A Two-Year-Long Rollercoaster
Before our team has pushed out the press release earlier last week I was still extremely stressed about the situation. Over the past two years I dedicated almost my entire time on Chainbreakers and the NFT space and I’m very sure that I will never regret this decision.
In the end it was hard for me to realize the financial impact of our journey that ended without closing a seed round. We experienced the growth of powerful technology in the Ethereum space which has matured immensely since we’ve started to outline our first ideas for a blockchain game.
We participated actively in global and pioneering discussions about play-to-earn and other fundamentally new ideas that were enabled by blockchain technology. In the end of this month we auction the project on Opensea.
The Community Situation
The Chainbreakers and also the Ethereum community have been very supportive since we’ve published the press release which is amazing. I’ve realized how many friends and partners from the ecosystems actually care about our team and the project which is empowering us a lot.
A strong community can heavily influence the rise or fall of a project. It’s possible to pay for code or accelerate development with additional funds but buying real trust is usually impossible or at least very expensive.
When pitching Chainbreakers I emphasize on the great community that we’ve built and our credible footprint in the ecosystem. Out team attended many conferences across the globe and we transparently shared our progress in over 50 blog posts, hundreds of tweets and thousands of Discord messages.
We managed to keep the Chainbreakers community and especially the NFT holders involved which was a huge effort for our small team but it’s something crucial that has definitely paid out in the long run. Thanks to everyone for the support towards our team, the project and myself.
The Financial Situation
Some of you asked on which expenses the auction money will be spend and I’d like to be transparent about this as well. We’ve been already working on Chainbreakers months before the first crowdsale has been kicked-off.
The development has been continued after the crowdsale funds were drained. We hustled on loans and revenue generated in other departments of our development studio but in the end we were unable to raise VC. This resulted in the finite decision to sell Chainbreakers to a new team.
The project has accumulated around $130k debt towards Decentraland and an additional $200k towards banks and other entities. A part of this was required to be repaid from our private pockets. Against these numbers stands $125k crowdsale revenue (150k before tax) which results in $205k debt.
To cover this entirely and break even we’d need to reach an auction price of $245k before tax. This is not required but any profit will enable our team at Qwellcode to continue building web3 dapps in the Ethereum ecosystem.
The price someone pays for this pioneering brand/IP is an appreciation of the value our team has added to Chainbreakers over the past two years.
The Franchise Situation
Despite all the things that went wrong since we’ve started with the creation of Chainbreakers I’m very proud of the current state of the franchise. When we initially unveiled the project to the public it was intended to launch as an exclusive Decentraland title.
Over time we realized that our vision for Chainbreakers was suppressed by the boundaries of their platform. One year later we decided to double down on NFT interoperability and pivot Chainbreakers to something bigger. This should also help to find willing investors that understand our vision.
We showcased the demo of a larger vision and started to work on the smart-contract based WebGL title “Trial of Artemis” which is powered by Matic Network. Their team supported us with a developer grant while Qwellcode has declined offers to migrate Chainbreakers to Ethereum competitors.
Our team has been very small but our achievements have been quite huge. I’m very proud of our creation and I’m confident that the quality of our NFTs and play-to-earn approaches will result in amazing games.
The Internet of Value
I’m still convinced by the potential that blockchain ledgers bring. Especially in combination with NFT- and DeFi projects. This paradigm shift is going to enable play-to-earn incentives and new business models that allow users to accumulate trust-less digital wealth on the web for the first time.
With this new technology our analogue ownership system can be bridged into the digital world. Over the past two decades I created accounts in hundreds of games and platforms. I’ve spend thousands of days in these ecosystems and only some of my past achievements remain visible into the present.
This is because each of these systems require the creation of a separate identity to which information is stored. Some databases are still online, most are gone. The principles of this account management paradigm has emerged from the nature of the centralized systems the software was build upon.
Of course, we have apis and cross-platform login nowadays but creating and maintaining those individually is time consuming and creates dependencies. This prevents the creation of permissionless digital value (goods or reputation).
This is entirely different on Ethereum where a single database hosts identities that are consistent across multiple projects. Digital accounts and assets are owned and accessible outside of any custodial platform or application. Users can login with the same account across all web3 platforms.
Owned assets can be used on the application layer. User decide which dapp is allowed to interact with particular assets they own. This is very similar to our usage of physical goods in the real world.
Our Future Situation
The final price of this auction will decide about the number of hours me and my team can spend within the web3 space. The Ethereum space is one of the most interesting areas these days and I’d love to apply the knowledge and experience our team has acquired in future web3 projects.
If you know someone who might be interested in continuing Chainbreakers and is capable to do so, please share this article and put us in touch. The whitelisting process for the auction is linked below.
