Disclaimer

This post was written from my personal perspective as a crypto founder. Nothing should be construed as financial advice. This post and our products are not intended for U.S. audiences. この投稿の日本語版については、ここをクリックしてください。

TL;DR

As we approach the last week before our announced January 20 snapshot date, we wanted to retrospectively look back on the foundational principles and success stories of crypto, and how we have applied these insights towards our own evolving journey of building community and shaping culture.

(Also, as a bonus, we’ve teased a few early details on our upcoming tokenomics within this post, so keep reading until the end! 👀)

In Token We Trust

A cryptocurrency token is, at its most fundamental level, a form of money. And money, throughout human history, has been based on trust.

The modern era of purely trust-based money began in 1971 when the United States severed the dollar's final connection to gold, ushering in an unprecedented age of fiat currencies. For the first time in history, the global monetary system operated entirely on faith in institutions instead of the intrinsic value of precious metals.

While USD has maintained its ruling position as the world's reserve currency for decades afterward, this trust-based system began showing cracks. A series of controversial policy decisions, from aggressive foreign interventions to domestic financial deregulation, has increasingly eroded public confidence in American institutions. This erosion culminated in the 2007-2008 financial crisis, which exposed fundamental vulnerabilities in a system built primarily on institutional trust.

From these ashes of institutional failure, Bitcoin emerged with a radical proposition: trust in code over trust in corruptible human institutions. Its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto architected not just a new form of money, but a new foundation for trust itself—one built on cryptographic proofs rather than centralized authority.

In the years since Bitcoin's genesis, we've witnessed an explosion in the number of tokens launched. Amidst this proliferation, a crucial pattern has sustained: the tokens that survive and thrive are always backed by strong communities united by a shared belief. Sometimes these ideas are ambitious and world-changing, like Ethereum's vision of a decentralized "World Computer." Other times they're little more than hedonistic or nihilistic nonsense, like Fartcoin or dogwifhat. What matters isn't the scope or seriousness of the idea, but rather the authentic connection it fosters among its community of holders.

This pattern holds true across the entire market spectrum, from "blue chip" L1s to the latest memecoins. The most resilient tokens are those where community members implicitly trust and share a mutual concern not just for each other, but also in an idea bigger than themselves. Crypto is so much more than just a technological innovation; it's a social movement where communities bound by shared trust write the rules for a new culture.

A Game of Trust

If every crypto token is fundamentally a game of trust (like in the below visualization), then what is the optimal strategy to building community?

Previously in another blog post, I wrote:

In the past, for example, [centralized exchanges] over-indexed on approving listings of projects based on vanity metrics like number of Twitter/X followers, which thus led many teams to “rehypothecate” inauthentic user numbers via bots, SocialFi campaigns, etc.

Because of this repeated behavior, many crypto users are still under the (false) impression that higher pre-TGE numbers translate to higher post-TGE numbers:

However, as I had shared in an earlier blog entry, not all users should be treated equally, especially in crypto, because of our industry’s incredibly pervasive bot problem:

In their recent 2024 State of Crypto report, Andreessen Horowitz estimates that only 14-27% of crypto users are human, meaning 73-86% are bots. Even within the small minority of human users, there are many who simply do not care about anything else other than making money from a crypto project. When a token’s airdrop distribution falls predominantly into the hands of extractive bots or airdrop farmers, the true fan loses.

From day 1, our goal with both Farm Frens and Everseed has always been to attract and grow an authentic community of true fans. When we reward our community with our token, the ideal outcome would be that as many of our airdrop recipients cooperate (i.e., hold & buy more token) instead of cheat (i.e., sell token). The more our holder community cooperates, the better the outcome for all.

Our Commitment to Community

So how do we put what we preach into practice? As most of our Farm Frens players have only been a part of our company Amihan’s journey for several months, we thought it would be a good opportunity to reshare a foundational thought piece from the early days of Everseed that reveals our team’s unchanged philosophy and process for building community:

Despite Web3’s growing pains, one of the main reasons we originally became so interested in the space was witnessing how close relationships would develop between creators and their highly engaged and passionate fans. A more openly communicative and collaborative process of development with the community resonated strongly with us. At its core, Everseed strives to build a digital society that engages and uplifts players for not just years, but generations. After lurking in a myriad of other Web3 communities, we were left disappointed to find many conversations were focused primarily around financial gains when there are so many more inspiring ideals that Web3 could enable. One of these is the development of deeper and more meaningful relationships with friends online, which represents the foundation for early community building. 🤝 […]

Our decision to put the player first above all else originates from our founding team’s experience building great games at Riot. While this approach may be new for Web3, we hope to set a higher standard by which all future Web3 gaming projects can and should be measured against. […] With your trust, together we know we can usher in a new era not just for gaming or tech, but for humanity. We hope our vision of equalizing opportunity resonates with you as strongly as it does with us. Hand in hand with you, Everseed can be uplifted and represent the dawn of a new community-first society rooted in the noblest of human ideals. We are so incredibly excited to embark on this adventure together with you, and look forward to meeting and becoming friends with each of you[.] Thanks so much for your interest, patience, and understanding. You are all amazing. Welcome home! 💚

Following the above post, the allowlist, mint, and reveal processes we crafted for our Everseed NFTs were one-of-a-kind, and focused on benefiting true fans and players as opposed to speculators or extractors.

Though our team’s product priorities shifted from Everseed to Farm Frens last year, our core values have remained the same, and no matter what product we ship, we have always strived to nurture a community that reflects and represents these values.

Tokenomics Teaser

From Everseed to Farm Frens, our loyal community has grown even stronger through this expansion. Similarly, as we evolve again from Farm Frens to our next shared chapter with TGE, we wanted to ensure our community has been set up with the best starting point for potential success.

For Farm Frens players, airdrop allocation will be determined by three variables: $NUTS, $DIRT, and $DUNG. Each of these plays a specialized purpose to track player contributions across economic, time, and social axes, respectively. By basing distribution on multiple variables instead of just one, our team has the flexibility to adjust calculations to punish bots and cheaters while rewarding true frens.

Moreover, though we still have to make final adjustments to our tokenomics after our January 20 snapshot date, here’s what we can tease for now:

• >40% allocation to community for current (⅔) & future (⅓) airdrop rewards, and fully unlocked at launch

• Insider (team, advisors, etc.) rewards to be fully locked at launch

From Community to Culture

We hope what we revealed today excites you for what’s to come, but there’s still so much to share. As detailed earlier, the success of any token is predicated on shared trust among a community for a unifying vision. So far we’ve only touched upon the first important ingredient: community. In an upcoming blog post, we’ll continue onwards with what exactly is the core belief behind our community, and how the culture we create together will manifest that vision into reality.