There’s a strange sense of “whiplash” writing this now, just months after a period when crypto felt quiet. Markets were uncertain, capital was sidelined, trends and narratives were bleak or did not seem to be impactful in the long run.
That phase of the cycle hasn’t been kind to all. We saw one of the largest hacks in recent memory, and the broader space went through a period of memecoin euphoria that ultimately resulted in one of the biggest liquidity extractions from the space. Ethereum also saw an existential crisis where its mindshare and position as a major was briefly questioned.
Since then, the tide has shifted with the re-election of Trump sparking early signals of a regulatory reset, with crypto becoming a geopolitical and economic talking point throughout the world. With that Bitcoin has surged to new all-time highs on the back of institutional inflows, ETF momentum, and renewed macro and consumer confidence. But beneath the surface euphoria, the cracks in the lack of projects with actual fundamentals, sustainable revenue generation or product-market fit have only become more apparent.
They say that tech moves quickly, but the meta in this crypto space shifts even more rapidly because of how nascent the space is. Talking to the builders in @arcthecommunity a couple of months ago, there was a strong consensus that there is this air of stagnancy in the development of new and compelling concepts that are able to find some ideal market fit within CT outside of core verticals like DeFi, stablecoins, protocols and infrastructure building etc. Instead, what we’re actually seeing are a slew of projects that try to quickly go to market with a fresh narrative with misaligned incentives that ultimately fail to maintain momentum and gradually lose mindshare and adoption altogether.
There is, however, a silver lining, that crypto is maturing. It seems like this period of crypto may be the first time the space will experience an era of dApp-based building at scale vs what we have been more familiar with in the past where protocols and infra development have traditionally been prioritised. This to me, is great news as it means that we’re finally getting to a stage of development where the skillsets of people like product designers and creatives become a priority. That can only be a plus for the onboarding of new users who have traditionally been turned off by the inaccessible, high friction experience native to crypto.
With that in mind, ARC remains highly optimistic in the development and progression of the space with the intent of building scalable Web3 products as a core revenue stream for us. These products will prioritise bringing value back to our members (as per our intent to optimise for community-led growth) but also hopefully, with time, to future users outside of our immediate community.
For ARC as a product on its own however, as a founder in Web3, I know what everyone is waiting for, which is essentially the launch of a token. As someone who has been through 3 cycles now, I am well aware that “metas” come and go quickly. While there is a very strong temptation to jump onto the “next shiny object” which is trending, as a long-term centric founder, I have never felt a strong motivation to launch a token based on short-term centric thinking like “Elroy, let’s launch now, the token will make money” or “April will be a good month to TGE”, or that “the narrative is new, we need to be the first movers”.
To me, if ARC were to launch a token, its purpose and narrative as well as the core products we have developed for the ecosystem have to be future-proof across cycles. There is no other way, as brand and repute are paramount to me, the ARC team, and our members and launching tokens haphazardly out of your main brand can be devastating in the long-run.
With that being said, 2025 is the year that ARC is laser-focused in preparing what is necessary to ensure a successful token launch down the line. The foundation is established, the community is thriving and engaged (could be better, yes and we are working on this), and the road ahead is clear. We’ll be kickstarting the next arc for ARC via https://t.co/ky76u1n1A4 and more information on what we’ve been cooking will be unveiled in the upcoming months.
I hope to achieve what most, if not all, DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations) have failed to achieve in the past: creating a community-first structure that is capable of social coordination of diverse individuals towards collective goals.
Why, you ask me, do I want to accomplish that?
ARC's inception stemmed from a generic Web2 idea. A couple years or so before COVID, the early core stakeholders and ourselves questioned the absence of a purpose-driven online community that we aspired to be a part of. While interest-based communities were prevalent on platforms like Facebook and Reddit, we found it peculiar that purpose-driven communities (E.g. offline business groups that collectively created value together), which existed in the real world, did not have an online equivalent. Specifically, we were thinking about communities that were capable of bringing people together to do things together.
So we jumped on the idea thinking that hey, no one was doing it yet, and with the networks that we had, it seemed like we were positioned at the right place and time to go about assembling this curated collective under a single banner of collective value creation.
We took the first 2 years since launch to bring this community together. Through an application-only membership process, and via Web3 tools like NFTs to create a sense of ownership in what we are building together, we were able to close the mint last year at 887 members.
Today, we are a collective majority made up of non-retail passionate builders and active investors working to push the Asian Web3 space forward in everything we do. Across the board, here’s a glimpse of the founders, builders and investors across a broad range of projects including:
◆ Protocols: Aethir, Aptos, Base, Grass, Ithaca, Kelp DAO, Monad, Polygon, Taiko, Thetanuts
◆ DeFi: Bluefin, Kyber, Meteora, Optimex, Pendle
◆ Platforms: Backpack, BitGo, BitMEX, BTSE, Bullish, Coin98, Coinbase, CoinGecko, Coinhako, Derebit, Etherscan, Infinex, Libeara, MoonPay, Nansen, OKX, Photon, Shuffle, StraitsX
◆ VCs / Funds / MMs: Amber Group, Animoca, Arcane, CTH, Egirl, Fisher8, Formless, HashKey Capital, Impossible Finance, Lingfeng Innovation Fund, Mask, Mirana Ventures, Ouroboros Capital, Pantera Capital, Parc Capital, Signum Capital, QCP, Wintermute
◆ Consumer Crypto: Doodles, Memeland, Mighty Bear Games, Mocaverse, Pudgy, YGG
◆ AI: Sovrun, Virtuals
◆ Services / Marketing / Media: Arcadia, Forbes, Glimmer DAO, Gnosis HQ, Rug Radio
I have shared about this in previous interviews I’ve done. The origins of ARC as a name was inspired by roman arches, the architectural foundations that built the Roman civilisation. With what we have created, we are building the foundations for a brand new digital world that connects and brings people together to do things together.
The potential for what we can achieve together as a single entity is immense. Like the tagline we had in our initial launch days in 2022, “when like-minded people come together, the possibilities are endless”. However, there is one core thing that will be our stumbling block if we do not execute on it well. And that is fundamentally the challenge of social coordination.
If we think back on the early days of Web3, that was what the thesis for DAOs was. They were hyped up as an utopian entity of the future where internet-native communities could socially coordinate a group of individuals to act in an aligned manner without centralised leadership.
We all know what happened there. The failings of the earliest renditions of DAOs come from several factors. One of them being that most DAOs focused entirely on the community and token coordination aspect while forgetting the importance of prioritising how members would derive value directly from the entity. At the same time, many of the necessary social infrastructure, coordination tools and technologies like AI were not ready for that future (yet).
However, the landscape is entirely different now, with the space maturing greatly along with the ascent of AI development in the last couple of years that helps to further digitalise a community with real working efficiencies by solving and automating workflows. In the Web2 space, many businesses have already tapped on AI and AI agents to increase the productivity of their existing workforce. Through automating regular workflows that involve coordination of diverse individuals, it frees everyone else to focus on higher-level thinking and ideation work. Today, we believe the conditions are finally in place to turn the original thesis for DAOs into a reality.
To be clear, our vision isn’t necessarily to become DAO. As per what we have shared in the previous chapters of this series, ARC has never positioned ourselves as a typical NFT project or looked at Web3/crypto as an end in and of itself. We are highly convinced in our vision and believe that blockchain technology and digital assets like NFTs and fungible tokens are important tools to help us achieve our community and business goals. What we do want to achieve are the end outcomes of what a viable and successful DAO could be like -
“the creation of a socially autonomous organisation (SAO) that is able to coordinate the actions of diverse individuals towards collective goals”
As I have said before, we are now at a perfect moment in history to unleash the full potential of individuals acting collaboratively as a single whole. With an aligned collective of diverse individuals, we can go on to launch new businesses, products, services and even fresh brand IPs under this core entity. Our collective and the networks connected with our members now have a social media following in the hundreds of millions across multiple social media platforms. Imagine every member acting together as a single entity to advocate for any new venture that ARC launches (Web3 or Web2).
🎟️ The first drop of Tappy’s soulbound NFT admission tickets have been issued.
🌀 To the top 50% of testnet interactors, your place in the DeFi Supercycle is now secured.
Check your mainnet wallet. Hold tight.
Wave 2 is coming…
🐘 Tappy invites you to the DeFi Supercycle 🌀
A soulbound NFT will be airdropped to the top 50% of testnet interactors across two exclusive drops, the first lands this week, the second before mainnet.
This ticket proves you were early, and it’ll be highly beneficial...