After a year of $4,000 OtherSide gas fees, FTX cOntAgIon, Terra Luna collapse, ApeCoin’s geographical staking restraints, blur’s fumbled 2nd airdrop, and countless other tom foolery… you’d think the community would have a little more understanding around project fumbles.
What Did RTFKT Do?
RTFKT Airdropped an NFT-Ticket to CloneX holders without telling their holders the ticket inside was only immediately usable for U.S. holders, full stop. All of the anger beyond that speaks to our still moderately-spoiled Web3 community demanding flawless execution of bleeding edge innovations and/or 5 figure airdrops.
Who Got RTREKT?
People who live outside the U.S. that ape’d into MNLTH2 NFTs (the airdropped ticket) on the secondary market thinking they were getting access to an RTFKT creation, and/or flippers.
Want to take a second to acknowledge the genuine fans of CloneX and RTFKT who don’t own a CloneX, live outside the U.S., and bought a MNLTH2 hoping to forge the creation for their own enjoyment. You truly got temporarily-rekt on this situation. I do say temporarily because you most likely received the MNLTH3 airdrop for being a MNLTH2 holder, which means future RTFKT blessings are hopefully coming your way.
The only thing I can truthfully flag the CloneX/RTFKT team on is poor communication ahead of the release. Most of the anger I heard in Twitter Spaces was primarily anchored on “They should’ve known about the fomo and communicated this to holders in advance!”
Maybe it’s because I don’t own anything in the RTFKT eco-system, maybe it’s because I didn’t bother looking into the project until I discovered how loudly their creator community has thrived in the bear, or maybe because my first RTFKT/CloneX experience was walking into their highly impressive immersive Merch Store.
Nah, perhaps it was the RTFKT Art Basel Tee they were handing out for free to anyone who walked in that ended up being better quality than all of the BAYC merch that came out around the Other Side release that some people paid THOUSANDS of dollars for.
For all of the reasons stated above, while some members rage-sell their cloneX, I’m pulling up with birdmanhandrub.gif looking for an entry.
Long Term
In 2021, maybe the top 5% of nft projects even bothered putting together an in-real-life (IRL) experience, or bothered to deliver their Gildan print tee. Even fewer created an actual functioning community that built together beyond hype.
I was unable to dive fully into the RTFKT ecosystem last year because frankly, I was consulting on several projects, swing trading, running my own discord of 150 crypto homies, and “drinking from the fire hose” that was keeping up with all the happenings of Crypto Twitter during a bull run. Now that we are in a bonafide bear market, Web3 has become much more quiet. Outside of the top 4 or 5 PFP projects I haven’t heard much in the way of true innovation or brand growth except for what I’ve been hearing from the RTFKT creator community. Rappers, artists, animators, I haven’t seen anything like it.
It’s especially cool because they’re truly building out the next frontier of Web3 technology and infrastructure. It’s not quite the same as BAYC owners who were airdropped $100,000 in apecoin to then go slap their IP on a wine/beer bottle, or throw their ape on tee. The RTFKT Creator community appears to be a true passion project. Now they have whatever these Animus eggs are going to turn out to be. With all of the anon whales on my timeline forecasting that web3 gaming are going to be one of the main onboarding ramps of web3… seems like a situation where holders will have to take this one on the chin for a project that has shipped higher quality experiences and products than any other project in the space. The space color mnlth shoe being double the price of the blacked out sneaker seems a LITTLE sleazy, but in the grand scheme of “Contagion Class 2022”, I’ll forgive them if they improve communication and continue to deliver amazing experiences and product.
