Sidekick: Building the LiveFi Infrastructure for Real-Time Trading

TL; DR

· Sidekick is a Web3-native livestreaming platform that blends TikTok-style content feeds, Huya-inspired monetization models, and on-chain transaction capabilities. During livestreams, users can tip creators and join airdrops, making creators real-time distributors of digital assets.

· As the crypto attention economy becomes increasingly crowded, the impact of promotional tweets and leaderboard events is waning. In contrast, livestreaming builds greater trust and offers higher conversion rates, making it a preferred channel for raising visibility and credibility for meme coins and VC-backed projects.

· The platform has already gained early traction in Asia, attracting over 1,000 KOLs specializing in livestreaming. Sidekick plans to expand into new content segments and deepen community engagement through new incentives.

· The team is largely composed of Web2 veterans with solid experience in livestreaming platforms and global market growth. Sidekick joined BNB Chain’s Season 7 MVB Accelerator, backed by YZi Labs, Altos Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, and Hashkey Capital. They’ve also partnered with Solana Foundation, Base, and OKX Wallet, and joined the Google Cloud Web3 Startup Program.

· Looking ahead, Sidekick could evolve from a livestream platform into a modular infrastructure layer, powering a wide range of on-chain activities with real-time content and becoming a key building block for project operations.

Why Livestreaming Is Essential for Web3 Growth

Sidekick is a Web3 content platform built around livestreams, offering market analysis, blockchain gaming content, and more. It adapts the “livestream commerce” model to crypto, creating LiveFi infrastructure that lets KOLs, traders, and project teams interact live in a single space.

The growth in Web3 livestreaming is a direct response to a structural issue in crypto: marketing inefficiency and an increasingly saturated attention market.

Since Q1 2024, platforms like Pump.fun, BONK’s LetsBonk, and Raydium Launchpad have made token launches radically easier. AI-driven smart tokens have accelerated this shift even more. Token launches have jumped over 50-fold since Q1 2024, and active wallets on major Layer 1s have doubled. But mechanisms for token exposure haven’t kept up, leaving early-stage projects struggling for attention.

At the institutional level, VC investment has climbed steadily from Q1 2024 to Q1 2025, but capital is increasingly flowing to just a few “star” projects. These projects’ high valuations and liquidity pressures raise the bar for market attention even further.

This makes “distribution efficiency” and “information delivery” more critical than ever. Project teams now need to win the attention game as much as they need to ship products. As Sidekick founder Jonny notes, today’s token projects are increasingly judged by their ability to grab early attention, rather than just their fundamentals.

Among all channels, KOLs are the engine for project buzz. While agencies help connect with top-tier KOLs, they’re expensive and offer limited reach. So, how can projects tap into and activate mid-tier KOLs to improve marketing ROI?

Many InfoFi platforms use leaderboard-style airdrop models—distributing airdrops based on Twitter/X engagement. This widens participation and motivates mid-tier KOLs to create content, but also leads to side effects: content becomes homogeneous, users grow fatigued, and marketing effectiveness drops off.

The challenge now is clear: How can projects—especially startups—stand out in the noise, earn trust fast, and keep delivering differentiated content?

In Web3 marketing, livestreams have multiple structural advantages. Unlike static tweets or pre-recorded videos, livestreams enable creators to interact with audiences live and unscripted. This real-time engagement boosts transparency, allowing viewers to evaluate not just the content, but also the speaker’s authenticity and intent. These strengths powered the rise of livestream commerce in Web2. In 2023, livestream e-commerce in China topped RMB 4.9 trillion in GMV, and similar trends are catching on in the West.

Web3 is fraught with information gaps and high trust costs, so livestreaming is a natural fit for reducing uncertainty and building credibility.

Demographics also support this shift: around 60% of global crypto users are ages 25–44, overlapping closely with Twitch’s core base (about 50%). This shows cultural and behavioral alignment between crypto users and livestream culture.

Adoption is already underway: In 2024, Pump.fun added livestreaming so creators can introduce tokens in real time. The “Crypto” section on Twitch now attracts over 4,600 daily viewers—on par with big mainstream categories like NBA 2K25 and Call of Duty.

Livestreaming’s attention flow also fits real user behavior. Sidekick’s team mapped out a typical five-step discovery journey:

1. A token contract address gets shared in a Telegram or Discord group.

2. It gets discussed within private DMs or subgroups.

3. A platform KOL recommends it to their followers.

4. It gains traction on X (Twitter).

5. The buzz drives real trading volume.

This highlights the importance of trusted individuals telling the story, verifying legitimacy, and building early trust. Livestreaming’s authenticity and immediacy make it the ideal tool for accelerating this process.

Sidekick: From Attention to Action

Sidekick is a livestream-first crypto discovery platform, emphasizing live market insights and interactive project engagement. It addresses the new realities of Web3 behavior: scarce attention, fast-changing narratives, and trust as the key to adoption.

With deep integration of livestream and trading, Sidekick enables real-time engagement between projects, creators, and the audience. It brings the “livestream commerce” logic into LiveFi, ensuring storytelling and community participation truly intersect.

Platform Features

Sidekick’s “trust-to-action” flywheel is built into its product: combining Web2-style interactivity with Web3-grade transaction features, and incorporating the core strengths of TikTok, Huya, and Bilibili.

Creators publish content in real time, while viewers can tip, send gifts, buy ads, or subscribe—creating a highly interactive and monetizable ecosystem.

Business Model

Sidekick provides two main revenue streams for streamers: viewer tips via virtual gifts, and a creator incentive program managed by the platform.

Regular users are core to the ecosystem—they tune in to livestreams, access market analysis, chat in real time, and can win rewards in platform-hosted airdrops.

The third stakeholder is the project owner or advertiser. They can raise awareness and drive engagement through live AMAs, airdrop events, or product placements, and can also collaborate with streamers as a performance-based marketing channel.

As both infrastructure and a marketplace, Sidekick charges partners commissions, similar to agency fees.

Team Overview

Sidekick is led by founder Jonny, who brings deep experience in gaming, livestreaming, and investing. His career began at Wangyu Internet Café—China’s largest chain—where he led European market expansion. He then founded Bixin, a gamer companion platform, and gained a nuanced understanding of gamer and livestream culture.

Under Jonny’s leadership, Sidekick was accepted into BNB Chain’s Season 7 MVB Accelerator and secured backing from YZi Labs, Altos Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, and Hashkey Capital. The team also partners with Solana Foundation, Base, OKX Wallet, and has joined the Google Cloud Web3 Startup Program.

Market Strategy

Sidekick’s go-to-market strategy unfolds in three stages, each targeting different user types and content structures:

Stage 1: Focus on crypto-native users, especially in Chinese-language communities active in private channels but less visible on X. This stage aims to build a loyal core user base.

Stage 2: Expand to broader entertainment creators—those who may not be pro gamers yet excel at humor, storytelling, or emotional impact, enriching the livestream experience and boosting retention.

Stage 3: Enter new verticals. Rather than compete head-on with YouTube, Huya, or Douyu—which have strong IP and esports advantages—Sidekick focuses on the “real-time crypto market” niche, enabling greater flexibility to explore new content, creators, and monetization methods.

This community-first approach fuels organic growth. Many users voluntarily switch to Sidekick-themed avatars and produce tutorials without direct incentives, generating strong engagement and loyalty through grassroots participation.

The team is also hands-on in crypto communities—actively trading meme coins, joining KOL discussion groups, and staying close to attention and narrative trends.

Competitive Landscape

As livestreaming and crypto market commentary converge, the “LiveFi” space is seeing diverse product strategies: third-party Twitter/X livestream platforms; token launchpads with livestream add-ons (like Pump.fun); livestream-game hybrids (like Abstract Chain); and exchange-native interfaces (such as Binance’s rollout).

Each approach reflects a different view of livestreaming’s role in crypto:

· Third-party Twitter/X tools led with livestreaming, but lack crypto-native tipping and rewards.

· Pump.fun’s livestreams are all about viral meme token launches; livestreaming is a push tool here.

· Abstract Chain is dedicated to GameFi, focusing on Western creators and audiences.

Most platforms still treat video as a “marketing layer” or add-on. By contrast, Sidekick positions livestreaming as the core trading interface. Content creation, token trading, and community engagement all converge, with built-in monetization tools—tipping, airdrops—bringing both creators and viewers into on-chain action naturally.

Major exchanges like Binance are adding livestreams, but only for tokens already listed. Sidekick lets creators livestream about any asset—brand-new or obscure narrative tokens. This gives Sidekick sharper trend awareness and the flexibility to ride new waves and speculative cycles as they emerge.

Recently, a streamer broadcast his entire meme coin trading journey, culminating in a community takeover (CTO). Viewers could follow and interact live—bringing new transparency and participation to crypto streaming.

In terms of regional reach, Sidekick has built a strong base among Chinese-language creators and audiences, signing over 1,000 livestream-focused KOLs. This combination of breadth and creator loyalty is a powerful edge in the ongoing battle for attention.

Conclusion: The Future of LiveFi and Protocol Integration

As the market evolves, Sidekick is shifting from a content platform to a Web3-native infrastructure layer. It’s no longer just for content delivery, but acts as a real-time discovery engine where content and on-chain actions are tightly linked. In this transformation, Sidekick is moving from merely a “content layer” to an “execution layer,” turning viewership into on-chain transaction flow.

Looking forward, Sidekick could extend to more on-chain use cases—asset issuance, IDO launches, whitelist sales, even lending. The platform will roll out more modular components to support protocols and applications across the spectrum.

Just as livestreaming disrupted e-commerce, Sidekick aspires to spark an equally transformative wave in Web3.

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