Origin | My Artist Side, Personal Branding, & The Power Of Connections

Hey, I’m Q. This is my first article ever written onchain. I discuss the struggles of being undiagnosed schizotypal, getting called a dork and being stuffed inside the locker by the bullies inside my head. My love for anime, art, and cosplay. My journey into web3, and how I found the true value of an NFT.

I hope this story helps me share a piece of myself, to help onboard and connect with the friends I've made inside my ecosystem, and spread the vision to create changes onchain in a world of wealth inequality.

My background in crypto started about six or seven years ago. I was talking to one of the smartest friends I had at the time, Zach. Who’s been living as a foreign exchange teacher in Taiwan for the past several years. I was explaining how the whitepaper was really great and with the world accelerating more and more online. It had potential to be big. He suggested I also look at Ethereum, so I did. The framework was a bit too complicated for me back then. But from what I read on their website, I understood that Ethereum was a framework to use crypto inside of computer applications.

I wasn't a big technical reader at all my entire life. I was born a got really into spirtuality, chakras, and western philosophy. I thought of myself more of an artist and creative. I did buy 3 books on crypto that I've still yet to read all of. Proof Of Stake by Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum. Read, Write, Own. By Chris Dixon. and Blockchain Data Analytics by Micheal G. Solomon, PhD. But it was through a DAO called LearnWeb3 DAO. Where I actually began building projects like Liquidity Pools, Tokenomics Distributions, and advanced Smart Contracts. I built with communities and led developers in freelancing projects and we worked together to make money. Throughout this process I developed the planning, leadership, and cognitive thinking required to calculate the value of labor, NFTs, and coding projects. I was also very active in Twitter Spaces, and Clubhouse. I met with Gary Vee before his NFT project got big and met a bunch of people in spaces that really connected with my ideologies and beliefs of a better world.

I have schizotypal disorder. But most of my life I was undiagnosed, unmedicated, and had anxiety & paranoia I couldn't really comprehend. I thought I was just a nerd. Like the characters on TV. But I fell in love with the idea of superpowers. It always felt like I was trying really hard to fit in, to get girls to like me, people to respect me. Which made me fee...l different.

But that pressure is what motivated me to be the best in everything I do. I'm happy with the results, because all of that time I spent learning art paid off. I'm now medicated. A UI/UX Designer making money through my freelance agency, connecting with cool people virtually which also eases a lot of the social tensions that, I still tend to get social burnout and anxiety. But now I take responsibility for my disorder, so it's much more managable. I know that medicine helps me avoid those periods of times where i'm completely overwhelmed and uncomfortable with people.

So Zach was right. Ethereum went up, pretty high actually in 2017 and in 2018 I got the free time to learn and get a hard wallet and was reading Ethereum's website for information which was pretty scarce at the time. I stumbled upon a "DApp". Also known as a Decentralized App. This term was used often and was a play on words. The app was using decentralized currency, but still had a central owner.

This was a big misnomer that distorted the entire crypto world a few years later. But during this time, Ethereum was only like $200, I thought we might get back to the spot it was before $1,200. I never could have imagined with my brain then that it could go much higher, but it did... And I didn't make money. :(

I was too busy studying and learning the technical aspects of Ethereum and NFTs. I found a Pokemon knockoff. I was determined to figure out the NFTs and Ethereum how worked, kinesthetic learning style.

So I jumped in the water, went on opensea and purchased $80 worth of crypto for the NFT and the game wasn't even finished yet. Scam. I was privileged. I grew up in a society with Xbox/Nintendo/Apple , I had never experienced playing an unfinished game or dealing with an unregistered market before.

Lesson learned. I should have done my research.

Now you might be thinking... this has nothing to do with NFTs value. Yes I know, but I had to set the foundation for how frustrating and random my onboarding experience was. It was like trying to use emojis on an iPhone 4 in 2011. It didn't really exist unless you had the app extension in your keyboard.

So true value came from me creating art, and talking to people in Twitter Spaces, I met a friend Saba, and her sister Oblivious. They asked me to help them run Twitter Spaces and judge pitching competitions they were doing on Twitter Spaces. It was really fun and a lot of my technical knowledge got to shine, as well as my understanding of the different levels of art I was seeing all across the space.

Saba's Fuzziemints were inspired by her baby, they had this motherly and child-like expression and were a fun play on the words mint. They made you feel kinda warm and cozy and I think that's why people connected with them, and they made over $38,000 in revenue and sales.

The truly unfortunate aspect was the entitled behavior of numerous popular social media personalities. These influencers, leveraging their substantial followings, relentlessly bombarded Twitter's Timeline with their personal opinions on NFTs. They loudly proclaimed their views on the ideal nature of NFTs, what they should be, and attempted to dictate how everyone else should approach and interact with these digital assets. This constant barrage of subjective assertions from influential figures contributed to widespread misconceptions and unrealistic expectations within the NFT space.

It's the reason for Bored Ape Yatcht Club's pivot into gaming even though nobody wanted it. It's also what pushed Saba to pivot her ideas, and sadly because of it Saba got burned out and gave up on FuzziMints.

🧶FuZZieMiNTS🧶

@fuzziemints

WAGMI is a lie. Not all NFT projects will make it.

Ours didn't.

This wasn't for the lack of hard work, collaboration, innovation or community. We lacked hype, an influencer network and also, maybe, luck.

Here are 5 things that you can learn from our failure.

9

5:33 AM • Jul 15, 2023

Many artists really had no idea what AI art was in 2021, and they were just as clueless with NFTs, many of them hadn't picked up a pen in years, they just started making NFTs from random notes or low effort paint.

I had some really great job opportunities but because of all this, I just couldn't align myself with the ethics of the companies. I spent a lot of the time just coding and hacking projects and freelancing for clients. Discovering how to code in solidity and make smart contracts. Now that AI is here, it feels like I can do even more so i'm super excited.

The real value of NFTs I own are very sentimental. Most of them were made personally for me, or made by friends whom I valued very much. I didn't buy a Fuzziemint for the longest time. It took me really understanding who Saba was as a person for me to purchase it.

The same goes with myself and the people that I've met through hackathons and freelancing. Online, we're kind of just drawn to people free from a lot random apps and chats. It's kind of unique and it's a uniqueness of connection that can't really be explained. That's the value of NFTs and digital ownership, this unexplainable feeling of connection that roots itself into different paths, connecting us to new people, experiences, and connections.

My best advice is, keep learning new things. Even if you aren't in computer science, an artist, a musician, or politician. Doesn't mean you can't learn. So many people switch majors, or change careers in their late 20s, 30s, or 40s. Have a change of direction at 55 or 60.

With a worldwide currencies embedded into the internet, and safety tools for children, we now have no excuse or reason to not be using their tools to connect and learn from other humans across the world, it's the most valuable thing that onchain tech, crypto, and NFTs has to offer.

"It isn't the value on a chart, it's the value in your heart." - Some corny guy

So many people in the world choose not to chase the spark of ambition they get when thinking about new things, they doubt themselves and tell themselves they're just "fitting in".
We learn so much just by transforming our shadow, and exploring new ideas.

My journey hasn't been getting lucky and buying some thousand dollar NFT, and valuing my worth based on money. My experience was connections and perspectives outside of my own, outside of capitalism, and sharing my gift of design with aspiring entrepeneurs and creatives.

That's why I don't use crypto for money, we use it for voting, and storing data, thoughts, creative ideas, it's how we were able to create a brand that's impervious to shutdown, a library, and a team of extremely talented builders with aspirations, dreams, and moxie.

~ God's Q