Golden Rule To AVOID SCAMS In NFT Gaming & Play To Earn Projects!
When I started playing NFT games I would look into the project's team before investing. Many projects I looked at only had first names of team members and avatars for photos. I thought it was odd but assumed they must have a reason for being anonymous.
Now that I've had a year experience in game-fi, I will no longer touch a project that is completely anonymous.
Why do I stay away?
About every other day I have a project reach out to me asking if I will do promotional content for them. Usually NFTs or tokens from the project are offered as payment.
Personally I never want to put biased content out that could mislead my community. Instead I tell the project that I am willing to bring them on for free to a new live podcast show I'm starting called NFT Gaming Bites.
When I offer this, guess what happens?
Radio Silence...
No Response...
Bump...
Still Nothing!
I can't believe that these projects don't want free content. It can only mean two things.
They don't believe in their project enough to talk about it live with viewers asking questions.
It's a scam so they don't want to be shown. There's simply no other explination.
My Golden Rule
From these experiences I've developed my new golden rule.
"If I can't see their face and hear their voice, I don't invest in their token and I won't buy their NFTs."
It doesn't have to be on my podcast or videos but it has to be somewhere. Youtube, their website, discord, town-halls and AMAs, etc. Somewhere they need to be shown.
Not only does this minimize the risk greatly of it being a scam project, but it also allows me to get a better feel for the team. Having a peak behind the scenes helps me to decide if I trust them and agree with their value and vision.
The One Exception...
There are some scenarious where team members remain anonymous and that's okay. I've talked to people in projects who have said other teammates could get fired from their current company if found out to be helping with an NFT project. Of course it makes sense for these people to be hidden.
However at least the founders, CEO, or someone near the top of the project must be public. No startup would ever ask a venture capatalist to invest in their business while remaning anonymous. No VC would invest in the business anyways. Yet that is exactly what a lot of NFT GameFi projects are asking people to do.
Keep the Rule!
If you want to minimize your risk and avoid scams, join me in this Golden Rule. As the community respects it, hopefully more NFT projects will also see that this is what the community desires and implement it themselves.
