We here at Serenity Shield would like to express some of our collective thoughts on the current state of the market. Some of the views in this piece will no doubt resonate with many throughout the Web 3.0 and blockchain space. Unfortunately, not everyone will share them. For those of you who do or find purchase within you somehow, we welcome you to work alongside us to build a better tomorrow. Ultimately, that has guided our actions and will continue to do so.
Looking Forward
As Serenity Shield took its first tentative steps, from proverbial cocktail napkin to working prototype to live solution, we have remained amazed constantly by the number of intelligent, passionate, community-driven people we encounter. So many people in the Web 3.0 space have approached blockchain technology with genuine humanitarian interest. It encourages us to see many right-minded people and projects placing principles above mundane priorities.
For example, one need only drop into one of the many Twitter Spaces catering to the industry. From Cosmos Hoss’s channel, Genfinity.io’s Twitter Spaces conversations, and the burgeoning intellectual ecosystem built around the industry, the variety and multitude of forward-thinking people abound. That fact alone gives our team immense confidence in the future of our industry.
Not Everyone Is An Ally
Still, one would be foolish to act as if what we have witnessed over the past year does not represent a massive step — or five — backward. With a knife, one could almost cut the distrust circulating within the space, and throughout the outside world. So thick the pessimism and skepticism become. This holds true despite the recent massive retracement in the overall market.
For those of us here for the right reasons, this turn of events no doubt casts a pall over the space. The optimists like to overlook or dismiss the bad actors, the confident men, and the shysters. Some have enough integrity to tell us up front what they are here for — to make money. Somehow, we consider that modicum of honesty a sufficient reason for praise. Only later do we bemoan their predictable heel-turn when they show us precisely who they said they were in the first place.
Crucially, it should not be misunderstood as us collectively just missing the mark, trying with all our might but coming up short. No, we are talking specifically about the arrogant recklessness that infects the space. The “hooray for me, to hell with you” mentality. It is about the sociopaths and snakes that crawl amongst us, waiting for the opportunity to take full advantage of well-meaning people trying to build something great. This is about us allowing those crooks to squander one of the most incredible opportunities to empower the very people who already get victimized that the modern era has ever presented to us.
Starting With the Person In the Mirror
The bottom line, we need to become much more cautious in who we allow to become the mouthpieces for our movement. We need to raise our standards, not just our principles, but the expectations we place on others. We must insist on it!
More importantly, we can no longer afford to allow the hoodlums and hooligans to ride on the coattails of the well-meaning. When those of us with a more humanitarian bent allow them to use us as cover for their inevitable villainy, we have no one to fault but ourselves when the other shoe inevitably drops. Allowing ourselves to be exploited in this way does not just hurt our reputation and impede progress. More importantly, it costs the very people we intend to help.
Consider for a moment the damage that has resulted from the litany of fraudulent, criminal behavior associated with the FTX scandal, the Genesis/Gemini Earn shenanigans, or the Terra/LUNA collapse. The financial carnage and the wreckage to public trust they caused cannot and must not be understated. The grifters pushed back broad adoption for years, and for the worst reason possible. The “civilians”, the very people so many of us intend to help, now feel this space is beyond toxic… and rightfully so. Whatever goodwill had been garnered previously has dissipated. It will take us years to rebuild the trust needed to facilitate broad adoption.
Our True Mandate
Fundamentally, we must provide bleeding-edge cryptographic tools to solve the problems of a more digital human experience. We must accomplish this simultaneously while educating the world about their importance. Equally, doing so in readily accessible and understandable ways. Blockchain technology will revolutionize human society and commerce. That much we know for sure. Therefore, we must proceed responsibly, taking a conservative and forthright approach to our business operations and communication. All this must come before profit. Otherwise, we replace one burdensome and exploitative paradigm with another. ‘The Who’ had something to say about that.
Ultimately, we all bear a glorious responsibility to humankind. Let’s build our solutions, deliver them to the world, and do so honestly and in good faith. If we believe that centralized authority is the cancer that rots human society, we must lead by example. We cannot rely on appeals to the powerful to arrive at the most reasonable time for their bottom line, like some financial deus ex machina — no matter how much they would like this scenario to play out.
The Road Forward
Despite all that has transpired involving the metaphorical scorpions and snakes operating in Web 3.0, the Serenity Team remains optimistic for the future. When all is said and done, and we have a better handle on the extent of the fallout from the cascading debacles of the past year, the future remains not only unwritten but promising. The blockchain industry will stabilise since many bad actors have been identified and dealt with appropriately.
Consequently, a more stable industry will entail significantly broader adoption — eventually. That wider adoption will enable significantly deeper technological integration into all discrete interactions in our society. As the digitization of our culture proceeds, we will develop a substantially more significant reliance on fundamental technologies. In the meantime, we must take this opportunity to follow our advice. We cannot use blockchain to reinforce the high risks and power dynamics it is intended to solve. Similarly, we cannot succumb to the incentivized cynicism that pervades the Web 2.0 and analog world.
We intend to leave from the front on this, but we cannot do this alone. We welcome all good-faith partners to build the world we wish to see. Let us work together. They cannot stop us all.
Join Us
For more information, please join us on our Telegram channel. There, you will be the first to know about official project announcements and developments. You can also find us on Twitter, Discord, and our website. Please visit our whitepaper and previous articles here for a more in-depth discussion of our project. We are always available on all of our platforms to assist with your Web 3.0 questions.
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