Why Web3 must do better
Criticism is easy. But it’s even easier online, where relative anonymity can tempt people to give themselves carte blanche to denounce a subject, artistic creation or personality that, for whatever reason, has become the target of someone’s ire. Examples abound. YouTube comment sections often require an intellectual and moral hazmat suit to navigate, Twitter discourse regularly escalates into mob mentality, and Facebook might as well be the official mascot for the most horrific political tirades.
Although Web2 violates the above Web2 claims, Web3 is not entirely exempt from knee-jerk negativity. Criticism in NFT environments can be even more unpleasant than in any Web2 space, since there is money in it at the core of almost all projects.
The NFT space is collaborative, yet encouraging. But it’s also filled with community members who view any artistic endeavor in Web3 as a business venture. And a subset of these can and do act as impatient and entitled investors. You can be showered with a barrage of GMs and WAGMIs one moment, and be called a shill or labeled a reckless carpet-puller the next. It’s enough to give anyone a serious case of vertigo.
Web3 is still in its infancy, and this early growth period is a perfect time to set the future tone before the bones harden and become rigid, so to speak. Crucially, projects that take chances and by no means fail deserve our indignation.
On the contrary, they deserve our respect and encouragement.
Cool Cats and the Curious Case of Cryptic Criticism
One of the more interesting case studies here is Cool Cats. In October 2021, the project was one of the hottest in the NFT space, with the average price of a Cool Cats NFT at about 26 ETH (or $92,000, at the time). The 9,999 programmatically randomly generated cat-themed PFPs were minted in July of that year, close to the release of projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club. The project quickly gained momentum and popularity as celebrities such as Mike Tyson, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Aoki bought Cool Cat’s NFTs and tweeted about them.
The project was known in space as a generally positive one. Its reputation as an NFT project to be reckoned with continued to solidify as significant figures in space such as Farokha well-known NFT enthusiast and the founder of the Web3 media platform Rug Radio, became very vocal advocates for the project.
But in early 2022, criticism of how high-profile Cool Cats holders were behaving began. Some accused Farokh of pumping and dumping — essentially, hyping up a project to increase its value and then quickly selling his NFTs for a profit. Discerning whether a person actually does this is not particularly easy to assess, but the criticism came nonetheless.
The Cool Cats themselves hit some stumbling blocks around this time. At the end of January 2022, the project employee Chris Hassett as CEO, a decision that some in the community saw as a misstep, since Hassett did not have a reputation as a Web3 native. This sentiment was reinforced by the Hassetts departure from the company just three months into his term.
Shortly before Hassett’s departure, the Cool Cats released a long-planned NFT game called Cooltopia for its community, where holders could go on quests and feed their Cool Pets eggs, which are NFTs from the project’s secondary collection that dropped in early February. Cooltopia simply wasn’t as successful as the Cool Cats team hoped it would be, and the value of its original utility token, MILK, immediately began a steady decline from which it has yet to recover.
The combination of Cool Cats’ difficulties in 2022 with an ever-deepening crypto winter has resulted in a notable decline in the popularity and value of the original collection, which now has a floor price of just 2.68 ETH, down from 10 ETH in fall 2021.
Pouring salt on the Cool Cats’ wounds
Some in the Web3 community have not reacted kindly to Cool Cats’ fall from grace, seeing it as an opportunity to “sell-shame” collectors who are now parting ways with the struggling project. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Farokh once again found himself on the receiving end of such criticism when he began doing just that last month. Since the beginning of August, he has sold ten of his Cool Cats NFTs at an average price of 2.31 ETH – a remarkable loss, to say the least. Still, people accused him of leaving the project for money.
This kind of criticism is insidious. Like Farokh himself recently pointed out, judgments like this betray bad faith on behalf of those who issue them. If we condemn people for selling their NFTs when a project is at peak and later condemn them for liquidating their NFTs when a project is dormant, we have built a Catch-22, making accusations that it does not is any chance of staying. found not guilty. In other words, we criticize for its own sake, and it is inappropriate behavior by someone.
NFT projects deserve better
The Cool Cats Team – Tom Williamson (xtremetom), Rob Mehew (Lynqoid), creative director Evan Luza (ELU), and Colin Egan (clone) — have done a remarkable job of trying to create new utility, experiences and value for collectors, and they deserve all the credit for doing so. Even during Hassett’s short tenure with the project, Cool Cats released a long-awaited game project and signed with the well-known Creative Artists Agency for licensing and merchandising opportunities. The brand created an IRL version of its Cooltopia game at NFT.NYC this year, which some say was a highlight of the event. The team puts in the work, and that must be respected.
Disappointment with a project’s rougher patches is understandable, as is the collective frustration with the general state of the crypto and NFT market over the past six months. What’s harder to understand is the implicit holier-than-thou attitude that often accompanies criticism of projects like Cool Cats and their most vocal supporters for trying to build something of substance and stumbling along the way.
And you don’t have to look far for an example of how the Cool Cats might return in the future. Another NFT community that has used a lot of luck to try new things, fail and regroup is DeGods, a project that has arguably done more to put Solana on the map than any other community built on that chain. Don’t forget, DeGods had been around for barely a month when people declared it dead in the water. Even the developers were about to abandon ship. But that didn’t stop them from experimenting with things to make their collection valuable and unique – Paperhand Bitch Tax, DeadGods and DePalace, among others.
Not all of these were successes, and that’s the point. Not everything an NFT community tries to build will be a success, and that is a good thing. That means people are swinging for the fences. You can’t expect project developers to innovate and try new things while holding them to an impossible standard of infallibility and reprimanding them when things don’t go as planned. Web3 is an expansive and welcoming place, but there is no room for that kind of restrictive thinking.
Much of this boils down to two things: a tendency to define ourselves in opposition to things rather than in support of them, and an understanding that we can’t quite blame others for their mistakes any more than we can take credit for ours successes. Australian comedian Tim Minchin said it best: “Empathy is intuitive, but is also something you can work on intellectually. […] Define yourself based on what you love. Be demonstrative and generous in your praise of those you admire. Send thank you cards and give a standing ovation. Be pro-thing, not just anti-thing.”
