I have not fully understood the implications of Psychedelic / Fleek changing tracks radically. They say Plug wallet will continue to function and that they will not completely depart the IC, and sound confident of finding buyers for their portfolio of IC related services, all of which is good. But why did matters get to this stage at all?
Based on what I have read, it seems that Psychedelic aimed to be a gatekeeper to the IC the way Consensys is to the Ethereum ecosystem. But in the IC it is more difficult to separate core protocol from services, and Dfinity built tools in areas that Psychedelic felt should be left to developers. The overlap grew too large between areas Dfinity was expanding into and what Psychedelic wanted to do, making Psychedelic feel they would have too small a corner of the ecosystem to justify being an IC pure play. So they pivoted their development to more chains and deepened their association with ones they already had some association with.
Is this an incorrect reading? So much is available to insiders that ought to be known to the public, because it has significant implications for the future value of the IC. Polychain capital, one of the ICās backers, has invested a large amount in Psychedelic. Is that just spreading bets or are they taking a step back from their view of the ICās future?
I would be happy to have any miscomprehensions in this post corrected.
DFINITY read this and decided to do the complete opposite
What I think.
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They started as Fleek right? Fleek had an IC launch tool, that was used but was getting less traction vs IPFS, other modules. Fleek IC sites were used less and less over timeā¦ Fleek already has investors, a vision, and is making $$$ on other modules.
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Psychedelicās plan was to create dominate services on the IC and then DAO-ize them in a great liquidity event. āThe most valuable DAO of all time!ā. They probably saw a drop in usage going into a crypto winterā¦ how does one maintain teams if the liquidity event horizon keeps moving back?
Plug, etc would need to start charging to make $$$. Price increase will reduce usage even more.
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They raised a large round for Fleek recently ($25 million). Some VC ask for focus. How can you do that with 10+ projects?
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In all reality, Dfinity can build anything into the protocol that they see getting traction at the application level. In this case, they built a DAO tool (SNS), when Fleek wanted to build a DAO suite (DAObunga). But you can imagine this happening with a lot of cool things. Token (DIP) to (ICRC-1) as another example.
These are some of the speculative reasons that I think they leftā¦ @harrison can probably tell the real reasoning.
What happens when something sells
a. It is also not a great time to be selling crypto projects. It would be interesting to see who and at what price they go forā¦ or if they are maintained as open sourceā¦
b. How many interested buyers are there for IC projects? Minus those who only want to buy products already making money. Small group.
c. There are only a small handful of investors interested in IC projects out of an already small subset of investors interested in āweb3ā right now. āThe community will fund everything?ā Is ULTRA-naive IMO. SNS will likely end up the same way as NFT. The first few projects will get funded and the latter will suffer from diminishing marginal returns. Should most projects be done through SNS? Noā¦ only ones that are very valuable and useful for all of the ICā¦ Kinic might be the only one right nowā¦ and maybe a DEX when they start to deliver.
Psychedelic argued against a protocol level DAO-tool and lost outā¦
Any buyer will want a returnā¦ get ready to pay for things!
2023 will be a year where loads of IC projects need to start making money. This can mean cross-chain, unique features, or b2b focused marketing and products. I hear that Dfinity is starting to dig down on B2B to face off with Polygon, et al. ICME has plans to make modules for āThe Polygon of BTCā ā as a pitch it makes sense with the new integration and allows for piggy backing on successful marketing of other chains targeted to highly profitable BUSINESSES.
Risks that this situation pointed out
- Dfinityās roadmap can destabilise application developers work. Nothing short term seems to be doing this, but is always a risk. There were a few early cases of this as mentioned above.
NFIDās Google login is helping users onboard more easily, but if asked can Dfinity not just create Oauth into II? ā yes they couldā¦ which is a risk for NFID.
How the hell will Crowdfund NFT boom now? If the SNS takes offā¦ it will work as a crowdfunding platform.
- IC projects fail to find product market fit. Is it really worth it to just have a āsite on chainā, or a āblogā on chain or a āTwitter on-chainā? The only way it would be is if it is SEEMLESS and BETTER then the alternative web2 versions. There are many things we can do on the IC that are simply not possible elsewhere.
DSCVR is leading the way on this one. It seems to have traction with a specific type of user. How can they expand that and make $$$? A token?
- Not a single application has broken out of the IC bubble - YET. I think a part of this is due to a Twitter focused marketing bubble. The same few people RT everything, who are viewed by the same few people. This is a marketing pipe, not a marketing funnel.
How to fix? Get a few good b2b use cases. Get a Sony to use the IC or a Starbucks. Devs see big names using it and want to āgain the tech knowledgeā where the money is at. How to get companies to use it? Unique traits of the IC: Reverse gas-fees, Web serving, BTC smart contracts, data enclaves, ā¦ more.
The whole plan - ''get developers to use the IC and we win!" is also naive. Developers need food to eat. Ever notice that a bunch of the Supernova hackathon projects vanished? No money = no food = no development.
This is why Code and Stateās āMake money on the IC within 48 hoursā is a much better constructed vision. It is not only about onboarding devs to the IC, but about making cool things that people are willing and happy to pay $$ for.
Lastly
IC is very dev-heavy. This means that most creators are developers. Developers tend to build their own things, particularly if any potential for making $$ is involved. We will likely see any āinfraā projects be repeatedly created or open sourced. Sounds cool right? Not reallyā¦ as it diminishes value of creating āinfraā in the first place. Most of these projects, like some under Psychedelic, should be open-sourced and funded by grantsā¦ If not people will spend hours upon hours reinventing the wheel.
You know who is willing to use existing tooling and pay for it? Companies looking to onboard in a seem-less way, who may not have IC specific expertiseā¦ It seems clear what we need to do 
Super, @apotheosis, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Thanks
Very insightful and informative
I think they should hand over dapps to sns1 as a gift, for abandoning the IC
Unless the developer try to take over the ecosystem and fails on their own.
Hey @skilesare ,
Curious how/if this impactās the Origyn governance dashboard?
Iām currently staked on the dashboard and connect w/Plug wallet. Not totally sure what I would do if Plug Wallet just disappeared.
If I export my DFX to a new wallet, how would I be able to log into the dashboard if Plug is the only authorization vehicle? I imagine future state - your team onboards new authorization wallets and/or integrates with the NNS? TIA
In the short term Iād make sure you have a safe place for the export from plug(sec phrase storage is likely fine as it is deterministic via a known standard), but I donāt expect it to be an issue, and if plug goes away Iām sure one of the other wallets would let you import a pem file.
Austin what happens with the rewards on origyn, I staked for 4 years to get a 25% api rewards and now is low as 7%
Between vesting stakes no longer receiving rewards and the 197M that was burned, you are now receiving a much higher proportion of issued rewards than before even though the percentage went down.
We have lots more coming and weāll make sure you have the ability to stake at the desired amount once we get it all in place. Thanks for the patience.
have dropped from 25% per year to 7% for dissolve delay of 4 years. Itās no serious
Do I understand correctly?
Dfinity creates a stadium with a cycle track.
Psychedelic comes and puts down his bikes and says, I will control who will ride and who will be forbidden.
If you donāt agree, reinvent your wheel.
Was that the Psychedelic plan?
The " letās build everything like Ethereum" mindset doesnāt work for the internet computer. The protocol is more than a tool to build financial applications. Why should they get to dictate what another independent organization get to do?
Plugās going to end up like the Parity Wallet (with hopefully less issues when it comes to multisig.)
I really like InfinitySwap wallet. Even though it could be streamlined a bit (when adding contacts, choosing contacts), it just works.
YC is supported by Plug though and not InfinitySwap.
who ever has hidden my comment. congrats, keep ignoring voices that view things differently (wich are THE MOST HELPFUL). thats the way to go. bravo!
InfinitySwap depends on DAB which is owned by ā¦ Psychedelic.
They need to make āmeaningfulā partnerships with Stoic, ICME, CrowdFund NFT, NFID, moreā¦ not just quid pro quo I will Tweet about you if you use our walletā¦ Or create an automated DAB which should be possible with ICScan.
Definitely open to suggestions on how to improve on DAB. A lot of projects are not big fans of having to manually register NFTs. We will do our best to serve your needs, having said that. We do a lot of work behind the scenes on a technical/ infrastructural level to serve IC projects. All I can say is, watch this space.
What is DAB? I assume itās a library or project?
DAB is