Fomo 3D
You could be forgiven if you haven't heard of Fomo3D yet. I debated whether or not I should even write about it, but the whole thing triggers so many thoughts and feelings in me, I had to write about it. The fact that I was already able to draw out more real ETH than I had initially deposited (and deposit it straight back in) may also have some influence on this... Whether or not you choose to do anything with this information is really up to you.
So what the hell is it? A big scam?
Well, yes and no. The dev team behind the dapp (decentralized app) is quite open about the fact that it is essentially a pyramid scheme/exit scam, though maybe not in the way you would expect, unless you have been around crypto for a while (more on that later). The way the developers accomplished this is by creating a fully self executing smart contract on the ethereum blockchain that divides any incoming funds between existing token holders, the active pot, an airdrop amount, etc... (check the wiki). Basically, the countdown timer has a hard cap of 24 hours, and each time someone buys a key, it adds 30 seconds to the timer. Whoever is the last person to buy a key when the timer drains gets the pot... which currently sits at over 15,000 ETH, and at current valuation is somewhere just below $7,000,000 USD. So it's going to be profitable for one person for sure (as long as the smart contract runs according to plan). As each key is bought, the price of purchasing a key rises as well. All of this adds up to a rather enticing gambling scheme.
At the same time, I have to say there are no promises or guarantees with putting ETH in this. As with all pyramids, previous success need not signal any promise of future success. But hey, hype trains can drive strange projects to massive heights, so who knows? The devs are on this page as well, saying on the wiki: "P3D makes literally no promises and is completely open and transparent about the mechanics of the system". Much more information about how the ETH is distributed and how the system works is also available on the wiki, or if you can read solidity, you can audit the contract code directly right here. From what I understand, once the first round is complete, it resets and starts again - so I really have no idea how long this will last, and whether future rounds will be profitable or not.
Anyway, I'm honestly not really here to sell you on the project at all, but give information and talk about why I think it's interesting - which I do. Even so, if you do decide to buy, do it through this link
Why do I care about this at all?
(besides my ETH in the contract)
For one, this reminds me in many ways of the first thing that got me into bitcoin, which was a cloud mining scheme that collapsed - Hashie.co. For those of you who were not part of the privileged few to "donate" money to some of the less honorable bitcoin ventures that included shady cloud mining companies, you may want to consider yourself lucky. I'll spare the full details, as much of the information can still be found in the archives of the cryptomining-blog or whatever is left on their bitcointalk thread. It may not be completely fair to call hashie.co a pyramid, even if it played out that way, but the story was that they got hacked and then basically disappeared... But also left behind their website that normally hosted the login for checking miner performance website with and mp3 of "Let It Go" embedded in the page, as part of an ARG (Alternate Reality Game). In any case, it wasn't a good situation, and there was a lot of uncertainty for a long period as things were worked out.
I ended up getting some BTC out of the whole situation, but not as much as I had put in. At the same time, the whole experience made me much more familar with how bitcoin worked, having had to purchase it for the first time, navigate a wallet, figure out the sending and receiving functions, and really just ended up making me more curious about the entire concept. After all, I had only lost the equivalent of about 40 bucks at the time, I wasn't broken from it. I ended up reinvesting in another cloud mining site, Genesis Mining which ended up being a legit cloud mining site. I don't necessarily recommend them, though I did make out pretty well with early ETH mining contracts with them. At the same time, I now know it's pretty easy to build a GPU miner which gives much higher payouts if you are comfortable building a PC and have reasonably priced power. Besides, Genesis doesn't seem to sell hashpower very often these days, but if they have some on sale and you feel like using a referral code for 3% off there, use Xe3KJO at checkout.
I'm wondering what the split between longtime ETH users and newbies getting into the space for Fomo3D would be? My initial guess is that it leans heavily to users that already had ETH to spend, but who knows? As the concept spreads, the actual concept of FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out, might play into more brand new crypto users trying to get in on those sweet, sweet profits after giving up hope on trying to get in and capitalize on BTC/ETH/Altcoin mooning. I just hope that it fosters some more engagement with the space if there are new crypto users that enter through this project even if they end up losing some money that they don't leave discouraged. Getting duped isn't just for the early adopters ;) I for one welcome any and all new users into our rapidly developing decentralized world.
One thing you might note about almost all of the old projects that I mentioned include affiliate links that benefit the recruiter somehow - this is and has always been a big part of the crypto space. It may be framed a little differently in the current ICO climate, but I don't think that concept has really left at all. The hype train on anything tends to build momentum and sometimes profit even with very little behind it.
Which then brings me to another reason Fomo3D is really interesting to me - it builds a hype train behind something that is seemingly ridiculous, and brands it as such. The ICO concept turned on its head, a project based on the ridiculousness of network effects and hype trains, while still being enticing and demonstrating a ridiculous growth curve in the investment to the smart contract. The fact that I am a social scientist and it has also been called "a psychological social experiment in greed" may also play into my morbid curiosity.
I'm also a fan of dry humor and tongue-in cheek proof of concepts, and occasionally also a fan of well placed schadenfreude (be honest, who isn't?). Fomo3D offers all of the above in spades. The brazenness of the concept combined with the utilization of smart contract technology is fascinating. Not to say that this is a project to model other dapps after, but the obvious thought and ingenuity imbued in what ends up being realized and manifest in a small piece of code running on a decentralized network, combined with the intrigue, hype, and yes, greed that it inspires is something that I can't help but describe as a strange, dark kind of beautiful. To be able to consciously design a smart contract that can inspire that range of human engagement is truly an achievement. The crypto and blockchain space needs people that are willing to think outside the box, code crazy ideas, and put them into motion, test them, and break things where they are susceptible so we can get to work on strengthening those spots for the next time.
Why Might You Care? - Gas Fees, Ethereum Congestion
(profits?)
I had dropped a bit of ETH into the contract a few days ago after seeing the project on stateofthedapps, and was curious to see how the smart contract was going, so I looked it up on etherscan. I also regularly check eth gas station, especially if I'm moving any coins around or breeding cryptokitties, and noticed the network was pretty jammed up today. I headed over to the gas burners tab, or a ranked list of the top gas-consuming smart contracts on the ethereum mainnet over the last 1500 blocks. I have been watching the Fomo3D smart contract fluctuate between 18% and 26% of the total network gas fees and traffic today, which is massive.
This has a couple effects that I can see that non-Fomo3D users might be concerned about. One is that the safe recommended gas fee for making transactions on the Ethereum network is quite high, and there are currently over 3000 unconfirmed transactions, even just on this one contract. This is a bit of a bummer for anyone working to deploy any smart contracts in the near future on the network, and could have a real effect on currently operating smart contracts in the system. I can understand why some people might also have issues with the project for those reasons. It reminds me a lot of the cryptokitties launch. Any dapp that takes up that much of the overall traffic deserves a serious look, both for reasons of deciding personal involvement, but also for evaluating the deployment of smart contracts as a whole and the effect that high traffic generating contracts can have on the whole network. Obviously cryptokitties was the first, but Fomo3D won't be the last, so it is important to take note of the situations as they occur.
Vanity Links
One other fun thing that Fomo3d has allowed is the purchasing of vanity URLs for 0.01 ETH that are also used as referral links. In honor of the reminder of my experience with Hashie.co and the very similar feel of divs and reinvestment, I registered http://exitscam.me/hashie. What better way than to pay homage to an old pyramid in the new one? Make sure to use the http://exitscam.me/hashie link if you decide to take my terrible advice and buy some keys to get in on these profits ;)
Yes, you may have noticed that I embedded the vanity link almost everywhere I mentioned Fomo3D in the article. That's just good referral practice ;)
In case you missed it before, my referral link is:
http://exitscam.me/hashie << or >> http://exitscam.me/hashie
http://exitscam.me/hashie << or >> http://exitscam.me/hashie
Good honest read. 👍😃.
It is a 10 mile mine field covered in tall grass filled with venomous snakes...Those of us who make it will be rewarded more than they can ever imagine. 😁
Thanks for the compliment and the response :)
I'm very curious to see how this all plays out... I've got the popcorn ready!