12 minute read
Rise of the Pseudonymous Leader
from Rise of Leadership
The Rise of the
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Pseudonymous Leader
History has shown us that great leaders can rise up as a one man army or lead a revolution, often under the protection of anonymity. The impact true leaders fighting for freedom and independence can start the foundation of a country or begin movements that shape society. Leaders so passionate about their message or purpose often risk their own lives or freedoms in hope of a better way of life for all, wouldn’t you agree?
Pen names or aliases are less commonly referred to as a pseudonym. Pseudonymity has been popularized by gamers and cypherpunks in the digital world - one of the most famous being Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. America’s earliest roots and values were penned by Publius, the author of The Federalist Papers, seeking ratification of the Constitution, later revealed to be collective writings from Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Hay. Pseudonymity allowed these founders a shield of protection to “do only good everyday” or DOGE, the popular meme coin, with another pseudonymous founder. Would America’s history be different if the identities of The Federalist Papers authors were known? We can assume Bitcoin would have never made history if its creator was known. Disrupting power and control gets a lot of attention that a one-man army cannot defend against.
Investors playing in the highly volatile decentralized finance (DeFi) space are watching with similar interest, as the interest paid to Pluribus, to what is being developed by Forex_Shark. Forex, the creator of DeFi apps Drip and Animal Farm, is one of a number of a new breed of pseudonymous business founders that have sprung up through the advent and high adoption of get-rich-quick schemes in the DeFi space. While a number of these founders, such as Forex, are creating projects for the long term, there are many who do nothing but set up projects with the sole intent of using their anonymity to fleece investors of wealth and disappear into the crypto ethers. So, who are these pseudonymous founders, why the secrecy, what are their projects and how do we know what to look for in crypto so that we are not on the receiving end of another one, in a string of rug pulls?
We will discuss what we look for in creating criteria for fundamental analysis of DeFi projects while telling the Forex story. What we look for first is the leadership of a project and the vision they are communicating to the community they want to build. If this develops the way Forex envisions, we could see the proven use case of non-custodial DeFi, without the oversight of greedy founders with ego-driven ambition, while remaining anonymous.
Doxxing, or publicly documenting personal information via the Internet, oneself has given a false sense of security to investors as we have seen from the demise of Luna and FTX. For the undoxxed, increased scrutiny and sophistication within crypto communities has made it challenging for these individuals to launch short-lived schemes and hide investor capital. Experienced crypto leaders are pulling together to self-govern and expose bad actors.
We have experienced the journey along with Forex because of his communication with the community. The thousands of members that have made enormous profits got clouded by delays in rollouts of the next update to Animal Farm. Protocol investors appreciate tips on best practices and timely information, which Forex has greatly improved. Millions of funds have been committed - many investors believe what is coming will be revolutionary in this space. Animal Farm is about to hit the Top 10 DeFi projects according to DefiLlama. There are over 130,000 DRIP wallets currently, with plans to go over 1 million in the ecosystem.
Let me share with you what Forex has hard-coded into the foundation of what he is building - The right culture and values! Greed is one of the biggest threats to crypto and any project trying to build successfully on blockchain technology. DeFi is considered high risk for many reasons - one huge sell order can trigger fear of an imminent collapse. DeFi is about investors being able to take their risk capital or idle coins and tokens, and pledging them as loans or liquidity to earn a yield on that investment. What Forex has done is combined elements of traditional financial (TradFi) models and rebuilt those models on the blockchain using smart contracts, cutting out the need for middlemen - banks and insurance companies. Talk about disruption and getting attention from the wrong people!
He also saw that the crypto communities develop their own culture. Like any business, its leadership spreads culture through the organization. With smart contracts, you can, in effect, preprogram the foundation of culture. A reason we see value in Animal Farm is it supports our lesson of don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. The key here is building DeFi platforms with smart contract technology that cannot be changed. What also cannot be changed is how the game operates. He has put in limitations that help control human behavior around money within the contract. The contracts reward good user behavior and penalize poor interaction. He has eliminated the greed factor and added a “code” of values patience, personal responsibility, self-reliance, and good economic stewardship. Lastly, at any time the user can hold the $DRIP, and $AFP (PIGS) tokens in their wallet to participate in market swings with liquidity or they can deposit them into the contracts. Players trade full access to those tokens for a potentially better yield and/or future payout. It is your choice how YOU play the game.
LEADERSHIP
Drip Network is a community-driven platform that Forex designed to grow on its own word-of-mouth advertising. There are no developer fees. He became independently wealthy through his own trading and developer skills, then built a discord community to spread what he was doing to help others. We also trust him because no one in his past has said anything to discredit him and his actions are consistent with this. He has embraced being a leader to many. As you listen to his interviews, one can tell there are characteristics of a savant creating his masterpiece to give to the world.
He maintains his pseudonym, Forex_Shark. The term Crypto Twitter uses to describe this shield is #Anons. He has not doxxed himself publicly due to the fact that he is disrupting financial models and needs to protect himself and the ecosystem. We assume he is (North) American with English as his native language. He could have made off with millions or quit at any time over the last 18 months. Without showing his face, he attends countless interviews and communicates consistently within the community as a leader. Unlike public-facing business leaders, Forex knows investors’ options are un-staking when possible and selling if leaders are not held accountable to their timelines and their word. The beauty of this is that developers have an incentive and carte blanche to develop what they feel the community wants according to their timelines. The downside is that investors’ funds can be locked up for months. The minor concerns we witness are the delays and he innovates as he goes with no clear roadmap to build a perfect ecosystem. Some with less patience have moved on and have doubts while others know technology and financial models take time to build the right way.
NETWORK FOUNDATION
An active and loyal community - to sustain the rise of a pseudonymous founder they need support from their team and community. Healthy community involvement is another key factor in Drip and Animal Farm’s success. An affiliate component rewards referrals like most organically grown models. 10% of the initial deposit goes to the person who invited you only one time. What’s unique is anyone in the community can share Drip with another and increase everyone’s bags. There are fun contests, voting on dank memes, and rewards shared for participating. As a result, the Drip community has attracted over 130,000 wallets or players to its ecosystem because of its simple story.
The Drip Faucet contract is an annuity or certificate of deposit model that runs on the $DRIP token, paying out 1% daily of deposited funds. Like an annuity, you deposit your funds in exchange for a stream of income over time. It has been operating and yielding 1% since April 2021. You can claim or re-compound that 1% daily ROI.
As of the end of December 2022, the token has decreased in excess of 95% during this bear market. Yet, holders who compound daily see their token holdings double about every 75 days, which has eased the decline. Forex sees the inflation and is creating an added utility to increase buying pressure and decrease selling pressure. Will Animal Farm and the supporting gamification that is coming into play soon attract enough new investors to bolster liquidity? Let’s explore those pieces of the ecosystem below and how Forex innovates.
THE ANIMAL FARM
The community wanted more and he got busy building on, what Forex considers his “masterpiece” with the creation of Animal Farm, a community-owned, non-custodial protocol. The theme of this project is based on, you guessed it, the book, Animal Farm, by George Orwell. For those of you not familiar with this work, Animal Farm is a fable warning about Communism told through farm animals who rebel against their farmer wanting freedom, equality, and happiness. The theme has pulled the community together in anticipation of the next rollout of the game. Memes and creative content of dogs and pigs’ likenesses from the book have been spread throughout social media.
The Drip Garden was the first component of Animal Farm adding more utility and liquidity to Drip. Then the announcement came for the Manor Farm which ultimately would change to Animal Farm. The $AFP (PIGS) and $AFD (DOGS) tokens are the native tokens in the ecosystem. Yield Farming in crypto is investing in income-producing digital assets to create passive income and steady profits.
We saw the next step of his vision when he announced PIGS token holders in the Pig Pen can be owners with governance rights of Animal Farm. By staking PIGS you reap rewards in a non-native token, in this case, the Binance Smart Chain’s stablecoin, $BUSD. What having a stablecoin provides is easing the selling pressure on PIGS, letting investors hold the asset while still profiting from yield. Yield comes from the fees collected transacting with the protocol plus collateral rehypothecation as a source of fresh capital to fight Ponzi-like models. Rehypothecation was a prevalent tool used by hedge funds to maximize gains from their clients’ capital and rebate back a portion of those yields to them. It was too risky for global regulators and centralized models. In a decentralized model, Forex uses a portion of the liquidity within Animal Farm, buys $CAKE, and deposits it in pools within Pancake Swap that generate a 30-40% APR. He then rebates that back to the Pig Pen holders in $BUSD. You don’t have to sell PIGS to take profits! This is one of the best strategies we have seen for a generous high-yield reward system. Most protocols emit their own native token as yield which leads to inflationary circulation and deflationary prices.
Next came the Piggy Bank. It is a user-customized, timed annuity contract. There was a bot attack within the original $DOGS contract and Forex had to pause Animal Farm. He quickly saved millions from being drained from the contract. The token contracts had to be re-issued as $AFD and $AFP.
The exploit was a true test of his character and he spent the next 6 months rebuilding. He could have walked away and given up. He reformulated the tokenomics and released V2 of Animal Farm with key functionality for $AFD that rewards holding and severely penalizes selling after a pump in price. His plan is to be the yield farm protocol for staking your idle blue chip coins and earning $AFD and $AFP tokens.
For further research, reference community updates on Medium and the wiki page:
www.medium.com/@f0r3x_shark
www.dripcommunity.wiki/
WHAT’S NEXT?
A key component of building a successful network is attracting new users and keeping the community and user base coming back for more. Users already visit both the Drip.community and AnimalFarm.app DApps (decentralized applications) on a daily basis to compound their gains and claim profits along the way. His long-term vision includes use cases of lending, insurance, and privacy. He is managing community expectations and planning more features to include a digital scratch-and-win lottery ticket called, “Scratchy” that can be white labeled for additional revenue, a more professional Drip interface, and two other games involving Animal Farm. A portion of the fees generated will go to DRIP, the Pig Pen, the development team, and marketing.
ANOTHER LEGACY IN THE MAKING?
You know you are doing something right when countless devs are copying you or forking off of your code. Community developers are creating tools to support the ecosystem and its users. Check out https://dripfi.app for a simple interface to determine your holdings and yield values. Is the Animal Farm becoming a paragon of decentralized finance? The model to duplicate to invest capital, print tokens with liquidity, and take profits? Currently, it’s one of the few, if not the only project to create a massive feedback loop to take profit without having to sell the native tokens.
