Armani Ferrante@armaniferrante
On FUD.
FUD is an opportunity to either address misunderstandings or to identify mistakes and simply fix them. With every TGE, emotions run hot, as people focus on a single number, the token price, determining one’s feelings. It’s human nature, and because Backpack has such a large community around the world, spanning from advanced traders in Asia, to wallet users on every network, Mad Lad holders around the world, and everyone in between, the TGE is a time where people vocalize their views.
I would like to address several different topics I’ve seen floating around over the past few days to set the record straight and offer my perspective.
- OTC. I can’t believe I have to say this, no, we aren’t OTCing our own tokens to cash out. See the tokenomics. Fake news. End of story. What is true: buyers reached out to me and asked for OTC. I am happy to help buyers find more tokens. Unfortunately, due to the bad history of other crypto projects using OTC to cash out, folks assumed the worst when they saw me post about OTC in discord.
- Mad Lads. All existing Mad Lad holders pre-TGE retain their Backpack VIP status. New holders do not. Some like this, some hate this. I understand both perspectives. My perspective is that Mad Lads has always been an evolution alongside Backpack. We went from the whitelist games inside Backpack => pre-reveal inside Backpack => reveal boss inside Backpack => xNFT inside Backpack => airdrops inside Backpack => VIP points inside Backpack => the BP token. Each one of these stages created a clear path for Mad Lads to get to the next stage, always focusing on long term holders over people that come and go. There are people that follow the path, and people that do not. There are people that evolve with us and people that do not. Our approach from the day Mad Lads was born has always been to focus people on the Backpack product. Naturally, new people came into Mad Lads with their own pre-conceived notion of what it was or what it should be. This creates tension. But we have always had a strong vision and we will always stick to it. The people that use the product always get to the next stage, where every stage answers a single question: how do we push Backpack forward. When designing token utility, it’s a question of economics, and it would be a disservice to BP to not align incentives around it. There’s an additional nuance worth pointing out: Backpack is different from basically every other product that dropped a mined token because we KYC users and are selective about the regions we open up. Those users have been out of the game, so to speak, not because I want to do that–nothing upsets me more than not being able to serve users in a particular region (what founder would want that?)--but it’s because we have chosen the path of building a crypto native financial institution. That path is long and hard. For these users, we have maintained the path to get to the next stage and have communicated that. When we open up regions, these regions will get their drops, and we will be running new campaigns to get more drops just by using the product, and that brings everyone up to speed with the same VIP benefits of the original pre-TGE seasons. For the long term holders, nothing has changed. The key issue is with respect to new NFT holders. Some people will hate this. Some will think it’s sound economics. I understand both perspectives. We are doing what we think is best.
- Sybills. Our goal was to protect retail users competing for points against sophisticated players splitting accounts and giving themselves an unfair advantage over those that don’t. The mistake we made: our process was too black and white. From the team’s point of view, we had a line and we stuck to it. From the community’s point of view, the line is nuanced. We did not sufficiently take that into consideration.
- Price/FDV. With every token comes the human nature to think about the price at all times. There are good ways to think about price and there are clearly illegal ways to think about price. Our position is simple, we are building over a long period of time, and we are not making short term decisions. 24h post-TGE FDV is not a meaningful metric. Even 1 week post-TGE FDV is not a meaningful metric. If you ask anyone that’s ever built anything, they’ll tell you the same. Many people will take issue with that statement, and that’s ok. Ultimately, you have to look at our incentives and decide for yourself. The fact of the matter is that the team and I are incentivized to make Backpack a success with arguably the most extreme tokenomics ever created. What happens if the token goes to zero and stays there? Our company fails, and we get nothing. Some people might rebut saying that we get rich from the company revenue. No. That is simply not how companies work. We don’t get rich from a bad token price. We are punished in the most extreme possible way. And we are rewarded in the most extreme way only if we achieve all of our hopes and dreams. The way it should be. This is by design. Beyond this post you won’t see me talk about price or FDV. You will see me talking about building and creating long term value. And it’s only by doing that, can BP become a success.
Every project goes through trials and tribulations. This is certainly a moment for us. We are nothing without our community, and we will serve it in the best way we know how. I have complete conviction, I am all in, and the team is all in. Don’t trust us, look at the tokenomics to decide for yourself.
Thank you for reading this. Thank you especially to those that have supported us this week. It means a lot. We will continue to review the above, particularly the cases around sybils, and get back to building.
