I wrote a specific Treasury Review: Patron Sale blog post to cover an in-depth view of the sale metrics. Below is my personal perspective and hopefully a fun read.

The Patron NFT went live on Monday 10pm AEST, 24 of October 2024. This was the second biggest event of Infinex’s history, after our Patron Sale just 30 days prior. The most intense week of my life. A marathon of preparation with a sprint to the finish line.

When Kain and I arrived in Singapore for Token2049, I was concerned. I was a few days ahead of him and remember sending a message saying "we might need to delay the sale". We had friendlies and soft commitments—basically the crypto version of ‘Maybe I’ll swing by.’ Not a single contract signed. If everyone followed through, we’d still be short. Nervous? Definitely. We also opened a one-way door, we fired the gun and announced to the market this sale was happening… in eight days. He reassured me that I was an idiot and everything was going to be fine.

This process is a bit like dating, if you’re too keen, she's not interested. You need to become the life of the party, and then she’ll have to get in line to talk to you. It’s a power play, the more you want them the more unattainable they are. Brutal but effective.

For the previous six months we had been perfecting the Infinex story, working on the pitch and meeting with VCs, foundations and KOLs. This was the marathon.

We met with 91 VCs and foundations over a 4 month period and ended up closing:

• 25 VCs

• Six foundations

All in, 91 meetings, four months, 285 hours of handshakes, pitches, and follow-ups. The result? Twenty-five VCs, six foundations, and a closing rate of 34%—a far cry from the industry average of 5-10%. Turns out, clarity and conviction sell.

We had incredible discussions and debates with a diverse mix of VCs. The newer ones had never seen a structure like this. They were confused about paying the same price as the community.

They didn’t understand the benefit of community alignment that was generated in the early days of crypto, where everyone got the same deal. Armies were made when users took bets that not only made them rich, it made them right.

We definitely made it difficult for ourselves by focusing on community alignment. Did the fact remain that this was the right thing to do? Absolutely. By February, we chose a structure where everyone gets the same deal. We wanted to break the meta where private sale disproportionately benefitted the participants often at the detriment of their user base.

We thought we would only need to convince a small number of buyers that the current meta is broken and that the community suffers because of it. In the long run, selling tokens (NFT’s in our case) to people who wanted to buy them at an affordable price benefits everyone. It creates real supporters - not airdrop farmers, not sybilers, not flippers, but individuals who believe in the project and have skin in the game. In the beginning, this is counterintuitive to firms that have been benefitting from the existing meta, I get it. It feels counter productive but ultimately, we have seen alignment to the community is overwhelmingly more beneficial. Without attention, and a following of core supporters who are incentivised by having skin in the game, it’s near impossible to win.

During the courting process, we learnt a lot. Some things we executed perfectly: In order to have a wide distribution of VCs, we often asked funds for their minimum cheque size. Paradoxical, I know, but it meant that we could open the door to a wider range of funds. As a result, Infinex is supported by a list of world-wide funds including those from the US like Founders Fund, Variant, Framework, Breyer Capital, BlueYard, Breed, Bankless and SALT. From Europe, we rallied the support of: Wintermute, Moonrock, Robot, Infinite, Edenblock, Age and CyberFund. From Asia-Pacific - Bodhi, EVG, Reinventure, UpsideDAO and Magnet Capital. We now have an incredible bench to call upon when required.

Some things were less than optimal; we definitely broke the meta - there were no SAFTs, seed investors, advisory tokens, side-letters or any of that nonsense. Every single person or entity who participated got the same deal. On the other side, we also had: A gating mechanism, a short and fixed timeframe, multiple waves, Patron passes, Patron tickets, buying limits, a 2-day long sale, and an interactive game which provided access to that sale. In retrospect, some of these decisions were a mistake. Confusion was high, attention was sparse, communication was challenging.

We were right that the market was desperate for something new, and even though the sale was an outstanding success, in hindsight, we got the gating, timing and aspects of the pricing tiers wrong.

In August we expanded the amount we would offer for sale from 50% to 58%, mainly to bring in more community members into Patronage ownership. The sale XIP allowed for a maximum of 58% of the supply to be sold. We designed the Infinex campaigns to distribute Patron Passes and Tickets, which would eventually act as gating mechanisms to stop whales and bots taking up the whole sale. This worked well but also a little against us, as participants had to pay attention, participate in campaigns and disproportionately favoured early users over late arrivals. As momentum grew so did the appetite from whales, but there was some confusion about how to participate. If you came in late, you were limited by size. Another learning for us.

Foundations are notoriously hard to access; you rarely see more than one foundation supporting a project. We invested significant time in both the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems, because to Infinex, both are critical. Which is why we delayed our launch to ensure we had Solana account deployments on day one. We sent a clear message to all foundations that Infinex will be, all assets, all chains. At the end of the day, most of the foundations we spoke to acknowledged change needs to happen, especially for them, because they care about users, they care about onchain metrics. CEX’s don’t provide that. If we had time, we would have evangelised more with our mission of bringing users onchain.

Infinex is supported by six prominent foundations:

• Solana

• Wormhole

• Pyth

• NEAR

• Synthetix

• Mantle

To the innocent bystander, that's like scoring Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, and Adele for your opening act. Each one doesn’t just support us—they validate a future we believe in. They carry so much more meaning than a vague 'partnership' announcement. Thank you to Ben, Lily and Matt from Solana, Robinson from Wormhole, Mark at Pyth, Illia, Harshit and David from NEAR, TC of Synthetix and Isaac and Andrew from Mantle for believing in our mission.

The marathon was pulling these parties together, iterating on the pitch, the approach and securing commitments. If you don’t adjust your approach rapidly and early, I’m sorry for your loss. Your audience is busy, tired and has heard it all before. Without attention, you have nothing.

Token2049 was the sprint. Arriving, we had soft commitments from ~15 strategics, even if we closed every single one it would be only half our goal…

Token2049 is also where Infinex went exponential. It felt like almost every conversation and Defi panel mentioned Infinex. We booked a cafe in the middle of MBS and parked there for the day. My schedule was brutal, but probably quite familiar with conference folk;

• 6am - 9am - calls to catch the US in their timezone

• 9:30am - 5pm for back to backs in 30 minute slots

• 6:30pm - pitching or private dinner

• 8pm - partner event

• 11pm - 2am - Hotel for VC, legal calls and purchase agreements

This was for eight days straight. Even halfway through, it wasn’t obvious we could finish, commitments were slow, timelines were tight and optimism was a luxury no one had cash for. Here's the thing about crypto, if you wait for perfect conditions, you’re too late, you fucked it. You jump, headfirst. We committed and announced anyway. Without a set date for the community sale, it initially seemed impossible to move forward. Every conversation held significance, but as momentum began to build, the pressure gradually eased. We called it right.

We established a compelling event that served as a crucial anchor, leaving us with no alternative but to keep moving forward. If we didn’t do this, the impact would have been completely different; At the start of the week, it was about who the other buyers were. The middle of the week, they stopped asking because they heard from someone else. The end of the week, it was what size allocation they could get, basically a complete 180. I have worked out the formula, so you don't have to, it's access + reach + money / time (deadline) = momentum.

A special mention to Jonas from Wintermute, Ted from Breyer Capital, Michael from Framework and Robinson from Wormhole, for being our very early buyers. We used your backing as a cornerstone in discussions. And, to Joey from Founders Fund, who turned around one of our largest purchases in three days.

We finished on 25 VCs and six Foundations, and through brute force, we met everyone.

The community had access via three waves: invite only KOLs, Patron Passes and finally Patron Tickets. Of the individually invited KOLs, 209 of them purchased a total of 2,216 Patrons, making up $4.2m. These were founders of protocols, industry leaders, Twitter voices and partners. We had Vitalik and Toly, Namik and Smokey, Luca and Rushi, all from different ecosystems, buy Patrons.

The community bought over $17M worth of Patrons—a staggering number by any measure. Yet, as the numbers rolled in, we couldn’t help but feel the sense of ambition unmet. Could we have done more? Should we have done less? The answer lies somewhere between the champagne and the spreadsheets.

The community which typically prefer short or no-lockups, surprisingly, behaved very similarly to the strategics. We would like to think that even degen community members recognised that Infinex is building something that the market truly needs, something that breaks the current structures and actually makes Web3 usable to everyday people. Or maybe thats just wishful thinking…

Across the three tiered options, only 4.5% opted for liquid, 21.5% for linear and 74% locked. Strategic buyers were only slightly higher on the locked tier at 84%. The community was given liquid optionality and instead they chose to be the VC.

This meant that 7.1% of patrons were liquid at TGE. Which is not optimal for an ERC-20 token but turned out to be completely irrelevant for an NFT. This was an unexpected result.

The remainder of the supply goes back to the treasury. As it stands today, the treasury has 30,940 Patrons. At the beginning we allocated 10% to be used for incentive campaigns, of which we have used 5,816 Patrons (5.816%) leaving 4,184 (4.184%) reserved. Taking that into account, the treasury currently holds 26,756 Patrons (26.7%). This is a phenomenal result. We have $67m in the treasury and over 25% of the supply available for the future.

During the sale, we didn't have a single support ticket raised. Everyone who was eligible and paying attention experienced a smooth purchasing process. For TGE, we've not had a single ticket raised for issues with the distribution, withdrawal or allocation amount. I have been professionally investing in crypto for 7+ years and a degen for longer than that, and I can proudly say this is a first for me. No issues with onboarding, process or allocation? No gas wars? No whitelists? And no complaints? Unbelievable achievements by the Infinex project, our Working Group is truly world class.

At the end of the sale 43.2% (43,244 Patrons) of the NFTs sold for a total of $67.69m, the largest NFT sale in history.

In summary, we broke the meta, maxed attention and closed the sale. We optimised for a community first approach and landed 1601 individual Patron holders. We live and die by our community, it’s in our blood and gets incorporated into everything we do.

If you're wondering how to join the ecosystem or run a process like we did, please feel free to get in touch. Patron NFTs are now tradable on OpenSea, Blur and Magic Eden.

Special thanks

• Jonas at Wintermute for being an early buyer, campaign participant, helping with introductions, advice and general feedback. This was immensely valuable for us.

• Jesse and Jake from Variant for seeing the opportunity early, understanding the concept clearly and always being available for support.

• Michael at Framework for understand what we were trying to do and committing before we had even started our process.

• Joey at Founders Fund for having a founders based approach, you cared more about how we planned to fix the problem than the metrics we had accumulated. This resonated deeply with us.

• Simon at Moonrock for being our leading champion, you truly understand what it takes to run a process like this and have supported us every step of the way.

• Robinson at Wormhole for the early morning calls to make sure we were set up right, for always offering introductions and building our first critical partnership.

• Ben at Solana for being a master connector and making sure we were represented properly in the Solana ecosystem, the alignment couldn't have been possible without you.

• Mert at Helius for acting like a team member with no financial benefit to yourself, you helped with intros, advice and support.

• Ted at Breyer for being our very first Patron buyer, pre-pitch, pre-deck, you committed and we are incredibly grateful, your process focused on us rather than the product.

• David and Harshit at NEAR for helping us drive the partnership from a 1 hour meeting to a multi-million dollar engagement... and the 3am calls.

• Guy at Ethena and Larry from the Block for getting Infinex wider distribution by offering it on Echo, for supporting us on advice from the BBC group and integrating Ethena.

On to the next one…

Egor

roge.eth

Infinex Treasurer