bozo (a Q&A on DeGods, y00ts and Dust Labs)
i ask myself all of the questions u mfers want answers to.
Intro:
I’ve never missed one of my mom’s birthdays before. This was our text message conversation leading up to her birthday this year.
One year ago, I was working 4 remote jobs while my brother & I were taking care of my mom in the hospital.
She’s doing a lot better now. I’m working more than I did when I had 4 jobs & talking to her has become more difficult every single day.
She still stays up some nights, texting me stressed out… because she reads the wild accusations & made-up narratives about me on Twitter.
I got to see her this past weekend, told her to stay off twitter for a bit 💀.
I’m not sharing this for your sympathy.
I’m sure I’ll get subtweets calling this cringe. That’s fine.
I have no right to complain. The NFT community changed mine & my family’s life. For that, I am and will always be eternally grateful.
I’m sharing this because I want to share my perspective.
I think the best way to format this is in Q & A format. I’ll just interview myself.
Don’t worry, no softballs.
Q & A: Frank on Frank Violence
Frank, it’s been 8 days since you’ve been on Twitter. Pretty sure you’re rugging & snorting lines off strippers tits.
Sorry to disappoint, but we are not rugging.
I’m happy to give you the transparent breakdown of what I’ve done for the last 8 days.
First 3 days: Got back into meditation, got a haircut, visited my parents, read most of this book & smoked some weed.
Last 5 days: Restructured the entire team’s workflow/task management software to ensure that we don’t have issues with delays/technical fuck ups again.
Also, ran 4 holders-only AMA’s for DeGods & y00ts.
You’re saying there’s going to be no more delays? Stop lying.
From this point going forward, we simply will not announce a date until the actual thing we’re launching is stress-tested & ready for deployment.
This includes the y00ts art reveal + staking launch. No official date yet.
That’s ridiculous, how can a blue-chip NFT not have everything ready & still mint?
Great point. Let’s look at the data of blue-chip NFTs & their second mints.
Doodles Dooplicator Airdrop - 127 days, still no reveal
Doodles Genesis Box Mint - 48 days, still no reveal
Moonbirds Oddities Airdrop - 61 days until reveal
Azuki Seeds/Beanz Airdrop - 37 days until reveal
Otherside - Forget the game’s release date itself, when will there be details for what the attributes on the land be revealed…
It’s been 8 days since t00bs public mint has sold out.
We don’t expect to take as long as any of the references above. If the timeline worries you, please just sell & go invest in any of the other incredible NFT projects on Solana.
y00ts will be ready when it’s ready. In my opinion, the wait will be worth it.
Still, it’s ridiculous that you took so much time since delaying Duppies in June and still don’t have everything ready.
We’ve been working 24/7 on this collection since May 2021.
This is a screenshot of one of the many art-boards for Duppies.
Every single drawing you see up there took hours of work from our artists, each.
All of it was scrapped.
The painful reality is that we’ve thrown away literally multiple months of work throughout this process. And this is just one of 6 total boards spanning the art for Duppies & y00ts.
Creativity is difficult to put a timeline on - in any field. Movies, literature, and albums usually take years to be made… but for some reason people get upset about a few extra weeks for something that will live on the blockchain for eternity.
Regardless, we persist & will continue to keep iterating until we’re 100% satisfied with the work.
Ok, whatever. What about DeGods? The floor crashed, what are you doing about that?
Right now, the floor is thick with DeadGods that have claimed their y00t already.
The simple thing that people have always gotten wrong about DeGods is misunderstanding of the mechanics of the project itself.
We’ve designed the system so the supply of each season of DeGods gets smaller over time.
We only create new rewards for the DeGods in the furthest season.
This creates a friendly environment for new people to join along the journey.
Someone joining DeGods today can assume that the DeadGods w/ the y00ts already claimed will be the only sub-section of holders that will get the next reward that we create. They wouldn’t even need to hold the y00t in this scenario.
Although, having both y00ts and DeGods wouldn’t hurt 🤷♂️.
The simple game mechanic is → follow the path & you win.
But, hey it’s all good… you’ll always be able to catch up with $DUST.
DeGods: Season 3 is loading…
Ok, bro but no deadlines? All these dickriders (and the market) clearly haven’t realized it yet, but I know the truth! DeGods & y00ts are the biggest slow rug, pump & dump, hype ponzi of all time 🤡.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. People can believe whatever they want to.
But you can’t deny facts.
This is a summary of everything we’ve done since the mint. Happy to compare this list of things we’ve built with any other blue-chip project on the market.
11 months. 7 days / week.
3 weeks and 3 days off so far.
#1 & #2 NFT Projects on Solana.
Top 5 NFT Project in the world.
Even if there aren’t any official deadlines… that won’t change the fact that we’re a team of animals who love what we’re doing & we’re not slowing down.
Can’t believe you raised Venture Capital for Dust Labs, you’re such a sell out?
The venture capital was raised for Dust Labs which is separate from De Labs.
Dust Labs: building technology & infrastructure for the NFT ecosystem.
De Labs: building the best NFT projects & communities in the world.
Some key clarifications:
All the DUST from the round was fairly earned via the y00ts mint in the free market.
The team never received a pre-mine, nor pre-allocation of DUST.
All the capital raised is controlled by Dust Labs & the De Labs team hasn’t received a penny of it, personally.
All investors & team members are locked up on their DUST for a total of 4 years.
Many people have asked what the relation between Dust Labs & DUST is. Frankly, we can’t make any forward looking statements on DUST Protocol.
There are currently over 100,000 holders of DUST on the Solana Blockchain. Whether people like it or not, this is already a decentralized protocol that anyone can participate in. Including myself.
So, do whatever you’d like with DUST. As will I.
Can’t believe you only sold out on $7M, did you see what everyone else is raising?
90% of investors we spoke to wanted to invest in the IP of DeGods & y00ts. In fact, several deals fell through because we didn’t want to include this in the round.
If we just look at the data, objectively we’ve been able to scale DeGods to with an extremely capital lean & scrappy approach.
NFT Projects by Treasury Size | Market-cap Ranking:
BAYC - $400M+ Treasury | #1
CryptoPunks - $400M+ Treasury | #2
MAYC - $400M+ Treasury | #3
Moonbirds - $100M+ Treasury | #4
DeGods - $1.2M Treasury | #5*
Doodles - $70M+ Treasury | #6
Azuki - $70M+ Treasury | #7
RTFKT - ∞ Treasury | #8
VeeFriends - $70M+ Treasury
and the list goes on…
*even if you add Dust Labs treasury (which doesn’t make sense because we haven’t spent any of that money on DeGods)… then it’s $8.2M total in current treasury.
**even if you include the already spent mint funds, which have primarily been spent on hiring and paying our employees well… then it’s closer to $10M.
More capital does not equal more value to NFT holders.
Oh, but 10% royalties, you must just be pocketing all the money and dumping on the entire Solana ecosystem. Absolutely evil, I see right through you Frank.
Despite what most people assume, the vast majority of funds collected by DeLabs projects, goes towards payroll for our growing team of 17 full-time employees.
Growth for DeGods & y00ts has been the result of the strongest NFT community in the world, hard work & thinking outside the box.
We don’t need capital for that, we need time & top-tier talent.
To be honest, hiring top-tier engineers/developers is the most expensive piece of scaling an NFT project.
We believe with some key hires, we will soon be able to scale out our product offering at Dust Labs tenfold.
Yeah, so none of your logic & facts will change my mind. You’re still a douchebag and hypeman trying to make a cult and everything is going to zero.
I know it’s really easy to demonize anonymous people on the internet. It’s easy to assume the worst intentions behind everything.
The truth is usually more boring than the conspiracy.
In reality, I’m just a 23 year old kid who works relentlessly to be the best in the world at what he does. The truth is, I’ve had this mentality ever since I was a kid.
Yes, I’m also a human being & enjoy making money for myself. But, that’s not what’s most important to me.
We’re in this special industry where doing a good job can result in changing people’s lives. That’s what motivates me to push for insane goals, like building the #1 NFT project in the world.
Maybe we can do it, maybe we can’t.
If we don’t, then at least we fail at trying to do something big. At least we’re not the critics that will never understand that the true value is in the journey itself.
If we do… well, fuck. That’s an existential crisis for another day.
final note from frank.
In my time away from Twitter, I finally got a chance to reflect on these last 11 months.
I just feel like I have to say what I’m about to say.
Frank is a character. He’s the embodiment of the guy I’ve always wanted to be. If most of you met me in real life, you probably wouldn’t believe how normal I am.
The NFT community has given me a chance to become the best version of myself through Frank. I feel a deep sense of gratitude that so many people on the internet appreciate the work that myself & my team are creating.
But, I never set out on this journey to build an “army” or a “cult”. I can see how to many on the outside, it might feel like that.
Cults aren’t scalable. Community is.
What got us from 0 to 1, will not get us from 1 to 100.
If we want to get to 100, we can’t be reliant on only me. Our community can’t go on pause if I’m not there for a few days. I’m not saying this because I need more vacation time, I’m saying this because it’s becoming a core weakness.
This transition will likely take time, but over the coming months - I’m excited to see members of our community finally get recognition and responsibility for helping steer this ship.
If we do this right, then everything we’re building here will be indestructible.
My only request is that we spend less time worrying about what’s next & more time enjoying the moment. Because, if history is any indicator… we’ll be looking back at this time with nostalgia & start thinking “these were the good ‘ol days” very soon.
Good to be back.
Sincerely,
Frank DeGods
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also don’t worry, 80% of my net-worth is in DeGods, y00ts and DUST at this point… so we’re all on the same team, lol.