Sell shaming: Why Web3 needs to do better
Criticism is easy. But it’s even easier online, where relative anonymity can tempt people to give themselves carte blanche to denounce an issue, artistic creation or figure that, for whatever reason, has become the target of someone’s ire. Examples abound. Navigating YouTube comment sections often requires an intellectual and ethical hazmat suit, Twitter discourse routinely veers toward mob mentality, and Facebook may even be the official mascot for the most cruise-worthy political tirades.
While breaking with the Web2 debate above, Web3 is not entirely free of negativity. Criticism in the NFT community can be more uncomfortable than in any Web2 space, since, at the core of almost every project, there is money involved.
The NFT space is collaborative, yet encouraging. But it’s also full of community members who see all artistic endeavors on Web3 as a business venture. And a subset of these can act like impatient and possessive investors. One moment you can be showered with GMs and WAGMIs, and be called a shill or labeled a ruthless rug-puller the very next. It’s enough to give anyone a serious case of vibe vertigo.
Web3 is still in its infancy, and this early growth period is a perfect time to set its future tone before the bones harden and become rigid, so to speak. Importantly, projects that take chances and somehow fail do not deserve our wrath.
On the contrary, they deserve our respect and encouragement.
Cool Cats and the Weird Case of Mysterious 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 around 26 ETH (or $92,000, at the time). 9,999 programmatically, randomly generated cat-themed PFPs were created in July of the same year, behind the release of projects such as Bored Ape Yacht Club. The project quickly gained steam and popularity when celebrities like Mike Tyson, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Aoki bought Cool Cats NFTs and tweeted about them.
The project became known as a generally positive one in space. Its reputation as an NFT project will continue to be regarded as a significant figure in the space FarooqA well-known NFT enthusiast and founder of the web3 media platform Rag Radio, became a very vocal advocate for the project.
But in early 2022, criticism began to arise about how high-profile cool cat holders behaved. Some have accused Farrokh of pumping and dumping — essentially, helping raise the value of a project and then selling their NFTs for a quick profit. Determining whether a person is actually doing this is not a particularly easy thing to assess, but the criticism came anyway.
Farooq:
We love cats
Farooq: *List of 5 Great Cats for Sale*
— nogood.eth (@nogoodlogan) March 19, 2022
Cool Cats themselves have had a few stumbles this time around. By the end of January 2022, the project Appointed Chris Hassett as its 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 further amplified by Hassett Leaving the company Only three months into his tenure.
Shortly before Hassett’s departure, Cool Cats released a long-planned NFT game Cultopia For its community, where holders can go on quests and feed their cool pets eggs, which are NFTs from the project’s secondary collection in early February. Cooltopia was not only as successful as the Cool Cats team had hoped it would be, however, and the value of its native utility token, Milk, immediately began a steady decline from which it has yet to recover.
Combining the cool cat’s 2022 woes with an ever-deepening crypto winter has seen the popularity and value of its original collection drop significantly, with a floor price of just 2.68 ETH now, down from 10 ETH in the fall of 2021.
Pouring salt into the cool cat’s wounds
Some in the Web3 community have not reacted kindly to Cool Cats’ fall from grace, seeing it as an opportunity for “shame-selling” collectors who are now parting ways with struggling projects. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Farooq once again found himself on the receiving end of such criticism when he began making it just last month. Since the beginning of August, he has sold ten of his Cool Cats NFTs for an average price of 2.31 ETH – a significant loss to put it mildly. Still, people accused him of abandoning the project for money.
Such criticism is insidious. Like Farooq himself As mentioned recently, judgments like these betray bad faith on behalf of those who make them. If we condemn people for selling their NFTs when a project is at its peak, and then condemn them for liquidating their NFTs later when a project is stalled, we have created a Catch-22, with no chance of evening out complaints. Found innocent. In other words, we are criticizing for its own sake, and this is an unpleasant behavior of someone.
NFT projects deserve better
Cool Cats Team – Tom Williamson (extrematumRob Mayhew (Lincoid), creative director Ivan Luza (ELU), and Colin Egan (clone) — has done a tremendous job of trying to create new utility, experiences, and value for its collectors, and they deserve every bit of credit for doing so. Even under Hassett’s brief 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 in what some said was a highlight of the event. The team is working, and you have to respect that.
Frustration with the rough patches of a project like this combined with the overall state of the crypto and NFT markets over the past six months is understandable. What’s hard to understand is the implied sanctimonious attitude that often accompanies criticism of projects like the Cool Cats and their most vocal supporters for trying to build something and stumbling along the way.
And you don’t have to look far for an example of how Cool Cats could return in the future. Another NFT community that has received a lot of criticism for trying new things, failing and rebuilding, is Digods, a project that arguably did more to put Solana on the map than any other community built on that chain. Don’t forget, DeGods had barely existed for a month when people declared it dead in the water. Even its developers were about to abandon ship. But that didn’t stop them from experimenting with things to make their collection valuable and unique – Paperhand Beach Tax, Deadgods and DePalace, among others.
All this was not a success, and that is the point. Not all attempts to build an NFT community will succeed, and That’s a good thing. This means people are swinging for the fences. You can’t expect project developers to invent and try new things while simultaneously holding them to an impossible standard of impossibility, scolding them when things don’t go as planned. The Web3 is a wide and welcoming place, but it has no place for such restrictive thinking.
Much of this boils down to two factors: a tendency to define ourselves in opposition rather than in support of them, and a realization that we can no more fully blame others for our failures than we can take full credit for our successes. Australian comedian Tim Minchin said it best: “Empathy is intuitive but something you can work on intellectually. […] Define yourself by what you love. Be demonstrative and generous in your praise of those you admire. Send thank you cards and give standing ovations. Be pro-staff, not just anti-staff.”
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