Influencer shilling & some zing thoughts

There's been a list leaked recently by zachxbt of some influencers and the cost to get them to shill your tokens/project, I mean this is web2 after all, beside some adrevenue that twitter might offer them, how else are they going to capitalize on the blind followers they've amassed?

It's just kind of sad the games we still play, it's a two sided game as well, these people aren't out there actively looking for projects they actually like and invest their own money into, they're just playing the numbers game in terms of attention and waiting for projects to come to them and pay them to bring light to their project - which they along with the influencers then abuse to dump on the masses they've lured into buying their token.

Why do we play these games?

I remember in the early altcoin days, people were so adamant about making sure early distribution was fair and that devs would explain any and all funds being used on their public and transparent addresses, else the masses would just move on and look at other projects. Now of course Steem was one of the few ones that cheated this system hard yet many stayed and hoped they'd do right by the community (aka the ninjamine, which we now know they tried to fuck that up as well), but I feel like it's only gotten worse over the years. Either through exchange launchpads, VC's/angel investors and all kind of dirty web2 tricks you may not know about but become more clear now as payments may be easier to trace due to blockchain compared to banks back in the day. Has web2 always been this dirty and we're now just seeing it drip into this space?

Now okay, you may be thinking I'm setting myself up to talk about how fair zing token launch was which I've probably talked about more times than posting any actual news about the game, but I thought I'd post about some other things that I'm going to be trying not to do with the project. Some things maybe you may expect of me not to given the time I've invested here and hope to keep my sheet clean in the foreseeable future of the chain, but maybe some things you may not think of that I may think of now as I'm writing this post on another sleepless night while wondering how many points I may have forgotten by now as I wrote these few paragraphs. Let's see.

Before I dig in, I just wanna point out one thing that makes Hive different compared to the above - in a way. Sure you could technically still privately "pay" people to shill your projects without leaving a trace here on-chain, but can you imagine how easily this would leak here compared to on web2? Someone with proof of having gotten paid could just make a new account and post about it, I'm not able to mute this account and any downvotes would just get it more attention - which on web2 could easily be swept under the rug that's about to be pulled. You have a persona tied to the projects here, if you look at a more longstanding project like splinterlands, I could name 10 usernames I know have a lot of value parked there and are investing more over time and I know these are real people placing more skin in that game from their hard-earned hive or outside value. This, among the censorship free nature, gives things a lot more trust that you're not stepping on a minefield that's about to implode as soon as you make a sizeable investment or that the people running the projects aren't just going to bleed you dry over time by selling through other accounts secretly, etc, since everything can be traced. For instance, if you took a look at my account, I think the only time I sold zing was to place half of it in the liquidity pool, other than that I've just been buying for almost 2 years now in different ways (delegations, alpha vials, staking or direct swap.hive to zing swaps.

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Anyway, after having been in this space quite a long time, I thought I'd write down some things I don't see myself doing in the future to keep the project as fair and genuine as I can.

You won't see me

• pay users here to shill zing or the token, aside from them wanting to do so on their own or the 5% referral rewards they may get from your purchases
• pay outside users to shill zing, having similar leaked messages or lists pop up online of me having been involved in such activities would quickly destroy my reputation on hive
• print tokens out of thin air for promotions - this devalues investors, myself included, just to create a short term value going to people attempting to promote the project, most likely all sell pressure.
• balance distribution in a way that favors myself more than others, to give you an example here, LP rewards have been one of the most rewarding aspects of zing as of late, yet I'm not active in the pool personally and we have reduced staking rewards since last update (which means less staking rewards for a lot of my zing). I could easily make these changes but it'd be unfair to others and devalue those who are mainly interested in the token more than is needed. While we have been trying to make adjustements that'd get the project more funding, we've noticed there isn't much left to come in at this point in time, so we won't be making more changes in that regard until the project is further ahead.
• sell out the project/IP to other entities, this project is mine and I intend to keep it that way, sure we may do partnerships, collabs, etc with others but those would have to come with mutual benefits while staying true to the points above, i.e. not diluting investors by printing tokens out of thin air to give to partners. Everyone will have to invest like anyone else has or purchase tokens from the markets by other crowdfunders if they want skin in the game.
• give up on the project, some of you who may know me well may know that I dislike giving up on projects I start and run here, especially those I spend a lot of time developing as it feels like a major waste and disservice to hive itself. More than that, this is something I've been planning and looking for the best time to start for almost a decade now, sure things have gotten in the way or not ran as good as they could have, but taking things slower than planned doesn't mean we stop or give up, as long as it's in my power it won't be a project I give up. Even in the worst cases where no one else wants to play it, I plan on maintaining it at my own cost and seeing what the future holds for it.
• do shady things like getting people to FOMO into the token even if it has gone up a lot or try to convince them to buy the token rather than invest in/fund the project which helps pay for development - or on the other side of things, purposely try to get people to sell off tokens so I can buy them cheaper on secret accounts, etc. Use alt accounts to prop up the price of the token, corner some creatures/cards, hide information for selfish reasons, etc. I've tried to be as up front about things as I can and I've been posting quite a lot about things, potentially to a fault or where you may get tired hearing about it without any substance to show for it yet. Either way, point is you won't see me trying to do things that'd get my hive reputation in trouble, sure not everyone may like me or agree with some of my stances or actions on here, but that's kind of an impossible task.

I swear I had more points in the back of my head before I started writing this but it's kind of escaping me now, maybe I'll write them in a comment if I come up with them after a sleep.

If this project does well, I hope it means it'll bring a lot of value to hive. Oh, that's another point

• get paid to move the project off of hive for another chain. Sure we may list the token on other chains for interoperability but it'll always have its birth and native token on hive and I'd try my best to get people to use it here rather than outside with hopefully less fees and the potential to earn to be part of the community by being social here.

I also hope it'll do well for everyone else and those in between who are involved or invested in the project and have helped crowdfund it. I'm in a way considering all the hive I've spent on zing as "locking it up" for a long time, think 3-5 years, even then I kind of doubt I'd get rid of most of it. I may play around with some liquids here and there if movements call for it, but end-game is kind of my goal similar to my hive stake. The way I envison zing is that hopefully as many regular people as possible are involved rather than institutions, exchanges, being the ones controlling the price and getting the lion's share of fees and future distribution.

Either way, I'm kind of blanking on more things now.

This post may come off kind wrong depending on who's reading it, I'm not trying to build myself up as some kind of awesome ethical person and trying to get you to invest or buy into it based off of this post, please don't and take some time to think about it if it's in any way asking you to do a kneejerk reaction. I'm just voicing some things after the depressing stuff I keep seeing on other platforms of what keeps happening with what we call "web3" outside of hive, the shitstorm of memetoken casino's, rugpulls, shills, manipulation, overreactions, tribalism, etc. I'm kind of glad I barely have the time to follow on happenings outside of Hive whenever I dare to take a look there now and then.

Thanks for reading, stay safe out there.