Why Bear Markets Are the Best Time to Build and Focus on Your Next Project
Bear market times are difficult for projects, especially in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. But it is an opportunity to focus on establishing solid fundamentals and building momentum.
Historically, bear markets have spelled uncertain times for the crypto sector. The first big Bitcoin bear market in 2014 was the result of the Mt.Gox hack, which rocked the industry at the time. The last crypto winter in 2018 lasted for almost two years, where we saw Bitcoin lose more than half its market cap, and top cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum saw a sharp drop as well.
At AllianceBlock, we know that bear markets are when innovation happens, fueling the next cycle of growth — always bigger and better than the last. What’s more, we’re making it easier than ever for budding projects to crowdfund their launches with our peer-to-peer funding platform, Fundrs.
Bear Market Inception
AllianceBlock itself was founded during the last bear market in 2018. Our original vision was to create a decentralized capital market, beginning with a decentralized investment platform, which is now coming to fruition in the form of Fundrs. Our Co-Founders Rachid Ajaja, Matthijs de Vries and Amber Ghaddar envisioned the platform to be fair, inclusive, transparent and participative, embracing the values and philosophies of decentralized technologies and taking advantage of the community’s collective intelligence.
We have first-hand experience of building in market conditions similar to the ones we face today. What we’ve learned is that budding entrepreneurs should use this period wisely. Bear markets level the playing field by bringing serious projects who are committed to their vision and mission to the forefront. The various market-influenced limitations allow for creativity and resolve to create beneficial innovations that stay for the long-term. During these periods, entrepreneurs are free to build their products, communities, and networks without the distraction of an externally-driven focus on short-term token price movements. It allows project founders to focus on innovations driven by technology by seeking out the best use cases for blockchain and Web3.
You can build engaged communities and involve them in helping to shape meaningful solutions with genuine user demand. You can establish your place in the ecosystem, and work on developing partnerships and affiliations that will deliver value greater than the sum of their parts.
It’s like paddling a wave in surfing — you need to build up your momentum as you’re waiting for the rise of the wave. Projects need to be strategic before they can surf the bull market by building up their technology, building their community, and continuing to grow and support their ecosystem.
With the benefit of our experience in operation over an entire market cycle, we know projects that can deliver strong fundamentals have the best chance of sustainable success, which makes bear markets the best time to build.
Fundrs Delivers on AllianceBlock’s Vision
Four years on from AllianceBlock’s launch, our vision has grown substantially as we’ve come across more opportunities to solve some of the most important challenges hampering DeFi adoption. The journey has been long, and we’ve greatly expanded on our mission, now aiming to provide an end-to-end infrastructure for projects in DeFi based on the challenges we’ve encountered. And now in 2022, with a suite of DeFi product launches under our belt, Fundrs is poised to deliver our original vision of a decentralized investment platform when it launches on Mainnet.
Let’s briefly recap on the progress of Fundrs to date. In December 2021, we launched the first iteration of Fundrs on the Testnets of five major blockchains — Ethereum (Rinkeby), Polygon (Mumbai), Avalanche (Fuji), BNB Smart Chain, and Polkadot’s Moonbeam (Moonbase Alpha).
If you’re new to Fundrs, then the announcement is worth reading in detail as it also provides a detailed overview of how Fundrs works, uniting Seekers (individuals and organizations looking to raise funds) with Funders (investors, experts and community members). The first deployment on Testnet allowed users to perform actions to generate t-rALBT that could be converted to rALBT once we launch on Mainnet.
Seekers are crypto startups, traditional startups, SMEs, or high net-worth individuals (HNWIs) seeking to raise capital on the platform. The first Testnet release allowed Seekers to go through a short questionnaire to check if they qualify for funding on Fundrs, and then fill up an application form to get listed in test mode. It was a first preview of the level of requirements and filtering that we implement to make sure the highest quality projects with solid fundamentals would be listed on Fundrs. In the future, through the Fundrs DAO, community experts and professionals can also help shape and advise on the value proposition of projects, allowing Seekers to focus on refining their pitch and focus on their work with the backing of a strong community.
In mid-January, we followed up with the launch of ALBT staking on the Ethereum and Avalanche Mainnets. Staking ALBT on Fundrs allows users to mint NFTs representing Gold, Silver, or Bronze membership tiers, depending on the amount of tokens they staked.
Each of these membership tiers has its own benefits, and with increasing multipliers for accumulating rALBT, the higher the tier. Still, all of them give stakers the ability to mint reputational token IOUs that are eligible for conversion to rALBT on the upcoming Mainnet version of Fundrs. This feature is still open, and full instructions on how to stake are available on YouTube and through the announcement blog.
Within 24 hours of the launch, ALBT holders had staked 3.75m ALBT, exceeding our expectations and demonstrating overwhelming demand for Fundrs and strong support of our community. As of today, there are over 12.18m ALBT staked, with over 8.31m rALBT claimed from the staking!
Last March, we released the full end-to-end experience for Funders and Seekers on Testnet. Funders are investors and experts, who are providing their investment and expertise for projects launching on Fundrs. This release expanded on what Funders can do and go through the end-to-end process of performing actions on the platform by voting and commenting on projects, signifying interest, participating in the decentralized lottery, and exchanging winning tickets for Funding NFTs.
AllianceBlock’s end-to-end infrastructure delivers solutions for blockchain startups and companies to meet their needs at various stages of their journey. Fundrs will serve as the gateway to the AllianceBlock ecosystem as we extend our reach to blockchain and crypto projects, as well as traditional startups.
What Makes Fundrs the Ideal Platform for Seekers?
AllianceBlock’s solutions aim to free up projects and developers from the time-consuming effort of raising funds and generating token liquidity for their new projects, so they can focus on building and developing their products. Moreover, Seekers can gain insights from the community before even starting to deploy their product or incorporate meaningful feedback as they progress in their development.
For Seekers, there are many benefits to choosing Fundrs. It offers a no-code crowdfunding solution that’s quick and easy to set up, freeing up time and resources. Being part of AllianceBlock’s ecosystem means that you get access to a consistent and familiar UX and UI across our entire suite of products — and can provide the same experience for your communities.
AllianceBlock is interoperable across many blockchain networks, meaning you can target for the chain that suits your needs best. There is also a stronger opportunity on launching on multiple chains to create more collaboration opportunities and offer more choices their users and communities.
We also build with security in mind. All of our smart contracts are audited at regular intervals and upon every application upgrade and release. Moreover, we are building with compliance and regulation in mind, allowing you and your communities access to a combination of permissionless and compliant offerings — completely optional, and the choice is up to you.
AllianceBlock Beyond Fundrs
Beyond Fundrs, being part of the AllianceBlock ecosystem offers many other opportunities. Projects launching on Fundrs can also list their token on the AllianceBlock DEX, which recently underwent a soft launch on Mainnet. The DEX uses AllianceBlock’s unique mathematical model to mitigate the issue of impermanent loss and in the future, enable single-sided liquidity provision.
Therefore, as the launch roadmap progresses, the DEX will become an extremely attractive venue for liquidity providers, and by extension, for projects seeking to bootstrap liquidity.
The DeFi Terminal gives you access to all your liquidity campaigns, providing a single (no code) interface to launch liquidity mining and single-sided staking campaigns with your token. You can also set up your pools to pay out rewards on top of earnings from trading fees in liquidity pools, or extra rewards for those who keep their tokens staked for a longer duration.
The AllianceBlock Bridge allows you to move crypto assets, including tokens and NFTs, across multiple networks, making it easy for your communities to participate in your launch on Fundrs, swapping across networks on the DEX, and joining campaigns on DeFi Terminal.
There are also several future releases as begin to shape out our end-to-end infrastructure. With the upcoming launch of TIDV, we are beginning the deployment of our compliance layer, which would allow compliant access for the DEX, inviting more institutional adoption. And with the launch of our APIs and SDKs in the latter parts of the year, we are offering a deeper level of access to our infrastructure beyond the ready-to-use solutions we have already launched or will be launching.
All together, AllianceBlock provides a full-featured DeFi solution for the launch and operation of your token, making it the ideal choice for your project. As we progress towards our launches in Q3 and Q4, AllianceBlock’s vision of creating a participative economy that helps projects at every stage of their journey is more and more coming into focus.
Wrapping It Up
After four years since the inception of AllianceBlock during the depths of a bear market, and with multiple products now in operation, we are now delivering on our vision of providing a decentralized funding platform for startup founders. On the journey to this point, AllianceBlock has ambitiously expanded our vision in a bid to solve some of the most pressing issues facing those in the DeFi sector, resulting in our multifunctional ecosystem with a suite of operational products.
With our experience of building through a bear market, we’re confident that Fundrs will empower a new generation of startup founders to take advantage of a break in the relentless focus on the markets and develop meaningful solutions of their own. In doing so, you’ll be primed for success once the recovery inevitably starts.
If you’re new to Fundrs and wondering if your project qualifies, then you can already complete the qualifying questionnaire as a Seeker on the Fundrs app.
On the other hand, if you’re one of the Funders that’s been waiting patiently for Fundrs to launch, then don’t hang around over the next few weeks — now is the time to leap into action and encourage your communities to start staking their ALBT so they can earn rALBT before the launch itself!
Make sure you’re following us on Twitter and are subscribed to our announcement channel on Telegram, so you don’t miss an update about the upcoming Fundrs launch!
About AllianceBlock
AllianceBlock is bridging the gap between decentralized finance and traditional finance, by remedying issues that exist in both spheres and linking them more closely together. They see the future of finance as an integrated system in which the best of both worlds can work together to increase capital flows and technological innovation.
Building this future by bridging traditional finance with compliant, data-driven access to new decentralized markets, DeFi projects and ecosystem-scaling tools such as funding and interoperability. As such, they are building a next-generation financial infrastructure that aims to provide regulated financial entities around the world with the tools they need to seamlessly access the DeFi space.
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