DEFO’s journey
Before explaining what Futurum is, let’s start with some background about DEFO. When DEFO was starting to take shape back in December 2021, it was merely an idea. We saw so many protocols launching but we knew we wanted to do something different. We wanted a project that:
1. Was fully transparent, going against an era of unknown expenses and protocol founders and devs getting rich at the expense of everyone else
2. Built to last, with sustainability as the ultimate focus (before it became a buzzword without any thought behind it)
3. Helped raise funds for charity, making the world a better place through DeFi.
However, in early January, it was still an idea without anything set in stone. In order to create the project we dreamed of, we needed a team. Most importantly, we needed smart contract developers and they are very hard to find. But we also needed frontend developers, graphic designers, a tokenomics expert, and a marketing team.
It’s impossible to overestimate how hard this task was. It took around 2 months to get a full working team. It’s very difficult to get people that are both skilled and trustworthy. There was one week in early February where Dazai did *nothing* but interviews from morning to dusk. If we assume a typical 40hour work week with $30/h pay, then that process costs over $1000. And that was just one week for only one position.
Futurum’s Services
Futurum is a project incubated by DEFO, which will provide the needed infrastructure for projects to launch. This includes smart contract development, web design, graphic design, marketing, and tokenomics consulting.
Having an idea is great, but it means nothing without infrastructure, which is very time-consuming to establish. Back when we were building DEFO and had to assemble a team, we desperately needed such a service. Current problems hint at future demand.
For new projects – the runway from idea to execution is littered with problems:
– How to assemble a team?
– How to move fast enough and keep up with DeFi?
– Moving past Web2 marketing
– Find good people to hire for Web3
– Differentiating a good developer from a bad one without coding experience
– Dealing with community management
These are universal pain points for upcoming DeFi projects. And precisely the services we can help with. Web3 projects need help to build themselves. This is a market that will never go away as long as DeFi exists. DeFi will keep innovating but new ideas need infrastructure to take shape. Sometimes, the founder is a developer and can do the coding themselves but one’s area of expertise (not to mention time) has to end somewhere, and sooner or later a team will be needed. But, as we have seen, building a team is a huge commitment both in terms of time and effort.
Just to give you a concrete example of the type of money this can potentially involve when we were searching for audits of our smart contracts, we were quoted twice for over $100,000. We will not offer contract audits for the time being. Although we will likely provide this service in the future, the overall point is that this can be very profitable in the long term, especially as DeFi grows and as Futurum builds an ever-increasing portfolio and reputation.
Team and incubation
The team of Futurum largely overlaps with DEFO, although we’ve brought in some fresh talent and will continue to do so depending on our needs. DEFO alone has accumulated almost 2000 hours of work across all its departments, and of course, every member of the team has previous experience. That expertise will be invaluable for any project finding its feet in the space.
Futurum will act as DEFO’s sister project, working independently in practice, but financially linked. For DEFO, it will act as a regular investment. There is an initial period of providing the necessary funds to get the project started, and then that investment is rewarded with part of the profits. Those profits will be added to DEFO’s Treasury, and therefore, be part of the profits that are re-distributed towards DEFO investors in Phase 2 for those who have DEFO locked up in our Vault.
This type of investment by DEFO is very advantageous. First, it adds extra revenue. But also it’s revenue that isn’t so directly tied to markets. While, of course, the demand for infrastructure will move according to market conditions as well, it’s nevertheless a slightly different environment – especially since the market might be doing very poorly in one aspect but be more stable in another. For example, while the market now is doing badly, NFTs have retained much better stability and are still profitable in many niches.
For any investment, you need to consider both the upside and the risk. The enormous benefit of an incubated project like Futurum is that while the long-term upside can be high, the risk is very minimal. In fact, it is close to zero. To get Futurum working, the amount of funds required is very low and is mostly related to branding. But once the company is up and running, the costs are paid on a per-project basis, thus immediately becoming self-sufficient.
To clarify Futurum’s services, it will not provide any type of incubation to other projects, it will simply provide a service (e.g., smart contract developer or tokenomics consulting) and get paid for that service. We are not endorsing that particular project, and generally speaking, everything will happen behind closed doors. Not that it’s a secret, it’s just not relevant. While the expenses will be transparent and fully in line with DEFO’s values, there isn’t any involvement from DEFO and Futurum’s clients. Although we will try our best to only work with serious projects, we are also not liable for how the project is run or the ethics of the people involved.
The best analogy to conceptualize the role of Futurum is a web design service. If you are building your own business and you need a website, you hire a web designer. But the web designer isn’t affiliated with your company per se, nor are they responsible if you happen to manage the business badly. The difference is that Futurum will offer many different services beyond just web design.
Futurum does not change any fundamentals about how DEFO runs — it’s simply an extra source of revenue for DEFO investors. We also have another incubation project in the works. Although much smaller in scope, it shares the same benefits of very low risk and being easily self-sufficient, so stay tuned!
You can follow Futurum’s updates by following our Twitter page.