New Cluster Proposal: NFT Safety and Legitimacy Cluster (NSLC)

Clusters
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Hey, everyone!

Quickly before I outline the proposal, I just want to say I love Canto and I love this whole idea of the Canto clusters. I really like what Canto is shooting for in terms of true decentralization and user-ownership, self-custody, etc. The core tenants of crypto are alive and well here!

So, as someone who loves the space, I’ve been quite saddened by the amount and intensity of rugs in the Canto NFT space. When I heard of Canto, I quickly rushed to get over here ASAP as I saw it as an emerging space, a place where I could network and get to know the key players before it blew up, and like I said above, a place where my own ideals were reflected. I began an NFT project (Cantoasis, some of you may have seen or heard of it) and it took me about a month of nose-to-the-grindstone work to get everything set up. Unfortunately, during that month as I participated heavily in the space, the Alto chat, etc, I watched so many different projects spring up, suck liquidity from the market, and then rug, leaving nothing of value behind and taking away opportunities for legitimate creators such as myself and other great emerging Canto projects like Impulses, Duks, and so on.

So, I was hoping to spearhead an initiative to try to stay on top of upcoming NFT releases, contact potential projects to discuss their plans, checking to make sure that project art isn’t stolen or copied, etc. I would be looking to partner with multiple other projects that I’ve already networked with in the space that are legitimate.

Now, I recognize that this is a potentially problematic venture. To be clear: I am not suggesting some kind of board that says whether or not projects can launch. Canto should be free for all. Rather, I am suggesting some kind of system that potential investors could use to check up on projects before choosing to invest in them.

My dream version of this cluster would be a large, multi-faceted and extremely diverse group of NFT creators and enthusiasts who work together to keep Canto investors safe from rugs.

I’m open to thoughts, suggestions and criticism. Unless I get some extremely negative responses, I will likely begin putting a team together to work on this soon…

My project link below for those curious:

https://twitter.com/cantoasis

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Sounds like a great idea, would love to get involved!

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Hey Merk I love the idea as well and we would be happy to help in any way!

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Awesome! You’re definitely a trusted individual in the space, that’s a good start :rocket: :alien:

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Thank you, your project is looking great, completely successful so far! I trust you too, let’s build out from here :rocket: :alien:

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It is a great idea and I would love to be a supporter for this!

I truly believe that we can improve the NFT space generally by sticking together as team and support each other where we can.

I am also tired of ruggers (and paid shillers)…

We even partnered up with a rug project on Canto which made me more cautious of whom to work with.

Together we can make it a safer place for investors or art collectors, who don’t have much free time or the knowledge to research projects.

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when cion had to delay their nft bc of this issue (ppl were asking for the contracts etc, they denied, and after some discussions they had to pospone it) there was a complex porposal, about a DAO like using neons as collateral, deposit nfts untill everything seems legit, oc this breaks the permissionless of the chain so its complex but there can be a project involved in this so if its “Xproject” endorsed well things will be better
ps: also being here is just some kind of a good sign, most ruggers are lazy as fuck
ps2: ok so 5 min of research and canteen has a liquidity locker, not the same as making a dao to audit contracts but goes with the same vibe

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Glad to hear it, TOR! I respect your grind as someone with years of experience in the space and clearly your DAO is helping many to explore the ecosystem, grateful for your aid as well!

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Yes, the guy who runs Canteen is legit as far as I know, we can definitely work with him! However, I’m not sure about a financial incentive… I meant more like a network of trust, so if someone within the network can vouch for you, that’s a good sign that the project may be more legit than others. I don’t want anyone to feel forced to pony up cash before they drop a project! I myself don’t have any money, really, and am grateful for Aspen and The Canto community for allowing me to launch here.

But yeah, there’s definitely something there. If we can get some kind of financials involved in some way it could definitely help to keep people honest! Let me know if you develop this idea any further…

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Ok everyone, it seems like most of the interested parties are already in the Canto Taqueria, so I’m going to ask the owner of that discord if we can use the mod/project owner chat there as a homebase, or maybe make a new chat within it.

For anyone interested, that’s this discord…

It already has the goal of being a chill/positive community hub for Canto, so I think it’s a great place to build out from!

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Hey! Thanks a lot for jumping in. Looking forward to seeing how this plays out!

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Thank you very much! I’m definitely open to comments, criticism or suggestions so please feel free!

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Alright folks, so, porting over the core content from the discord just to make sure everyone can see what we’re discussing, I started a list of trustworthy projects:

"For whoever would like to join, let’s start with a list of trusted projects who likely have legitimate project owners. For me, just off the top of my head:

  • Me xD in all seriousness though, I am serious about the Cantoasis. We will be relaunching soon (about ten days away, Sunday the 16th) and airdropping replacement tokens for all original holders, and I have more free content for holders to follow. I’m doing what I can to provide value, definitely haven’t rugged.

  • @⋐ui | Degenesys ( @Cui ) and the rest of the Degenesys team has already run a poker night with great prizes! Cui is super kind and supportive and they’re definitely doing enough building for their project that it would be stupid to rug. Clearly, it’s legit.

  • is CryptoffChillen in here? From The CantoVerse ( @CantoVerse )? That’s another project that hasn’t launched yet, however, his vibes are great and they already did a free airdrop. Technically still possibly a rug but from my interactions he seems trustworthy so I’m expecting it to be legit

  • @TORusweb3 has already created a large DAO and organized a discord full of contests, free WL opportunities, etc. It’s a bit bloated (I mean no offense but there are a lot of people in there who can @ everyone and so on, so I’m not gonna vouch for literally everyone there), so I’m not sure if we can trust EVERYONE in there but he certainly seems legit. Crypto old head from back before I even began buying ETH or Crypto who genuinely seems to want to help others to learn and grow.

  • k41r0s#8788 from CantoDuks already delivered a token and the coinflip game for holders, he said he’s working on some other stuff, the project may continue or it may not but it definitely wasn’t a rug and the dude seems cool

  • arno kiss from impulses. I don’t know him personally and if we’re being honest I don’t think he’s super serious about Canto but he technically didn’t rug as he did airdrop stuff for all impulse holders

  • The Orka founders. This one is iffy as the project had MANY issues at launch but I would argue if they were rugging, they’re doing it pretty slowly. They’ve been doing giveaways and stuff, active in the chat, got some help creating a discord bot to verify holders. They seem like they’re here for the long haul

  • and of course we have @jefsauce , I don’t really know you but this Taqueria idea really feels genuine and positive, you have my vote of confidence right now just for doing the work of setting this up. So far I haven’t seen you try to leverage it for a quick buck so that’s a great sign! And I really appreciate you being open to this cluster idea, thanks for hosting us :pray:

Then, what else is there? Who else has info on major Canto projects and their legitimacy? For example:

  • early birds were cloned here from Sol (not stolen, same guy for both, but still) but their creator seems nice! Some people accused him of being a rug/fake/scammer but then apparently he was exonerated? It happened in the Alto chat a while back but as far as I remember, he was accused, his accusers provided no evidence, then it was floated that maybe the ppl who scanned them were pretending to be him so I guess he’s safe? It kinda threw me off on the project and made me nervous but he seems nice enough, I have nothing against him really. Anyone else vouch for him?

  • Canto Cuties kind of rugged :confused: they promised this whole analytics platform, started it, then killed the project like 3 days later. They finally came back to the chat and said something about it not being over or whatever but I would be slow to trust. How do others feel?

  • anyone know what’s going on with Cypher Skulls? 6e61.eth#4719 did promise the game but I’m not a holder so I dunno if it’s happening or not

Anything else? Please list your thoughts, let’s get this organized :rocket::alien:"

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Hey Merk - yes sir I am here. I can assure we are not a rug (but we are having a bit of a time with the staking contract… that has been our primary hold up). We have the NFT contract complete, mint site complete, air drop claim site complete, validator node running but again are just struggling to finalize this staking contract. We also are working some on the metaverse as well (as displayed in the COH demo) and will shift gears to 100% focus on metaverse as soon as staking contract is complete and live. Also worth noting, we will run the mint as soon as staking contract is live as well.

Thank you for the kind words and validation.

Now - per projects.

Pumped Rats
@PumpedRatsNFT
I’d like to add Pumped Rats to the list to watch. So far they seem legit and are just suffering from lack of NFT interest on Canto. They switched up their mint to free for their original series and paid for a 3d model. I’ve interacted with the founder and they seem legit. Seems like a cool concept as well with their clothing line launch. Just wanted to add them to the list and add my experience with them!

Orkas
I’ll also add, per Orkas, that I’ve spoke with their leaders as well and they seemed interested in a collab (we want to integrate other projects for sprites to be used in game) and they were supposedly building out a sprite but that was several weeks ago. Haven’t really seen a lot of activity in discord since then either. Again, I’m not really sure what to say about this project. I guess I’m hoping they are just waiting to announce updates until Canto NFT interest picks back up.

Cantofornians
@Cantofornians
Then there are the cantofornians - I believe a finalist in the COH S5. Unlaunched. I don’t believe a rug but they have not been active for roughly a month. Another project I’m hoping that is silently building while anticipating Canto NFT hype. Just wanted to put on the radar as well.

Mintworld
@MintWorldGG
A project I would like to research more is Mintworld. They have a working demo on Polygon/Matic and I believe it is what they submitted to the COH S6. Because they launched on another chain first and are now migrating to canto just makes me a little uneasy. Hopefully someone else has more experience with this time and can vouch for them but personally I just have them on my radar as questionable. Would love any feedback though that anyone else can provide.

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Not to derail the conversation regarding projects but something I have wanted to bring up with this cluster is the discussion of projects doxing. I’ve had several people ask if we are or plan to dox and its made me really think. Personally, I do not have a problem with doxing at all. However, I’m just unsure if it follows the ‘ethos’ of Canto? I guess I’m weary of starting a trend (projects ‘needing’ to be doxed) if its something the community doesn’t really support? Anonymity seems to be a staple of BTC OGs and I get a similar vibe for Canto.

I would really love feedback on this matter and appreciate it.

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I may shoot Reverend a dm (founder of canteen) to see if he would be interested in joining the cluster. It may be beneficial to pick his brain a bit about the lockers and how they could possibly be implemented in an effort to legitimize a project.

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Sorry, I was quoting from the Canto Taqueria discord which you may not be in, the partner channel there? But yes thank you for being here, this is why I ported the notes over from there, I want to make sure it’s all accessible to anyone! and yeah I’m definitely NOT expecting you to rug, it’s just a shame that in this industry, and specifically in Canto right now, it’s hard to fully trust any project before launch. That’s what this is all about though, and I appreciate your desire to join the initiative!

Yes, whoever runs pumped rats has been quite kind to me as well! I don’t know as much about their project as you do, but I’m happy to add them to the extended list of likely legit projects.

Yeah, agreed on Orkas. The founders seem great but given the current lull in the market, it’s hard to tell between building and giving up sometimes. I’m hopeful they’re building.

Interesting, I’ll have to look into the cantofornians… the name sounds familiar, I’m sure they were on my radar at some point, I’ll go double check…

Mintworld is something else I’ll have to look into more, thank you!

Now, the talk on doxxing is great! This is something that, as you say, needs to be treated delicately. Just like in my original post how I made it clear that I am not trying to make this the Canto NFT cops or some kind of final judge of who can and can’t drop, I think the same thing should apply for doxxing. I ultimately want this cluster to help people to make intelligent, informed decisions without actively trying to control or dictate anything. So, in terms of doxxing, while it obviously can build trust, it can also be a whole lot for the creator.

Personally, I’ve never doxxed myself for my art, not in a decade. I like the anonymity just in terms of separation of my life as an artist and my person life outside of that. Of course, a select few individuals have been to my shows or know me IRL first, so my identity isn’t a huge secret, but I like being A-Merk online. I wouldn’t want to take that away from anyone, especially once money and angry crypto bros get involved.

In my opinion, doxxed founders should simply be one point in the “trust” column of our evaluation of a project, not some kind of necessity. I appreciate your initial hesitance with the suggestion, I do think Canto is very close to the original vibes of crypto and anonymity was one of those. I do think it should be protected.

Perhaps we could continue an idea that @Cui floated in the Canto Taqueria? Projects could dox to each other, like for example, the members of this Cluster could dox to each other, therefore allowing us to trust each other more, and build out from there? Again, it would be delicate to make sure this didn’t feel forced.

And yeah, please do! I’ve been meaning to reach out to him to talk about the Canteen. That’s a great idea!

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Oh no worries at all. Thanks again for the kind words.

Per doxing to follow up - I like how you described your “online identify” vs irl. I like to keep the two separated as well.

Shooting from the hip, having teams dox eachother sounds more reasonable for sure. It would be a tough balance between this cluster preventing rugs vs “some final judge” as you said but i also agree that doxing should just be a single check on the box so to speak.

I feel we share the same sentiment in not wanting anything feeling forced and balancing things out but I greatly look forward to hearing others opinions on this.

Ive shared the link to this forum with reverend and he is passing a long to the canteen team. Hopefully we’ll see them join in on the conversation.

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Thank you, I look forward to hearing from him and/or his team about this initiative!

As for doxxing, let’s continue these discussions with others in the Cluster when they have the time. I think it would be a good step for us if others could agree.

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Ok, everyone, porting over some more notes from various places:

Colin from Alto raised some important concerns about the Cluster, such as, “who defines legitimacy” and "what happens if this cluster (or one of the members) is simply bribed by an upcoming project?

The second concern is easier to deal with: since the entire idea was never to be some kind of board that decides who can or can’t mint, bribes shouldn’t be a huge issue. We could have people in the cluster tell lies or support the wrong people, because of bribes or other reasons, but there will never be a situation where we’re deciding what’s happening and people want to bribe us to be allowed to do stuff. So, that should be a minimal concern. In general, we’ll try to vet everyone who contributes to the cluster quite intensely and get to know them before they’re doing anything major, and hopefully, that’s enough.

As we’ve discussed above, at some point, you have to trust people. You can’t make them do anything, ultimately, you can just hope that their interests align with yours. So far, I trust the people in here. Let’s work to keep it that way!

Then, in terms of “who defines what is and isn’t legit”, I think that’s been a good challenge for us. @CantoVerse and I were talking after we read Colin’s comments and it became clear that our focus should be simply on providing information.

This is more of a refinement of what’s been discussed already than a change in direction, but I think it’s good to clarify:

Our mission is to create a web of trustworthy individuals in the Canto NFT space who can gather information and be trusted when they present it. Then, we will begin to catalogue everything we know about every project in an unbiased way and make that information available to everyone.

So, in the simplest form, we could have a spreadsheet with a few columns for each project, such as, “Where is the art from?” (ie, is it stolen? paid for? copied?), “Is the founder doxxed” (as mentioned above, not necessary, but could be good for confidence), “What is the proposed price per NFT”, “What plans, if any, do the founders have for the money”, etc etc etc.

Then, prospective buyers could look projects up on this spreadsheet and make their own conclusions based on the data. As always, NFA and DYOR are key concepts in crypto, but if we work together I think we can bring enough info to the masses to make the space a little safer for everyone (except scammers!)