Dear Adam,
For the past week, we’ve been tirelessly trying to reassure you—and we’ll say it again with all our heart—that there has never been any ill intention on our part to act against the IC ecosystem. We want to emphasize, as clearly and sincerely as possible, that we DO NOT HAVE ANY RELATION TO NODE PROVIDERS WITH RESPECT TO RUNNING NODES OR HOSTING NODES in the PAST, PRESENT, or FUTURE. Nor have we ever engaged in discussions about colluding with node providers, setting up nodes, or participating in silent auctions or actions related to the transfer of nodes—or anything of the sort.
To start, we’d like to clarify something that seems to have caused confusion: the name changes. These shifts—like moving from Hot or Not to YRAL to DOLR AI—were never about deception. They were about moving quickly, adapting to evolving business needs, and conserving our limited time and financial resources so we could grow.
This isn’t unusual and you can look at Google, which went from BackRub in 1996 to Google (a twist on “Googol”) and later to Alphabet. Or Facebook, evolving from Facemash to The Facebook, then Facebook, and now Meta.
For us, as we explained in our early forum post (DOLR AI - The First Layer 2 Scaling Solution on the Internet Computer), DOLR AI began with GB, Hot or Not, transitioned into YRAL for clean feed, and then grew into DOLR AI as our vision expanded. And importantly, all the other apps in our ecosystem remain ALIVE and thriving, as you’ll see below.
Here are the assets we’re so proud to have built, all of which are currently live, sharing user identities and connecting to the same 500,000+ backend user canisters on the IC. Together, we call them the apps of the DOLR AI ecosystem:
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https://yral.com/ - Our decentralized alternative to TikTok, built with love and care as YRAL
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https://hotornot.wtf/ - A space where content that doesn’t fit App Store guidelines is automatically sorted by AI, keeping YRAL’s feed clean and user-friendly as HOT OR NOT
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https://icpump.fun/ - A platform where anyone can create their own ICRC 1,2,3-compliant token in seconds—no gas, no bonding curve, just pure creativity. As IC PUMP
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https://pumpdump.wtf/ - A fair, peer-to-peer token game built atop ICPump.fun memecoins, designed for fun and engagement. As PUMP DUMP
Every one of these assets shares the same backend. As a user, you can log into any app and see for yourself— your token, profile and other data flows seamlessly across them all. And on each app in the DOLR AI ecosystem, we proudly declare that it’s BUILT ON THE INTERNET COMPUTER. That’s a badge of honor for us.
When we set out to build a scalable app, we took inspiration from OpenChat’s brilliant single-user, single-canister architecture. From day one, we knew social apps like Hot or Not/YRAL would need to handle spiky traffic and a dynamically scalable backend. Without that, social apps—no matter how great the idea—face an inevitable end.
Our journey proves this. In 2022 (https://x.com/dominic_w/status/1679795979732516864) and again in 2023 (https://x.com/Rishi__Chadha/status/1666794807442767873), we saw incredible momentum—thousands of users flooding in daily to play the “Hot or Not” game, a hit among Web3 users. But both times, we had to HALT SINGUPS immediately. The demand was overwhelming, and our backend couldn’t keep up. For months each time, we paused onboarding to pour our hearts into redeveloping the architecture, determined to create something that could handle future spikes without ever shutting down again. The ENTIRE TEAM AT DFINITY HAS BEEN AWARE OF THIS THROUGHOUT
In 2022
In 2023
Building a social app is an uphill battle—it always has been. Tens, if not hundreds, of companies in Web2 and Web3 have tried and failed, especially in Web3, because crafting a backend that can handle unpredictable, explosive traffic is no small feat. Our small team of ten engineers has given everything to this dream, striving to build a scalable foundation that could one day support millions of users—imagine the influx from just one big influencer in India, Indonesia, or the US, with tens of millions of followers on TikTok or Instagram. Even now, onboarding an influencer of that scale would push our current infrastructure to its limits, however scalable we’ve made it. But we’re not giving up—we’re building for tomorrow.
From a business perspective, we also knew advertising in Web3 wouldn’t easily sustain a social platform like YRAL. Revenue generation has always been a puzzle, and we realized the best path forward was to share YRAL’s user data with other Web3 dApps that could connect seamlessly with us. That’s why, over the past couple of years, we’ve dreamed of linking to decentralized apps effortlessly—creating a revenue stream for YRAL and driving demand for the DOLR token. A single-user, single-canister model made this vision logical: smaller dApps could tap into YRAL’s data without wrestling with complex authentication flows. Saikat laid bare our struggles in this forum post (LAMENT: A tale of constant struggle of what it's like trying to scale on ICP), and it’s a testament to how hard we’ve fought to get here.
All of this—the scaling challenges, the vision for the future—led us to our current technical choice: a single-user, single-canister, multiple-subnet architecture. But we’re not rigid. We’re wide open to feedback from you, the community, or anyone who can guide us toward an IC infrastructure capable of handling millions of concurrent users—say, in a few hours. It’s taken our small team two to three years of relentless effort to reach this point, pouring our souls into something we believe in. And that’s why it’s unimaginable to us that anyone could think we’d want to harm the Internet Computer. It’s taken tens of thousands of hours from the world’s brightest minds to build the Internet Computer into what it is today — and a tiny team like ours, still grappling with building a scalable social app on the IC, even dream of taking it over with! Just repeating it again for your reference: we have no allegiance to any node provider. We’ve NEVER considered colluding with anyone in the IC ecosystem for anything or to make life harder for developers. We’ve NEVER hosted nodes for ourselves, Hot or Not, YRAL, or DOLR AI—nor do we plan to. Our focus is on building, and never ever disrupting.
Like you have supported the ecosystem with your generosity, Adam, we’ve tried to do our part too—through technical expertise, even if our financial means pale in comparison to yours. Yes, we’ve worked closely with IC projects like Estate and Fuel, lending our skills to help them take flight. We knew if we didn’t step up, these ideas might drift to other ecosystems—or worse, never see the light of day.
For Estate, we imagine that you are one of the biggest investor in the SNS and you invested not just for its potential but to support your friend George. For Fuel, the IC community—including you, we hope—watched its journey unfold over eight months on the forums, for its decentralization. We’ve been ardent technical supporters of both, just as we’ve guided numerous SNS projects with tech, marketing, and collaboration—some succeeding, others faltering without enough community backing. As the YRAL team, we’ve poured our hearts into every SNS, investing, promoting, and cheering them on, because we believe the ICP ecosystem grows when we all grow together—not just YRAL, OpenChat, or Dragginz, but all of us.
At every event we attend with Dfinity, we’re the ones standing for hours, eagerly explaining the IC’s potential to anyone who’ would ask anything about the IC. If you also check with Dfinity’s marketing team—they’ll tell you how passionately we help support the ecosystem. Our goal is to draw developers and entrepreneurs to the IC, helping it rise to the stature of Ethereum or Solana. And if you’ve looked at our code, at its current stage it’s just good enough to build something scalable, but deeply tied to the IC’s canisters and subnets. Spread across 20+ general app subnets, our work is intertwined with the IC’s fabric. Any disruption to the network would unravel everything we’ve built. Our treasury, DOLR—is under the NNS’s control. If the IC faltered, our years of sweat and dreams would collapse to zero in an instant. We’re really all in.
DOLR AI is our attempt to become the FIRST Layer-2 scaling solution on the IC (DOLR AI - The First Layer 2 Scaling Solution on the Internet Computer). It’s a vision for now—a white paper outlining how DOLR could abstract the IC for developers, letting them scale without rebuilding the pieces we’ve painstakingly crafted for YRAL: a scalable backend, identity sharing, userbase sharing, AI-driven content moderation, token creation, and more. As a platform atop the IC, DOLR could also split the 500,000+ canisters cycle cost from one dApp like YRAL across many, easing the burden.
Now, about abstracting the IC in the DOLR AI white paper—it was a deliberate choice, but not one meant to deceive. We’ve added that abstraction primarily to attract outside investors and users for listing on centralized exchanges (CEXs). We’ll update the white paper to include the IC explicitly, avoiding any confusion within our community. Here’s why we took that route: over years of pitching to investors and VCs, especially in the US, we’ve hit a wall whenever we mention the Internet Computer. Many are chain-focused—Solana investors stick to Solana, rarely crossing ecosystems. I am sure it’s been similar for you —investing first in the IC, then becoming the biggest backer of nearly every SNS, including Hot or Not/YRAL/DOLR, because you believe in this ecosystem. We’ve also learned from months of research that CEX listings favor platform plays over single apps.
If you check the top 100 tokens on CoinMarketCap—almost none are standalone apps. PLATFORMS dominate the top 100-200, so we’ve aligned DOLR AI to maximize value for ourselves and all token holders, including you.
By abstracting the IC, we hoped to appeal to investors and users from all ecosystems—not just the IC—while building on the IC’s foundation. Take Odin.fun—it’s thrived by drawing Bitcoin ecosystem users without shouting it’s on the IC. In Web2, giants like Netflix, Airbnb, or Spotify don’t advertise they’re on AWS or Google Cloud—it’s a tech stack, not their value proposition. We aimed to follow that model, highlighting DOLR AI’s offerings without tying it to preconceptions about the IC or it’s history. That said, we’ve heard the feedback, and we’re reversing that abstraction to proudly spotlight the IC.
Week after week, month after month, we’ve collaborated with the IC dev team and poured our struggles into forum discussions (LAMENT: A tale of constant struggle of what it's like trying to scale on ICP). You’ve been our biggest investor and supporter on this IC journey. As far as we understand, you brought George into the IC ecosystem—your longtime friend—and we met you both, along with Donna, as a united front. Through you, we began working with George on Estate, while also helping projects take root on the IC. We’ve always seen you and George as teammates, earning our deep respect and admiration.
Also to clear any doubts with respect to Spanish connection, In early February, after collecting our Spanish residency cards in Madrid (I can share a photo if needed), I personally messaged you, and we were eager to meet in person and showcase what we’d built over months. You couldn’t meet then—your family member wasn’t well, and of course we understood. If we’d connected then, perhaps this misunderstanding wouldn’t have grown. We respect that you’d rather not speak directly now, but we’re open to an open forum or live Twitter Space—any platform where we can address the community, clear doubts, and affirm our intentions. We don’t want future IC developers to see discord between whales and builders on the IC. We are also happy to meet you in Person, if you’d like, and would be happy to walk you through everything we’ve created, not just for ourselves but to uplift the ICP ecosystem.
Our goal isn’t just the success of YRAL/DOLR. We really believe that no one has been able to grow alone ever. Like you, we’ve lived and breathed the IC for years, fully committed. As mentioned before, to clear this confusion, we’ve scrapped the abstraction in the white paper and will add the IC back ASAP—it’s the only thing that might’ve muddied the waters, and we want no lingering doubts. You’ve been our rock, our greatest supporter and investor. We’re eager to hear your feedback, act on it, and work hand-in-hand with you and the IC community to make us all stronger.
We know, its not just you or us, but the entire ICP community together can lift the IC to its dream of becoming the world’s biggest chain. Our team’s dedication—through every struggle—has been filled with a lot of sweat and hardwork, and we’re here to build a platform that scales to millions while making the ICP ecosystem bigger and better than ever. That’s our promise, delivered with kindness and gratitude.