InvArch

Nearly four years ago, InvArch was born from a singular vision: to create a world where anyone, anywhere, could contribute their ideas and talents to bring bold innovations to life - trustlessly, transparently, and collaboratively. This dream wasn’t conceived in comfort or luxury, but during one of the hardest periods of my life. At the time, I was homeless living out of a friend’s spare room more than a thousand miles from where I had once called home, working construction jobs when I could, and quietly battling unspoken health issues. But in the midst of it all, I held onto one thing: the unwavering belief that InvArch could change the world. On August 4th, 2021, I officially kicked things into high gear. I wrote a lite paper for InvArch, proposed some of the earliest ideas for on-chain IP primitives & protocols, and started to reach out to those who I believed could help me realize my vision. With nothing more than my writings & a LinkedIn account, and after countless messages & outreach, I pulled together a respected group of advisors & formed our initial team. We secured a grant from the Web3 Foundation (which we successfully delivered on), began to raise capital despite the bull marking ending in late 2021, started to hire for our team, and focused heavily on growing our community. Where others in our space raised tens of millions - $20M, $30M, even $60M+ - InvArch entered the arena with a humble $1.7M. Influenced by early advice that I later realized was misguided, I developed a resistance to large VC allocations. In hindsight, this limited our ability to scale, grow, and weather the storm that was to come. I came to deeply regret this over time. I've learned that one of the most important things I can ever do as a founder is make sure that our team has all of the capital possible to secure & ensure our ability to build & deliver our vision. The next two years that followed turned out to be some of the most - if not the most - brutal conditions the blockchain industry had ever seen. Teams that had raised magnitudes more than us began to dissipate & projects were getting wiped out, with our team also significantly impacted during this time, but we kept on building - we were determined. We went on to cultivate one of the most known & anticipated projects in the Polkadot ecosystem, helped achieve changes to those who had power in the ecosystem - from Parity's CMO to those who were responsible for the ecosystem's flagship events, helped give WUD what it needed early on to flourish, and fully dedicated ourselves to building on Polkadot. Throughout our journey, InvArch evolved. From on-chain IP, to DAOs, to multisig frameworks, and finally to chain abstraction - our pivots were attempts to align with fundability and market narratives. Looking back, I regret not staying true to our original vision. The world wasn’t ready for blockchain-powered IP - but that didn’t mean the vision was wrong. It meant we were early. And like many pioneers before us, we paid the price for being misunderstood. My original vision never left me, but I did lose a certain level of passion & excitement the more we pivoted away from it. We didn't need to pivot from IP (maybe from Polkadot, maybe not) - what we needed was to double down on our conviction. Over the past several months, we’ve operated with a lean but dedicated team. I personally took on responsibilities across every domain - from UI/UX, to project management, to community and social media. It was unsustainable, but it was necessary. The listing of the VARCH token was disappointing. We lost $30,000 - funds we could barely afford to lose. I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us there. I should’ve fought harder for a more strategic launch, one supported by a live product and a comprehensive marketing push. And I should’ve done more to keep us focused and aligned with our commitments. Gabe, our CTO, was instrumental in our early success. But in recent months, his absence during critical periods made it difficult for us to execute and respond effectively. I say this not to place blame, but to be transparent. As CEO, I carry the weight of every outcome. Thankfully, Xico has quickly stepped up & proved himself to be extraordinarily capable, and thank him for seeing that the new DAO management portal got delivered. The hard truth is that our team is no longer able to fully dedicate ourselves to InvArch, not as much as we would like. I'd like to clarify & stress that InvArch is not being abandoned - InvArch is live on Polkadot, it's core primitives & contracts are all live, and the portal is available for all to use & developers can even submit PRs for its improvement. However, our development pace will slow for the foreseeable future. We will continue to share updates via X, but we are winding down our Discord server due to limited bandwidth. A bug report form will be available via the portal. Our team has been forced to sell some of our holdings to pay for basic operational costs; however, this is also winding down as we continue to seek deals and arrangements to increase CEX liquidity & strengthen the token, and keep the door open for the possibility of a renewed listing. Regarding Youdles, I am talking to several parties, mostly DAO members, about a potential sale/transfer of ownership of the Youdles IP & the Youdles accounts in our possession. If a deal is made, then I will update the community; otherwise, Youdles will have to be placed on the backburner as our team is unable to focus on its migration to Solana or future growth. I want to thank everyone who has ever supported us through the jouney, and I am deeply sorry to those who we have let down. We made it far as a startup that came from nothing, and proved countless times that we were a powerful force, but in the end we fell short of what we needed to accomplish. Anything I had ever gained from this journey, I poured back into InvArch. I'm not typing this from a beach with money in the bank, but from my little apartment without enough money to pay my rent. I know that doesn't make things better for those we have disappointed, but I do have faith that one day everything will be much better, and I can finally see my vision realized, and we will see InvArch flourish like it was always meant to - until then, I wish everyone the best & want to again thank everyone who has been a part of this journey - I hope we can comeback one day stronger than ever. The last few years were the most stressful, but also the most incredible of my life, and I will always be grateful for the friends made & lessons learned along the way.

Surprised not more chaotic, but i'll take it