Native
Native is a digital city where AI agents and humans coexist, co-creating both economic and entertainment value.
@derek
Everyone:
I’m working on a new thing full-time. It started as a Birthday Labs project, and has become its own larger thing, and will be taking all of my time.
Rather than prolonging the inevitable, I want to be clear: the new thing is a separate company and product. With a team. It’s not a rebrand or migration.
People who previously bet on Native as a bet on me, and because of that tie, there’s a lot of frustration and anger and I get that. I’ve made a lot of mistakes over the last year, and I hope there’s some understanding there from you all. It’s hard.
There’s also a lot of folks who are excited about what’s next and they trust me to do right by Native holders. That’s my plan. I will continue to use my personal capital to buy Native.
I want to find ways to reward that belief in me, as it’s allowed me to build over the last year.
But I’ll be honest: I won’t make new promises about it.
What I CAN promise is that I’m *personally* invested in finding the best path forward for people who have supported me via Native. And I’ll prove that.
What I can also say for certain:
• Native holders will receive access to the new product, which is built
• Snapshots are being taken so I have a record of who supported Native, and me
The new direction: infrastructure with a dataset that doesn’t exist onchain yet. While not related, it’s in the same domain as Native: mirroring our economy onchain.
For Native, I’m happy to work with folks who want to work on the idea. There is a TON of code written for Dots, agents, and the Native context. I’m happy to open-source it, hand it over, etc. if there’s a plan in place. I’m happy to help fund the costs of running it. I’m happy to give over fees to a new group. There’s still a path forward for Native as a project if the community wants it.
There’s no easy way to “wind down” a project when there’s an associated token. There are a lot accusations and frustrations and misunderstandings.
I hope that when you step back, you see that I’ve:
• Used my real identity so that I have to directly deal with this head-on.
• Constantly been communicative (the best? No, but I’m here.)
• Open to feedback and ideas here
• Tried to do the right thing with my ownership
• Pushed through difficult times that made it hard for Native, including Base, Clanker, and Farcaster turmoil over the last year.
Once again, I’m so very grateful for those of you who understand the difficulty here, and who have been supportive.
Thank you.
50 replies
17 recasts
364 reactions
@mj41fantastican.eth
had to sell my native 😩
someone tap me if you hear anything so i can cop some more...
putting it all into various apps and experiences around RWACu
I still believe the future of native will be something. its just too much not too. Derek will be sitting in that same hottub smokin a cigar and sippin on his favorite commodity whiskey/bourbon and an idea will bring it all together
so im not selling forever, just needed the cash for copper stuff rn
2 replies
0 recast
5 reactions
0 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
@cryptoplayer
I still can't believe Derek abandoned the Native project.
I had been holding the Native token for almost a year. I was eagerly following YouTube and new information coming out of Native. I am sure that many stages of the project had been completed and we had reached the end point. I still don't know what happened to get us to this point and I am in shock.
0 reply
0 recast
8 reactions
@mj41fantastican.eth
$NATIVE is not dead.
its gotta get build for my vibe-dating app
oh and my two favorite coins: NUDIE MAGAZINE DAY, and the INFOMERCIALS
1 reply
0 recast
1 reaction
@listen2mm.eth
the gaslighting will continue until morale improves
https://farcaster.xyz/listen2mm.eth/0xdb2b2901
2 replies
0 recast
7 reactions
@derek
Great take from @mj41fantastican.eth.
So much of this resonates right now.
Thank you for your thoughts and being able to see the nuance here.
1 reply
1 recast
31 reactions
@mj41fantastican.eth
my big take
the biggest hit i can remember, but its cuz it was the biggest shot to take at the time.
Moe, you seem like a real one, you too jdot, you're the kind of people anyone would be lucky to have at their backs. sometimes the people who support things are such a turn off that it ruins my view of the project itself for some reason, but your support made me feel like i was in on something real, and i still do feel native is real. i mean he worked on it for a year ffs. to throw all that hard work away is just not what humans (the building type) do naturally
however, lets not toss $NATIVE and the @derek into the same crypto cess pool as MANY other blockchain projects. i dont think people here on fc (for the most part) have such an evil disposition like those of other platforms (looking at you pumpfn.)
he was pretty thorough and professional through the entire course of the project. i actually met with him on video conf.... just that alone, what other project dev invited people to talk to them. Only time i've seen that is when the dev is international, conveniently 8,000 miles away.
i would say this isn't broken trust issue, this is a capitalism issue. capitalism looks like it sucks, but straight-line trajectory only exists in a flash. there are failures and victories, and most we never hear about. the bottomline is that a year went on and things evolved as they do.
transparency sounds great, but its a difficult play because a business can never truly be fully transparent, its just not safe to do that. the boss still needs to determine what is best kept private. so for the communications not being to anyones liking: like what do you expect? are those expectations fair? have you tried to implement anything similar?
obvs the project is really complex, and perhaps either a bit early for agentic ai or early in funding who knows... maybe it is just such an enormous project that it cant evolve this current way its going. maybe he was like you know what can be better... then went with that cuz well its better. who the F knows, but this just doesn't feel like a scam. i know scammers, been beating them up all my life. this has no familiarity with any scam im familiar with.
What he is NOT saying
He is not explicitly saying:
-“Native is dead.”
-“We are shutting down the site/contracts.”
-“The token is worthless.”
-“I’m walking away and won’t engage.”
no formal shutdown hereWhat he IS saying tho
He is saying:
-He is no longer building Native as his main job (we all need/want better jobs)
-Native will not be the same thing as the new product (this is important)
-Native’s forward progress depends on others stepping up
(I can steer the ship under the right circumstances, feel free to reach out. transitional leadership is actually right up my alley.)
ok, now the dad in me has to say something to anyone putting their entire savings into $NATIVE (or any token)... for the love of GOD(s), your god, their god, all the gods, DONT DO THAT EVER AGAIN. seriously i dont care how good an idea is, what you're doing is gambling and its dangerous to do that with your LIFE SAVINGS!!!! If you want recklessness in the efforts to get rich quick then sell drugs. your family will be much happier. the risk there is jail, not $0 money for the kids.
fuqn read security analysis by graham, and read margin of saftey by seth klarman... and DO EVERYTHING YOU READ. if you're bothered by my message, im bothered by your actions. just read the book and lets go have a beer someday and talk about it.
as for @derek and trust, he did mention he was still going to buy $NATIVE so i will take that as the "MASTER PLAN was adjusted", and based on how he carries himself in other ways that we can see, he just doesn't fit the scammer bill.
he also mentioned wanting best for his native supporters and will find ways to thank them in future projects. <~ this is business talk. not scam talk.
good capitalists realize that you gotta make people happy and if you do it properly that can turn into a flywheel for a next project., even your career. im doing the same thing with my copper token project. I started something, a great fuqn idea btw, but the only way to learn how was to do it (thats the only way i know how to learn. and on such a smaller scale when comepared to $NATIVE, it barely relates, but it does relate) so all of that led me to plan better for v2. The 70-80 something holders I have are like the loves of my life. i want to make them so fuqn happy that my next project has their past support in my future focus. i got this from his cast, and that's a big tell. he's one of the good guys.
no criminal or scammer tells you where they work. they dont say anything real, they hide under bridges or something like the trolls they are.
in conclusion think many of us here want to build/support great shit and make a ton of money, whilst having fun doing it. for real builders, imo, the fun comes when everyones happy. I think native dev understands that. i think most of us here on farcaster do too, most of us just havent had that kind of early blessing in MC and attention.
im still in on native, and until its dead, fully, im going to support it.
tl:dr
this didnt hurt the industry, this is pretty normal
what affects the industry is how we react to it.
9 replies
1 recast
11 reactions
@mj41fantastican.eth
i hopped onto native for the first time in a while and I got this when I got to the launch token page.
is this just me (if so its expected and I'll just move on to something else for now) or is this happening to you too?
i ask because many of my accounts are screwed up and not connected to each other properly 🤷♂️
1 reply
0 recast
4 reactions