Bullish Dumpling: 2022’s Educational Influencer of the Year

The Cardano Foundation hosted the Cardano Summit in Lausanne Switzerland in November of 2022. The event was used to formally recognize many talented people who have been working hard to push the network forward technologically and expand its user-base. The Cardano Summit Awards are an acknowledgement of the contributions of community leaders in several different categories. Among the winners was Bullish Dumpling, recipient of the Educational Influencer Award.

An influencer is typically someone who has garnered acclaim by successfully presenting themselves as a specialist on social media platforms. When we believe we share certain interests, values, or other characteristics with an influencer, said influencer has the power to change our opinions and behaviors. Whereas a celebrity’s life can seem remote and far-fetched to the average working person, the influencer is distinguished by a welcoming and accessible aura that can provide fans with the feeling of being long lost friends.

Many of us consume the content presented by social media influencers and experience wishful identification. This often happens to me when I’m scrolling through Twitter, and I come across a great Bullish Dumpling tweet. I think to myself, “Bullish Dumpling is the type of person I want to be like myself.” I feel a burst of excitement and inspiration, then draft up a clever tweet of my own, but it’s not as good. It’s not as spicy. Sometimes I wish I could be more like Bullish Dumpling. When I see how successful her Cardano stake pool [FIKA] has been, I think “Bullish Dumpling is someone I would like to emulate.” Then there’s the Educational Influencer Award! What an honor it must be to have the Cardano Foundation recognize all your hard work with an awesome trophy in a beautiful part of Switzerland. I’d like to do the kind of things Bullish Dumpling does!

Part of what makes an influencer effective is their level of credibility. This is determined by how fans perceive someone’s trustworthiness and competence. If you want to influence my opinions and behaviors, you’d better be dependable, honest, reliable, and sincere. I won’t stand for being influenced by anything less than a properly qualified and highly knowledgeable expert.

All successful influencers must have an educational component to their content, otherwise they leave themselves subject to the whims of unproductive internet trends and the transient audiences they attract. Bullish Dumpling has shown dedication to the goal of sharing quality information with her audience on YouTube, Twitter Spaces and beyond. As we learn from Dumpling, we also get the sense that we’re learning with her, which allows us to wishfully identify with her, because we believe we’re a bit like her. My desire to be a well-respected participant in the Cardano ecosystem is aspirational, not based in wishful thinking. I know I can continue to hone what makes me a uniquely valuable piece of the Cardano Community and Bullish Dumpling’s content helps bolster my own ambitions.

One of the reasons influencers are so effective at connecting with people on social media is because we trust them. Trust is key, and Dumpling has proven herself to be worthy of our trust. She is a no BS interviewer who isn’t afraid to speak her mind and share her perspective. Her disciplined but unscripted content reminds us that there are very few clear cases of good vs. bad in crypto, only people doing their best to achieve some abstract idea of success. Many achieve greatness, many more fail. But having a figure like Bullish Dumpling in Cardano to fill the role of moderator around controversial and/or divisive topics only serves to benefit us all. More than a teacher, a true role model. She showed herself to be a thoughtful leader in 2022 and used her influence to share quality information with her fans. Bullish Dumpling has earned our trust and attention. I have no doubt the Cardano Community is better for it.

Bullish Dumpling was kind enough to do a brief interview for this article and I was lucky enough to get her to divulge the following:

I am bullishdumpling, bullish is the flavor, dumpling is the actual name.

I am an educational influencer and a problem solver. I enjoy having deep, spicy conversations with crypto projects and sharing them publicly so people can make up their own minds about these projects. Education through transparent conversation vs. shilling and hyping, I choose the former.

My biggest principles are — substance, candor, curiosity, and humor.

Also importantly, I am somewhat of a dumpling connoisseur myself.

In 2022, I made over 100 videos, hosted over 50 live twitter spaces, spoke at 4 large offline events in the USA, UK, and Switzerland. I met people I’ll never would have had the chance to meet otherwise — stake pool operators, a firefighter, a whale, a pixelated dog, TradFi folks, etc.

I established business and friendly relationships with projects, foundations, companies, degens and memers.

Cardano is what made these things possible for me. My life has turned 1000x more exciting (and volatile, just like the market).

On a personal level, I have spent a criminally high amount of time on Twitter, Telegram and Discord. but in the end, it proved to be worth it… that’s how I met 420, AdaPulse, Epochs End and all the wonderful folks.

One of my highlights [from 2022] is winning the Educational Influencer Award, of course. I’m grateful for all community members who voted for me, and who supported me.

I am also extremely proud of founding and managing the Chinese speaking community for Cardano, especially in this bear market, it’s vital to stay present, consistent, and bring constant knowledge to this crowd, because most of these people don’t have good access to information as we do in the English-speaking world.

Also, I’m very proud about my ability to establish relationships with entities such as IOG, CF, as well as everyday people. That’s something I want to work more on because I believe there’s tremendous value in bridging the worlds — when it comes to nationality, culture, nature of business, size, etc.

Bullish Dumpling

I also asked her how she defines success for 2023. She responded with the following list:

A. less time on social media, more time on building influence, creating value, listening to people’s problems, and making solutions.

B. launch a successful business model utilizing my personal brand to benefit the Cardano ecosystem, could be education, communication, branding… I’m currently working on it.

C. maintain and grow the Chinese speaking Cardano community.

D. 20k Twitter followers, organic, no bots.

E. host 50 Twitter Spaces.

F. try at least 15 more dumpling joints and rank them.