How crypto companies go bankrupt:
Yesterday, I learned that Phaver, a social media app, had closed operations with all socials gone.
Token down 99% since TGE in September.
I had high hopes for Phaver merging Lens and Farcaster ecosystems, with 35K DAU and 800k downloads.
At peak, they had 50% of Lens traffic and 20% of Farcaster's.
I asked their team member on what happened and three things stand out:
1. They messed up TGE and airdrop. It led to hours of portal failures, causing FUD as people couldn't claim immediately.
2. They overpaid for CEX listings: Paid more than $1m USD for 5 CEX listings. $SOCIAL still trading on Bybit, KuCoin, Gate etc.
3. Ex-employee said the team decided not to sell any tokens at TGE as FUD was already too high. This was a mistake as they were short on cash for operations.
TL;DR – Phaver ran out of funds. As a Finnish company, it also had to pay employees during the 1–2 month notice period.
All this despite raising $8m at ~$80M valuation from Polygon Ventures, Nomad Capital etc.
A common story in crypto.
Still, some ex team members are working on @ai_socialdao to give utility to $SOCIAL
Yesterday, I learned that Phaver, a social media app, had closed operations with all socials gone.
Token down 99% since TGE in September.
I had high hopes for Phaver merging Lens and Farcaster ecosystems, with 35K DAU and 800k downloads.
At peak, they had 50% of Lens traffic and 20% of Farcaster's.
I asked their team member on what happened and three things stand out:
1. They messed up TGE and airdrop. It led to hours of portal failures, causing FUD as people couldn't claim immediately.
2. They overpaid for CEX listings: Paid more than $1m USD for 5 CEX listings. $SOCIAL still trading on Bybit, KuCoin, Gate etc.
3. Ex-employee said the team decided not to sell any tokens at TGE as FUD was already too high. This was a mistake as they were short on cash for operations.
TL;DR – Phaver ran out of funds. As a Finnish company, it also had to pay employees during the 1–2 month notice period.
All this despite raising $8m at ~$80M valuation from Polygon Ventures, Nomad Capital etc.
A common story in crypto.
Still, some ex team members are working on @ai_socialdao to give utility to $SOCIAL
Wanted to share their story as I had posted about Phaver on my blog and X a few times.
Truly, their app was much better than most crypto apps these days. They had some users and traction. Strong community and yet they failed to survive
Truly, their app was much better than most crypto apps these days. They had some users and traction. Strong community and yet they failed to survive
https://x.com/DefiIgnas/status/1717195541036011788
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
