If you have a fragile ego crypto is probably not the place for you. No matter what you do and no matter what your intentions the market and its friendly participants are going to pillory you. The gold standard of not giving a fuck imo is @tayvano_.
Despite catching shit constantly for trying to save us from ourselves, including from me at times, she keeps running into burning buildings. You can’t do that if you are petrified of what people will say or think about you. It takes a lot of self-belief.
Communications for crypto projects is a hugely undervalued skill. You need to cultivate this and defensiveness is literally the worst thing you can do. My strong recommendation is to accept that everyone, including you, has no fucking clue what is going on, be humble, work hard.
If you start a project you immediately occupy a privileged position you arguably do not deserve. If you abuse this position you put the entire project at risk, communications may seem trivial at times but small things add up and can undermine confidence.
Communities hold their leaders to high standards because they intuitively feel this tension. Experiments like YFI are rapidly highlighting that having leaders, even temporarily, may be a false economy. You can cede almost all power and things still work, maybe more efficiently.
All authority should be challenged and at best should be a transitory and necessary evil on the path to decentralised governance. Thus any abuse of this power is rightly examined closely and can undermine the legitimacy of the entire project.
This is why open, clear and transparent communication is so important if you want to cultivate a community that is prepared and eager to take control of a project.
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People seem really confused about the relationship between @infinex and @synthetix, but much less so about @Blueshyft 😅 and @bodhi_ventures. Here’s a thread about what the deal is and a little walk down startup memory lane.
The first startup I joined was in the year 2000, called WhatCard. It was a payment card for kids and teens that parents could manage to allow their kids to buy stuff online but with oversight. Way ahead of its time.
It died in 2002 but we signed a bunch of artists and you could redeem your points for merch, Mandy Moore, Christian Aguilera, the backstreet boys etc. We had a couple of pivots, but ran out of money. But I loved every minute of the grind.
Airdrops have devolved into a protection racket this cycle. “Nice project you’ve got there, it’d be a damn shame if it burned down.” This is not even a criticism, it’s just reality. Which means as a founder you need to understand the game your are playing.
You want to pay the guy who could actually burn your project down, not the guy who has zero ability to harm you.
If it’s no longer about rewarding the community. But just blood money then you really need to identify how much top line protection to pay. $20-50m is a good start. And then even more important you need to work out how much cash each CT mafioso needs to get in a brown bag.
Those of you who have been following me for a while know that @derivexyz is one of my favourite projects, and definitely in my top three favourite portfolio companies (though not by PnL 😬).
The reason I like them so much is not just because they are Synthetix OGs but because they have relentlessly pursued one goal across multiple cycles and multiple product iterations - create the best derivatives exchange in DeFi - so many teams have crashed out on this journey.
I have a weekly call with @hjmomtazi to discuss the market. We spent almost the entire call this week debating whether ETH is doomed.
While I used to be an ETH maxi, I pivoted to chain agnosticism due to contractual obligations (@infinex_app). I'm still deeply wedded to my ETH bags though and think of them often.
With that context, here is my thesis on what is causing so much pain in Ethereum land.
I’ve had the misfortune of dealing with a lot of bad market makers over the years. But also a few good ones.
Back in the ICO era it was practically impossible to raise without having a deal in place with several “market makers”. The cost was $50k-$300k+ per month.