Most of you who have followed my thesis on this on X, already know that I have opined in detail about this specific issue. I will not post the X links here because I don’t want to run afoul of the powers that be - again.
Fact is, there is [currently] zero incentive for any [serious] dev to build for ApeChain.
They keep throwing around numbers like “34 builders are ready to on-board”. Yeah? That’s great! Who are they? What are they building? And if so, how does that relate to this fund that seemingly sprang up out of nowhere even when there were others like this one by @yatsiu and this one by @CaptainZwingli which, after languishing for months in admin review, he was forced to withdraw it because apparently they couldn’t get 3/5 people to agree on actually sending it to vote.
I have yet to meet or hear a single dev who has all these other great gaming chains and platforms to choose from, go “Yeah, amma totally go build for ApeChain”. The reason? It’s not so much the issue with apes being elitist and all that; but it’s all about perception and optics. The only people who believe that ApeChain has any [plausible] reason to exist, are those outside the DAO community trenches, those who stand to gain financially or those who believe that somehow having our own chain is going to automagically make us cool again and number go up.
But ApeChain is almost here - and I said back in Oct when the noise started, there’s nothing to put on it - yet. Testnet? Nothing. Any chain going live has dApps in test mode etc. waiting to roll. There’s nothing. Unless they’re hiding - which would be odd.
The greatest challenge is not that we don’t have very talented apes in the community. We do, and I know quite a few of them who I communicate with regularly. The issue is that we don’t have enough of them. Why? Because most of them - like me - have long since moved on for some reason or another, and just observing on the sidelines. And that’s the thing with loss, it’s difficult to rebuild. Like the token, the community has been on a slide for months and that’s what is going to affect the long-term prospects for attracting talent to ApeChain when there are so many other competing chains and communities - with less drama and [Yuga] baggage.
I want to make myself clear. I think this proposal is well-intentioned, but lacking in so many areas. But the primary issue is that, regardless of what the community says or wants, just like the voting where 4 whale wallets can change the outcome of a vote regardless of the popular vote count, the leadership will do what they want. I mean, after all, to believe that they didn’t think of all the pros and cons of this when they came up with this, and that they needed community voices to point out issues etc. would be the height of arrogance on our part. First we had the Polygon fiasco. Look how that ended. Then we had other questionable ones in between, leading up to the recent F1 sponsorship fiasco. All these things erode trust and affect the optics when you consider that there are people on the outside looking in - while pointing and laughing.
Right now, I am working on a DePIN platform + two Web3 games. In parallel - across two teams. And they’re all on another chain. Not because I don’t love my DAO frens or because I don’t want to see the DAO or ApeChain prosper - especially if I get to brag about it - but because, like most, I became disillusioned months ago. Until this AIP showed up, and people asked me to opine here for beneficial impact rather than on my X feed where I regularly write multi-page missives about our DAO. It’s disheartening for me to say this because ApeChain was a blue ocean opportunity for a lot of us to do something great and to get the support of the community - just like in other gaming chain communities. I mean, as I type this, in less than one week, I could have three projects migrated on ApeChain testnet. Ask Machi and others who all know what my teams have been working on for months. The other games that came and went - same thing. Does anyone think those guys would even consider coming back here? At least not without major financial incentives. I mean, there was a lot of noise and angst over AIP-364 not passing. I very much doubt that those guys are even coming back.
While we’re at it, what happened to AIP-438? Anyone got performance metrics? That was $420K.
What about AIP-209? That was $480K. Any metrics?
You see where I’m going with this? Well, just imagine $100M with little or no guardrails.
I mean, Yat has AIP-438, which I believe to be a [small] step in the right direction, which went up on May 1st, and concluded on June 6th. It’s not on schedule to go to admin review, let alone to vote. But this $100M BANANA boat is on the fast track. That’s the sort of thing that optics are all about.
Yes - we need to do something to spark builders (not me - I’ve moved on) to deploy on ApeChain. Throwing a good portion of the treasury liquidity at it, while appointing the usual frens to manage it, isn’t the way to do this. It just isn’t. You want credibility with the DAO community at large so that spreads outwards? Good.
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Go get the ThankApe guys involved in this proposal. We ALL trust them - implicitly, and because they’ve proven themselves time and time again.
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Allot $50M in tranches across a specific set of [game/dApps] RFPs here so that the community knows what is going on, and thus have a say. We recently had an AIP-401 pass, and which setup some clear guidelines for them.
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Then, have the 4 whale wallets commit to NOT override the popular vote, and let the DAO community determine what they believe to be worthy titles to fund via the RFP process.
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When the $50M is allocated - just like ThankApe - renew it for more as-needed.
Start there.
I have no reason to believe that this initiative will even work, not with $10M, nor with $50M, and certainly not with $100M. Why? Because games are super high risk and we’re hardly going to see any tangible gains at all in the short-term. There’s a reason that over 95% of current Web3 games are underperforming, while everyone is waiting for the next crop, like cicadas, to pop up by YE24 to 2026. But they’re all currently on committed chains that aren’t named ApeChain.
I guess @JonahBlake was onto something. Too bad most didn’t quite like the idea of a $20M games publishing arm of the DAO because that was too much money in the hands of an “outsider”. Here we are. Hindsight and all that. And that was a year ago this month. Now he’s literally blown up and thriving elsewhere - not here.
ps. My price is 10M $ape. Totally non-negotiable.
pps. For those you who missed it, here is Garga’s take on this proposal.