There are many discussions on the future of Orange Dynasty within the core team and overall community and since then, many decisions have been made. It is time for transparency.
Missteps
Community gradually became an orange echo chamber without a clear message
We called it the “orange virus.” Once you started to follow Orange Dynasty, your entire timeline would be orange-pilled with all kinds of vibing content. It was our strategy to grow: to start with good vibes, then onboard with vision, because the vision and tech are sometimes unnecessarily detailed for most people. The vibrant culture went well until I felt we became stagnant.
Many people’s impression of Sign became more of a karaoke space than our true ambition to build digital infrastructure for nations. We’ve also built an echo chamber in certain demographics but got shadow-banned by Twitter algorithm. Our influence wasn’t growing as fast as we planned in CT and the overall tech circle.
Persistent farming culture is bad
One of our goals for the community after TGE has been to change the community culture into a holder’s culture, where people care more about our product and business instead of future airdrops, which caused numerous issues such as AI-generated spam on apps and timelines.
Farming brings transient and fabricated popularity but zero loyalty. There are a number of bot accounts that seem to be hyping us on Twitter but then sold the airdrop as soon as they received it. Having farmers in the community hurts true holders.
We are doing whatever that needs to be done to clear the farming culture from our existing community and protect those who genuinely care about Sign.
There will be no future AIRDROPS.
Reflections & Looking Ahead
A token is not an experiment. It's the team, investors, and holders' financial alignment in an asset format
We spent $12M in profit to buy back tokens last year at a price much higher than now, showing our commitment to the price. Among other comparable assets, our price has shown the least drawdown through the recent turbulence.
In my opinion, the term “Utility Token” was created in 2018 by lawyers to differentiate tokens from securities. I do not believe that a token’s utility has a significant impact on its price, Layer 1 gas tokens and governance tokens are mostly just stories for VCs to justify their investments to LPs. The real story is always profitability.
Making money in crypto from a non-trading scenario is not easy, but we managed to make a profit and have grown every year since 2024. My goal for the token has always been simple and clear, and I will be hyper focused on that.
Orange Dynasty App
Token integration into the app is hard due to App Store policies, but not impossible. We are now thinking of launching Oranges on Sign’s Central Bank Digital Currency system and inviting all app users to pressure-test our system.
Sign launched Sign Protocol as one of its products in 2023 and now we are much more than an attestation protocol. We will move sovereign-grade products into a community version and embed them into the app. Meanwhile, posts and some overly complicated features will be discontinued.
The app will always be the community town hall and a playground for our new products.
Seeing Signs NFT
We have airdropped 47,500 SIGN(~4000 USD by TGE) to every NFT holder, which is 10x the minting price. Although we should have built a burn-to-mint mechanism to increase the scarcity, we ran out of time. NFTs will have other future use cases that I can promise.
The pace
Yes, we were trying to do things too fast. I personally always have an urge to push and push. I think experiments are crucial. We are living in a fast-changing world, how do we know if we never launch the product? A lesson I learned was to do things more transparently, so we receive feedback and iterate faster. If things don’t work, we should postpone or shelf them faster.
One example is the clan system. We were going to launch it in October, but after assessing it, we didn't think we were fully ready for it, so we postponed it.
We are shifting from a “vibe community susceptible to bots and farming” to a Holder Community, with the reins in your hands. And as you may have noticed, there have been changes in the community account and team, with specific details to be shared soon by Sign Intern.
Don’t be afraid of change. If what we have doesn’t work, we try something else.
I deeply appreciate @Farmie_KIND ’s open letter. Real builders are always worried, because they are thinking hard to do better.
We are doing it now. Please write to us with more genuine concerns and ideas. This is very healthy and important.
