from users trading via Vector displayed directly on the chart at the corresponding points.
The feed was algorithmically driven, aiming to surface the most valuable trading signals within the network. Upon seeing a signal, users could execute a trade almost instantly. Our goal was to shrink the path from "social signal to trade execution" from minutes to seconds, ideally milliseconds, a stark contrast to the poor state of mobile trading at the time.
A concept we pioneered was displaying user avatars and trading activity directly on the chart. No one was doing that at the time. I remember seeing this design internally and thinking, "This is absolutely genius." It's great to see this UI pattern has now become standard across trading apps.
Our founding team had a simple definition for Product-Market Fit (PMF): PMF means user demand is so intense that you can't supply it fast enough—they literally tear the product out of your hands. We knew Vector was a hit even before the official launch because during the closed beta, this exact scenario played out. Users constantly begged for invite codes to bring in their friends.
We launched in late November 2024 and immediately went viral within the crypto Twitter (now X) community. Our daily trading volume quickly hit around $1 million; by late January, during the Trump-related Meme coin releases, the daily volume peak even exceeded $20 million.
User retention was equally astonishing. While I don't recall the exact figures, I remember Day 7 retention being around 60-70% and Day 30 retention around 40-50%. Users opened Vector frequently to trade, follow each other, share investment ideas, invite friends, and copy trades from people they followed.
Our team was under 25 people at the time, and the pressure from this explosive growth was everywhere: system failures, occasional failed trades, an overwhelmed support team, and always more features to build than people to build them.
This experience gave me a visceral feel for what real PMF is—it was the most profound lesson I've ever had. Demand creates pressure everywhere, pushing everything forward faster than the company can actually handle.
It also reinforced a firm belief of mine about company building: small teams of exceptionally talented people can achieve incredible things, and nothing is more important than staying close to the customer. Being customer-centric is a cultural trait that must be exemplified from the top. If you're not in the trenches talking to users, providing support, and understanding product shortcomings, it's easy to become disconnected from reality and lose touch with what the product truly needs.
A Misstep: Betting on the Pro Trader Market
However, as the Meme coin market later cooled, a structural problem became increasingly apparent.
Casual users often end up losing most of their capital, leading to reduced trading or leaving entirely. Professional traders, on the other hand, make money, continue trading, and contribute enormous volume. The economic structure was highly concentrated—roughly 5% of users contributed about 95% of the trading volume.
Consequently, we made what seemed like a rational choice at the time: to pursue the professional trader market. Their needs differed from casual users. They typically operated with multiple screens, monitored numerous charts simultaneously, and executed frequent, quick trades for entry and exit. Vector was a mobile product, and many professionals did use it, but for them, mobile was often a supplement to their primary trading setup, not the main venue.
Simultaneously, market competition intensified. Axiom built an excellent product, and competitors like Photon, BullX were all vying for the same user base. Given that pros contributed the vast majority of volume, we began developing a Vector desktop version. Becoming the preferred trading interface for professional traders seemed like the best path to win the market at the time.
Even today, I still believe that was a very viable strategy. Our desktop product was excellent, early beta users loved it, and we had confident go-to-market plans. However, we never publicly launched it, so we never truly validated the strategy.
Looking back, I have another perspective on our choice at the time. We focused on winning the existing market, rather than committing to an incremental market. We spent far too little time thinking about the question: "Could we dramatically expand the market by attracting new users who had never done on-chain trading before?"
And that is precisely the path Fomo ultimately chose.
What Made Fomo's Success Unique
The most fascinating aspect of Fomo to me is its strategic focus. When we were building the desktop version, the obvious opportunity in the market was to serve professional traders. Axiom was growing rapidly, the pro trader segment dominated the market economics, numerous products were fiercely competing for this group, and it was the industry's focal point at the time.
Fomo chose a completely different path.
They looked beyond TikTok, Instagram, and the CT circle, targeting an audience where many had never done on-chain trading before. Instead of fighting for seasoned traders, they targeted a massive consumer market that most other companies in the industry were overlooking at the time.
Timing was also crucial. Fomo rose after the peak of the Meme coin frenzy, when the market environment was no longer as manic and purely speculative as during our operation. I'm unsure if the same strategy would have worked at the peak of the frenzy, but they targeted a different user segment at the right time and executed brilliantly.
They found ways to reach users outside the traditional crypto sphere, onboard them, and facilitate their first on-chain trade. This is no easy feat, requiring excellent distribution channels paired with a great product that makes the unfamiliar concept of "on-chain trading" simple for the average person, successfully converts them, and gives them reasons to keep coming back.
Fomo nailed the product experience details that mattered to this target audience. If we had simply dropped our original Vector into those distribution channels without tailoring the product for these users, we wouldn't have achieved the same results.
But I don't think our decision to serve professional traders was wrong; I still believe our desktop strategy could have been highly successful. The more valuable insight is that beyond the market we were focused on, there existed a much larger market we didn't spend enough time exploring, and Fomo did just that and cracked it open.
The market that gives you PMF may not be the one that supports your massive scale growth.
The first target market a founder finds might be the perfect "beachhead," but it might represent only a fraction of the ultimate market opportunity. Once you've found a product people truly want, it's worth asking: where else could this product work wonders?
Hindsight is 20/20, but it's much harder to see this while in the trenches. Your data comes from the market you're currently serving. While it powerfully guides you on how to win that market, it's poor at revealing information about users you haven't acquired or distribution channels you haven't fully tested.
In our case, the data at the time showed professional traders dominated the economics of on-chain Meme coin trading. However, the data couldn't predict what would happen if a social trading product was introduced to a completely new audience that had never done on-chain trading.
Fomo has provided the answer.
Could Social Trading Be a Trillion-Dollar Opportunity?
Fomo has made me even more confident that our original thesis on social trading was not only correct in direction, but that the opportunity is moving faster and is larger than we initially anticipated.
We live in an increasingly financialized world. More people are investing and trading on their own, market movements are public conversation topics, investment ideas spread through social networks, people build trust in specific traders, investors, and creators, and capital flows along these networks of information and consensus.
Trading and investing are inherently social. This holds true across asset classes, whether it's Meme coins, cryptocurrencies, prediction markets, or even the stock market.
I believe this trend will only accelerate. The world is more connected, information moves faster, and AI will dramatically enhance information discovery and synthesis. Simultaneously, more assets are migrating on-chain. Stocks, prediction markets, options, real-world assets (RWAs), even financial products we haven't conceived of yet, are converging onto an increasingly global, 24/7 financial infrastructure.
If you can build a strong social graph around trading and alpha, paired with superb execution, you occupy a powerful position. Meme coins can be the entry point, but the product's evolution extends far beyond. As more of the financial world moves on-chain, asset classes become more modular.
This was always part of Vector's vision, but Fomo's journey has given me a more concrete sense of its scale and timing. People are ready for on-chain trading and ready for social financial experiences. Fomo has proven that this experience can reach a broad audience far beyond the crypto-native market.
I think they are in a very strong position. They have started moving into perpetual futures, moving beyond just Meme coins, and if they execute well, the opportunity is vast. A classic analogy is Robinhood, but Fomo has the social graph and on-chain asset system baked into the product from the start.
Conclusion
If we had kept going, could Vector have grown into a multi-billion dollar company?
I think it's entirely possible. Perhaps even far more than that. We had a great product, a talented team, and a strategy I believe had strong potential for success. Maybe we would have used that as a springboard to eventually move into the broader consumer market; maybe Fomo would have still beaten us; or perhaps we would have grown even larger than Fomo is today.
Maybe one day, quantum tech will let us wish that into existence in a parallel universe. For now, what interests me most is watching another excellent team (Fomo) explore a path we didn't take.
I'm witnessing it from the sidelines. They cracked open a market we never truly engaged with and have pushed the social trading model to heights far beyond where we took it. I have immense respect for what they are building.
More importantly, witnessing this process has made me even more convinced that financial markets are inherently highly social, and as more global assets move on-chain, this characteristic will only strengthen.
Back then, we attempted to build an early version of this future through Vector. Fomo's trajectory is now showing us just how massive this space can ultimately become.
