It's been over 3 1/2 years since I first joined @ThePlagueNFT ecosystem. It has since grown to become my biggest conviction play in the space.
Today I burned 11 of my beloved frogs to create this gem of an Exodus Elder! Super excited to see where this next chapter takes us!
Plague on 🐸
We’ve grown into our own over time as far as developing the @LT3NFT culture.
In the beginning, a lot of what LT3 revolved around was our Web2 social presence
Putting out impressive stats and etc.
As much as that stuff still matters, I think over time we found our true lane, with help from the community
Because now it’s about finding an LT3 NFT that reflects who you are and what you’ve been through
It’s about picking things up and learning on your own, a creative, supportive place
It’s about being your true self, being as genuine as you’re comfortable being
As soon as we stopped TRYING to develop culture, our culture found us and formed.
Somewhere in there is a lesson
Two things surprised me about the Elder calls.
The first is that almost nobody asked what they get out of being an Elder. Not one person in 13 calls led with "what's in it for me." Every single person led with some version of "what do you need" or "where do I fit" or "I've been wanting to do this for years."
The second is that three separate people, completely independently, identified the exact same problem and offered the exact same solution. I'm not going to say what it was yet. But when three strangers diagnose the same thing without talking to each other, you know you're not guessing at what's broken. You know.
The people in this group are not typical NFT holders. They're business owners, finance professionals, advertising executives, foremen, developers, web strategists, creatives. People who ship things in real life and want to ship things here.
I went into these calls expecting to convince people. Instead they convinced me that this community has been underestimated for a very long time.
7 more calls. Then we build.
Installed 19 doors on Monday.
Third floor is now finished with all the trim.
Second floor trim is getting started now.
It has been a busy but productive week.
Quick update for the Frogs of @ThePlagueNFT
1⃣New Discord is live. I will start accelerating the vouches soon. Working through some of the bugs and the process.
I have never seen so many people want to get into Discord :)
Our goal is to create "clean" channel where our community can gather and not have to deal with the transients or daily shills we all get in this space.
2⃣ Exodus is moving along nicely. Over 4,000 Genesis Frogs burned so far, with a little over 1,100 new Exodus Frogs created.
Elder selection process will start to be communicated next wee.
3⃣ The animation process is moving slower than I would like. I will have a more solid update on this by next week.
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I believe this bear market will kill the majority of the remaining NFT brands. I do not believe that NFTs are dead. But certainly the NFT market as we knew it has been dead for a while.
What we have left are some zombie brands, propped up by a few people hoping their bags will pump on more time.
That being said, I do believe there are a good number of NFT communities (including the Frogs) that have a real opportunity to mold the industry into something meaningful.
But I am sure half the comments will tell me dumb and "washed" I am.
The new Frog Discord is live.
There is no link.
You will start seeing people get vouched for to enter into the discord.
Criteria to join:
1.) Be a Frog holder. Genesis or Exodus
2.) Get vouched for by someone who is in there already.
3.) Every person in the discord is given only 2 vouches.
There are two primary rules.
1.) The Golden Rule
2.) Don't shill
The old Discord will stay open indefinitely. We will still make announcements there, and we will ensure every announcement is also posted from this account.
Our goal is to build upon the already amazing community of PEOPLE we have in the Plague.
P.S. Elder applications will start getting approved shortly.
Currently vibe coding a self-care app where you look after your own pet seal by curing your own brainrot.
Do daily tasks (go for a walk, avoid TikTok today) → Catch fish → Level up & decorate your home
The app is fully web2 atm but debating some stepn-like mechanics.
@FreaKnLinkin I remain bullish on RWAs and that has a lot to do with your leadership on this project. Excited to see things steadily progressing. No more clucking around 👊
Web3 promised yield.
We built blocks that lay it. 🥚
Each block is a production unit you can copy-paste in the real world.
Same inputs. Same outputs. Same math.
Turns out the most reliable protocol…
is food production. 🌱
I will speak to how these blocks work, allow true diligence, and how capital works in our 2 year anniversary space
#RealYield#BlockByBlock#realfi
As a longtime OG @ThePlagueNFT holder, I’ve always preached one thing.
Our X factor was the community.
Frogs were willing to do anything…hype, build, battle, help and spread the plague. We showed up no matter the weather. We genuinely cared.
It’s no one’s fault, it’s everyone’s fault.
We were under utilized for too long.
We were built to roam Web2 where we would spread while thriving in Web3.
The frogs were always bigger than X.
I believed it. I preached it.
It was never about the meta.
It was never about just Web3.
We were built for Web2 reach. Organic genuine unstoppable human energy with real world connections.
We were meant to be boomers.
We were meant to remain boomers.
We were never a meta.
We were infrastructure.
The kind that survives rug pulls, bear markets, metas, hype cycles and API bans. The kind that decentralizes opportunity, builds real brands and empowers holders with equity utility and a voice.
Frogs emit value on and off chain.
Frog energy still exists.
That’s the signal.
We didn’t manufacture community, we amplified what was already there.
We Ribbit.✊
Exodus is the next chapter.
We’re still here, still building.
Did we fumble our strength?
TBD
But one thing is clear. The Plague wasn’t a wave to ride, it’s the pond we swim in.
If you’re a frog, you know.
If you’re not, maybe it’s time to join the plague.
🐸🖤
Has been a while since I've given an update so here's a breakdown of where Sappy is at right now and what we're focusing on going into this year.
Pre-amble:
With altcoins & NFTs the market is definitely not the same as it was before. I think this is obvious to everyone but I've noticed there are still japanese soldiers that are convinced old tricks and mechanics work. They don't. Liquidity is thin; people want to bid assets that feel like "real companies" not vacuous memecoins.
There's still room for memecoins, social currencies, and "utility tokens" (I would say without these functions, tokens are hard to justify versus equities). I'm not part of the camp that thinks there will never be hyperspeculation in crypto again, because there will be; we all love ponzis and PvPing each other onchain. Just not with solved games -- people need something new and fresh.
So the overarching plan is to continue building for users, sustainable revenues that aren't tied to directly to crypto, and doubling down on the areas that we've already found PMF / Brand Market Fit. Then leaning into crypto during cyclical periods where liquidity is sloshing around at an accelerated rate.
Where we've found early PMF / what we're leaning into:
Roblox: we're going to continue to go hard and accelerate here. It's our main objective to ship more seal/brainrot focused games across most genres to cast as wide of a net as we can for the brand, and to also iterate and see what works and stays sticky.
Our initial incursion into Roblox was very successful peaking at 2M+ MAU and still sustaining a large portion of that player base... for all of its success, that was a relatively amateur first attempt; we've been setting up better AI pipelines for Roblox development that makes it reasonable to ship many more games and 10x those player counts in totality.
It's my belief that Roblox is the sandbox whose audience will be the most valuable on the internet once they are grown up. That intense feeling you get when you see a TikTok referencing an old game you enjoyed on the PS2 or the Gamecube, or when you see a Pokemon card is the exact same feeling the youth of today will get when reminiscing on the things they enjoyed engaging with when they were younger. Fortnite and Roblox are functional equivalents to the old school consoles and exactly where that is taking place.
Which is why as much as I care about scaling revenues through Roblox, the long term brand equity gained purely through being popular on the platform is totally invaluable. It also can heavily convert to merchandise sales today if all touchpoints for the brand are dialed in (which is why brands get overcharged so much by Roblox dev shops for the same ROI that only cost us a few thousand $).
We have the playbook, it's just about iterating new concepts and then aggressively scaling.
Brand Expansion & Merchandising: I've started to create a content pipeline that is easily repeatable, cost efficient (costs next to nothing through either AI or smart reusable concepts), while still being very tasteful and meeting our quality standards for the brand.
We are mostly focusing here on reaching people where they're at through nostalgic/emotional content, or just being visually stimulating through carefully curated aesthetics. Content that isn't superficial and touches people in a memorable way. I've attached some examples to the post so you can see what I mean rather than just read it.
I don't think it's long until larger brands start doing this at scale, but it's always good to be ahead of the curve and most importantly winning on taste -- knowing what will resonate with people and what won't has always been our edge.
The purpose for these accounts is not only to rack up attention but also to begin converting those into sales of both of physicals (plushies & gacha collectibles) and digital avenues like our games, and any other apps we produce. Because they're offshoot accounts it's also a lot easier to be aggressive/experimental with said conversion strategies.
Sappy Studio: I'm wrapping everything like Omnia, Sappy.lol and everything else into this category because they're all tangentially related.
Beginning with Omnia, our current focus is gearing up for Season 0 which involves players competing in the ranked ladder for a prize pool that has rewards through Monad Momentum as well as a player-funded prize pool. This season will be fairly simple with us mostly logging retention, deck building habits, as well as qualitatively observing how aggressively players push the combat system. Deeper monetization wont exist yet outside of the player buy-in (to be eligible for P2E rewards).
Beyond that our overarching principle this year is to focus heavily on risk-to-earn mechanics where a portion of that excess value is circular i.e. revenues flow back to prize pools or other parts of the economy, treating the game almost like a protocol where the objective is to amass TVL or player liquidity. Social is also a big focus, and that means implementing the Open World hub which from an infrastructure perspective has already been built out and tested by all of you previously. Right now we are scaffolding the environment in 3D and working through how that hub should look and feel, so players are excited to hang out & idle together while they're queuing.
For sappydotlol, what I'm about to say is still early days from a design perspective so a lot can change, but I'm pushing the site in the direction of being a virtual game console. An intersection between Nintendo & Myspace where users can play, trade, and socially interact in a way that's deeply personalised; a breathe of fresh air from the hostility of the current internet.
If you go back to my thesis on Roblox above and the game console references, you can kind of see how this will all sequentially tie together. In essence, the strategy is to acquire a critical mass of players through traditional platforms like Roblox, and use that attention and trust to provide an onboarding funnel for web2 users into our own sandbox filled with a mixture of our own browser-based experiences as well as an aggregation of others. The aim is to make the platform a breath of fresh air & bunker from the enshittified platforms like TikTok/IG/X where users are actually served in ways that delight rather than agitate, and where self-expression is incentivised.
Closing:
As always everything here is subject to change but I've never felt more conviction in our direction until now; I know exactly what we need to do and how, with everything aligning with our team's strengths.
Very excited and grinding through things to the point where I'm getting headaches and can't sleep from being hyperfocused for long periods of time lol. There probably has never been a better time to join the ecosystem from a price to fuck around and find out perspective.
Just some of the many PFP edits I’ve been gifted over the years
Shoutout to all the amazing artists putting out quality work
Which one’s your favorite?
(middle is my OG)