How developers keep milking you on every new narrative
For the second or third time now, clueless degens are following slick “farmer” developers like @dev0xx_ straight into the same trap.
1. His first project, @zxbt_labs on Zora, generated over $100,000 in fees. It was marketed as an “AI-Beeple” agent that would generate one image per day.
He couldn’t even execute that properly. The images weren’t generated and posted automatically, they were uploaded manually.
Think about it: one AI image per day, done by hand, plus constant promises of future updates. The result was pure extraction through fees and token.
Zora reportedly offered him a partnership that required doxxing. He refused, stating publicly that he wanted to remain anonymous. Make of that what you will.
$ZXBT peaked at a $17M mcap and has since fallen to around $40K (-99.76%).
2. His second project, launched right after Zxbt, was @ppl_markets. This time, support was much weaker because people still remembered the previous mess.
The idea was a crowdsourced onchain alpha platform. Access required holding 1% of the newly launched $PPL token on BAGS. As you might expect, the project was later “paused” once a more lucrative opportunity appeared.
$PPL peaked at a $100K mcap and now sits around $9K (-91%).
3. His current project is @tellrbot. The concept is to detect new agent launches and tokenize them.
Surprisingly, he managed @0xDeployer to secure a 50% commission share from Bankr fees. On top of that, he promotes his BasedBot referral link in Tellr Telegram live feed.
Revenue streams now include:
• 50% of Bankr deployment fees
• Referral income from BasedBot
• Selling $TELLR tokens from side wallets
$TELLR dropped 56% in the last 24 hours, from a $2.7M market cap to around $900K.
If this project excels at anything, it’s filling the pockets of a pseudo-developer who keeps cycling narratives for profit. Do as you wish, but I’ve chosen not to engage with any of his projects, even if they might be profitable.
We shouldn’t reward serial farmer developers or conveniently forget their past failures just because they promise to “do better” or claim they did nothing wrong.
In these cases, it’s always the users who pay the price – the ones who trusted them and ended up losing money.
I think @zora should do something similar to what @bankrbot did for developers, but for web2 content creators.
I don’t know if there are ways to force launches through TikTok, Instagram, etc.
But even if hype-driven internet personalities were simply reached out to and shown how they could earn, it could lead to massive onboarding success.
The hype wave could probably have been several times stronger than what we saw with OpenClaw agents.
Just imagine there being hundreds of Nick Shirleys, all monetizing their moment of fame.
I hope Zora hasn’t wasted time since the beginning of this year.