Sharky.Fi | NFT Strategies in 2023

Video Transcript:

Chris: Strategist you may share with some of those who are aspiring to create their own projects in order to succeed in this field. Yeah but yeah let’s start with the formal questions actually, to start off can you quickly introduce yourself and tell us you know what exactly you were doing prior to your time in Sharky?
 
Neppah: Yeah sure. So this was Neppah speaking, I’m the purple monk in the audience that’s my personal account but I would call myself a core team member I’m not a founding member Sharky was founded in December of 2021 by our co-founders Anton and Reya we’re a fully doxed team so people can check out the link tree in our bio and see all of our beautiful faces and what we do. What I personally do at Sharky is just community management I do like to lead on that and partnerships and social media management so almost all of the posts made from Sharky.fi is me, and yeah that’s how you say our name our entity name is Sharky, the website name is Sharky.fi, sharky.fi, so you can call it Sharky you can call Sharkyfi but I like saying Sharky and that’s just a little bit about me I know I joined the team in March or April of last year, so it’s been almost a year with me working with Sharky and we’ve seen tremendous growth. You know like when I first came I’m pretty sure we had 200 to 300 users on the platform and today I believe we’re about to approach 14 to 15,000 users, so we’ve seen tremendous growth since we launched on mainnet which was April of last year, and since we launched our nft collection which was October of last year, so that’s just a little bit about me when Sharky was incepted, our co-founders and people can check out the Linktree in the bio, and then I think you asked about my previous experience outside of Sharky?
 
Chris: Yeah so what with that being said can you actually tell us yeah what were you doing prior to getting into Sharky project, then how did you actually get to start in this whole web3 space, especially nfts is really great for us to learn more about your journey in this space right? How do you actually start here?
 
Neppah: Yeah, yeah, sure I started working full time and been working full-time in web3 since October of 2021, so that’s two years ago, and it first started with  how did I well let me let me stop let me pause how did I get into the space I’ve been on Discord before I was a gamer, Discord was made by gamers for gamers, so I already knew about the app  knew about group chats and stuff, so I was also on YouTube and found this community called Thumb Money who also has a Discord and there’s these three guys that basically do stock trading they social arbitrage stocks, so let’s say your favorite Netflix movie came out and you see the whole world talking about it that’s when I would go to Google Trends, see that the Google Trends is at an all-time high and I would see what stock can I buy to arbitrage that  so that’s where I came from and they had a small section in the Discord talking about crypto where I always thought the people talking in it were like smart as I was like I have no clue what that is no clue but I was just fascinated by like the language they were using and that goes to show like I kept making connections within Discord kept like researching asking the right questions and then soon I founded a documentary that I watched of one Bitcoin on crypto, I got into it  started reading white papers on Ethereum on Bitcoin, yada yada. You know do your own research, gain the conviction so you know what you’re putting your hard-earned money into. So fast forward, became a Discord moderator for Dumb Money because they just trusted me it’s all about consistency it’s about showing up for the community it’s about answering questions, asking questions and then soon someone from that community created their own project called Neo Nexus, and Neo Nexus was going to be like the largest metaverse on Solana if anyone heard of it, it’s now a rug but someone who founded it they did hire me as a community manager and that’s basically where I started as web3, shout out to Leon Gabondo, he’s a huge investor into the space who introduced me to Sharky, but yeah so that goes to your second question before, I was with Sharky, I did work with Neo Nexus and a few other projects. I’ve helped projects launch I’ve helped projects build their Discord I’ve helped projects create strategies around engaging and building their community such as SOL Socks. So I am like I’m not a Solana Maxi but, I do focus on Solana, so I don’t know if anyone’s an OG and knows about SOL Socks, but that was like when limited collections because you know 10K collection is the general thing but that’s what meta was like the limited collection so SOL Socks was like one of the first limited collections I think they had 500 Solanas, I mean Socks on Solana minted at like 1.5 SOL when Solana was at like 200-250 and it went up all the way to like 50, 60, 70. SOL Socks is also now a rug too, so it also has a lot of things happening, I was introduced to a lot of nft projects since 2021 and now I’m with Sharky but before then yeah just community manager marketer Discord moderator and I do think I do things outside of Sharky, but Sharky is my main focus but right now I Discord moderate for Moon Holdings which is an upcoming event it should have meant tomorrow so super bullish from the founder of moon holdings actually that’s who got me into the space.  I’m a Discord moderator for a chill chat they’re gonna be having some news come up can’t say too much about that and I’m a Discord moderator for the dare mola supply chain project which I know he has the creatures men coming out so I’m really just connected within the space love artists love the big profile picture collections, loves engaging with the community, but that’s just a little bit about how I got into the space, what I’ve done outside of Sharky and what I’m doing now.
 
Chris: All right that’s so cool, actually I’m also looking forward to getting a white list in Moon Holdings. Yes aside yeah it’s really.
 
 
Neppah: Mint is like tomorrow, so I don’t know if the white list is being handed out anymore.
 
Chris: I applied, I think that’s like one or two weeks ago yeah, it’s fine. All right, so yeah really interesting stuff, so I know some people in the audience are also you know currently working as community moderators or community managers, so you basically, you had it from the people being the people on the actual field in the community, and now you’re one of the co-founders of one of the trending projects in the space which is really, you know really inspirational in a sense, I really like that yeah and for those who don’t actually know about Sharky project, so to our wonderful listeners can you tell us more about this Sharky project.
 
Neppah: Yeah for sure it’s my favorite pitch to throw, I’m super professional at it. Okay, what Sharky is, we are the leading nft lending protocol on Solana. So people go to sharky.fi, sharky.fi to lend SOL or borrow Solana, so let’s say you have a little extra liquidity you’re not using all of the Solana you hold that’s when you would go to sharky.fi to lend Solana to your favorite collections and get interest payments so you’re earning more on the opposite end let’s see you need a little extra liquidity for an exciting mint coming up that’s when you would go to Sharky.fi tomorrow Solana utilizing an nft so every single collection listed on sharky.fi is having like an extra added utility because you can hold an nft keep ownership because we are escrow less, so when people take out a loan borrowing against their nft the nft stays in their wallet safely Frozen in their wallet backed by Cardinal Labs. I do appreciate Cardinal Labs that is the tech that they power, but that just means you get to keep down access you can still receive airdrops, and you can even stake in nft and borrow against it for instance Solana so that’s what people do it’s why we say nft backed loans but it’s just how it works in like web2 as soon as you take a loan you have to put up something as collateral for example, in this case, you’re putting your nfts collateral. So we do work for short-term loans, seven days and 14 days, and if you don’t pay back that loan within seven days or 14 days or whatever you agreed to the lender that gave you the SOL, that provided the SOL can then foreclose the nft and get a foreclosed loan, to get your nft so it works as simple as that lend SOL or borrowing SOL. The common misconception that I see is people say they’re borrowing an nft, they’re lending out an nft, you’re never doing that, you’re only lending out your Solana or you’re only borrowing Solana, but if you forget to pay back your loan when you borrow Solana, that’s when the lender can get an nft. So that’s how Sharky works, escrow less in a way. I know we have our shark collections connected to it that will probably dive deeper about, but that’s as simple as it gets so I do recommend people like actually visiting our website sharky.fi, if they’re confused because our UI and UX are pretty simple, it explains it all even if you don’t get it though just DM us DME will walk you through it but we do believe simplicity is key in gaining and attracting and adopting mass users so yeah that’s just a little bit about us.
 
Chris: All right, so I just had an additional question with regards to that, so like for example right I get this amount of SOL, usually the collateral nft is higher in price right, is that correct?
 
Neppah: Oh sorry yeah typically I mean this is all decentralized. So if you’re a lender of Solana you can lend as much Salon as you want and I definitely recommend knowing what you’re doing, because you can lend an amount of Solana that’s just as much as the nft so let’s say SMBs for example, Solana Monkey Business, let’s say it’s at 240 Solana me as a lender, I’m not about to lend you 240 Solana because the floor price can probably drop below that within seven days and if the floor price drop below the amount of the loan that you gave, you’re likely to receive a default,  but that’s usually how it works yeah the nft is usually priced higher than the actual loan, and I do recommend knowing what the LTV is, the loan to value the loan to floor, but I know on the website it does say a little bit about that too we recently yesterday publicized our dashboard too so if anyone’s wondering like what are the LTV values what is, the highest what is the lowest per collection then head up our Discord because we definitely do have the dashboard public too about those things, but yeah typically the nft value should be higher than the loan always but if it drops below that, the loan is likely to default.
 
Chris: All right so it’s always, I thought there is a system that automatically assigns these values, so it’s being assigned by the users themselves right?
 
Neppah: Yeah, anyone can lend the amount they want and as a borrower, you take the highest offer, for example so that’s how it works, anything that’s really like our standard is the APY like the annual percentage yield which goes from 180 to 240 on our platform, so if you’re a lender you can earn 180 to 240 percent APY on your you know.
 
Chris: Wow. Okay so the rich guys here you can lend on Sharky platform, lending platform, that’s really awesome API so with this Sharky project, you know there are a lot of projects in the space right so what do you think really sets this project apart from other projects in the web3 space, and then you have any strategies that you can share with us? So how you’ve actually done these things to be unique in the space?
 
Neppah: Sure, I mean our projects are unique in the space only because we actually have a working protocol for generating revenue, not too many projects have a working product that’s already generating revenue. I know for a while we had zero fees, so anyone on our protocol lender or borrower you weren’t paying any fees and that was just to drive our growth. So as of November 30th of last year that we implemented 16 percent fees, so we are generating revenue on that and I do think that does settle support from almost every single nft collection there’s a difference between nft collections and like builders and an actual product so I would say that but on our actual product the simplicity is what I think defers us from other products other competitors, for example simplicity is key that is something that we emphasize that’s something that will drive users and drive our growth for sure being simple not being too over complicated not giving the user too many options but also like I even know like Anton our co-founder has a way where he wants to make some of the stuff obsolete like loan duration or apy that might not have to matter in the future just because we’re going to make things so simplified for our users  so I do think that is like the main thing that differentiates us from our competitors and one thing that I extremely like about Sharky because when I first start like joined Sharky March of last year, I didn’t know what a loan was to be honest I didn’t know what a default was I didn’t know what LTV was or any of that but the simplicity of the protocol definitely helped me to learn that and I feel the same way for our users probably  so I would say simplicity, and also just the way that our founders think so our founders Anton and Rhea they have founded startups before successfully sold them off as well I know one is called like toast at the nation which is maybe like the largest software used on slack so if anyone uses slack for messages like our founders help make some of the software on that which is really cool and that probably differentiates us from other teams too just from having like that experience and previous experience of being in a startup this is my first time experiencing startups so it definitely works way different from being in something like corporate America or working a nine to five you definitely have to fill in positions that you’ve not filled in before, it drives your personal and professional growth and stuff like that but those are just like a few things that I feel like helps us to differentiate differentiates us and drives our product is just the simplicity, the way the co-founders think, and the way we set up. So I know we have put an nft collection to 10,111 sharks, give you money that’s when I’m gonna invest into you because I can actually see your product, use your product, see if I like it, and then you’re asking me for an investment, so I love the way we did too, but that’s just a few things yeah.
 
Chris: All right, so we lost you for quite a few seconds in your last statements but yeah we get your response yeah so it’s really interesting. I agree you actually created a really nice protocol here at first like a really nice product with great utility for everyone so for those who are looking for more gains using their money or Solana in case okay they can earn actually by landing this and then for those who are like for example if you are a degen and looking forward to a really hot mint that will be coming soon and you don’t have the funds you can just use your nfts as collateral then get this and somehow with the mint and then once it goes live you earn something from it then you can pay back loans with that so that’s really something that’s interesting yeah especially not everyone in the space has this liquid money with them so really helps a lot of people I  believe.
  
Neppah: Yeah for sure, yeah my bad am I able to take these questions in the audience or are we going to do this afterward because I know, APO down there has two questions that he typed in the chat bubble, can I take these now or are we gonna do it after the segment?
 
Chris: Oh yeah, you can take this now actually.
 
Neppah: Yeah because I know APO just asked what will happen to the foreclosed loan nfts. I have no clue that’s up for the lender to do this is decentralized so if you loan sold and you receive a default because the borrower didn’t pay back the SOL, you can foreclose that loan and keep the nft so you can do whatever you want with that nft foreclose the loan get the nft keep it, sell it, stake it, I don’t know burn it but that’s up for the lenders we don’t really know what happens to the foreclosed nfts we’re not in control of that unless we’re lending and the second question is what if during the loan the floor price drops, what will you do to relieve the losses so as of now we don’t have anything that’ll trigger your loan to automatically like stop if the Fuller price drops which is why I find it very important to know what you’re doing before using our protocol and why I bring up loan to value loan to floor I personally don’t lend out 60 to 75 percent of the floor price so let’s say the floor price of X nft is 10 I’m not going to give over 7.5 Solana because if the floor price drops below that within 7 to 14 days or whatever the loan is I’m likely to receive a default so if the full price drops below the loan you’re likely to receive a default. As an entity, don’t do anything to trigger we don’t do anything that that’s why it’s up to you to know what value of the loan you’re putting up against the floor price of the nft, however, I do think we can be way better at education like disclaimers, for example, I know we just put up disclaimers if you give a loan that’s above 92 percent of LTV or the loan to the floor will give you a disclaimer now some people say that’s too high maybe it is maybe we should drop that down to 80 and be like hey you as a lender make sure you know you’re about to give 80 of the value of the floor price so that’s something we can do but I definitely do want to keep and I’m that’s I it’s not in control of me but I do want to make sure the user is still able to do whatever they want to do. For example but these are good questions and those are my answers to them I just wanted to acknowledge them. But if anyone else in the audience has questions and doesn’t want to request to speak I know the bottom right chat bubble feel free to type those in and I’ll look at them.
 
Chris: Yeah thank you for that question APO, so thank you.  All right so let’s proceed to the next question, so if you have any questions you can request to speak guys, and also can also tweet your questions so we can read them as well if you are shy to go on stage and actually speak for your questions. All right so let’s move to the next question, so how do you think with regards to the general notion about nfts nowadays right, so the year has passed and with the recent things that are happening in web3, specifically in nfts, how do you think nfts are going to move forward and then in this upcoming times, you have some specific strategies that do you see that would be effective so you can adapt to this changes or any improvements in the space?
 
Neppah: Yeah I honestly have no clue, straight up, I have no clue.
 
Chris: Yeah it’s fine.
 
Neppah: They’re going, like I’m just being honest because there’s a lot of weird stuff going on where I know the comments saying we’re early we used to go on a lot because I’ve been in nft since like January 2021 and I always heard we’re early, we’re early and I do want to bring up that bring that back up and do say we are early to the point where I don’t even know where we’ll be within the next five ten years you know, what I’m saying there’s a new meta every week every day there’s something different going on every week every day and that’s because we’re so brand new to this technology that we are experiencing like the upgrades of it that’s just like being in the 1990s or 2000s when the internet became a thing that’s what I feel like this is so I’m bullish long term always on crypto and nfts, I believe it’s going to provide like a lot of value within the Earth, for example like the books and history, a lot of our history were burned in books now we have the blockchain to keep history and information on you know what I’m saying so I believe nfts are going to be like our bank records nfts are going to be our insurance cards and the nfts might be like our car insurance, nfts will be when we visit the hospital and have our records that’s going to be minted onto the blockchain because we won’t have to lose that information so I’m bullish on it long term, but like short term let’s say the next three to six months, I’m not sure where we’re headed. I know on Solana we recently just maneuvered to this pnft stuff to enforce royalties, and that whole thing I’m still like trying to comprehend because I personally got into web3 for decentralization, for me to pay royalties to creators, for me to pay royalties to independent people who are just creating artwork to live, you know what I’m saying, so it’s crazy that we’re now having to create new tech to enforce royalties you know what I mean, so I just literally sit back relax I ingest all of the information and then I go from there but some nft strategies that I use as like none currently I haven’t been minting as much, I am a huge believer of like your network is your net worth or your net worth is your network, so the people that I buy with, the people that I connect with, let’s say I hear them talk about an nft project I’ll keep that in mind cool, if I keep hearing about the same nft project all right obviously this should be on my radar I might meant it simple as that that’s my strategy now because I don’t have much time as I did in 2021, since I’m like a full-time worker in this, but now my strategy is literally just listening to the communities I’m implemented in what are they talking about what are they doing what are they mentoring what are they selling and then I’ll take my own like matters in hand and see what I do so I do know Moon Holdings which is tomorrow is the last thing that I bought, I bought that in pre-sale but as far as nft strategies I’ve not had much you know working for Sharky, I have been lending I do lend almost every day to earn more Solana but other than that a flipping jpegs and nfts I’ve not been doing much of for example it’s an Effie market right now, and so it’s a bit difficult to like even find strategies you know what I’m saying but on the hand of our protocol I know a lot of people have been making money even in the bear market by lending, by borrowing and I’ve also been a borrower so I’ll give you a strategy that I use just one strategy that I use to borrow but for our own shark cement on October 2nd of last year  you know I’m in the team so I’m convicted I knew we would hit 10 SOL floor price at one point so minting I borrowed 10 Solana from my so dad nft, I minted some sharks and FTS because so that it was seven days so I was betting on sharks going up to 10 SOL floor price within seven days, so I can pay that loan back and sell sharks and then keep profit for example so I take out a loan for 10 SOL I meant a few sharks I wait until sharks hit 10-4 price, I sell one out of those few sharks and then I keep the profit and then I keep the rest of my sharks so that’s like a borrowing strategy that I see that I’ve used and on the opposite end there’s lots of lending strategies you can do I have lots of liquidity on the side I’ve got 20 Solana in my wallet for example I’m about to lend that to a collection I like which I would recommend lending to a collection you like because like I said if you receive a default then you’re going to be getting that nft and if you don’t like that nft you’re probably going to insta sell it you’re probably not going to know what to do with it you might miss out on a couple of games  so that’s just a few strategies that I see like nfts are protocol wise and then Apple I know he asked but no everyone’s free to use sharky.fi, you don’t have to hold our nft if you had a holder nft to use our product that would definitely damage the growth mechanism that we’re trying but we do want to keep growing our users and for anyone wondering about the stats I do have all the stats out but we currently have 14,317 users all time. If anyone’s wondering about the default rate that I keep popping up but it’s currently at 7.7 percent which is honestly the highest that I’ve seen it that has been taking up these past few months the lowest that it’s been at has been like 2.5 percent so you can tell we’re in a Fe part of the market since our default rate ticked up although it’s still the lowest in the industry I do believe the other protocols probably have way higher default rates why simplicity I don’t think their users know much their users don’t know as much as our users know just because we keep it simple so that’s just a few things yeah I kind of like talked out my ass, but that was a few good information I wanted to share.
 
Chris: Yeah it’s all good, all good those are really interesting points, yeah and yeah with regards to simplicity that you are mentioning, yeah actually there are a lot of different people in the space right so it really helps like for example you have this really simple platform, that’s really easy to understand and I actually read your whitepaper so this is a really smart way to describe a white paper of the Sharky project, so it’s really simple I agree and I really understood it in the first glance so that’s really something different from other white papers we’re in I need to reread it back and back again just to fully understand that project concept but with here it’s really simple and it’s made for everyone actually so even those who you know really hard time who has really hard time comprehending technical Concept in some projects so with here they can easily understand, even just from seeing your Twitter bio for example, you easily understand that they’ll say something really interesting and simple tips, I really like that strategy and then yeah with this space right now every day there are a lot of changes I really like your honesty on that, so I really appreciate it yeah it’s like we are taking all our steps based on what’s actually happening in we cannot really plan ahead of what will happen in the future because we’re just simply assuming things that would be happening but we’re not really sure of yeah I agree with that as well it’s a really unique answer to this question but I really like the way you express it thank you for that. All right so going over to more, you know strategies as this is nft strategy stock as well so have you also encountered so you right now you were a really successful project but then in the past have you also encountered hurdles within the span of operating Sharky project so how do you actually overcome these obstacles then maybe you can share some insights to our listeners, especially to those who are project founders, struggling and would just like to learn more from you?
 
Neppah: Yeah for sure, great question. Yeah, I would consider us pretty successful because as of now we have 3.3 million Solana and a total loan volume. So for anyone wondering that 3.3 million Solana has been loaned out or lended on our protocol successfully, so and I do believe the key or some hurdles will okay so I’m gonna say this over deliver under promise as a project founder which I’m not as a project founder you may have ideas in your head you may know where you want to go but I do think you should keep tight lip with at least some of it you know what I’m saying you do not have to publicize every single thing including the dates that you wanted out having a clear-cut road map I know that’s a thing but that doesn’t have to be a thing I do believe over delivering and under promising is what’s going to have us continue to be successful so I bring that up because it’s also a hurdle that we’ve had we meant it out of our sharks and ft collection October of second last year and we made them a stake of telling them 30 days after met you guys will have the utilities for this nft it’s not like three to four months and they’re still the Sharks holders are still waiting, shout out to Chris and the audience. I do see his sharks pfp but hey Chris I know you guys have been waiting for a few months for us and that’s like been a hurdle we’ve been facing because before we launched we’ve only had like a people like a 10 to 12 team 10 to 12 people team, so as of now we’re working on expanding our team we’re hiring contractors because we do need to have a little bit more speedy development and that’s just with the nft collection as well as the protocol because having a protocol and an nft collection, you definitely can  get distracted you know, you have to figure out your priorities what is priority providing utilities for your holders making sure your protocol works right you know upgrading the UI and UX you know people were asking for a search bar for the longest time and we finally got a search bar but at some point it’s like you can press Ctrl f for that because we were distracted we had to get out holder utilities so that’s like some of the hurdles we’re currently facing and have been facing is just like internally we’re making sure we know what is priority we’re making sure we can be speedier about development and not being distracted with this pnft stuff with the metaplex like royalty enforcement program going on  that was a distraction you know if that didn’t go on I I’m more than convinced that holder utilities would be out but that did distract us for a bit and it is important for us and I don’t think our holders knew it was it’s very important for us as an nft lending protocol because if we weren’t up to date on the metaplex like royalty program our whole protocol could have like just stopped you know what I’m saying your loans your, and everything people lending people borrowing all of that could have stopped working which would have been a hell of a mess you know what I’m saying so prioritizing something like that over providing values to our users or having to put that on the side as something that we’re currently going through and me as the community lead community manager a hurdle that I go through is communicating that communicating the process, communicating what the community actually wants to hear, and stuff like that, so that’s a current hurdle that we’re facing that I am transparent about that people do know about , but we definitely are going to get through it, I know we just released our one pager which is the pen post on our Twitter for fishy token but that fishy token is connected to the Sharks nft holders they’re going to be able to level up their sharks and finally get some Solana because I don’t know if people know but if you hold a shark’s nft you’ll be eating Solana back from our royalty fees and our platform fees so that’s dual, that’s gamified dual rewards revenue that you’re getting not just from royalties not just from our platform but from both so those are just some hurdles we’re facing just priority  knowing what to do getting more contractors getting more devs, devs cost a hell of a lot of money, we also want a fundraise but hell that can be a distraction at this point do we want to continue working on utility or distract yourself to fundraise for more money you know what I’m saying so those are just some things that I’m not even owner but I do think other project owners founders, community managers could definitely benefit from knowing about over deliver and under promise not your community doesn’t need to know every single thing in the works they don’t need to know down to the T, the time and date that you guys want to drop something for example but I wouldn’t say keep things from them but like yeah no I wouldn’t say keep things from them but definitely keep delivering like don’t say everything you’re working on because development wise I’m not a dev, but I do know like internally when we have a timeline that timeline could always change something could always happen for example so those are just a few things I’m learning a few things other people can learn a few things we’re going through but we’re definitely I love the saying you got to go through it to get through it you know what I mean so that’s a good question that’s just personally with Sharky what I’ve seen us going through difficulty wise.
 
Chris: Yeah, the also the challenge with that example, if you announce something, the community my experience as well as a community lead, if you announce something to the community and you did not you know hit these dates for example, or any the roadmap you specifically specified some dates and then you missed it you know there is more damage to be done like oh they will no longer trust you that you are capable of doing those things, etc., but then, in reality, yeah happens so some things may delay you that you can no longer control but you’re still on track right?
 
Neppah: Yeah for sure and it’s about communicating those delays too so I’m definitely growing professionally and personally to know hey if something’s being delayed let’s see what we can communicate to the community that they care about you know if we have a delay because the co-founder’s sick for example community is not going to care about that they’re going to be like well where are you what are you doing it’s like I get that so it’s just about knowing what to communicate, and communicate being transparent, which we have been transparent from the start and I know our co-founder Anton just released like a Discord announcement too about why some things have been delayed, we’ve acknowledged some things that we can and will do better at for example so it’s just a great question overall especially for us because we are learning competition is picking up which is going to keep us on our toes and that’s kind of exciting.
 
Chris: That really loves this answer actually yeah thank you for that and yeah with regards to students still strategies or the nft projects because we have some listeners here who are really trying to build their own projects or even dream of making their own projects for their own visions and believe this example so from your observations, so which previous for example marketing strategies and community strategies being used by other nft projects no longer work and what our new strategies that you observe to be working?
 
Neppah: That’s a good question, I no longer see giveaways happening a lot like Twitter giveaways and if I do see those happening on someone’s profile, I’m not gonna lie red flag if I see you posting nothing but giveaways like retweeting red flag, I don’t think that is sustainable growth that is growing but that’s not sustainable growth that’s when you see a Twitter go from 500 to 5,000 followers and then as soon as they’re meant flops they drop right back down to 500 followers. So I don’t think those strategies are working anymore I do think the whitelist collabs definitely still do work you know if you are creating a project whitelist collabs are your main marketer that’s your main driver your main growth, but when you do white colors whitelist collapse you definitely want to see how are you going to maintain those users because that’s also like can be unsustainable growth your account can go from 500 to 5,000 during whitelist collapse if you tell people to like and follow your Twitter but how are you going to keep those users how are you going to keep those people those are the thoughts I have and so I know with Sharky something that I mentioned before that worked 100 for us having things for free you know our product was free for three four five months and that’s how we were able to drive our users even though we weren’t earning revenue and this was before sharks were minted out too so we weren’t earning money on our protocol we didn’t have an nft collection to help fund us  we actually had like a round or two of seed round like seed rounds so I do believe we raised like 1.8 million before we did rent out our collection however even before that you definitely want to like gain strategies like having your product for free for a minute to drive that growth for example it’s just like how these free to play but free to earn, earn to play games or you want to make sure that the game is free so you can drive the users but within the game maybe you have things for them to buy that’s going to drive your growth versus having like a 15 game maybe some people can afford that that’s your limit right there, so I do believe like having our protocol free for a few months definitely helped us out launching an nft collection after having a working product definitely helped us out and even if you can’t do that because like I said some people bootstrap some people cannot raise especially after the FTX  thing, like it fundraising is a you know an iffy topic but even before those things, like oh I’m about to lose my thought, but yeah no having your product for free, or just like having strategies to earn to gain that user growth that user retention, that ROI things like that so something that I also think works out for us too is just being connected I know I say your net worth is your network being connected also is the leading nft lending protocol we definitely are connected with like almost all of the all of the projects listed on our protocol which is 350 to be exact actually you guys but when we list somebody on our protocol, we want to make sure we do a vetting process, we might talk to the team we might set our community up for some whitelist collabs, if it’s pre-mint, if it’s post-mint, we might set you up with a Twitter space that will do but being connected and just like knowing your partners your collabs knowing your users knowing your community definitely can help out with like your growth, but yeah I’m talking too much to where I think I forgot the question to be honest.
 
Chris: Yeah so yeah you mentioned okay yeah for example, I usually see also project startups doing giveaways right because for example okay you’re new to the space, you don’t have many networks and basically if you don’t have the initial traction maybe when someone wets your project they will not be interested in doing a collab so what is the strategy you suggest so example some people just resort to these giveaways right just to gain initial traction so with that being said, maybe what can you share like what can be a good strategy to gain initial traction if we no longer will not be using these giveaways because this is currently is being seen by the market and the community in the web3 space like a red flag?
 
Neppah: Doing exactly what we’re doing now, really being active, being present being in Twitter spaces where you can reach live people, live active people who are listening to you and wondering about your product. I see a lot of people building things which is kind of like heads down, build and then market which I get, but after you’re done building, after you’re ready to share, be active, be present, be consistent with that too, so I know we host our shark bite spaces once a week and I try to be on one to two Twitter spaces after that too, so being consistent with being on Twitter with live active and open People ready for questions ready for critiques definitely is helping us out and I think that would help any project out regardless of what stage you’re in just be consistent with being active and showing up for the community and eventually that’s gonna you know eventually that’s you’re going to reap the rewards in my opinion especially if you’re connecting with people like let’s say I come on here and you have like some genuine constructive criticism for me or maybe someone in the audience does that’s definitely going to help us out  but yeah speaking of I do know there’s a lot of questions too let me see I know BB cake asked seven minutes ago how do you communicate that hurdle with the community, so they won’t lose trust in the project, great question being transparent and communicating, I mean you kind of answered your question in the question, you have to communicate that you have to be transparent and if you fucked up on that end, you have to tell the community you fucked up, you know what I’m saying so like I said our co-founder just made a Discord announcement  acknowledging like why we’ve been been delaying and kind of acknowledging like yeah we kind of up we’re not telling you guys about the delays like with the pnft stuff that I personally mistaken telling the community like hey this was priority so some listings were put to the side so we know all of the collections on the protocol works right but I forgot to communicate that so that’s when I on my that’s when I reversed my mistake and be like hey I understand you guys frustration I understand that and this is what I messed up on this is what I can and will do better at and I actually find myself saying that in the Discord often I’ll receive constructive criticism, I’ll be like you right you’re right like, that’s absolutely what I needed to hear we always appreciate the criticism we always appreciate the comments because that’s how we can do better for example so that’s a good question BB, it’s just communicating it communicating the hurdle and if he didn’t communicate it they lost trust in you that’s when you need to actually like be on your and acknowledge that, so yeah and then yeah I think that’s all the questions let me see holders.
 
Chris: There is another one from APO.
 
Neppah: Holders will have the staking app, if you hold the Sharks, you’re already staking it by holding it, we’re taking snapshots frequently like every four to eight hours, and every seven days you’re accumulating fishy tokens, all of this our website will be released for you to claim it’s kind of like what we just released the other day with the one the fishy one-pager, so if you want to check out the pinned post on our Twitter we explained a little bit about that, but yeah holding staking currently. Does the liquidity of the coins come from the profit made from loaning? Fishy tokens a utility token, so it’s not backed by liquidity that is a great question, fishy token when it drops it’s not going to be backed by liquidity this isn’t going to be something that we put up liquidity for we don’t have an LP provider  so yeah it’s just gonna be a utility token for people to level up their sharks participate in raffles for defaulted nfts and we’re gonna have professional analytic tools for people to have a subscription to and that’s where they can earn fishy from or that’s where they can use fishy for two so that’s the three main uses of our fishy token which is just the utility token, leveling up your sharks which you do want to do because level two sharks and above are the ones that earn Solana if you have a level one sharks you’re not going to be earning Solana, so fishy token three things leveling up your sharks, participating in raffles for defaulted nfts and getting a subscription to our professional analytic tools there may be more utility added in the future but that’s the three main ways, and I think that covered all the questions so for the holders is it passive income not necessarily I and I don’t want to say that just for legality reasons legal reasons, but it is gamified dual revenue rewards so you will have to actively claim it and I think the process of you actively having to claim it keeps us away from all the regulatory issues because if we just airdropped it called it passive income government might be up our ass so yeah.
 
Chris: Yeah I agree with that, so they try to control actually withdrawn hours but yeah
 
Neppah: Yeah for sure, my bad.
 
Chris: There was one more question I didn’t want to miss but yes we do plan on moving to multiple blockchains, we’re currently partnered with pine protocol, they work over at ETH, so that’s just putting that in your ear but we definitely do plan on moving to ETH, we may plan on implementing and integrating more blockchains maybe like Polygon or something else in the future, but yeah that is the plan.
 
Chris: Yeah that’s really nice. All right, so yeah I think we will move to this next question, I guess it’s really interesting, especially to those who are always following you and Sharky updates in every space. So what’s actually next for Sharky? So can you talk to us more about the exciting future of Sharky and your team’s plans for 2023 to ensure the longevity of the project?
 
Neppah: Yeah 100 percent, so what’s next? After we get these holder utilities out people start gaining and claiming their Solana, I know we’re gonna be focusing on the UI and UX of things, we definitely still have more products we want to release like buy now pay later and more things like that, so let me read a little bit of the announcement that we posted yesterday that just a little bit of our product roadmap but expendable loan so making all loans on Sharky be able to be extendable bulk operations like you can bulk borrow bulk foreclose be able to adjust all of your loans automation for lenders, we have a few dedicated lenders that just want to automate like their loans, let’s say they want to lend out to a specific collection every other day or something that’ll be in the future mortgages as well as the buy now pay later thing I mentioned and proved analytics, risk management, maybe more disclaimers definitely want to focus on education, automated low risk investment fund, but those are just like a few things ability to adjust offers online and stuff those are just a few things of the product roadmap  and outside of that I’m also just as community lead speaking, I’m excited to start vibing with the community, you know what I mean we used to do something every Thursday if not a whole there’s AMA we would do something else like play games or do like some quizzes and the community kind of became like impatient with us on that because they really just want their Solana they want to earn money they’re like all right y’all I’m just trying to get my fishy token get my salon respectfully so after that’s released I’m 100 percent excited to start vibing with the community again creating campaigns around how we can all earn money and maybe play some games and wager some stuff for example a lot of people hit us up for poker tournaments and I’m like I would but I don’t know if the community is trying to play poker when they just want their money you know what I’m saying  so that’s just a few things that we have in the roadmap a few things I’m excited about and  yeah and like I said we do plan on maneuvering to something like Ethereum we’re not moving from Solana but we plan on integrating with Ethereum, so I’m excited about that but I do recommend people I pay attention to who we’re partnering up with, we are well connected up with the space you know we’re connected with Magic Eden, hello moon Pine protocol, phantom,  phantom even like I believe, we were a highlighted project even in their mobile wallet so definitely stay  tuned to who we connect and partner with because I can tell you where we’re going in the future too for example atadia, I forgot to mention atadia, but credit scores people ask about credit scores maybe those are down the line too super excited about those because as a lender if you see a bar where it just took your loan you want to see their credit score like what are they going to pay you back are they not going to pay you back something that people might want to know you know what I mean.
 
Chris: Yeah that’s really cool. Yeah all right, so last but not least okay, so since we have listeners here who want to you know learn more on how to actually create and launch their own projects, so for new projects, nft projects launching this 2023, so what suggestions do you have for them to be successful so what are some of the key things that you want them to keep in mind when starting their own project in the nft space?
 
Neppah: The FUD, keep in mind of the constant fight, keep in mind of the eyes the, highlight like I used to preach this back then I don’t know why I stopped, but I’m a firm believer, if you’re creating a large nft collection like five to ten thousand nfts, you’re creating a startup you’re creating a company, you’re founding a company, you’re about to ask people to invest into you and give you a significant amount of money so you better see those people as your investors your users you need to value them but that is something I don’t really I didn’t  that was like months ago when I spoke that but I didn’t see many people really think that way they thought nfts are enough T’s just digital Collectibles I’m gonna create a 10K collection and dip like that’s not the case you know, and I’m very conservative, I am from stocks, came from Forex, I love just collecting my dividends, so if I buy an nft, I don’t even stake really I’m not a staker, I just buy and hold, I like old even though I’m only 23 years old and yeah so that’s something I would definitely keep in mind of how many users, how many people you’re affecting, how much money they’re about to put into you because people are going to put money into you they’re going to spend this amount of money on your nft, you’re going to give them expectations, they’re going to expect those you don’t give them those expectations, or your rug simple as that so I personally will never create an nft project like people can put that on the book, this was recorded this is Neppah speaking, don’t see this as a Sharky account, this is not the speaking, I will never create an nft collection project, I don’t want the stress, I don’t want to have to manage the money because when you launch a collection, you have a lot of money, you’re managing to what SOL are you gonna put in the stables, how much Solana are you going to put into stables because like I said I’ve experienced  working for a project that ended up rugging me and what happened on that project, we minted out, we minted out a few nfts when Solana was 250, raised 2.5 million dollars and the founder did not want to put that into stable, so when Solana dropped 60 percent, you know you kind of lose sixty percent of your money and then that’s when the founder gets stressed and he’s like yeah I’m out, so those are things you guys want to consider all of that you know money management, people management, customer service, it’s all of the above, you’re creating a product, you’re creating a service, you’re creating a company that’s what I’m trying to say that’s my mindset anyway, so definitely keep that in mind.
 
Chris: Yeah so think not twice but thrice trying to build.
 
Neppah: Exactly.
 
Chris: Yeah because yeah I realize that’s true because a lot of you know people who are fascinated by the fact that some people earn money through launching NFT projects thought that they can just easily do that, launch a project, hype it and it will succeed. So it’s no longer the case, actually right now, especially since we are in the bear market, yeah. I really agree with that.
 
Neppah: 100 percent.
 
Chris: So yeah I think that sums up all my questions for this space, so do you have any questions from our audience so just to remind everyone right, we are actually giving an incentive to those who actually participate and give us a nice question, high-quality questions, you know so to encourage you to become more engaged in this really good discussions with our featured projects so if you have their questions it’s your time to shine now. Click that request to speak button or tweet the button and share your questions so our guest speaker will actually answer them for you guys and who knows maybe your high-quality question could win you some USDT from TokenMinds as an incentive for participating in this discussion.
 
Neppah: I know we’ve had good discussions and questions so far, so if we don’t have anymore, I just want to get my gratitude to thank you for inviting us on, I did appreciate the space appreciate the whole organization you guys did before it definitely like one of the most organized spaces that I’ve done I was kind of like, I was kind of nervous because when we have a space for about an hour and it’s just two of us it can definitely get quiet can get boring but you guys organized it so I really appreciate that and I know we have a group chat so we’ll continue talking maybe if we do another space we can get one of the founders on too because I know I’m just the core team member but people love hearing from our founders, so I appreciate you.
 
Chris: Yeah we appreciate it, there’s also this first time actually to have these compliments in the way, and we organize the Twitter space. So yeah thank you for that.

Neppah: Also oh yeah for sure those are things I noticed because like I said I’ve worked with a lot of teams I’m in partnerships now, so I see how a lot of teams communicate and yeah no not many teams like write a whole document for me to see of what we’re going to talk about on the Twitter space so cheers to you guys, my only question would be, I have a question for you guys, but just like explaining to us like what is TokenMinds, what are you guys doing over there?
 
Chris: All right, so actually TokenMinds is a full-service web3 agency, for example, you are a project founder and you want to create something in the web3 space. So with our experience also in creating projects, we helped you start up projects actually, so if you have this dream maybe we can help you with that with all the knowledge that we have back from 2017 when we are only launching tokens IEO, IDOs, etc., and now nfts, so we build things here like from marketing, advisory services, community management, blockchain nft development, or even website development, everything from scratch so we help our clients with those actually.
 
Neppah: Yeah, yeah 100 percent. Well if I know anyone that needs some type of service like that, I’ll definitely recommend you guys because just from the organization from the Twitter spaces I can tell you guys would be organized and helping people create their own startups and stuff like that, so it’s really good to know.
 
Chris: Yeah and also we’re also having this space right so some of you know potential founders would actually get to know from the real successful projects already, their experiences, share their strategies, etc., so this is why we’re having also this space and guesting the hottest projects, blue-chip projects in this Twitter space feature them as well yeah.
 
Neppah: Yeah 100 percent, appreciate having that, I just pinned something up top, I know someone just posted their takeaway but I like that comment of yours Nina, so thank you all for listening to me speak.
 
Chris: Yeah so yeah shout out Nina, so yeah starting an nft collection trust is a valued currency, I really like that there, the community has to believe in you, it’s one of the quotable quotes yeah.
 
Neppah: Yeah definitely a quotable quote.
 
Chris: All right, so oh we have we still actually have some questions, so maybe let’s take this last one question, all right so from BBK yeah. 
 
Neppah: Yeah I see it.
 
Chris: So?
 
Neppah: Having worked on different projects, how do I tailor my marketing approach for each? It’s a great question BB cake, but to be honest with you Sharky is the project that I’ve grown the most at professionally and personally. So before Sharky, I was not into marketing before Sharky, I was just used to being a Discord moderator, and community manager, you know what I’m saying but now I would say I call myself a community lead and core team member because this is the first startup I’ve actually worked at, where it’s a startup. I’ve filled in positions where I can fill in and I’ve learned to grow myself to do something like marketing and so I know we have our chief marketing officer Bieber who I work closely with who probably could answer this question a bit more for you, but for me personally I’m still learning this was my first time like being into marketing being in a partnership social media managing, before this I was just used to being on Discord and by then you know what I’m saying so I know it may seem it may not seem like it because I seem pretty comfortable but yeah I’ve been doing this for a little over a year, two years, but yeah before Sharky, was definitely just used to being on Discord and it’s why I love web3 recommend everybody has a place from web3 like if you want to work in web3, I’d recommend it because this is the most growth I’ve seen for myself personally and professionally, like I wouldn’t see myself grow, if I was still working as a pharmacy technician you know working 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. filling pills pill prescriptions for pets, you know what I’m saying so now I’m just now learning like to market learning about product learning having users the thing that’s distinctive between Sharky too from the other projects I work for the other projects. I worked for were just nft projects, they didn’t have a product but now this is a product with the project, so I’m not just worrying about the community. I’m worrying about users, you know what I’m saying, and we have users and holders, not just holders. So I’m definitely learning a lot of things it’s a good question.
 
Chris: Yeah that’s really interesting the web displays actually everyone just tends to indulge themselves in the role and then they learn it from experience, actually it’s just no one initially was an expert here.
 
Neppah: I agree with that 100 but yeah I think that’s all the questions and thank you so much for having us on TokenMinds again.
 
Chris: Yeah thank you also Sharky project. So yeah, I advise you guys to all listeners here to check out Sharky, so just in case you missed our Twitter space for today and the interesting discussion talking about Sharky project its perks utilities, and how it actually benefits its community members and listen to listeners like you how can you benefit from this platform so you can always get back into the recording of This Twitter space and then yeah, I suggest you check out Sharky and their Twitter and then their website, so for more information. So this is really a good platform in this place and a really helpful one. So yeah thank you Neppah for being our lovely guest for today, yeah and thank you everyone so for those who will be winning actually in our incentive for being participative, so we will be just announcing this maybe on the next day, so there’s a surprise factor, so thank you, everyone, for coming in today and see you in the next space.
 
Neppah: Thank you, thank you. Before you end it, just to give you guys some stats to see, like how much our protocol is working and it might be a little bit of alpha, let me update this, but I have been having our stats up just in case anyone asks, but as of now we have, let me see, let’s load, let’s load I believe we have over no let me not guess that hold on y’all my internet went out okay as of now we have 15,000 and 400 and fifteen thousand five hundred total active loans, someone just took out a loan and that’s been 21,000, a little bit over twenty one thousand Solana in 24 hours and total loan volume, like I said, our default rates currently at seven point seven percent, we work with 7 or 14 day loans but currently the average repayment time is at six days one hour and 13 minutes so that’s a fun fact, but our lenders sometimes get paid early which is in their favor because if the lenders get paid early, they’re still getting paid in full from the borrower, yeah and that’s just with over almost three hundred thousand total loans taken. So just a few stats from Sharky and how much we’re working and appreciate the space.
 
Chris: Yeah, thank you for that really interesting so yeah check out Sharky project, its Twitter account, and its website, and yeah thank you, everyone, for listening today, and see you again next week on our Twitter space. So we’ll have another guest which or who will we announce, so yeah have a nice day everyone, and bye-bye.