Subscribe to ALANA's ⚡NewsFlash⚡
>200 subscribers
When I started The ALANA Project as a personal avatar project a few years ago, I would not have thought that it would turn into a community that outlives many other creative educational projects built on the evolutionary sentiments of Web3.
But here we are, almost 4 years later, quietly building in the background and still standing strong. As we close out 2025, we can proudly pat each other on the back for several reasons and in several ways as members of the ALANA community.
We have been further clarifying our infrastructure as a community that keeps decentralizing, expanding our paid and open-source product universe, and laying the groundwork for a more resilient, creator-first future in 2026.
This report mirrors the livestream I did on the 28th of December 2025. It offers a written snapshot for ALANA members, collaborators, and partners who prefer to read the story of what was built—and what is about to emerge. Nonetheless, here is the recording, for those of you who prefer the podcasty version:
This year, we focused much of our energy and resources on Infrastructure and Branding.
The Infrastructure & Strategy working group gave ALANA's NewsFlash a new home here at Paragraph and worked diligently to decentralize ALANA further.
With Paragraph, we not only adopted a more decentralized newsletter and blogging service but also onboarded more community writers. A big shoutout on that note goes out to Lutra, Dani, and Shellpen. Thank you for having your digital pens ready whenever ALANA asks for them and for contributing your brainpower to a free educational system.
Thank you also to greyscale for his hours of research and summarizing core principles of novel technologies, tokenomics design, and more, so all of us had to do less reading.
Here is what we did in 2025:
We made Snapshot our primary governance platform
We launched official membership NFTs powered by Unlock Protocol
We officially implemented the ALANA manifesto, aka "10 Principles of a Good Community," as our north star in ALANA
We created a meticulous Contribution Calculator system that works as an internal backbone for accountability and fairness.
We created and implemented two ALANA multi-signature wallets: one for the ALANAmagazine branch and one as a decentralized wallet for the overall project.
While webinars played a smaller role this year, I promise we will be back even stronger in 2026 with a stronger focus on creator monetization and strategies than ever before. We know you need this, and so do we!
We finalized The ALANA Project Brand Guidelines. Big shoutout to Kirsty Milloy and a former member who initially contributed a lot to it as well, Klaus Kluss-Fleischhacker. The guidelines will be available online soon, and I will update the link here when they are officially released. Thank you for an undertaking that made us fight, sweat, and refocus on what truly matters in the end.
I hope the intention here is clear: making sure the full foundation is in place before we can become more available and visible to the rest of the world. ALANA has been a HUB for experimentation, which, in my opinion, makes it fluid and welcoming, as a true ecosystem should be. To be successful means documenting and learning from mistakes. We never claim that we know it all, because there is too much we don't. But collective learning and creative building can enable us to wise up faster. I feel that is already a pretty good foundation.
On the product side, a lot has happened, but tons of it has been happening behind the scenes. I know everyone thinks building in public is the latest trend, but sometimes you want to work on something genuine and not stress about make-up, livestreaming, and overall social media response. Nonetheless, let's put you in the know about what's been going on:
ALANAmagazine
The next edition of ALANAmagazine has been a journey with both momentum and setbacks, reflecting the realities of building an indie, community-rooted publication in Web3. Delays, shifting timelines, and coordination challenges with contributors became part of the story—but so did the commitment to finish the edition with quality, context, and better support for the featured creators.
Either way, I believe we have fought through the nebula, coming out stronger on the other side and ready to go full steam ahead on the AIR Edition release campaign for Q1 of 2026. Thanks to the Artizen campaign and some sales, we were able to generate enough with the first edition to pay our writers. Thank you, and a big shoutout to all the individuals who made the first edition happen and to those involved in the second: Sogand, Nastaran, Delia, JavoG, Shellpen, Lutra,
On that note, I want to celebrate all of our loyal community partners. Let me start with Marie Bastian from WORLD OF MESH, Alexander and Christopher from CHOICE DAO, orchidea3d, and my fellow teammates, Jonathan and Ceci, at Unlock Protocol. Additionally, I want to express extreme gratitude and appreciation for SvenH from incented.co!
Looking ahead, one of the most exciting upcoming community partnerships will be with Onome Emeya and Yemi Scott at Announce Digital Fashion regarding the ALANAmagazine AIR Edition.
ALANA’s community grew less around raw headcount and more around depth of involvement. It feels hyped and nice when 100 people on your Discord say 'GM,' but in all honesty, it doesn't move a community or its vision forward. Instead, a core group of active members has been consistently working on all the above and below, driving content, operations, and experiments across the year. A big shoutout on that note to JavoG, Oyinlola Sofela, and Nitish Arora for being such ambassadors for ALANA all year round! Nonetheless, we worked out the numbers for the ALANAmagazine Media Kit:
A notable directional change was the move to emphasize Telegram as the primary communication channel while gradually stepping back from Discord. Telegram offers a more fluid space for quick updates, coordination, and sharing work-in-progress, which better fits ALANA's current scale and culture than Discord's heavier structure. If you haven't already joined, here is your personal invitation!
Additionally, we loved observing how many people minted the ALANAmanifesto NFT. Thank you for almost 100 mints that signal alignment on how to work together in a global, decentralized, and respectful manner. Thank you for seeing yourselves as part of this long-term story and for valuing the project's principles.
Looking ahead, there are several threads I want to share with everyone, just like spilling the beans on an exciting gift received. As you know, we are a community of volunteer members. This means we often face delays and unexpected circumstances. Considering that we don't do fixed timelines at this point, but we are working really hard to get these projects and additional resources out to everyone:
The New ALANA Website
It's been a long journey, but with the brand guidelines finalized, we have been spending the last quarter of the year putting the website together. This new website brings together all the resources we have created over the years, tools, experiments, events, and of course, the community. The goal is to make it easier for newcomers to understand what ALANA does in 5 minutes, for existing members to sell products more efficiently, and for existing members to find where they can contribute next. Again, big shoutout to Kirsty and Dani for their input.
In a nutshell, The ALANA Project community enters 2026 with stronger infrastructure, a more focused product line, and a clear commitment to creators who want to build sustainable, experimental, and sovereign careers.
This report stands as an invitation to keep building the next chapter of ALANA together, whether through writing, designing, coding, or simply showing up in the chats.
Stay tuned, ALANA adventurers!
Stella Achenbach
Find The ALANA Project on:
When I started The ALANA Project as a personal avatar project a few years ago, I would not have thought that it would turn into a community that outlives many other creative educational projects built on the evolutionary sentiments of Web3.
But here we are, almost 4 years later, quietly building in the background and still standing strong. As we close out 2025, we can proudly pat each other on the back for several reasons and in several ways as members of the ALANA community.
We have been further clarifying our infrastructure as a community that keeps decentralizing, expanding our paid and open-source product universe, and laying the groundwork for a more resilient, creator-first future in 2026.
This report mirrors the livestream I did on the 28th of December 2025. It offers a written snapshot for ALANA members, collaborators, and partners who prefer to read the story of what was built—and what is about to emerge. Nonetheless, here is the recording, for those of you who prefer the podcasty version:
This year, we focused much of our energy and resources on Infrastructure and Branding.
The Infrastructure & Strategy working group gave ALANA's NewsFlash a new home here at Paragraph and worked diligently to decentralize ALANA further.
With Paragraph, we not only adopted a more decentralized newsletter and blogging service but also onboarded more community writers. A big shoutout on that note goes out to Lutra, Dani, and Shellpen. Thank you for having your digital pens ready whenever ALANA asks for them and for contributing your brainpower to a free educational system.
Thank you also to greyscale for his hours of research and summarizing core principles of novel technologies, tokenomics design, and more, so all of us had to do less reading.
Here is what we did in 2025:
We made Snapshot our primary governance platform
We launched official membership NFTs powered by Unlock Protocol
We officially implemented the ALANA manifesto, aka "10 Principles of a Good Community," as our north star in ALANA
We created a meticulous Contribution Calculator system that works as an internal backbone for accountability and fairness.
We created and implemented two ALANA multi-signature wallets: one for the ALANAmagazine branch and one as a decentralized wallet for the overall project.
While webinars played a smaller role this year, I promise we will be back even stronger in 2026 with a stronger focus on creator monetization and strategies than ever before. We know you need this, and so do we!
We finalized The ALANA Project Brand Guidelines. Big shoutout to Kirsty Milloy and a former member who initially contributed a lot to it as well, Klaus Kluss-Fleischhacker. The guidelines will be available online soon, and I will update the link here when they are officially released. Thank you for an undertaking that made us fight, sweat, and refocus on what truly matters in the end.
I hope the intention here is clear: making sure the full foundation is in place before we can become more available and visible to the rest of the world. ALANA has been a HUB for experimentation, which, in my opinion, makes it fluid and welcoming, as a true ecosystem should be. To be successful means documenting and learning from mistakes. We never claim that we know it all, because there is too much we don't. But collective learning and creative building can enable us to wise up faster. I feel that is already a pretty good foundation.
On the product side, a lot has happened, but tons of it has been happening behind the scenes. I know everyone thinks building in public is the latest trend, but sometimes you want to work on something genuine and not stress about make-up, livestreaming, and overall social media response. Nonetheless, let's put you in the know about what's been going on:
ALANAmagazine
The next edition of ALANAmagazine has been a journey with both momentum and setbacks, reflecting the realities of building an indie, community-rooted publication in Web3. Delays, shifting timelines, and coordination challenges with contributors became part of the story—but so did the commitment to finish the edition with quality, context, and better support for the featured creators.
Either way, I believe we have fought through the nebula, coming out stronger on the other side and ready to go full steam ahead on the AIR Edition release campaign for Q1 of 2026. Thanks to the Artizen campaign and some sales, we were able to generate enough with the first edition to pay our writers. Thank you, and a big shoutout to all the individuals who made the first edition happen and to those involved in the second: Sogand, Nastaran, Delia, JavoG, Shellpen, Lutra,
On that note, I want to celebrate all of our loyal community partners. Let me start with Marie Bastian from WORLD OF MESH, Alexander and Christopher from CHOICE DAO, orchidea3d, and my fellow teammates, Jonathan and Ceci, at Unlock Protocol. Additionally, I want to express extreme gratitude and appreciation for SvenH from incented.co!
Looking ahead, one of the most exciting upcoming community partnerships will be with Onome Emeya and Yemi Scott at Announce Digital Fashion regarding the ALANAmagazine AIR Edition.
ALANA’s community grew less around raw headcount and more around depth of involvement. It feels hyped and nice when 100 people on your Discord say 'GM,' but in all honesty, it doesn't move a community or its vision forward. Instead, a core group of active members has been consistently working on all the above and below, driving content, operations, and experiments across the year. A big shoutout on that note to JavoG, Oyinlola Sofela, and Nitish Arora for being such ambassadors for ALANA all year round! Nonetheless, we worked out the numbers for the ALANAmagazine Media Kit:
A notable directional change was the move to emphasize Telegram as the primary communication channel while gradually stepping back from Discord. Telegram offers a more fluid space for quick updates, coordination, and sharing work-in-progress, which better fits ALANA's current scale and culture than Discord's heavier structure. If you haven't already joined, here is your personal invitation!
Additionally, we loved observing how many people minted the ALANAmanifesto NFT. Thank you for almost 100 mints that signal alignment on how to work together in a global, decentralized, and respectful manner. Thank you for seeing yourselves as part of this long-term story and for valuing the project's principles.
Looking ahead, there are several threads I want to share with everyone, just like spilling the beans on an exciting gift received. As you know, we are a community of volunteer members. This means we often face delays and unexpected circumstances. Considering that we don't do fixed timelines at this point, but we are working really hard to get these projects and additional resources out to everyone:
The New ALANA Website
It's been a long journey, but with the brand guidelines finalized, we have been spending the last quarter of the year putting the website together. This new website brings together all the resources we have created over the years, tools, experiments, events, and of course, the community. The goal is to make it easier for newcomers to understand what ALANA does in 5 minutes, for existing members to sell products more efficiently, and for existing members to find where they can contribute next. Again, big shoutout to Kirsty and Dani for their input.
In a nutshell, The ALANA Project community enters 2026 with stronger infrastructure, a more focused product line, and a clear commitment to creators who want to build sustainable, experimental, and sovereign careers.
This report stands as an invitation to keep building the next chapter of ALANA together, whether through writing, designing, coding, or simply showing up in the chats.
Stay tuned, ALANA adventurers!
Stella Achenbach
Find The ALANA Project on:
ALANAboutique
Thanks to Paridhi, ALANAboutique matured from a conceptual stage to finally reaching curation in 2026. We have worked hard to create a cohesive, immersive experience built on Unreal Engine 5 that composes a curated, creator-first "virtual boutique." The vision is for ALANAboutique to act as both a storefront and a stage, where collections, collabs, and immersive drops can live in a globally accessible space. We have two boards like the one below that document the development, corrections, rework, and optimization of this exciting new endeavor.
FABA AI, aka ALANA AI
We are currently being a bit secretive about FABA AI, but let me tell you this: the people building it care about creators and the problems AI should actually solve for us, rather than taking our opportunities to create for a paycheck. The front-end for the first MVP and beta testing is almost complete, and we aim to invite you guys to test in the first quarter of 2026. So stay tuned, and if you are not already subscribed, this may be a good reason to finally do it. My guarantee, though, is that neither Digitalmonkey, Lepidope, nor I is taking this lightly, nor are we just "whipping up" another AI. Pssst to the rest for now!
MINIFI & Phoenix Gate
Under ALANA's wings, two open source-oriented projects also advanced: MINIFI and Phoenix Gate. MINIFI continues our mission by making DeFi more accessible and easier to grasp. At the same time, Phoenix Gate explores infrastructure and tooling to help creators, DAOs, and small communities manage access to their events. More on each product soon, but for now, a massive shoutout to Manuel and Kirsty, with whom I have worked to get MINIFI off the ground, and to Karel for supporting me in building the first working prototype of Phoenix Gate.
Token Engineering and Whitepaper Part II
ALANA’s Token Engineering design process and Whitepaper are entering their second half of preparation, grounded in the very real data and practices captured through the Contribution Calculator and past experiments. Rather than rushing a token for the sake of it, we are working toward a model that is aligned with actual behavior: contributions, time, care work, and creative outputs across the ecosystem.
The New ALANA Avatar
Perhaps the most emotionally charged "leak" is the new ALANA avatar currently being finalized—a fresh embodiment of the project's and our communities' values, taste, and future direction. This avatar builds on years of experimentation with character creation, digital fashion, and identity, and it carries traces of the lessons learned from previous iterations while stepping into a more defined visual and narrative role.
This is also the moment to explicitly thank Princess Jessica Nwalozie and Ana Paula Garza for their input and hands-on support in shaping ALANA’s new avatar and broader aesthetic identity. The journey hasn't been easy, but we are here. ALANA 2.0 will be officially released in early January 2026.
ALANAboutique
Thanks to Paridhi, ALANAboutique matured from a conceptual stage to finally reaching curation in 2026. We have worked hard to create a cohesive, immersive experience built on Unreal Engine 5 that composes a curated, creator-first "virtual boutique." The vision is for ALANAboutique to act as both a storefront and a stage, where collections, collabs, and immersive drops can live in a globally accessible space. We have two boards like the one below that document the development, corrections, rework, and optimization of this exciting new endeavor.
FABA AI, aka ALANA AI
We are currently being a bit secretive about FABA AI, but let me tell you this: the people building it care about creators and the problems AI should actually solve for us, rather than taking our opportunities to create for a paycheck. The front-end for the first MVP and beta testing is almost complete, and we aim to invite you guys to test in the first quarter of 2026. So stay tuned, and if you are not already subscribed, this may be a good reason to finally do it. My guarantee, though, is that neither Digitalmonkey, Lepidope, nor I is taking this lightly, nor are we just "whipping up" another AI. Pssst to the rest for now!
MINIFI & Phoenix Gate
Under ALANA's wings, two open source-oriented projects also advanced: MINIFI and Phoenix Gate. MINIFI continues our mission by making DeFi more accessible and easier to grasp. At the same time, Phoenix Gate explores infrastructure and tooling to help creators, DAOs, and small communities manage access to their events. More on each product soon, but for now, a massive shoutout to Manuel and Kirsty, with whom I have worked to get MINIFI off the ground, and to Karel for supporting me in building the first working prototype of Phoenix Gate.
Token Engineering and Whitepaper Part II
ALANA’s Token Engineering design process and Whitepaper are entering their second half of preparation, grounded in the very real data and practices captured through the Contribution Calculator and past experiments. Rather than rushing a token for the sake of it, we are working toward a model that is aligned with actual behavior: contributions, time, care work, and creative outputs across the ecosystem.
The New ALANA Avatar
Perhaps the most emotionally charged "leak" is the new ALANA avatar currently being finalized—a fresh embodiment of the project's and our communities' values, taste, and future direction. This avatar builds on years of experimentation with character creation, digital fashion, and identity, and it carries traces of the lessons learned from previous iterations while stepping into a more defined visual and narrative role.
This is also the moment to explicitly thank Princess Jessica Nwalozie and Ana Paula Garza for their input and hands-on support in shaping ALANA’s new avatar and broader aesthetic identity. The journey hasn't been easy, but we are here. ALANA 2.0 will be officially released in early January 2026.
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Stella Achenbach
Stella Achenbach
No comments yet