ranny

Lessons from InfoFI and ICO meta As someone who has been in crypto since 2021 but off CT and invested in over 100 projects with my friends (I know, story for another day). 2025 was hard mode fr and I hope to share my experience and lessons with you (a long read). I came into CT to build a personal brand (from TG trenches) in late July (I know, I was late to the meta, I had an IRL draining job and finished my one year program mid-July, so I had to come on CT after seeing the InfoFi wins from friends). Like any other 'newbie to CT' I was confused on what to do, how to grow or what to yap about, seems everyone figured it out, so I gravitated towards a project that was familiar to me at the time which was Union (been doing their airdrop since 2023), so it was a no brainer. But pretty quickly (more like after 3 weeks of yapping) I found out there were people yapping this project for months/a year and it was pretty difficult to gain mindshare or recognition with my posts, and so, I started pivoting slowly. Then Kaito update of nuking replies and yap thresholds came up, the once familiar landscape became a blur. I decided to focus on what I was interested in Defi, AI, Trading and Gaming (which didn't survive the bear). Along the way (mid-August), I discovered Almanak (through my friend @senseii). It felt like my Ikigai, it had ALL THREE, so the flow was seamless for me. I felt like a kid in a candy store while following the advice from most people with "motion" on CT, which is focus on 1-3 projects and max your conviction while growing your account. So I did just that. Put time, energy, finances and sleepless nights into my conviction while trying to skill up on my trading. After 2 months, the results started to show, started networking with people and the team members, my posts started gaining traction and even retweeted by the project. I was learning and growing, or so I thought. Then came my biggest hurdle, Cookie algo, with series of mental drain and self doubt, I moved past it and focused on what I could control, my posts and my growth. I started branching out slowly with my posts and exploring new things while posting my conviction. Met a great team focused on building and transparency. I wasn't looking to make quick buck, nahh, I wanted more, to automate my trading strategy and hopefully become a vault curator with my conviction. My expectations were high, not for launch (okay you caught me, maybe I'm lying) but for the future of this project. Then TGE happened, a colossal failure. I discovered in 17 minutes the immaculate team I thought would deliver, was faced with inexperience in their marketing, listing and liquidity provisioning teams. THE BENEFITS 1. Got to network with a lot of people and team members, built new online friendships. 2. Grew my account (most positive ROI). 3. Learnt more about DeFi especially Pendle and YTs. 4. Got to see real PMF from the ground up, used cool tech, vibe coded and saw potentials. 5. Saved a portion of my portfolio from the $19B liquidations in October and subsequent dumps thanks to going hard on Almanak yield vault and not half-arsing it. THE LESSONS 1. Being early to any meta is important, found out about that in 2021 ICO meta hence why I mostly skipped this ICO meta. I was already late to ICO meta by starting in September 2021, pretty close to the bear. ICO meta started in mid 2019 or 2020 if I'm not mistaken. 99% projects I invested in from 2021 till now are non-existent today, they were all max extractions or died naturally cuz of how brutal narratives shift in crypto. So I learnt how to spot extractions from a mile away. I was late to the infoFi meta, sad but true. 2. Narrative and hype is one of the key pillars to success for any project (pretty obvious, don't think it needs an explanation). I do think InfoFi is dying it's just in denial phase, sure we might have runners here and there but it fundamentally is. 3. Don't get emotionally invested in ANY project. I thought I built this with investing in different projects but Almanak was different because it felt like I was there from the beginning, that I had found my tribe. This made selling difficult, it just took the instinct of selling first release at TGE for ICOs and a rule I made after roundtripping to cut my losses. I sold 40% initially after some hesitation and made a second mistake of buying some back because I got emotional and believed in something. Sold my remaining 60% after the transparency update article. 4. When looking at a team, marketing/business experience is just as important as the dev side and so are supervisors. I saw how lack of an overall Supervisor for all departments in a team to checkmate all members crumbled a 4-year project in minutes. Teams are meant to intersect and communicate not isolate. Frontend messed up claims for community members, DDOS attack could have been spotted before launch, adequate liquidity for DEXes could have been provided and LPs seeded properly, lack of marketing experience on how to amend the situation. Just reports and long term hopium because no one, not even the team expected this. "Not my department, not my business" essentially killed the project in my opinion. I'm still inclined to use the tech, always have and I'm also considering buying some at these valuations and most likely at $10-20M FDV for the long run and maybe by some miracle they come out of this, but the chances are near impossible. 5. Journal your experiences and learn from your mistakes, note any red flags and think hard about whether you should ignore it or not. 6. Risk what you can afford to lose, don't borrow to grind. People who came out in slight profit or breakeven either ranked very high on the leaderboard or didn't buy YT. I burnt about ~$2.1k in YT and made about $1000 or less due to hesitations in selling (thanks to the ACM campaign rewards, could have been much worse). So net -$1.1k+ plus time, energy, resources and hopium. To everyone who my posts incentivized to buy YT, I'm truly sorry and I hope you made breakeven or experienced minimal loss which you can come out of. 7. Trade YTs don't just buy YTs, this would minimize burn and protect your capital to an extent, learnt this from my friend @Prasetyo_HK. He essentially used orderbooks on Pendle to time when he bought and sold YTs. Although, if the launch had a different outcome, we'd most definitely be having a different conversation. 8. Grow your account, stay relevant and show up daily searching for alphas, it's the most +EV thing you can do for any meta and it prepares you for the next of meta. Big accounts with motion yap and still get paid per post. These are my thoughts, do well to add yours.