Today we’re excited to announce that Psychedelic is growing! As of today, the DFinance project is now part of Psychedelic, joining Plug, Dank, DAB, CAP, and all other future projects.

Being one of the first DeFi platforms coming to the Internet Computer, this move seeks to significantly strengthen the Sonic project (formerly known as DFinance) by bringing their team into the Psychedelic family and contributing technical, BD/design/marketing, and strategic resources to the project.

The goal? to help improve the architecture, scalability, and security of the protocol, help guide the current and future product offerings and the user/developer experience, as well as leverage other Psychedelic products (Plug, Dank, etc.) to drive usage to the Sonic protocol.

To set the vibes for this new team-up, together with DFinance we’ve decided to rebrand to Sonic (short for ‘Swaps on the IC’) to give the project a fresh look as we join forces to help bring DeFi to life on the Internet Computer!

So as of today, DFinance will be known as Sonic! . More on that below!

• https://sonic.ooo/

• https://twitter.com/sonic_ooo

The DFinance team has been building an awesome set of base-level DeFi services for the Internet Computer over the past few months. We’ve been impressed with their progress and have been supporters from the beginning, because as peers in the IC ecosystem we know how important having a healthy set of functioning DeFi products/services is for all projects and participants in the ecosystem (token swaps, AMM’s, liquidity, etc.).

And on top of that, we ourselves (Psychedelic) need the services they’ve been building for our various projects.

For example, we can’t turn any Psychedelic projects into real Open Internet Services with a functioning governance token until there is a way to swap tokens, and we can’t offer swap functionality in Plug without different pairings/liquidity for various tokens.

But as fellow early IC builders, we know the unique challenges of building on a platform as new and different as the Internet Computer.

And we also know how critical it is for the growth of the IC ecosystem as a whole for the early projects to set a good example, create good standards, and above all else, be safe and secure for users to use and do the best we can to mitigate hacks, scams, bad actors, and any potential loss of funds for users.

So naturally given we were planning to intimately use DFinance’s products for our own Psychedelic projects, even before we had the idea to bring DFinance into Psychedelic we’ve had to evaluate and review the project, code, etc. as if it was one of our own projects. And that’s kinda where this all started.

Challenges With Building Open Internet Services 💪

As mentioned, being early to a new ecosystem and developing on brand new technology doesn’t come without its challenges.

And that is twice as true for building on the Internet Computer right now, which besides being a nascent technology that has several unique characteristics compared to other cloud platforms or blockchains, it’s especially nuanced when it comes to building DeFi on the Internet Computer.

Some of these challenges are known for any DeFi protocol/app ✅

Regardless of which blockchain they run on, there are things such as security audits for smart contracts, and pen-testing that everyone has to worry about.

However given the Internet Computer is so new, there aren’t well developed best practices for auditing canisters, nor are there years of experience/developed patterns/known dangers to look out for — this is unchartered territory for the most part.

Some of these challenges are Internet Computer-specific ♾️

But in addition to the above there are also other unique challenges specific to the Internet Computer and how DeFi is designed around it in a way that is future-proof, flexible, scalable, and most importantly: secure.

For example the Internet Computer doesn’t have built in transaction history for tokens (a problem Psychedelic is solving with CAP, which is another great example of the synergies created with this team-up).

Neither it has the concept of nonce’s or transaction ordering, which means existing DeFi/AMM architectures that are working on other blockchains can’t just be recreated on the IC. Instead early DeFi projects in the IC ecosystem need to do heavy R&D to figure out the best approach to solving these complex problems.

The Psychedelic Advantage 👽

While each IC project will always have their own unique challenges (especially an early DeFi project on the IC for the reasons highlighted above), a lot of the issues projects are facing at this nascent stage of the IC ecosystem are the same.

And luckily Psychedelic has an awesome team of 30+ people (and counting), the majority of which are super talented engineers who have been working on the bleeding edge of the IC for almost a year now. And we are continuously ideating on how to solve existing and new IC challenges and building tools/products to provide solutions to those problems.

We’ve gained tremendous experience with building, launching, securing, testing, and future proofing canisters and Open Internet Services on the IC already, with a lot more coming in the future. So we know we are in a rare position to help out and add value to almost any person or project looking to build something on the IC.

It would be a shame for us not to spread our knowledge and resources, because we see how unbelievably beneficial they are and how much time/headache it saves our own new internal projects and developers as they start building on the IC. That’s why as you saw in the Psychedelic announcement post last week, we decided to expand the Psychedelic value proposition to not only internally incubated projects, but external projects in the ecosystem as well.

Sonic (formerly DFinance) was the perfect first external project to pioneer this new approach/vertical for Psychedelic.

A Psychedelic Team-up to Break Through All of These Challenges 🚀💥

As mentioned, we’ve been collaborating with the DFinance team for a while. Ideating together, on DeFi toolings as peers (like the DIP20 fungible token standard), discussing challenges/potential solutions, and connecting dots where we found synergies (Dank, CAP, DAB, Plug, etc.).

With all these open points of collaborations already going on between us, and knowing how important a healthy DeFi ecosystem is for the growth and health of the IC ecosystem as a whole… It was a no-brainer to join forces and launch Sonic as a Psychedelic project

That’s why we teamed up together with this partnership/acquisition to ensure the now Sonic project reaches its full potential for the IC community!

And now that we say it, how about we present Sonic to everyone?

Meet Sonic, an AMM/DeFi Suite for the IC

As of today, DFinance and its platform will be renamed to Sonic! Short for “Swaps on IC”, one of the first core services Sonic will be bringing to the IC in its upcoming V1.

The ex DFinance and now Sonic team will continue to rock the development of Sonic as part of Psychedelic, but now they will also have the full-support of all other people, projects, tools, and resources within Psychedelic!

We’re pumped to see the team move forward into the next big, and much expected, milestone with the release of Sonic’s V1 (steadily in the works!), with its initial set of features focused on swapping and liquidity for ICP, WICP (Wrapped ICP), and XTC (Cycles Token).

Here’s a sneak peek of the platform’s new looks, following the rebrand (not final!).

Don’t expect changes just there. New looks are coming all across the brand, from Discord, to the main site, and social media accounts.

• Sonic.ooo (Previous site now redirects here)

• @sonic_ooo on Twitter (same account, renamed)

• Discord! (same server as before as well, renamed)

• And the Blog: https://medium.com/@sonic-ooo

The Sonic team will be sharing more news on the project’s development and roadmap through those channels! Coming next are the first steps of the platform, when V1 releases (liquidity, swaps), followed by the long-term vision the community already knows (farming, governance, etcetera).

We know many members of the community we’ll be asking themselves if the previous plans related to governance, token, early-supporters, and airdrops will be affected. The answer is simple: no! Those plans will remain the same, and whatever change comes will always take into consideration these early users.

Until Next Time! (When V1 Releases) 🚀

We’re all tremendously pumped and optimistic about working together, and can’t wait to see Sonic’s V1 release! The Sonic team is charging ahead, with the full support of the collective backing it up 😎

Expect more news soon regarding V1, what is coming in it, and what will come next on Sonic’s website, social handles and Discord!

• Our Website: https://psychedelic.ooo/

• Our GitHub: https://github.com/psychedelic

• Our Twitter: https://twitter.com/psychedelicDAO

• Our Discord: https://discord.gg/psychedelic

Today is the first step towards our end goal of turning our current product studio into a community-owned and operated DAO. This first step is mainly just a branding move, meaning we will start using the Psychedelic name and growing awareness around it.

Because, while Fleek is a super dope brand, it’s mainly known as a hosting platform, and with everything else we’ve got going on (and planned), we are quickly outgrowing that framing of who we are/what we do.

So we felt best would be to keep the Fleek brand for our existing developer/hosting platform (and potentially other stuff in the future), but put that and everything else we are doing (especially the Open Internet Services that will be tokenized in the future) into/under a new brand that will eventually become the product studio DAO: Psychedelic.

Why Now? 🧠

We’ve got several new products and projects launching in the next few days and weeks that we felt made more sense to announce under the Psychedelic brand.

Plus we’ve been putting off the switch for months and the longer we wait the more annoying it will be to introduce/switch later on!

So even though the IC isn’t ready for a DAO like Psychedelic to exist (yet 😉), the Psychedelic brand is ready. So all things considered now felt right to start turning the tide in that direction.

So… What is Psychedelic? 👽

To understand Psychedelic, it might help to first understand what Fleek is like currently. We are a collective of 30 people (devs, designers, marketers, entrepreneurs, etc.) building cool products and Open Internet Services on the Internet Computer (and at the intersection of other protocols the IC will natively integrate with like Ethereum).

Ideas for new products and Open Internet Services are discussed pretty much daily, and as a group, we just continuously decide and revisit what projects to work on based on a number of factors, like…

• Resources available

• How much time/resources it would take to build

• Market timing

• Future factors that might impact the viability of the product/service

• And just how passionate we are about the problem/opportunity!

But once we find a new idea that answers the above questions to our satisfaction, we typically go ahead and build it (or bring on additional resources to build it).

Not only is this model a lot of fun, but it leads to a higher probability of success for projects because of the shared learnings across all our projects/teams (which is often where new product ideas come from), and the compounding synergies and knowledge shared between projects/team members is extremely powerful.

Opening up this Model by Transitioning to a DAO 🚀

But as mentioned, right now this is all done as a closed community of the 30 people at Fleek. While we could keep hiring and try to scale things up as a traditional company, that seems like a significant (and inefficient) amount of work (especially from an operational perspective), and in the spirit of web3, it feels lame.

And as web3 has shown, great ideas can literally come from anybody and anywhere. Plus our goal all along for all our products was to exit to our community, so we figured, why not just go all in and do it not just for our products but for the underlying studio itself.

So basically we thought… What if we just kinda did what we do now, but as a DAO? 💭

Where pretty much anybody can join the DAO and contribute, anybody can submit a proposal for a new idea to work on, and anybody who is interested in an idea can decide to contribute some of their time to work on it and earn tokens in return.

That’s Dope. So What Now? 🤔

Right now not much. As we said this first step is really just a branding move. But what you will see immediately is us using the Psychedelic brand in more places.

For example you’ve probably seen that the repos for Plug, DAB, and our other projects have lived under the Psychedelic GitHub org since inception. But now we will also rename our Discord and create some other Psychedelic specific channels on other platforms such as:

• Our Website: https://psychedelic.ooo/

• Our GitHub: https://github.com/psychedelic

• Our Twitter: https://twitter.com/psychedelicDAO

• Our Discord: (Previously known as Fleek’s Discord).

• Medium: https://medium.com/psychedelic-dao

To start and to seed the DAO, Psychedelic will include the current and future projects we are incubating at Fleek, especially the Open Internet Services and other projects that will be tokenized in the future.

Basically Psychedelic DAO will receive a portion of the governance tokens of each project.

The Next Step? Welcoming External Projects 🤝

In addition to internally incubated projects, Psychedelic will also look to support external projects who are aligned with our mission.

We’ve already brought one external project from the IC ecosystem into Psychedelic (announcement coming next week), and will look to speak with more teams who are a good fit to join.

The idea is to not only provide resources to projects that join Psychedelic, but also in the future give Psychedelic (PSYCH) tokens to each project & participant that becomes a part of Psychedelic. That way, every PSYCH holder is incentivized to see every project and person in Psychedelic succeed.

One way to think about that is to imagine if every one of a16z’s portfolio companies was actually incentivized to collaborate and help the other companies in the portfolio succeed rather than the ‘every project for themselves’ model that currently exists.

We think this approach will recreate the magic we currently experience internally at Fleek between different projects, but as a decentralized DAO, and ultimately lead to more success, value creation, and enjoyment for all involved.

Wen DAO? Wen Token? Plz Mi Famiglia 🔮

TBD. The Dfinity Foundation says the SNS (service network system) framework will launch in January. And in conjunction with that we are also starting to do some of our own DAO research/prototyping just in case the SNS doesn’t end up meeting our exact needs.

That’s nobody’s fault, it’s just very hard to create a one-size-fits-all framework for DAO’s. We also feel it’s healthy for the ecosystem that multiple groups come up with multiple approaches and explore the design space of what DAO’s can be on the Internet Computer (kinda similar to what we’ve witnessed with NFT’s and tokens so far on the IC).

A DAO framework is something we need not just for Psychedelic, but for all projects that launch out of Psychedelic, and all Open Internet Services and other tokenized platforms/services/apps in general. So it’s def top of mind.

Our goal is to solve that in Q4 and hopefully launch the DAO for Psychedelic and our other Open Internet Services in Q1 2022.

How Can I Get Involved? 🤙

For Community Members 🗺️: Become a productive member of the Discord community. Start adding value to the Psychedelic community and/or to the projects within Psychedelic (ex. there is a lot of opportunity for early projects that integrate/utilize/build on top of our different products/Open Internet Services).

For Projects 🧰: Reach out. Let’s chat. We’ve got a lot going on and a lot of different projects. Maybe you can use one of our products for your own project (Plug, DAB, etc.). Maybe you’re interested in joining Psychedelic. Who knows.

Joining Psychedelic isn’t a rigid structure. It’s fluid. Each project that joins will be on a case-by-case basis and you can propose whatever you want for joining. And over time since the proposals will be public you’ll be able to get a feel for different projects/proposals to better formulate your own.

But in the meantime let’s just jam and figure it out together.

For now, that’s all we wanted to share with everyone as we move forward into this new brand and get started with it. But, like we said, the time was right to make the move because a lot is coming, so stay tuned, join us on Discord, and don’t miss one bit of what’s coming next for Psychedelic and its projects.

• Our Website: https://psychedelic.ooo/

• Our GitHub: https://github.com/psychedelic

• Our Twitter: https://twitter.com/psychedelicDAO

• Our Discord: (Previously known as Fleek’s Discord).

• Medium: https://medium.com/psychedelic-dao