141 ฿฿

I didn't come into crypto 9 years ago to launch a shit coin. I didn't come into crypto to get rich quick. I came into crypto because I believe it's going to change the world, and that the industry was something worth dedicating my life to. But somewhere along the way, amidst the booms, the busts, the moonshots, the decentralization theater, and the straight up scams, we lost our way. I don't know about you, but I'm just tired of false promises. And that's what most things are today, simply promises. We live in the most centralized era crypto has ever experienced, and the more centralized something is, the less meaningful a token is. While it's tempting to want to commit to these same promises, what happens if the team gets acquired? What happens if we want to re-invest into growth? What happens if we divert our time, energy, and resources out of band and circumvent the token altogether? What happens when the team and investors unlock? For many projects, the honest answer to these questions is not pleasant, and you see it in the price chart over and over again. Unless something is completely decentralized to the point where an immutable protocol can function with the team having retired in the Bahamas sipping pina coladas all day, then utility is just a promise. Often that promise is admirable and well intentioned--but ultimately an unenforceable promise nonetheless. Outside of BTC, ETH, SOL, and a few others, nothing really passes this test. Noble new token models have emerged to solve this problem (shout out to MetaDAO), and today, we introduce our own. Users that stake the Backpack token for at least a year will have the opportunity to exchange those tokens for equity at a fixed ratio--20% of the company today. It's such a simple idea, but as far as I'm aware, this is the first time a user has been able to earn the equity of a company by just using the product. So obvious in hindsight, and something I hope others start to adopt as they march on their path to progressive decentralization--both in crypto and outside of the industry. We have a lot more utility coming, things we'll share over the coming weeks, months, and year. As the Backpack community grows, we will decentralize the token, offering new things over time, some centralized like our equity offering, some decentralized as our product evolves. In the limit, I expect the token to represent more than anything a single company has to offer, but in the short run, it's the best we can do to show our long term commitment to our users. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I can't promise anything. The only thing I can promise is commitment. We go big or we go home--together, actually together.