By Ronald Amaya, Chief Strategy Officer at Lunar Digital Assets
The old cliche, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery ” is true, but in cryptocurrency, it’s often believed that imitation is born from mediocrity, and anything not entirely “original” is nothing more than a cheap knock-off. While many have piggy-backed on Bitcoin’s greatness rather than building their own unique brand and adding value, sometimes emulation is done with the hope of sustaining an idea or movement rather than with the malicious intent of taking undeserved credit (and market share) from the original.
A brief history of crypto maximalism
Within cryptocurrency, the idea that one coin and chain will rule all runs deep. While Bitcoin was born with revolution in mind, in the decade since its birth, many of the coin’s holders have forgotten that collaboration is at the essence of innovation. In Bitcoin’s early days, holders and developers were encouraged to share their thoughts about the direction the technology should move via public forums. Over the years, the forums in which censorship-resistance once reigned became heavily-moderated, and anyone who dared to offer an opinion that differed from the coin’s core development team was silenced.
Bitcoin maximalists insist that their reticence to embrace technologies that build upon Bitcoin’s foundation is due to a history of abuse. They say that all attempts to improve upon Bitcoin’s tokenomics or technology have been nothing more than thinly-veiled coups towards centralization and enriching the altcoins’ founders.
(Showing LTC and BCH underperforming BTC during the bull run)
Indeed, forks of bitcoin have historically underperformed the core asset over time, but that doesn’t mean that they always will or that stealing market share from bitcoiners was the intent of the forks’ designers. Bitcoin forks have typically been about increasing throughput and decreasing the cost of transactions so that the coin’s utility could live on; however, rather than viewing forks as attempts at sustaining the technology that so many fell in love with, bitcoiners view them as an assault. The same is true for forks and spin-offs of alternative blockchain technologies.
Despite being wrongfully branded as “worthless altcoiners” (whose favorite token was ETH), early Ethereans have adopted the same maximalist tendencies as the Bitcoiners who came before them. Throughout 2019 and 2020, Ethereum maximalists dubbed Polygon pointless, yet Polygon has helped to keep more TVL locked within the Ethereum ecosystem than any other scaling solution.
In 2021, UniSwap maximalists said that QuickSwap (a fork of UniSwap v2 on the Polygon Network) was a worthless copy, but QuickSwap’s users outnumbered Uniswap’s users several times during the heart of the 2021 bull run. In addition, QuickSwap’s utility token, $QUICK, outperformed $UNI last year.
What’s more, Polygon (previously known as the Matic Network) never intended to overthrow Ethereum, and QuickSwap was established to carry Uniswap’s momentum to a platform that was trying to help Ethereum scale.
Carrying the torch
After years of repeating the same mistakes over and over again, one might expect the crypto space to evolve and its inhabitants to learn to work together. Yet, in the same way maximalists disregarded the aforementioned crypto evolutionary trends, many are overlooking new chain-specific “punk” projects and calling them “copycats” or “derivatives.” We believe these maximalists are missing the point.
Many NFT projects are inspired by one another. Rather than viewing them as competitors, crypto aficionados would be wise to realize that “derivative” projects weren’t created just to leech off of their predecessors’ reputations. Michael Redd (a Polygon Punks community leader) recently told me quite the opposite: “Polygon Punks were created to pay homage to the holy grail of NFTs. This was never to infuriate the original developers, investors, and collectors of CryptoPunks. Instead, Polygon Punks are an attempt to propel the universal crypto ‘punk’ movement and fame surrounding the CryptoPunks phenomenon.”
Although this form of flattery may seem threatening to crypto-maximalists who believe that their preferred coin or protocol is superior to all others, this fear maximalists have is that the imitation may supersede the original idea, but what if accepting the concept’s evolution could protect their ideas by bridging communities, movements and technologies?
That’s precisely what Polygon Punks, and a number of other “punk” NFT projects are attempting to do. “Punk” projects are popping up everywhere because crypto community members want unique ways to identify themselves within their respective communities. Furthermore, many investors are looking for more affordable alternatives to CryptoPunks. As an example, Polygon Punks were minted on Polygon, a carbon-neutral blockchain that offers faster and near-zero transaction fees compared to Ethereum, allowing more NFT fanatics to participate.
The same goes for other punk-themed projects like SolPunks, developed on Solana (a highly scalable layer-1), which is also helping to bring its community and ecosystem together. To date, CryptoPunks have 3,300 owners and have done over $2 billion in trading volume. SolPunks have over 1,600 owners and have done over $61 million in trading volume, and Polygon Punks have over 2,200 owners and have done over $3 million in trading volume on OpenSea and NFTrade.
These types of projects are a highly valuable part of every ecosystem. Furthermore, for the first time in crypto-history, everyone within the cryptoverse has a chance to express themselves, showcase their personality, and even form a basic crypto identity via art on the blockchain.
WAGMI (We are all gonna make it)
We all know that crypto maximalists exist and that they serve their purpose in aiding the proliferation of our space; however, many maximalists miss out on future opportunities because they forget that crypto evolves at the speed of light.
Despite what early Bitcoiners said about Ethereum being an altcoin scam that would never work, Ether - the Ethereum chain’s gas token - increased by over 10,000% in 2017, and after the sharp pullback across the crypto markets from 2018-2020, ETH went on to increase by over 94% in the last year (compared to BTC’s 13% increase in the same time period). Even though many Ethereans insisted that Polygon (and it’s native token $MATIC) were worthless, $MATIC has increased by over 4000% in the last year.
Are you seeing the trend yet? Maximalists often fail to identify the next crypto trend because they allow their bags (and insecurities about those bags) to cloud their vision. Those who are more accepting of future trends stand a better chance of identifying them when they arise, keeping doors that enable collaboration open, and ultimately, staying relevant. Can you see the light? If so, maybe WAGMI.
About the author:
Ronald Amaya (aka “Aztec”) is the Chief Strategy Officer at Lunar Digital Assets (LDA) - a full-stack marketing and incubation firm. Prior to joining LDA, Aztec attained a high level of success as a crypto investor and ambassador for several projects. Today, LDA serves as a base and home for Aztec’s many skills.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.