The Seven Stages of a Skyfleet Superhero
Do you like Skycoin? Do you love it? Are you checking local laws to see if you can legally marry it? How far along the Skycoin path are you?
Technically, anyone who owns Skycoin automatically becomes a member of Skyfleet, since that term refers to the entire Skycoin community. If you own a Skycoin, you’re Skyfleet. But this article charts a very specific path through simple Skycoin acquisition to unbridled Skycoin fervor.
I briefly considered calling this article ‘Stages of a Skycoin Addict’, but addict is a loaded term. Likewise, fan is too childish and adherent is too cultish, (and Skycoin is not a cult, in spite of what you might hear from some community members about the divinity of Synth, Skycoin’s lead developer). Aficionado was too precious and connoisseur didn’t quite hit the right note either… But the people who make it all the way to Stage 6, 7 and beyond really are the heroes of the Skycoin community.
There are many clever and good-looking folks who discover Skycoin, quickly perceive its exceptional value, buy as much as they can, and then contentedly wait for the rest of the world to catch up. The true Skyfleet Heroes are the ones who don’t stop at merely acquiring the cryptocurrency.
Everyone’s journey to Skycoin is different, but there are several stages that may sound familiar to those who have made it deep into Skyfleet.
Stage 1: Ignorance
“WTF is the SkyCoin token?”
There is nothing wrong with ignorance; we all have to hear about Skycoin for the first time at some point. Do you remember the first time you heard about Bitcoin? (I bet you wish you’d bought some then.) The point is, we all start at this stage. Note the incorrect use of camel case when writing “SkyCoin”, a true sign that whoever is typing likely has no idea what they’re talking about. Skycoin doesn’t have a capital C in the middle of it, it’s not two words, and it’s definitely not a token. Any idiot can create and sell tokens, and many in fact do. Skycoin isn’t even a fork of a different cryptocurrency. Skycoin was built from scratch to solve the problems that its developers spotted in early blockchain projects like Bitcoin and Ethereum. It’s a third-generation cryptocurrency, that’s WTF Skycoin is.
First stop ought to be the official website at Skycoin.com, but sometimes, a person comes across one of the many pieces of fallacious FUD that is still floating around, or encounters someone who is parroting FUD they remember hearing (but never bothered to verify). This can lead directly to Stage 2.
Stage 2: Second-Hand FUD Dispenser
“Oh yeah, that’s the coin with the fake kidnapping exit scam.”
This stage is not (necessarily) reflective of any malice on the part of the future Skyfleet Hero. They are merely repeating what they may have heard or read online. In many ways this stage is merely an outgrowth from ignorance, as a person only half-heartedly attempts to find reputable sources of information, or bothers to authenticate the information they do come across.
Skycoin, as any community member knows, has been uniquely targeted for FUD over the years. (FUD, incidentally, is an acronym for misinformation designed to instil fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the minds of those who consume it.) Examples are too numerous and egregiously false to repeat here, but suffice it to say, there is literally enough to fill an entire website dedicated to debunking it: SkyFUD.com.
Some of the most damaging examples of Skycoin FUD began life as part of an unethical targeted smear campaign spearheaded by projects who saw themselves as competitors to Skycoin (or, rather, saw one aspect of Skycoin’s ecosystem as threatening to their own project’s goals.) They went so far as to actually employ bands of Fudders, tasked with doing anything and everything possible to discredit Skycoin, including doctoring audio, issuing scurrilous media tips, infiltrating Skycoin community groups to sow discord, and generally conducting a grossly unethical and quite possibly illegal campaign of sabotage.
Hopefully, at some point during this stage, the individual will stumble across a piece of writing or media by someone who actually knows a little about the project. Or perhaps they finally get linked to SkyFUD.com and get the full context for the rumours they’ve heard. Either way, once they start to understand the sheer scope of what Skycoin is doing (and has done), Stage 3 can arrive fairly quickly.
Stage 3: Incredulity
“It’s too good to be true.”
There is no question that Skycoin is one of the most ambitious projects in the crypto world. In fact, the scope of Skycoin’s ambition can lead some people to doubt the project’s ability to actually deliver on all their aggressive goals.
This stage can be the point at which the faithless simply turn away, perhaps thinking they might return later when the project is further along, or when some more of the milestones have been reached. (Of course, by then, the cost of Skycoin will be that much higher.)
Others decide to look at what Skycoin has already accomplished in order to discern whether they are capable of continuing to deliver at that level. On this metric, Skycoin absolutely excels. For a project that demands at least a modicum of faith in its development team, it isn’t hard to see how that faith has been earned a hundred-fold.
Since its inception, Skycoin has been steadily producing and delivering on all fronts. Whether it’s the multi-platform software wallet, the fully-functional Skyminer hardware nodes, the Skywire mainnet that runs through them, a complete general-purpose blockchain application programming language called CX, their sleek hardware wallet, or the forthcoming Skywire antennas, next-generation Skyminers, and much, much more… there is every assurance that the Skycoin developers know exactly what they’re doing, are exceptionally good at what they do, and will continue to deliver until the project has achieved everything it set out to accomplish. Even during the long “crypto winter” bear market, Skycoin devs had their heads down building, developing, and delivering unprecedented work. When you hear people in the Skycoin community say things like “Skycoin keeps delivering”, that’s what they’re referring to.
Check any of the websites that rank cryptocurrencies by GitHub activity (CryptoMiso.com, CoinCheckup.com, CoinCodeCap.com, etc.) and Skycoin is always at or near the top. The only reason it’s not consistently number 1 is because there are a number of private GitHub repos that are not included in the public tally, and a number of sophisticated hardware projects under constant development that are simply not measured at all.
Once an individual has been satisfied that Skycoin is at least committed to its stated goals, they typically enter Stage 4.
Stage 4: Cautious FOMO
“Maybe I’ll work some $SKY into my portfolio…”
The slippery slope begins with FOMO, the Fear of Missing Out. It starts with buying a number of Skycoin and adding it to one’s portfolio. As one learns more about Skycoin, it’s not long before they move their coins off the exchange where they purchased them and into Skycoin’s official software or hardware wallet. That’s because it’s around this stage that people learn more about the parallel currency called Coin Hours that are automatically generated by holding Skycoin.
As the individual continues to monitor the Skycoin projec, they will eventually be led to the Skycoin community on Telegram at t.me/Skycoin. This is where people come to discuss different components of the ecosystem, ask questions, receive support, and give back to the community. From the main chat room, people begin to branch out to one of the dozens of rooms dedicated to the areas of the Skycoin project that most interest them, from something as simple as the price of the coin, to developing dApps using CX. This cautious engagement quickly leads into Stage 5.
Stage 5: Evangelism
“Have you heard about Skycoin? It’s amazing.”
As research into the project continues, and interaction with developers, and other community members increases, all remaining doubts tend to be assuaged, leading to a kind of evangelism as the true potential of Skycoin suddenly becomes apparent.
There is a lot of responsibility when it comes to providing investment advice to loved ones. No one want to be the person who wiped out Nana’s life savings. But eventually the sheer inevitability of Skycoin’s ascendence becomes more and more difficult to deny, and the last vestiges of that skepticism dissipates. When an investor realizes they’re not crazy, and that Skycoin truly is the “real deal”, they begin to increase the size of their investment and start to casually mention the project to friends and family as something they really ought to consider throwing a few dollars into. (Remember to always include the caveat that no one should invest more than they can afford to lose.)
Part of this instinct to share Skycoin stems from investors not wanting to have to explain why they didn’t mention it to friends and family earlier. It begins to dawn on the nascent Skyfleet Hero that in all likelihood their investment is going to increase in value substantially, and no one wants to explain to their brother-in-law why they never mentioned Skycoin back when it was hundreds of times more affordable.
Just imagine your friend bought Bitcoin at 50 cents and didn’t tell you about that opportunity at the time. How would you feel about that friend when Bitcoin hit $20,000?
Share the Skycoin. Once you do, you’ll be ready for Stage 6.
Stage 6: The “All-in” True Believer
“I just got my first payment from my Skyminer!”
It’s not long before the community member starts to rebalance their portfolio in such a way as to highly favour Skycoin. Then perhaps they either begin building their own DIY Skyminer, or they purchase an official Skyminer from Skycoin.
Either way, the Skyfleet member begins to believe not only that the project can make them wealthy as an investment, but they begin to believe in the project’s core goals of a free, distributed, and end-to-end encrypted Internet that is indestructible and uncensorable. They start to understand how Balkanized the world’s internet has become, and how dangerous the spying, censorship, and privacy violations have become on the legacy Internet.
Running a Skywire node is one of the best ways to help build out the infrastructure for Skywire and help move the project forward. (It doesn’t hurt that people who do run nodes are financially incentivized to do so, earning a passive income of cryptocurrency every month.)
Stage 7: Skyfleet Superhero
“Welcome to Skycoin! How may I help you?”
This is the point at which an individual isn’t content merely having a sizeable chunk of their portfolio invested in Skycoin. One Skyminer is barely enough, all their friends and family have a bag of Skycoin thanks to their influence. Now it’s time to really earn their Skyfleet wings by contributing to the project in even more tangible ways. Luckily, there are a number of ways to do so.
For example, you can organize meetups and information sessions, building up a local Skycoin community that can prepare to deploy Skyminers and antennas as Skywire’s mainnet comes online, so you can all become your respective community’s internet service providers, covering your city in a wireless mesh network!
People at Stage 7 may begin coding in CX, which is Skycoin’s exclusive application blockchain programming language. It’s fully-featured, so one could program a smart contract as easily as a 3D video game. And because each project gets it’s own lightning-fast Fiber blockchain, there’s no limit to what one can do! And with incentive programs like CX Labs, a programmer could earn thousands of dollars just by building something useful! (Check out t.me/CXLabs to eat started; beginners are welcome!)
They may choose to participate in one of the frequent Skycoin Meme contests, creating fun Skycoin-themed memes for community member to share on social media, and get rewarded in Skycoin for their creativity.
There is also the Skycoin Rewards Program, which offers thousands of dollars per month to those Skyfleet heroes who create videos, write articles, and more to help bring Skycoin to the masses. As you were progressing through the various stages, you likely came across the cogent and insightful writing of Skyfleet members like Lawrence Qholloi, Marco Casino, and Crypto Discipulus. This might be your chance to write your own article, or make a video answering some of the questions you had as you joined Skyfleet.
The ultimate for any Skycoin fan, of course, is to actually be hired by the project team itself. You will have the opportunity to build a revolutionary new technological future of privacy, security and freedom, and you’ll get paid to do it! Keep your eyes on www.skycoin.com/jobs for something in your wheelhouse and then apply!
Conclusion
However you come to Skycoin, and however involved in the community you decide to become, know that you are welcome and appreciated. Skycoin enjoys one of the best communities in crypto, so head over to t.me/Skycoin and let us know what part of the Skycoin ecosystem you’re most excited about!
If you liked my writing and would like to contribute to me making more feel free to donate some Skycoin: GCB5KK9LmJzxxxh2hMoKm3HRXwaJe9vRfd
