We’ve addressed our prior experience with Spectiv and the Signal Marketplace in a Medium article, which was posted from the day we launched. We’re not trying to hide anything – we are proud of our conduct as a team in these projects. Here, we’ll respond to the concerns you guys point out:
We launched Spectiv in late 2017 and ended it in early 2020. As you might be aware, the crypto markets endured a jarring downfall over that time. Many projects — even those who followed through on developments, built functional products, and maintained positive community sentiment — didn’t survive that downfall. Spectiv was one of those projects.
We and many members of the retired Spectiv community reflect fondly on the project. We built an innovative decentralized ad platform, made major industry partnerships, and maintained a spirited community culture over its lifespan. We also set an unprecedented standard for transparency — for example, by publicizing all organization expenditures and tax documents. Although Spectiv was on the tram lines to an industry collapse, the project was conducted with grace, excellence, and honesty. No Spectiv founder ever sold any team tokens at any point in the project’s existence.
As markets took a turn for the worse, we did everything we could to weather the storm. We downsized the team, switched to remote working, cut out all noncritical expenses, and Nick/Dylan did not take a salary at any point from 2018–2020. As time went by and markets held low, we foresaw that reserves wouldn’t be able to support hosting/development costs much longer, and that it wasn’t prudent for us to continue expending capital to maintain a sinking ship. We elected to refund all remaining ETH holdings to token buyers. Without compensating ourselves, we refunded all of ~1000 ETH in January of 2020.
To sum it up for you guys, 2018 and 2019 were overwhelmingly difficult years, especially for small cap projects. Even if we were magicians, there isn’t much that we would have been able to do to come out of that successfully. The same can be said for most other small cap projects.
But you shouldn’t be focusing on the success / failure of a prior project. Entrepreneurs try things – sometimes those things work out and a lot of the time, they don’t. That is the nature of startups.
But unlike many teams, we went out of our way to refund reserves to buyers as we saw an imminent downfall – and didn’t pay ourselves a penny from those reserves. We held ourselves to the highest standard of integrity throughout the lifespan of the project.
Spectiv was a defeat – one which was heavily influenced by an overwhelmingly bearish crypto market. That defeat is not a reflection on the team. If there is any takeaway regarding the team as it pertains to Spectiv, it should be that we handled that defeat fairly and put the community first.
One last thing worth pointing out is that all BASE team tokens are locked for 12 months, then vested linearly over 12 months. We are long-term committed, because like always, we have and will conduct ourselves with the highest standards of honesty, transparency, and integrity.
The fact that we’ve had a failed project shouldn’t sully your view on Base Protocol. It should show you that, firstly, we have direct experience in launching a crypto project – we know what to do and what not to do. Secondly, it should show you that no matter the circumstances, we have always put our community first.
Make sure to refer to the team Medium article, which has been on the Base website since launch:
https://medium.com/@BaseProtocol/base-protocol-team-f64d0b62aa35