# Xi Ye's Investment Research Diary @Sidekick_Labs This Web3 live streaming platform, I've been following since last year, and today I'm doing a phase review. First of all, during the TGE, the team indeed had quite a few issues with rhythm and details regarding $K: the rewards for Kaito yap were distributed two days later than the community airdrop, which made some users feel that the project team and KOLs were cashing out early. After the price correction, this feeling was amplified. At the same time, the yap airdrop terms were modified shortly before the launch, with only 0.15% of the first phase rewards being unlocked, leading to a significant reduction in actual earnings for many high-ranking participants. These rhythm issues, combined with market sentiment, can easily trigger controversy. From a model perspective, the "haircut" (撸毛) is indeed the core driving force behind Sidekick's early growth, essentially keeping people on the platform through rewards and sunk costs. The explicit sunk costs are fees and gas, while the implicit ones include the audience, points, rankings, and the attention, influence, and even business opportunities that come from building up a live streaming account. This sunk cost can aggregate users in the short term, but it can also create dependency for the platform. Once the rewards decrease, the retention pressure will be very high. Looking at it now, Sidekick has indeed attracted a certain scale of content producers, but whether it can meet the growth on the demand side is the key to determining whether it can move beyond this phase of growth.