varundo

I’m going to take a break from X for a month at least. To my small circle of compadres I’ve never met here, thank you for your constant presence and interaction. If you need to reach me DM me on Instagram. Peace out ✌️

@Arthemort @retro_manni I did.

@retro_manni Just ask Raphael

The deeper you go down the history of Objkt vs HEN situation, the darker and more nuanced it gets. Now is the time to get as much truth into the open as possible so the tezos art community can make peace with it, learn from it & move on. If you know wtf happened, let it be known

@retro_manni @zancan I even collected @michaelmicasso work on Etherlink against all my common sense. I just dug his work, so did it. Now I’m locked out because the entire Rarible platform is blocked in India.

@varundo_ @zancan I know etherlink all too well. What a mess that was. I butt heads with those grifters on many occasions.

The global north hijacked an open source ecosystem, did DEI hires to fight their battles for them, ignored/fumbled millions for their masters, ripped off artists and builders, washtraded to keep their jobs, manipulated statistics and yet they still talk about one man’s ego. 🤮

@retro_manni @Tengushee Always respected you. The world is not black and white. That being sad, we didn’t draw the line that creates this divide, just saying that there is one.

@varundo_ @Tengushee We'll have to agree to disagree here. With respect 🙏🏾

@retro_manni @zancan It’s a good time to suck up to them as a lot of people are doing. There will be funding rolling in to execute these new ventures. Same thing happened with Etherlink launch. It all collapsed when the funding was depleted. Even mercenaries get the job done.

@varundo_ @zancan Highly likely. But rumours suggest they have the infamous war chest to keep the illusion alive until the drama passes.

@retro_manni @Tengushee Grouping corporations together in this day and age labels you as a commie. The north-south divide makes more sense here because this is supposed to be a decentralised system, devoid of corporations firstly but also devoid of socio economic divides. It’s failed with both.

@Tengushee @varundo_ There is the entire global north, and then there are corporations looking to capitalise and extract for personal gain. Grouping these together makes 0 sense. It's just easier when painting heroes and villains to pick a side, but nuance and context matter.

Rafael Lima calked what Objkt did an epistemicide. I had to look up the meaning of that word but it’s pretty spot on.

I’ve delved into this history of Rafael Lima and the Art Basel incident before. To those that missed it.

This the one incident always sidestepped by the explainers. The best explanation they had was they forgot to send an email or he didn’t reply to our email. Like that gives you the right to infringe on someone’s IP.

@zancan The day your associate threatened me in my DMs to destroy my career was the day the value of anything you had to say went to zero. Maybe the AI will care if you ask it.

There's always two sides of a story. Though I DYOR back then, Rafa's side was always cryptic, what was clear was that the fate of HicEtNunc was bound to one man's emotions, and yes, ego, must call a spade a spade. Not throwing him under the bus here : HEN grew enormous in the span of a month, money was at stake and that alone can definitely be too much to take for a single individual. The boom of NFT market was bound to create a highly competitive environment where one needed the shoulders and legal structuration to survive _ in practice. Similar to the endless complains we heard about the foundation, disconnected/white collars/doesn't support artists... No matter the cringe decisions, they kept providing a solid ground. Look, 5 years forward, Objkt is one of the rare to have survived. I'm glad they did. Teia took over the community side of the initial project, and the "spirit of HEN" lives on, at least through ideal and nostalgia. Rafael's project is regarded as the historic foundation of art on Tezos, man's a legend ! Though "South vs North" is such a wrong narrative IMO...

@ruralidyll It’s specific enough that those that need to understand the message will and generalised enough to reflect the colonial mindset that still exists in the corporate world.

@varundo_ Everyone’s terrified to rt this but it’s hard to argue with it 😬

@retro_manni There are great people from the global north who are fighting for equality and vile people from the global south who have sold themselves into servitude / are very complicit. Specificity I hope will come as the bigger issues moves into a state of resolution.

@varundo_ I'll agree with most of this as fact, but think we should reduce the broad strokes of 'global north' and be more specific about the individuals who did this. But the DEI hires strategy is super obvious and glad you pointed that out. They're being used against us to keep us quiet.

@santiagoitzcoat So much quality sarcasm is often lost in this space. I did it off chain in 2016. You can blame me for it. instagram.com/p/BM4ZJRlF4cC/

@varundo_ I did it on-chain in Dec 4 2024. Perhaps worth saying it’s by sarcasm zerounbound.art/tokens/KT1WShR…

Coming soon: Mega art event where all artists will be asked to make Uranium inspired art. Extra points if you convey how cool and creative mining rare earth minerals is.

tzkt dapp stats now only start from 3 years ago. Earlier it showed 2021 & what this ecosystems numbers truly were. The difference is embarrassing. I appeal to builders to reveal the true dApp usage stats of this ecosystem.

@Tengushee There are many. Mostly cheap labour /service based. Some also that service content creation for social media and some to tackle mental health issues caused by social media.

Name the last successful non-social media related/platform app which was actually successful. I'll wait.

@ktorn @zancan @TezomoPepdici @kikanicolela @ZHOUZELIANG @objktcom I’ve personally spoken to him about it. Even years later he was terrified/traumatised. Yes the community is at fault too but well before that there were people in positions of power who strong armed him. I believe him because I’ve had to put up with some of them too.

@zancan @varundo_ @TezomoPepdici @kikanicolela @ZHOUZELIANG @objktcom We (the community) need to assume our share of responsibility for being totally tone deaf. Even during the hicathon I could clearly see that Rafa was not comfortable with things getting out of hand. We had good intentions but we all had a hand in killing it.

Why was @objktcom born on the Tezos blockchain? As a large number of NFT platforms are closing down, we should understand the history of Objkt and what has brought it to where it is today.

@BakingBenjamins @alisis_official It’s just wordplay, don’t read too much into it 😆

@varundo_ @alisis_official

@TezomoPepdici @zancan @kikanicolela @ZHOUZELIANG @objktcom He let auctions in the door in good faith, it’s closer to a hostile takeover than one persons tantrum. When the community questioned why it wasn’t open source the answer was on the lines of: his code was so bad we had to rewrite it, so now it’s closed.

@varundo_ @zancan @kikanicolela @ZHOUZELIANG @objktcom I guess I take issue with: “Then the day when Objkt.com pushed their contract with a mint feature, Rafael got upset and pulled the plug.” That implies it was one thing. That it was sudden, and that objkt contracts were the cause and it happened in the same day.