I'm about to share my story on why I stepped back from the
@Ronin_Network in this post.
The events in question have to do with what I perceived as copycatism within Ronin.
This is a story I've held onto for a long time. Before I share it, I want to say: I still see the people who did this to me as friends. I am also not okay with what they did.
At the time, I had come up with an idea I was really passionate about: AxieDexia.
AxieDexia was meant to be an open-source encyclopedia for axie, heavily inspired by Bulbapedia, the pokemon wikipedia.
It was 2023.
I dreamt of building a place for other people to be able to escape and write. It was something I needed at the time, and building the Axie Dexia was my escape. I taught myself some basic coding, brainstormed the name, inspired by the PokeDex.
I soft launched the project in July or August of 2023. I released the website, with a description of what it was,an axie wiki, and as a real wiki. Anyone could write in it, just like in Wikipedia. One day, a rush of traffic found the site. I wondered who it could have been?
In September, the official Axie account announced a competing project: LunaLog.
I felt a sense of disappointment and shock. I try to be fair and neutral, so maybe this was some kind of coincidence. But it didn't feel like it.
I felt unable to compete with them. I had nothing. They created the game. My dream was slowly slipping away.
I still didn't want to let the project go. I was on the way to my first day of work at a new job, in the back of an uber. I decided to pursue a path of hope, and wrote the thread introducing it from my own account. Then, I let Professor Azalea take over, whose likeness ran our account handle, at the time called Axiedexia (now renamed to Azaleadexia).
Professor Azalea was my invention, one that I am extremely proud of. A spirited, quirky and passionate axie professor.
Despite Luna Log, people were excited about AxieDexia. People wrote in it. People were especially excited about Professor Azalea, who became a hit in the community, with many larger community members including Axie founders quickly following.
I wrote the posts for Azalea, and tried to keep her as separate from myself as possible, more or less feeling that this was a "Character" in a world.
Shortly after, I saw a post by Axie Infinity, introducing Professor Jihoz, who was going to be talking about their own Axie encyclopedia, LunaLog.
"The lunalog is a compendium of information related to the Axie Infinity Universe", Jihoz explained in the video.
I felt embarrassed for them. I felt embarrassed for myself for having had a dream to do anything in this ecosystem. Not only did they put out a competing project. Not only did they feel so insecure that they couldn't handle having a community wiki, they also, with no nod to us at all, came out with a competing character.
Axie did give us one or maybe two early reposts, which was helpful. After that, they ignored us for the most part, promoting their own product, Lunalog. I remember telling someone I was close to that Jihoz had started posting as Professor Jihoz. Her disgust at this kind of behavior was palpable on her face.
People still took to the Axie Dexia at first. I spent my own money to buy Axies for giveaways. We got one piece of support, from a very generous community member, who gave us a Christmas Axie for us to give to a community member. He wasn't, to my knowledge, associated with Sky Mavis or Axie, in any respect.
That was it. We never got support from Axie. They ignored our DMs.
Their actions spoke volumes though. They wanted to have their own product.
I perceived no desire to let a community built product flourish.
What amazed me was the level of insecurity at play. I also felt offended when they called their project a "wiki,". Axiedexia was an actual wiki, which is an opensource website infrastructure that makes it so anyone can add to it.
Their project was closed sourced, and no one in the community could just write articles for it, to my knoweldge. I felt offended for the wikimedia, opensource vision, that they would call their product a "wiki" when it was the definition of closed source and centralization.
In the end, I decided to walk away from working on this project. I didn't want to compete with them anymore, and it's very, very, very difficult to build a start up. They need incubation, they need support, in order to hatch into something beautiful, and I didn't want to try to do that in an ecosystem that felt unwelcome for me as a builder.
So, why am I telling my story now?
A few months ago, I realized that a promiment organizaiton in Ronin, that I won't name, had put out a product that was basically a carbon copy of another project I'd helped to build, which was a newsletter for axie.
That organization had approached us and wanted us to write a newsletter for them. What I heard from my partner was they wanted us to write it for $50. Each newsletter takes days to make and multiple people. Just lol.
So, when we refused, I guess their current product was then born somewhere down the line. I saw my work up there in their product, the tone I had developed, the layout and style one of our other founders had developed. It was more or less a carbon copy, just less well executed. And no credit to our work. I didn't even know this thing existed.
I looked around the ecosystem, and started to build a thesis. I think we all know Open Ronin hasn't gone so well.
My thesis is: this isn't the failure of one product launch, "Open Ronin." This is likely the result of this sort of attitude towards builders, for years. I wonder who else had similar experiences as I? Who else had felt thwarted?
As I looked around, I started to see signs of copycatism or similar stories of builders feeling thwarted in other places. I won't tell them here, because they're not my story.
My thesis is Open Ronin's mess is a culmination of many decisions that hurt builders. I believe this style of decision making caused creative, quirky people who would become builders to leave the ecosystem.
Can you imagine the Ethereum Foundation or the Solana Foundation doing things like this to builders?
To anyone who read this far, thank you. To the writers who wrote in AxieDexia, at one point I believe I downloaded a lot of the work, so if there was anything you wrote and want, just reach out. And thank you so, so much for writing in my project.
Why does this matter? I believe we're on the very edge as an eccosystem. I also believe this kind of dynamic is one of the underlying reasons. We need to be inviting and supportive of builders. Not just to say we are. We need to be it.
In my experience, this was not a supportive place to build.
To Jihoz, who is probably one of the only people who read this far: this wasn't okay. I don't know if you're ever going to talk to me again, but I'd still be okay to be your friend.
To the person whose organization knocked off our newsletter: this wasn't the right way to make your newsletter. If you wanted to so closely use our tone and style, ask us, and give us some credit, if you had of asked in advance, we probably would have given you our OK. If you didn't want to do that, come up with your own tone and style, please. I don't really know you well, but don't do this sort of thing to other builders and creators, please.
Anyway, love to anyone who read this.
And what about me? Am I just fudding? Am I leaving? No. I've been here too long to leave, and I hope if you were my friend here, you're still my friend. I've been an "outsider" since day one of almost anyone knowing who I was, when my SLP article went viral, lol. I also launched my writing career here long before the Axie Dexia and the newsletter project, when the first article I ever wrote in my life, which was about Axie, won an award in
@hackernoon.
I'll still be around, writing in some cafe in Lunacia. And I hope things get better, and that I can help make them better. That is what this post is about. Things that need to change.