People are “users” by default, they come for benefits, stay for benefits and leave when it attracts significant obligations with lower benefits.
This is why “forced vesting” doesn't work, it's a whack mechanism that will never turn “users” into “investors” but somehow, we keep chasing after it.
Everybody wants mass user adoption
But few understand what that means.
The reality is too boldly printed but we somehow can't seem to acknowledge it. A user uses a platform for his benefits, so if a crypto project is searching for “users,” it's effectively looking for people to come and “use it” for their benefits.
The biggest mistakes said projects make is trying to convert these users to “investors” through “vesting mechanisms” rather than allow that to happen naturally.
I've seen projects try it way too many times and it all fails!
You attract investors by building something that generates value sustainably. A users journey to becoming an investor typically involves various stages of using, and extracting, then losing out on opportunities, FOMOing back in, losing then too as that is usually the top, fearfully exiting and losing out on another growth, then realizing that to profit from this system, long-term commitment is required, this is the only point a user learns to chase compounding rewards by investing for the long-term rather than try to catch the quick bucks.
Pixelverse and Notcoin As A Case Study
Do you know what Pixelverse is? Maybe not, but you should know what Notcoin is, yeah?
Well, both are Telegram-based projects that launched this year, with Notcoin being the first, it introduced the “Tap-to-Earn” concept to the crypto community and had a successful airdrop/token launch.
Pixelverse on the other hand had a terrible launch and has since attracted community hate and is currently mass reported and tagged a “SCAM.”
Notcoin had about 35 million players, Pixelverse claims to have had over 76 million.
Notcoin did a free launch, distributed to exchange wallets, meaning no gas fee required, no forced vesting too, but a small 5% fee charged from early claimers to reward others that staked.
Pixelverse on the other hand forced users to stake(vest) by implementing a - 90% penalty on early claimers and the funny part is that it does not seem like any one has actually claimed and claims are to be made to non-custodial wallets, meaning gas fees are needed, and worse, the Token was launched on Ethereum despite claiming the project is a TON-based project.
And these airdrop allocations are not even worth Jack to pay that much gas for, pathetic yeah?
Pixelverse, who had seemingly more users, is now left with an angry large user base, while Notcoin is a huge success.
Despite the huge supply of Notcoin, a great deal of players made on average $200 from the drop. Some may say it was Telegram-backed, and all that but none of that really matters.
Many of the players that sold early regretted and some bought back in, this is how users become investors.
When a protocol forces vesting on users, it gains nothing, it's only slowing the inevitable as something quite common with projects with forced vesting is that there aren't ever any true developments that could cause users to want to stay vested when the time to empty the account comes.
It's always better to let the community decide if a token is worth holding or selling. We focus way too much on how someone is going to handle tokens earned rather than improving the process it is earned to generate income for the protocol and incentivize long-term holders.
It's quite comical but I'm sure we'll get to look past these old ideas of entrapping users.