Image recreated on Canva
In my six years of writing in various Web 3 platforms, I have come across different kinds of people and groups that exposed me to the working dynamics of most Blockchain projects and products. I have had the opportunities to work with projects' owners and developers in the form of promoting their projects and products with my blog. Projects like NFTs, new token release, and Blockchain games were frequent on my blog. This was especially evident during my streaks on the read.cash blogging platform and the BCH community.
Beside writing promotional content, I was also deeply into NFTs and investing in Defi tokens within the smartbch ecosystem, a side chain on the BCH network. These exposure to Blockchain projects positioned me for what was coming, and the experience of victimization that I want to share in this post.
I was browsing articles on the read.cash platform one fateful morning when I saw a post from someone who claimed to be an NFT artist. The content of her post was about her frustration in making any sales of her artwork (NFT) listed on Opensea, the popular NFT marketplace on the Ethereum Blockchain.
I saw her frustration in the post and engaged in a discussion with her on the possibility of helping her move her NFT collection to the smartbch chain. With my experience in NFT minting and promoting past projects within the BCH community, I was eager to help the new creator enter this burgeoning space.
After having a thorough discussion with the artist and reviewing the design concept, I was sure her vision had strong potential. Leveraging on my connection within the smartbch ecosystem, I got a skilled developer who was interested in helping out with the building of the contract and other technical infrastructure for the NFT collection. I connected the two of them together in a telegram group I created for the 3 of us to meet. Together, we formed a team and named the project.
After finalizing the collection details, I volunteered to take up the job of marketing, outreach, and community bonding since I was familiar with the evm community, and launched the initial promotional campaign. Our shared goal was to build a successful project that would benefit everyone who would invest in it.
One of the NFT
Through months of planning and consistent hype-building within telegram communities and my blog, the first 2,500 NFT was debuted on the smartbch chain. Within 2 weeks of launch the entire collection was sold out and started trading on the marketplace. The next thing was what to do to sustain long term interest for the project.
On that issue, the developer proposed developing an interactive game that would allow holders of the NFT to use them as a pass to engage in the game. The game would have its own reward pool from the project native token. The assurance was that the game would provide ongoing utility and value for the project.
With my connection within the community our initial goals for the project launch was achieved.
Before the game would be released, there were several unexplained delays for the game development. When it was finally released, it didn't meet the depth, polish, and promised features in concept designs shown to the community earlier. The community was disappointed and voiced their criticism over the poor experience.
A few days later, a mass exodus of investors happened, who lost their trust in the project. The NFT collection flooded the marketplace with prices lower than the minting price. The developer rather than being responsible for the substandard product decided to shift blame. They said that I did not hype the game enough to get investors' acceptance, though I was regularly updating the community of the development. Rather, it was the game itself that failed to deliver the right experience as promised and which could have driven long-term interest into the future.
The game banner
As everything went wrong with the project, tensions began to mount within the team. The developer and artist secretly created a different chat without me. This is where they planned rewriting our revenue sharing agreement without consulting me. I was invited to join the chat, and there I was told my share from the project's revenue was reduced to just 10% while they pocketed everything else. Realizing how they betrayed me after bringing this team together made me understand that I had been used as a scapegoat about things over which I had no control.
This unfair treatment left me hurt deeply and feeling taken advantage of. As you know, everything happened online and I knew nothing about who the people were and where they lived. I didn't even see their faces, they all hid their identity behind avatars. With what they have done to me, after putting myself on the line to see the project succeed, I felt victimized and knew I had to take my exit. My exit accelerated the decline of this project but withdrawing enabled me to have a fresh breath and avoid seeing more harm done to it by others.
All in all, valuable lessons were learnt here about partnerships in emerging industries. To compromise integrity will be unacceptable and unfairness or victimization cannot be justified by mistakes alone.
Below are links to some of the promotional content I wrote for the project.
https://read.cash/@Fexonice1/great-earning-opportunity-with-the-reaperville-nft-project-dac47a34
https://read.cash/@Fexonice1/meet-reaperville-the-new-nft-project-on-smartbch-2f483c8d
https://read.cash/@Fexonice1/surviville-nft-project-reward-card-game-is-live-ed18fbca
The experience narrated in this post is hundred percent true, there's no fiction in it at all.
Thanks for reading.
This is my submission for day 3 in the #juneinleo daily writing challenge.
