Just want to start off by saying SUCK IT SMUDGE AND SQUELSH, WEEK TWO BABY!
Pretty pleased with how week 1 went, although maybe it skewed too negative, and maybe there weren’t enough pictures. Will either issue be fixed this week? Read on to find out!
Village Idiot Unites AVAX
Earlier this week, Jony decided to go on a rampage against Dom for some reason despite Dom being mostly behind the scenes for at least a year now. There are definitely people unhappy with some of Dom’s decisions about NFTs, but basically everyone came out of the woodwork to clapback against Jony speaking on something he clearly knows nothing about. I admire his hubris tbh. The idea of sending “an open letter to Emin” is particularly hilarious and I look forward to the copy pastas for years to come.
I won’t highlight the replies too much as he just kept digging a deeper and deeper hole, but I will spotlight this evisceration from John Nahas, CBO (!) of AvaLabs. Props to the boss for coming out to defend his employees.
Something I also wanted to address here is the idea that AVAX has tons of infighting. This is misleading because in general the community is incredibly aligned against 3-5 dogmatic, high ego individuals. It’s not fair to call this “fighting” or “PvP” as that adds weight to their opinions. If anything it’s the opposite—the community comes together to PvE farm these NPCs after they post something dumb. If you take any time to become familiar with the situation, it’s easy to see that 99% of people are actually on the same side laughing together. As a drama merchant I love this and hope it never changes.
Blackhole FUD
Blackhole Dex’s token price has been declining rapidly, so the FUD brigade is out! Since launching one month ago, they’ve emitted 10x the amount of tokens that they provided in the initial LP. Who could have seen this price action coming???
I’m of two minds on this one. The founders are from outside the ecosystem, don’t have the best reputation, and were brought in with support from AvaLabs to launch here. They structured the launch in such a way that they could control 80% of the voting power, directing $BLACK rewards to their own pools (mostly the SUPER/BLACK pool) netting them a ton of tokens and voting fees. I can see why this upsets people.
HOWEVER, last time I checked (not recently) they hadn’t actually been dumping the token. Also, this was a tremendous opportunity for people to farm $BLACK and make huge profits. I LP’d with about $10k and claimed $10k rewards in around two weeks. Anyone could have done this! 100% ROI in 2 weeks! As Eric Kang says above, this was a massive boom for DEX volumes and TVL numbers. I have no idea how to assess if that actually matters for the ecosystem, but it was clearly a goal of the launch and it was successful in that regard.
The last thing I want to touch on is how dumb “dex wars” are. Dexes are almost all nearly identical—they’re all wrappers around the same stuff with slight UX tweaks. I’m sorry but your favorite dex is not much better than Blackhole. You think the Pharaoh team didn’t have a massive amount of the $PHAR supply? The $JOE team has been dumping their token on your head for literal YEARS. People launch products to make money. Use the dex that is run by a team you like (for me that’s Pharaoh), and avoid ones that aren’t. Or use the one that makes you the most money. Farm the fees and dump the token like everyone else. Just stop pretending like one is better than another, I beg.
KOLs and Thot Leaders
After the marketing discussion of last week, Whisky reached out on twitter to ask who people consider KOLs on AVAX. One thing I find funny about the term is that self-identifying KOLs (and people who work with them) use it unironically, while everyone else uses it mockingly. I think most people have a similar view to the above tweet—a KOL is a botted account that posts lowest common denominator engagement bait, often doxxed. They are paid to post, so by definition their posts will mostly just be bullposting whatever news their employer wants them to bullpost.
There are a few KOLs running around on AVAX, but I think people largely ignore them as they’re easy to spot. They’ll be the ones posting their own tweets in every groupchat you’re in to get their engagement numbers up (Wrathtank coded) (jk love you Wrath you’re one of the good ones). They have some sheepish followers but mostly exist on the sidelines shouting the newest talking points into the void. I don’t think they’re always malicious, but in general they tend to think highly of themselves and will be opportunistic.
The discussion eventually moved away from this term as Whisky (remember, he works with KOLs so he was using the term unironically) shifted his focus toward trying to find “Thought Leaders” which in my opinion makes a lot more sense. I would define a thought leader as someone with views that represent the majority of a community. When they speak, others largely listen and agree. The main thing that will keep a thought leader from becoming a KOL is their willingness to speak freely and take sides, whereas a KOL is mostly parroting whatever their employer wants them to say—that’s literally their job.
Some people who I consider AVAX thought leaders:
I did not spend long on this list, there are probably more.
Everyone Sells Everything
Almost every coin on AVAX has taken a beating this past week, with major players selling off entire clips in one go. I don’t have a ton to say here—demand for these coins was massively overinflated, so yes once that demand dries up they will trend to zero. All coins do. I don’t hold these sales against anyone as most of these people have been holding for months. Remember to take profits, guys! Turns out a coin can go down 90%, then go down ANOTHER 90%. Math do be crazy like that.
Token Mill v2
I won’t spend much time on this as it’s not even AVAX related anymore, but it seems like the Token Mill v2 launch has been going well and everyone loves it.
Also apparently they launched their own token, then once people started buying it they deleted all evidence it was them? Shoutout to the fake Wink token that Fish launched on v1 to “test sniper protections.”
Institutional Partnerships
Let’s finish on a high note. Plus, how can I enter my KOL arc without parroting the company lines! Patiently awaiting my paycheck!
Not much to add here and no drama, but lots of new announcements this week. These are all pretty sizable partners and it’s cool to have them involved with AVAX. Maybe Dom played some part in these, Jony? Impossible to know! Great week guys, let’s do it again soon.
— Smitty
Tweet of the Week
I made the cut!
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Nice 👍 good read.