Avalore Dump Week 29
"I'M CRASHING OUT" Edition
My dearest friends, colleagues, associates, enemies—the time has come. I have written the same shit in this article for MONTHS. I’ve been very reasonable in my feedback (in my extremely humble opinion), I’ve tried to see all sides, I’ve done it all. I’ve been added to different groups with employees, given opinions, offered my time (unemployed btw, infinite time) to help this chain succeed, and nothing has come of it.
All that happens is I get repeatedly told “nObOdY gIvEs GoOd FeEdBaCk” or “yOu JuSt DoNt GeT mArKeTiNg BrO” and I’m tired of it! Fuck the news this week! Time to dump stream of consciousness into an article! I’m crashing out!!! AHHHHHHH!!!!111!!!!!
Avax is for Business
Avalabs has made it VERY clear that their priority is focusing on businesses and institutions. This is relevant in pretty much every piece of marketing they’ve put out recently. It really feels like beating a dead horse here, so I’ll just let an ex-Avalabs employee explain why this bothers us so much:
Every pro-business announcement just drives the knife deeper. They’re focusing on businesses, so they’re not focusing on users. Can they do both? Possibly, but like Eric said there will be very few chains that do both well. The issue is that AVAX doesn’t seem to be prioritizing the users anymore.
Yes, they have not literally said “we don’t want users” as that would be an INSANE thing to put in writing, but they’ve made it clear over, and over, and over again that they are not focused on the onchain ecosystem.
The head of the FDN, Matias, did an interview with Avax Team1 that I found pretty telling. When “community” came up in the interview, it was often taken to mean validators and liquidity providers. This is an incredibly corpo-pilled way to view the community of a blockchain, and I would guess that many people reading this now are not validators of the chain nor are they foreign currency stablecoin LPers.
There’s no mention of the people who show up day in and day out on CT, people minting NFTs, people trading (gasp) memecoins. If “community” to Avalabs is to mean validators and people trading Forex on DEXes, we are simply not part of it.
It seems that at the same time, all blockchains have decided that it’s time for crypto to “grow up.” This is not an AVAX specific problem actually, and we’re seeing the same things on Solana, Base, pretty much everywhere. Everyone who made a shitload of money launching a chain in the last 5 years has decided it’s time for them to change the world and “mature.”
And yes, on all of these chains the community is pissed off. This is doubly frustrating because it’s easy for employees to say “Hey look at that, people on Solana are pissed too! It’s just a global crashout because prices are down!”
That being said, the crashouts are NOT from the fact that price is down. Let me say this again:
PRICE IS NOT WHAT IS BOTHERING PEOPLE. WE ARE AWARE PRICES ARE DOWN ACROSS THE BOARD.
Yes, AVAX is down more than other tokens, and would be $45 right now if it were only down as much as other chains, but that’s not the point! The point is that all messaging has made the users of the chain feel like they do not matter. Let me make this part big because I think this is the core issue:
If you have a browser wallet installed, you are probably not the target audience anymore!
That is how it feels!!
Crypto is entering its mature era, so it’s time to leave those silly NFT minters and memecoin traders behind. Let’s focus more on ETF buyers and people who will hold our token on an exchange. Let’s inflate our metrics to attract taxi drivers and “Technology” enthusiasts. Let’s get people like my friend Max, who sent me this text last week:
The target audience is now people who simply want to “invest in solano and the chain jp morgan uses.” I won’t pass any value judgements here—Cardano exists solely off the backs of these kinds of people. Maybe AVAX can as well. But whether this works in the future or not, going in this direction means leaving the on-chain community behind.
Literally all people want is to feel like there is some world where AvaLabs has even a small priority on what normal users are doing onchain.
“But Smitty, isn’t Build Games trying to bring more projects onto the chain? Aren’t they trying to help bolster the community?”
I’m glad you asked!
Build Games
Build Games is the epitome of this shift in Avalanche’s direction. Their stated goals are to identify startups that can run profitable, sustainable businesses on chain. I think in the absolute best case scenario, the goal of Build Games is to find the next Polymarket.
Hmm, well Polygon already has the last Polymarket—I wonder how that’s working out for them?
I use Polymarket almost every day, and in research for this article I just learned that the Polygon gas token is not MATIC anymore!!
I’ve spoken with numerous people who actually use the Polygon chain (they were hard to find, but they exist) and all of them seemed to echo the same sentiment—the presence of Polymarket is probably great for the KPIs of employees at Polygon Labs (or whatever the company is called) but it does little for the actual ecosystem.
If you use Polymarket, can you name an NFT project on the chain? Can you name a single token? Have you ever even used another app on the chain??? Probably not!
Onboarding something like that would be the absolute BEST case for Build Games, and even that would likely not effect anything that the readers of this article care about.
I’ve said it in this space before, but there really are two different worlds in crypto. There’s the bubble that Labs exists in where the only things that matter are onboarding businesses and partners to the chain, and there’s our bubble where we just want to have fun and make money in a vibrant ecosystem.
I even posted about this in the Build Games Telegram chat. I was wondering where our fun, ponzi experiments might fit in to this seemingly profit and sustainability focused program. I got the most AvaLabs response possible:
Yes, of course I was joking! Why would anyone hope that this program produces projects that people actually use?? Should have stuck with more RWA/stablecoin focused endeavors!
This really got under my skin, particularly the .eth idiot that clown reacted me—he’s building a web3 boot camp with certificates on chain, a very novel and super unique concept, I’m sure it will onboard many users. Afterwards, I reached out to some other people to see if this is really what Build Games is about.
They responded with things like “that’s just DevRel lol, you can do ponzis.” LOL!!! Silly me expecting the team to be aligned on what kinds of things they were looking for in this program they have been planning for 6 months!! Silly me, as a developer, expecting to get accurate information about a hackathon from Developer Relations!!!! LOL!!!!1!!!
And to be clear, I don’t really blame this DevRel employee. It’s just yet another example of how the people at Labs exist in a different bubble than the rest of us. They don’t use this chain. They’re “Not familiar with the HashCash project, sorry!” They want to onboard things that look good for future partners so that they can recruit bigger partners next time. That’s the real ponzi!
I don’t want to speak too ill of Build Games though since I am still in the program. I won’t bring up the fact that employees were flaunting how they had 2000 participants, only to later say “well actually, getting in didn’t mean anything, it was automatic” when one of them rugged. So are we supposed to be impressed that 2000 people signed up, or are we supposed to not care because the signup was a one-sentence project description that auto approved everyone? It’s just KPIs all the way down.
I also won’t bring up the fact that we’re 10 days away from the phase 2 deadline, but projects still don’t know if they passed phase 1. Too many program acceptances! How could we foresee this!!!11!!!
I definitely won’t talk about how it launched at the same time as a similar community program from Bears and Salmon, a team with about 1000000000000x less funding than AvaLabs. I won’t mention how they didn’t really acknowledge this until people complained, didn’t see these complaints coming, and then their big “support” was announcing a “dual funding” initiative. What is dual funding you ask? Well it seems that this just means that Bear’s Den projects are also allowed to apply for the Build Games program! They can win funding from both!! Wow!!! That’s so generous of them to allow people to apply for both!!!!!11!!!!!
I believe they will be getting a Build Games grant as well, but like everything else it is slow-moving and reactionary. And as far as I know they haven’t received anything outside of a $5k Team1 grant (more on Team1 later).
So What Do We Want?????
We want the same thing we’ve always wanted, Pinky—we want to have fun and make money. This is frequently mistaken for “jUsT bUy My MeMeCoInS” but that’s not it!! THAT’S NOT IT!!!!
WE JUST WANT FUN THINGS TO DO ON CHAIN!!! We want an on-chain ecosystem that feels supported by AvaLabs, not shunned. We want to make money! We don’t want some bullshit program encouraging more bullshit grant hunters from other chains to build some bullshit RWA/stablecoin “sustainable businesses.”
Voh recently said that she “soft shills” AVAX in her Solana spaces. What are you shilling that could have any appeal to people who actually use blockchains?? “Yo guys, come to AVAX, we have the deepest Korean Won liquidity!?!?!”
And don’t give me this “So build it yourself then” bullshit. There’s just not enough users here to build anything profitable. We need incentives that are actually focused on this stuff for people to have any reason to build. I’ve laid out plenty of ideas around this in past articles! Constructive feedback!!!11!!!
I’ve been mocking out a little GambleFi project for a while, and even with 5% rake I could expect MAYBE $10k in participants. That’s $500! I’m better off working at McDonalds!! Why do you think the FerdyFlip site was taken down? It’s back up now because VQ was so bored he doesn’t mind losing money on it.
And also don’t hit me with the “Well we tried getting involved in the ecosystem with memecoins and everyone hated it” company line either. Actually you know what, let’s talk about that too!!!
They Tried Getting Involved with Memecoins and Everyone Hated It
Yes, Voh was probably paid with a Wink allocation to make this post (shoutout ThaDream) but the sentiment here is true. When FDN was buying memecoins it was the most active the chain has ever been.
Yes, a lot of people came over for free money and a lot of them left when the money dried up. But that’s exactly my point! People will go where there is money to be made and fun to be had. Some of these people did NOT leave! I know because I see them in my Discord channels!
But it wasn’t all Kumbaya when this was happening either. People were mad about the approach FDN took here. Actually let me make this part bold because I know a lot of employees struggle with nuance:
PEOPLE ALWAYS LIKED THE IDEA OF BUYING MEMECOINS, THEY WERE JUST FRUSTRATED WITH SOME OF THE EXECUTION!!
Yes!! Obviously people were ecstatic that FDN took an interest in things that were happening on chain!
Believe it or not, it’s possible to run this sort of program without spending damn near ONE MILLION AVAX (yes that’s AVAX, not dollars) on Dani Sesta coins!!!!
And for the new AvaLabs employees just so there’s no confusion here, I’m talking about $LAMBO and $WIFE, tokens that pretty much nobody gave a shit about.
It’s also possible to run such a program without dumping 600k AVAX into $BLACK! Another token that nobody wanted!! Alex Becker sends his regards!
Imagine if more of that was directed into Excel’s Wolfi token! Yes I know they did put money into Wolfi!!! But imagine how much further this massive WIFE/BLACK spend would have went if it was put into a token that the entire community was rallying behind!!!1111!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHH
This is more of an opinion thing, but I think a TON of money was wasted trying to chase high market caps. People are just looking for 10-100x opportunities, there’s no reason to dump tens of millions of dollars into KET trying to force it from 500M to 1B. I guess 1B is better for KPIs! The same could be said later on in the cycle for them trying to push LAMBO to 100M. A much more effective use of money would have been creating multiple 1-10M runners and building a winning culture here.
Also I have to believe there’s a better way to keep the buys secret rather than dumping obvious 2000 AVAX clips into tokens from a custom contract! But that’s not my job!
It did make it easier to sum up the totals though, so thanks for that. I didn’t do much data sanitization here but I think the numbers mentioned in this article should at least be on the correct order of magnitude.
Regardless, this program created the most activity the chain has ever seen, and overall people would kill to have it back! I’m just pointing out that yes some people were frustrated by aspects of it!! Not everything is black and white!!! I’m just trying to give perspective and feedback AHHHH!!!!!11!!!!!!!!!!
But that’s enough on memecoins! Like I said, people struggle with nuance so they will take even the mere presence of this section as proof that the community only wants FDN to buy our memes!!
Speaking of nuance…
Communication!!!!!!
Along with the strong institutional push, the number two thing pissing people off is communication. It’s seemingly impossible to communicate with members of the AvaLabs team without being spoken to like a child.
I get that their job is frustrating, but this is why you get paid??
“Everyone has a bad opinion on marketing,” “This is a stupid thing to say,” “Silly implementation,” these are the kinds of responses people get when they try to voice complaints and make suggestions.
I don’t think it’s just me that sees this, as many other people have said the same thing over and over again.
It seems that they’ve taken this feedback on board now though, so we’ve been hit with a lot of “we understand you’re frustrated and we’re listening” type responses now. That’s great! Now show that you’re listening!
People also frequently complained about the lack of transparency, but I think that is actively being worked on as well. The head of FDN doing an interview on their goals is pretty cool (although I wish they weren’t so focused on stablecoin liquidity!) and more of that will help manage expectations better in the future.
I do want to say I feel bad for the employees like Voh and Kevin and Avery a little. I’m guessing that a lot of the parroting of company lines comes from above. Surely these people that came from Solana would prioritize onchain ecosystem and market to crypto natives more if given the chance? I assume that’s what brought them to the space in the first place? Idk maybe that’s just copium.
The Bright Spots
Ok that’s enough crashing out, I’m losing steam. I want to end this article by talking about the hope. The things that show that maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
First of all, I really attacked the Build Games program earlier but the reality is it’s not done yet. The program will be judged solely based on what it can produce. I think optimizing for the amount of participants is completely meaningless to people reading this article, and I think we have incredible builders on chain and don’t need to be bringing over other extractors, but I still have hope that we will see some fun things come out of this program.
They will probably receive the minimum $5k grants, and they may even be ponzis (much to the dismay of DevRel) but this is a positive outcome! I remain hopeful on this front.
Secondly, I want to shine a spotlight on poor old Chimba. His monthly $5k Team1 grant program seems to be the only thing currently aimed at nurturing the onchain community. I think a lot of this frustration goes away if (when) this program gets more funding and more exposure.
He genuinely seems to care about the community, and is less suit-pilled than any other employee I’ve spoken to. He’s leading lots of discussions with myself and other community members, trying to understand and fix our frustrations. Shoutout Chimba!!
That’s my crashout! I hope you enjoyed!
TLDR
Yes people want price to be higher. Yes it would be nice if FDN bought memes again. But people really are not upset about these things!!!!11!!!
They are upset because they feel like they’re holding a fundraising token for a B2B company and don’t have a reason to be here anymore.
They’re upset because even if the vision of focusing on institutions and businesses is the correct play for AvaLabs, it will mean nothing for the users of the wider AVAX onchain ecosystem. (Insert AvaLabs company line about tokenomics changes fixing this) (Insert lots of doubt here).
I’m personally upset because when I think about throwing another event at the next AVAX Summit, I realize that none of my friends from the last one are planning to come. They’ve either gone to another chain or tuned out crypto completely as they don’t resonate with this new “mature” era. It feels like we’d be hosting a bunch of “Blockchain Manager” type people from small or failed TradFi companies. And Wrathtank.
I’m upset because the same thing is happening across the entire space, and there’s basically nowhere for us to migrate to. People complain about the same shit on Sol and Base. Everyone is getting more “real” and that leaves those of us that are in crypto for fun with nowhere to go. It seems like there should be an opportunity to capture this market!
But I am not a marketer. I am not a decision maker. I am an endangered species—someone whose Rabby wallet defaults to the Avalanche blockchain.
Tweet Project of the Week
Luana vibecoded this anonymous crashout app that seems pretty cool!
Don’t want be like me and crashout publicly, potentially harming relationships with people that decide your financial future?
Crashout anonymously on her site here.
But also Tweet of the Week
I love AVAX 👍
Avalanche should definitely take this opportunity to capture this market of lost degen, my rabby wallet stuck on avax needs it.
That was really fun to read thanks smitty!