Thanks for the response. MC. My questions towards xbacked could of been better for sure. My point of view is that, DeFi on Algorand has been less than profitable for many companies in the past and now. Which we have over 10 financial places to put our money. All maybe except for one or two create a profit, which still is not optimal. The market is hard to build in general especially a DeFi platform.
Expectations to take on such a tough task means you either have expertise and a plan or you have the capital to put forward to outlast the market. If a company has to extend themselves to proposals before they are up and running in a profitable way then this is not a good investment. This would be different if we only had a couple of options but we have tons of options. This is where my pessimism comes from. Algorand Ecosystem funds should not be used to prop up business to keep them alive unless its top 3 platforms in their lane. All platforms already have trouble staying relevant as it is, which shows the “hardships” many are facing.
I think xbacked is fighting for a niche (Collateralized Stable Coin) already in a niche business. Which to me is a waste of time as of right now, but if you have your own money then by all means do whatever you want. We are having onboarding issues let alone getting people to leverage their money in web3. Even the top degens dont do that. The last two years and for the foreseeable future have been building years plus there isn’t a demand from business investors and the customer, which has been stated by xBacked. This is not a knock on xback but the market conditions have always dictated financial opportunities especially DeFi. Even if this were to come to market tomorrow how many people would jump on it and push the rankings of xbacked? My answer is not that many based on too much competition, we are over saturated not just here but even in the NFT markets.
2024 is a pivotal year for Algorand and its dAPPs (Algo is out of top 20 of L1s). Algorand already has all the DeFi platforms we need to support our small ecosystem. Other L1s don’t have as many options for a reason. Typically this would be a sign of health but in our case this is hurting our already small ecosystem. As far as red flag comment, it has nothing to do with your credentials/expertise, my concern is if businesses are hiring the same people to advise our defi platforms then are we seeing the same strategy? I can make an argument, yes based on the terrible TDR proposals that were not only copy/paste but lacked anything that resembled growth. Maybe had nothing to do with you but not much thought and effort was put into it. TDR and the effort being put out by our top platforms isn’t great already. If all our financial businesses need advising already during this bear then there is smoke and fire will soon come. Natural to ask for advising yes but getting an advisor for a proposal aka handout money!? Its like me telling my friend to go get food stamps to help them out but doesnt help their cash flow issue. There is a bigger picture brewing, not too mention DeFi platforms who started up in 2020-21 have gone away. Imagine the success rate of something not in the top 10 in a ecosystem that isnt in the top 20 for L1s and not top 50 for all tokens.
So to wrap this up I will say if you cant market yourself (with some of the lowest expectations right now), you need financial help building small upgrades, and your not even in the top 5 then this probably isn’t a good time for anyone to build out a DeFi platform and AF should not put money in a project like this at the current market conditions. This forum is to ask the tough questions and express ourselves as a community, if you look at our past we have been robbed by many “projects”, we need a winning strategy right now. Like I said earlier 2024 is a pivotal year and we need to use our funds to market. Marketing on a larger scale can cost money and planning but on a small scale which 98% are operating on then they can easily be active in some fashion IF your asking for money. Also not trying to make any of this personal as im sure everyone is a great person, but just business, this doesn’t make sense.
As far as my personal strategy for Algorand DeFi its about partnerships, marketing campaigns and IRL hosting events right now and can be done at a ground level which are primarily free or close to it and just require time. The last announcements for our Defi platforms that received TDR where all made at the same time and everyone partnered with each other by force. Fact is they can do that all year long or work with one another to develop strategies. I didn’t go into detail but can if you want to know more what some of this may look like, let me now and I will expand more.
Im rooting for everyone building and trying to make it, but with resources dwindling in our ecosystem we need to be real as possible and the only place we have as a community that is starting to make a difference, is this forum. This should serve as why you need to come correct with ducks in a row to the forum, be ready for the tough questions and engage the community before or during its asking period. We are not the Algorand of 2019-2022 anymore. Hope everyone is having a great day.
just having a bit of fun