The End Of Koinos?

Well, it seems Koinos might be toast

What is Koinos you ask? That's exactly the point: after 5 years of development the chain hasn't really caught on and is now likely not to survive 2025.

A bit of a personal take

Ever since the announcement of former Steem developers to build a new chain, I was pretty much involved in the whole process that unfolded. From the shaky start of mining new tokens and airdropping them to users on mainnet, to the ATHs of over $2 and the 95% correction back to now sub 10 cents again. Many projects (well not that many) came and went, around half of the people I knew from the start aren't around anymore. There are over 13k Telegram users in the official group, but I would argue there are at most maybe 200 active users. There was a pretty cool game being developed (like Splinterlands) "Lord of Forsaken" of which the main devs jumped ship and rugged the LP on KoinDx.

Andrarchy (aka Andrew Levine) was the CEO of Koinos Group for many years and there were many ambitious goals. Like onboarding 100k users in 6 months and creating 30 (or something like that) dapps. In reality maybe 1k users were onboarded and the chain had only around 10k users/wallets this year - after 5 years. In fairness, there were quite a few developments which weren't favorable and couldn't be foreseen. Like devs jumping ship or getting involved with the Chainge DEX (which are now struggling for survival as well) or having MMs on CEXs that terminated. I admire the conviction that KG had and the resources they spent from their own pockets to keep things going. It's a shame that things turned out as they have.

KG will likely start a new chain...

Yes, a new chain. At least it is in discussion, nothing finalized yet. But it's clear that this is where the momentum is leaning towards atm. The main reason for this idea is that Koinos has always lacked funding. Hive has the ninja mined stake which has been used for the DHF (which I personally think was a great idea, because I have seen what happens to a chain that lacks funding). No funds for paying devs or marketing or even keeping the infrastructure going... It's clear that this isn't a sustainable situation. So what's the solution?

A new chain with a 50% (?) premined stake. : ) It's of course the exact opposite of what Koinos stood for: a chain with no premined stake and no VC. I suppose we can look at the whole Koinos story as an experiment: what happens if you want to create a chain and launch it fairly? The answer is disappointing: it won't work(*). Yes, we can argue that all the wrong circumstances coalesced at the wrong time. That certainly is possible. But it's also clear that a chain dies without funding. Even an "inflation even" as is also being proposed as an alternative doesn't solve this problem, since it will add tremendous downward pressure (this is what happened to Chainge).

Conclusion

Should I sell my stake? Well I couldn't even because most of it is locked up in a burning contract and the main CEX lacks liquidity. So I will probably just see what happens. I agree that Koinos' future is looking dire if no radical steps are taken so I am not really in favor to keep going till the lights go out.

It also reminds me that Hive(*) truly is a one in a kind chain. We do not have a premined stake belonging to one party (although the top whales could easily vote for themselves, which does happen) and we never had a VC. And yet we are listed on dozens of exchanges and have an amazing ecosystem, community and ongoing development (DeFi connection is finally coming as well). Which other chain can say that about themselves?

Tagging @geekgirl for a comment on this situation since I know she was an early adopter as well.

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