An Open Letter to the Avium Community: The search for "real" value

26 July 2023

TLDR; Ordinals, Business network, Community fund activation

Dear Members of the Avium Community,

Last quarter, we announced (1) Project Lyra, our integration into Fortnite, (2) our partnership with MSW Ventures for our Web3 investments, and (3) the establishment of our US$100k community fund.

Today, we’re excited to announce further developments in the following areas:

1. Airdrop to limited holders - Launch of our ordinals collection, as a pre-cursor to our first gamified experience in Fortnite

2. For AFP Holders - Launch of our business network

3. For all - Upcoming initiatives supported by the community fund and anchored by the Avium Community Council

We’re excited to share more about these developments, and further details are found exclusively in our discord, so hop in to the announcements to find out more.

In the last open letter, I shared about how critical it was not to simply “copy and paste” things, to reduce uncertainty, and the importance of searching for real value.

If anything, the last month in the NFT market, matched with the overall decline in liquidity, has underscored the importance of really creating real value - without which, floor prices and investments in NFT projects are merely a game of chasing hype and where the liquidity flows (Shitcoin mania anyone?)

In the last 3 months, we’ve spent a fair amount of time charting the path towards real value, and I’m excited to share more now so you can see ahead as we build this out.

1. Avium is doubling down on the gaming space

There are many ways to build up a web3 project, and to us, it is clear that gaming/media is the industry to start with.

The gaming space is in an exciting period of time where there has been an increase of gaming content, yet the distribution of profits and revenue (read: business models) remains heavily skewed to a small group of studios.

In situations like this, new business models are created to disrupt old business models, supported by new technology.

The 1x CD-Rom flat fee was eventually disrupted by the freemium model, with the rise of ubiquitous computing (whether on the phone, or then-facebook)

More business models have also surfaced from this, eg. library-subscription fees (eg. Apple Arcade).

As we move towards more community-driven gaming as well as the rise in trend of user-generated content (eg. Roblox, Minecraft), it is clear that there will be a significant overlap between the Web3 ethos of community as well as how gaming will be driven by communities of gamers.

This is a short preview of the theory, but I also want to say this - merely creating a game is not enough.

Innovation will need to occur fundamentally at the game design level, user acquisition level, as well as the business model level.

I don’t have all the answers today, but what I do know is that this general direction is correct.

Put in another way, if you are used to buying Game CD-Rom titles at $60 (Web1 gaming), you would not be able to imagine how, people would be spending >$20,000 on digital assets in a freemium game (Web2 Gaming).

What makes sense today, what is so widely adopted today, did not make sense once upon a time.

So we are out there innovating in this vertical and doubling down on this.

Integrating into Fortnite, is just the first step. There’s a lot more lined up.

2. Success formula = Sound business + Web3 relevance

If anything the last month has shown, it is that sound business practices are key in sustaining value and creating value.

Technology supports innovation, but real innovation also requires a sound understanding of business for things to be sustainable.

As we tie in both web3 relevance + sound business practices, we’re doing this on two fronts.

Following our partnership with MSW Ventures and the establishment of the Avium Venture Scout Program, this has given us the opportunity to meet, bounce ideas, and journey with other aspirational founding teams in the space.

Our next area of growth here is to establish a business network amongst our Founders Pass holders, to facilitate sharing, growth, and synergy between our holders.

Our holders come from a rich and diverse background, ranging from venture capital partners, business owners, entrepreneurs, startup founders, professionals, national sportsmen and the like.

We will therefore be spending a bit of time to cultivate and facilitate this network, so that holders can tap into the rich experience of each other. Stay tuned for further information on this.

At the same time, we will also be (incrementally) activating the community to look at real opportunities in the web3 space. This will allow us to spot opportunities together, and stay close in the web3 space.

Airdrops, Alt-coin trading, participating in the right projects (eg. HV-MTL), are examples of areas where value can be created in the web3 space. Together with the newly established Avium Community Council (ACC), we’ll be looking at how we can activate the community towards these areas.

Which leads me to the last point.

3. Avium’s community will be inextricably linked to our endeavours

The key question some of you may have - so what does this mean for me?

The principle we build on is this - all of these endeavours, whether in the gaming front or from a business front, will inextricably be linked to the Avium community.

Our Avium community.

Whether by preferred access to gamified experiences, increased chances of winning, or by other methods, this is always an angle which we consider.

When and How this happens will eventually be charted out, and more of this will come to life with what we are launching, but I’m happy to share two starting points.

First, we’re planting our presence in the BTC ecosystem. Certain holders (AFP / Origins) will be eligible for the drop of our first commemorative Ordinals collection. It is a pure art collection on BTC, unique with its varieties of scale, orientation and flare - see our discord for more information.

Second, as you know, 9gagceo and the Memeland ecosystem has been extremely supportive of Avium and its pursuit (especially with AlphaKongzz holding an MVP). We are excited to contribute and be a part of this rising force in the socialfi scene, so, the ACC has decided that it will be utilising some fo the funds to take a position in $MEME tokens. Any profits earned from this grows the community treasury, which will be used to benefit holders as led by the ACC - likewise, see our discord for more information.

These are two examples of where we’re starting from - as we build out our gaming capacities and presence, and as we continue to pursue the right opportunities in the Web3 space, we’ll be bringing our community along as well.

Summary

We’re here. We’re still here. Unless some unexpected or business shock occurs (hey, businesses fail too right), we will be here building.

If you’ve gotten to this point, thank you for reading, and the TLDR:

1. Avium is doubling down on the gaming space

2. Success formula = traditional business + Web3 relevance

3. Avium’s community will be inextricably linked to our endeavours

Of course, one could always hope for the market to be more, exuberant. But we’re really excited for the next six months, and where true innovation will occur.

The search for real value continues. In the meantime, I would strongly encourage everyone to download and play Fortnite.

Thank you for the support as always, and we’re excited to build this out together with you.

Niteheart