Recently, seeing FungoLabs’ launch falter and @squeekchain announce its Genesis Mint pricing, I found it interesting to connect the two.

1. FungoLabs’ launch fell through despite having the ZAMA founder’s backing. More than 12,000 tweets discussed it across the network, with a hard-core narrative centered on fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). But nobody was willing to bid in the sealed auction, and actual participation was far too low, so the team had to cancel the launch and issue full refunds.

2. Squeekchain announced its Genesis pricing: a physical hamster wheel + on-chain mining. It’s easy to understand, fun, and naturally shareable. Genesis cards are currently priced at 0.05 ETH (about $111), with a total supply of 8,888. The founder has said they’re open to deciding based on community feedback.

FungoLabs just taught everyone a lesson: no matter how much buzz you get on Twitter or how strong your tech is, it means nothing if the market isn’t willing to put real money in. Everyone knows how tight liquidity is right now. A lofty tech narrative just won’t work when users have no money to spare.

Looking at Squeekchain, it has a solid concept and plenty of traction, but in the current environment, 0.05 ETH is definitely a significant barrier for an 8,888-item collection.

Since the founder @pillheadddd is willing to listen to the community, I sincerely suggest lowering the Mint price to around 0.01 ETH.

It’s far more practical to lower the barrier so real users can get on board and revive community morale and consensus than to keep people out from the very start. In a bear market, how many people a project can bring in will always matter more than how much money the team hopes to raise.

(Quoting my own post)