kipit | fan/acc@0xKipit
This “slow rug” narrative is simply false.
The sad and simple truth is that Fantasy hasn't achieved product-market fit. We had hype, we had a loyal core, but we never cracked sustainable user acquisition.
At peak we had around 15k DAU, heavily boosted by Blast incentives. Fantasy distributed $12M in Blast tokens. This external incentive led us to generate around 70% of our total revenue in the first month of existence. Since then, it was mostly down only.
Recent tournament numbers show this: 1,641 unique players registered a deck. 82% created their account before launch, 90% within the first month of mainnet. Less than 10% joined after June 2024, more than 1.5 years ago. That is not a scaling product. That is a loyal but shrinking cohort.
We are spending more every week in tournament rewards than we generate in revenue. This is not PMF, it's subsidized retention, which is only ok when you have growth.
1) On execution and pivot
User acquisition was always our dark spot and everything we did was aimed at onboarding new users:
- Arena removed card ownership friction.
- Monad and Base expansion were distribution plays
- Clout: attract users to follow Twitter stats, educate them on the meta, and funnel them into the game. We also had a B2B arm bringing rewards into Core alongside InfoFi campaigns.
- F2P: a paid game needs a free version to onboard people.
- Prediction market: same thesis, same game, but without the NFT economy that's hard to scale and onboard people into.
We’re building a product in social fi, something none has ever done properly before, there is no playbook.
Yes we did some mistake, yes we could have done things better but anyone that have built anything in his life understand that this is part of the process.
2) “Hidden treasury split”
This is simply false. The split was announced from the beginning. The space where we discussed it was attended by the community and multiple members retweeted the information at the time. We also announced the hero share of the fee one week before mainnet launch (x.com/fantasy_top_/s…). At launch, many community members were publicly excited about how much we were giving back. Here are just a few examples from that time: x.com/notthreadguy/s… x.com/frogleader_eth… x.com/bagholder/stat… x.com/ParallelAiRev/… x.com/davidbailey_et… x.com/beo_woolf/stat….
In May 25, when we made an update to this split, we clearly showed the previous breakdown. No one complained at the time (x.com/fantasy_top_/s…).
Also, framing revenue as "raising money from the community" is wrong. We are selling a product. Users are paying for cards, packs, and game entries. They are not investing in equity or governance. That is a fundamental distinction.
3) On TGE
We never publicly announced a TGE date or commitment. Never. We'd have loved to launch a token, but we do not have found a spot where it made sense long-term. Rugging with a hype token that fades to zero (like 95% do) would've hurt way more people. Successful tokens are backed by strong businesses: Hyperliquid, Jupiter, Pump. We unfortunately never reached those milestones.
4) On runway and the “3 years” claim.
We published our numbers to the community openly (x.com/0xKipit/status…). We clearly presented the worst-case scenario as roughly 1 year and the best case as 2.33 years. the 3 years data shared once, in the rush of a stream, was a confusing data point promptly clarified right after.
5) On Arena bots
We admitted this was a mistake and we own it. However, the claim that bots copied top players' strategies is wrong. The bots used random decks. This was a way to limit losses on games that weren't full. Subsidising growth via company looses is acceptable. Limiting those looses too. Not disclosing it publicly was the actual mistake, and we should have been transparent about it.
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The idea that we intentionally sabotaged a functioning business to extract funds makes no economic sense. The dream of a founder is to build a successful business and create a legacy that outlives them. How does intentionally running a project into the ground serve that goal? I've been building products and companies for more than five years. The last two years of Fantasy are the most exciting and challenging experience I've had. Why would I want it to fail?
Building in crypto is brutal, and we've made mistakes along the way, but calling Fantasy Top a "slow rug" after more than two years of hard work genuinely hurt.
