GoodBye RBH :(
Over time, I have developed an immeasurable passion for cryptocurrency trading and DeFi farming. Towards the end of April, I decided to put my experience to good use by developing a DeFi platform that would supplement my philanthropic efforts. The idea was to capitalize on blockchain technology by building a charitable product that would be decentralized, transparent, and being an open platform. This project was not going to be cheap to execute but my faith in it was so strong I decided to invest several hundred thousand baht of my personal money and pitching to raise funds from others who shared a similar vision. Soon we got a small team together that included admins, marketing, developer, etc.
We launched the project on the 11th of June 2021, open for people to swap RBH token through the means of AMM (Automated Market Maker) where we locked our liquidity for 1 year. The whole experience was very new to the team (and to the world), however, we’ve got a lot of insights from experts in order to design our tokenomics (still not sure if it is a good one or a bad one). We’ve capitalized from the tokenomic we designed and be able to feed more than 8,000 meals, provided cleaning equipment, and gave education scholarships to more than 50 students amidst the peak period of the COVID crisis in Thailand.
During the busiest 3 months we’ve had, a lot of things are done;
- Recruitment of the admin team for the community management
- Working with international agencies
- List our token on a lot of platforms
- Develop and integrate systems into Telegram
- Auditing of our smart contract and system
- A lot of partnerships with a non-profit organization
- Countless nights working up late with the developer team
- Etc.
Which took a lot of time, money, and effort to make it happen since DeFi is so new to the world, and very new to us.
While we got off to a good start, it was very short-lived but it was not for the lack of effort on our part. We did everything we could to keep this project alive. All I can say is that, this was a very interesting experience and I have garnered a tremendous amount of experience in such a short span that I can definitely provide words of wisdom for anyone planning on getting into DeFi projects.
Is the world ready to adopt cryptocurrency?
The answer is simply not yet. While the user base and adoption are slowly rising, there is plenty still of skepticism about the technology and its future as an asset. We had partnerships lined up with several distinguished organizations which would have not only legitimized our efforts but also served as an inspiration to others. However, it became quite a challenge still preferred a large amount of the resources to be distributed in fiat which caused a bottleneck in terms of operations.
When will the world be ready to accept cryptocurrency?
I believe when 50% of the population actually own an active crypto wallet ready to use for payments and exchange ( as of September 2021 the percentage of participants in the DeFi world is still under 3%).
Project Financing experience
I have been well versed with running several projects under a tight budget and rigid scope of work. However, in running a DeFi project where we had to rely on a percentage of the minted coins to be sold on AMM so that we could convert them to stable coins and eventually fiat in order to pay our team for the continuation of the project was beyond any challenge I had to face given the impact it would have on the price and the market sentiments. We had to make several difficult calls in order to keep the project going and in doing so had been on the receiving end of many upset calls but believe me when I say, I only wanted the best for the project.
Project Naming and Legal Bindings
In the beginning, we didn’t think much about the project name. We thought about a sustainable DeFi product that will sustain the funding towards a good cause so we named it “Robinhood”. Without second thoughts on the angle where Robinhood takes from the rich and gives it to the poor, we bought the domain name. Another note to be taken, we got a legal letter demanding us to cease the project due to trademark infringement with one of a large financial company as well.
- I have done everything I could to make the project alive;
- Propose to various IDO launchpad since the end of August and have been receiving the declines until the end of September
- Countless nights of working on the smart contract and the interface for NFT Marketplace (however, we couldn’t finish it due to a lot of technical difficulties)
- Legal pressure from the trademark infringement case that we have to terminate our operations
- Depletion of funds to pay the developers and team
-Adjusted emissions constantly to combat inflation.
-Reduced withdrawal from charity wallet
-Worked with a highly recommended marketing firm
-Partnered with a diverse group of social media influencers
-Introduced the BOGO (Burn One, Give One) Campaign.
-Increased Buyback & Burns
-Hired a new in-house dev team to redesign our smart contracts.
-Tried to build demand and use case with initiatives like Arcade, NFT Market & RBH 2.0
Final word
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who had supported us in this journey and also a shout out to the admins (both local and International), marketing and graphics team, and developers who have worked together through countless nights and days. We may not be able to bring this project to the moon but we will still be around executing social projects and continue improving lives.
Until we meet again,
JoeZ Chatchanart
