Bi-weekly progress report #1

lost, confused, defeated

I don’t know where to go from here. We’ve made some strides, we’ve released the Ants into circulation, and a few small sales, but nothing like what we expected for the amount of effort we’ve put in. This venture is starting like every other business, a money pit. They say most businesses fail, and I’m sure with NFTs this is true as well.

It’s more expensive then I thought it would be. I wanted everything to be as bare-bones as possible to cut costs, but that doesn’t attract people. So, in order to try to attract people, I have to pay for special software, websites, upgraded discord server, flashy linktrees, social media trackers (waste of money), and other monthly fees that slowly bleed you to death.

But I don’t see it. As far as I can tell everyone around me (on Twitter, of course) is succeeding - sometimes with shittier projects, sometimes with better. The better ones give me something to aspire to, and the shittier ones just fucking piss me off.

”How is this guy selling these dog turds and finding buyers? What’s the secret? Why will no one buy my Ants?”

I’m trying really, really hard to figure out what “the secret” is and I’m lost. I’ve tried giveaways. I never thought it would be so hard to give away a FREE nft?! How the hell am I supposed to sell one if I can’t even give one away? This is depressing.

It’s been a learning experience, and a painful one. I’ve already taken the time, attention, and money away from various people who DO support me, and I feel nothing but guilt and shame should this project fail. Of course, I doubt anyone will be as disappointed or as hurt as I am. It sucks to suck, I guess.

I’ve also become acquainted with the vultures. I don’t know who they are, or where they come from- but they see someone running an NFT project and you become a target. Weird fucking DM’s and propositions out of nowhere. I never do that. I don’t know how anyone does. I mean I’ve certainly inboxed people to ask a question, but not to try to sell them a product? You couldn’t find a single message from me in ANYONE’S inbox ANYWHERE shilling my discord or products. 9/10 only if it was asked. I have been guilty of just randomly shilling tweets in DM’s, but usually it’s to get someone’s attention to something specific.

I’ve been ripped off. I paid some guy $125 to help grow the Discord/Twitter, and he did jack shit except use some bots or fake accounts, which is easy to spot. “Are you happy with your 300 retweets, ser?” - No, I didn’t gain 1 fucking follower from it. I would’ve rather had the 300 followers. That just shows how naive I am to Twitter, as well. I don’t know what these guys do to manipulate the algorithm, but I’ll literally watch them take something I say and reword it and have it go viral.

Guess who gets the credit? Never me. I can’t even get a single fucking one of these influencers or “big shots” to even acknowledge that I exist. Perhaps they view me as a threat. Maybe they should. My envy and hatred of those that ignore me is a strong part of my motivation. I want to prove them wrong. I want to beat them in Chess. I want to engage them in a debate where they wouldn’t have a chance to win, sometimes I’d like to even whoop their ass. YES, I’M COMPETITIVE AND I LOVE TO WIN. I’ve always been #1, #2 in almost everything I do.

Except for these fucking NFTs, I’m in last place for the first time in my life. I fucking hate it and I love it at the same time. It’s challenging, but I’ll be damned if I’m not Rocky getting his ass whooped in the first few rounds.

We even went against our code of ethics (which isn’t codified) and paid our very first influencer/promoter. $30. Nothing to scoff at, but nothing to cry over. We expected something… maybe, 100 new followers? 30 more likes on the post that was retweeted?

What did we get, frens? Goose egg. And not a golden one. This one was covered in shit.

So now what? I finally did what I said I wasn’t going to do, and even THAT didn’t work? Holy fuck! What’s the secret? Is there a magic word? Does it just takes tons of money to start one of these things?! I was under the impression this would be “easy money” once everything was all in place?

And everything is in place. Nothing is perfect. Everything could definitely be improved or upgraded. But we’ve got all the bases covered, and more! We already have 90% more than 90% of all projects! Sure, there’s tons of better projects - but they have teams, I am one man! I’m torn in a dozen different directions at once.

Which brings me to my next point. So now my holders want staking?

Well hold the fuck up a minute, because that costs money too. So you guys want me to introduce staking to Ants that many of you got for free, and that no one is even buying?

Let’s just go ahead and put that one back on the roadmap for now. I’ve already neglected my time, health, family, and have been operating with a broken finger typing stupid posts like these for well over a month. This project has probably caused me permanent physical damage to my finger, but that’s my fault, of course - for not getting it looked at sooner.

Not to mention, the nail in the fucking coffin. DeGods has essentially taken over everything, including the niche that we had envisioned for the SSAP. We wrote a lot of fucking code, and went through a lot of headaches trying to learn Rust to develop such a system. Now, it’s only a matter of time before everyone copies “their” idea, and that niche is completely overrun and oversaturated.

Unless we have a brilliant idea soon, that project appears to be thrown into the scrap heap. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, I suppose.

But where’s the will? It seems like I’m losing it. Maybe I’m just trying to go too fast. Speed Racer. 100mph in a school zone. “Slow and steady wins the race” ?

Yeah, well if you can show me how to do anything “slow” OR “steady”, let me know, I’d be interested in hearing how to do that.

I can’t help but be irritated. I risked a lot to do this. I gave up a steady income, and I thought by now we’d be recouping our initial investment, but I’m not seeing it. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know who to ask.

And by golly, if I could ever put my pride away to even ask in the first place. Even when I do, I’m still often ignored. Maybe this is a young man’s game. Maybe I don’t give off enough the “crypto NFT bro” vibe or not. I try. I pretend. That doesn’t work either.

Ok, I’ll be a nerd and appeal to the nerd types. Nope. Crickets.

I’m not elitist, bougie, or stuck-up enough to pull off the “I’m an investment guru” schtick, but so far that’s when I get my best reactions. Hmm, maybe it’s time to reframe.

Yes… that’s it… pretend to be rich af. That’s the secret! That’s what all these other assholes are doing, and the masses eat it up. Anyone with half a brain sees right through it, but who cares, right? Fuck ‘em.

We’ll just be like every dirty, slimy, sleazy, scummy motherfucker in this space. If you can’t beat em, join em! Ugh, I’m sick of it. This is how rugs happen, I suppose? I used to think rugs were just projects stealing money, but WHAT IF… rugs are created from unsustainable business models? In other words… you’re spending more than you’re making!

I won’t go out like that, no. I’ll just take my ass back to work and do this shit part-time or on the side. It’ll be slow af, everyone will forget about it, and we’ll get left behind by the competition with the capital, advantage, dominance, etc. Instead of treating this like a fucking job, I’m going to go back to treating it as a hobby. This is supposed to be fun. I mean, it is fun… until you look at your bank account.

We’ve still got another week or two of March before we go back to the real world- so who knows, anything can happen. I’ve done everything I can do, and unless some more money comes in- we’re going to have to shut down a lot of our services. Why constantly release free content? Don’t get me wrong, I like to, but it feels nice to be rewarded for your efforts as well. And if no one’s appreciating it, and there’s no demand for it- well, what’s the point? I have a family that depends on me, I’m not going to risk putting them on the streets to make a bunch of fuckers on the internet happy.

”Can Devs do something?”

Yeah, when I fucking feel like it. After this, if I ever fuck around with trying to create an NFT project, we’re starting from the ZERO-EXPECTATION model. You buy it, that’s it. The deal is done. No discord, no website, no nothing, no roadmap, no promises, just a jpeg. That’s if we do “art”, at least. Utility tokens need all of those things.

We started the AAApoc initially with NO utility, and supposed to be only about the art and the lore, but I guess that’s not good enough. Really struggling to figure out exactly what it is that people want, I thought I had something - but, I guess not.

We’ll see where it goes. Just going to take a couple days off ENTIRELY and away from all of it to regroup and reassess. Surely, we’ll formulate a new strategy and make another go at it.