If You Love Them, Set Them Free

It was a February’s dark and cold night when Darkflex's original founders threw the towel after realizing that the project was losing steam day after day, and they had no ideas nor will to fix the situation. I always describe that moment as if our Discord was a huge restaurant, and meanwhile Arthur* was in the main hall trying to calm down hundreds of hungry customers, Hugo* was in the kitchen having a mental breakdown because there was no more food to cook.

(Arthur & Hugo are the pseudonyms of the original founders of Darkflex).

In response, a small group of holders hosted a community space to show support and discuss ideas. Before that, I had never spoken in spaces and thought I never would, but that night I did. That was the “click”. For the first time in my NFTs journey, I felt I could actively contribute to a project’s destiny. So, I started helping out with visual content, ideas & community building initiatives.

At some point founders asked me if I was up for taking the lead and full ownership. I knew it was a horrible situation to pick up, but I felt it was right to take that chance and try my best to save Darkflex. So they left me the whole project: NFTs collection, smart contract’s ownership, social platforms and treasury (which wasn’t much but I felt grateful cause it wasn’t given). 

Since then four months have passed. We’re still dead sales-wise but who isn’t? What is very far from being dead is the journey. I had the opportunity to connect with lots of awesome people: artists, creators, collectors, builders, and dreamers. In the end I think this is the essence of web3: ride the wave through the good and the bad times, share our path with strangers that become friends along the way and try to build something better together, for everyone.  

One encounter that had a massive impact was the one with our current pixel artist, Miss Godlikepx (my “beloved Mitty”). She’s a young Iranian lady who joined our Discord asking if she could work at our Lore. So we started talking and dreaming together, and we immediately bonded in a special way. So she started creating some of the most amazing artworks I’ve ever seen in “pure” pixel art and helped me become a true hardcore fan of this peculiar kind of art.

I quickly understood that art was the whole point all the time. Art brought our community together, art kept us close and united during dark times and never failed to lift our souls, allowing us to create a “happy island” in the negativity & massive bag chasing that unfortunately still dominates this space.

Another turning point was The Flex (our project’s magazine). In the beginning it was just seven pages of not-so-cool games and boring stories. A change came when I asked Godlikepx to feature her art in the magazine in a segment called “Pixel Addicts”. Since her featuring we started getting in touch with other incredibly talented artists and that opened our way (and minds) into Open Editions: a true goldmine of incredible art and amazing human beings.

I started hosting giveaways with the artwork from the artists I was featuring in the Flex and I decided that Darkflex needed to be completely open. Of course we love our art and we’re deeply fond of our project’s aesthetics and imaginary, but what kept us together and made us stronger as small community was being able to look beyond us, to have the honesty to accept that there’s a bunch of ultra-cool stuff out there, even if that would bring the attention away from our collection.

Today I can proudly say we’re a CrossChain community of art lovers, building bridges and not walls.

I wanna close by thanking the Redlion family, which has been nothing but super kind to me and gave me the opportunity to be here in this prestigious and legendary space talking about my little experience. And last but not least, I wanna thank the few crazy folks that have been incredibly loyal and supportive from my day zero in Darkflex: my beloved Mitty, my brother: SatoshiLambo, my general: Hadex, my friends: Axlsur, GM.sats, Jross, Peebz, Danno, the Warden, Sascha and all the Flawless Renegades fam, Mek, all the artists that were so kind to collaborate with us, Arthur (whom helped me through the blessings) & everyone who’s still dreaming a better web3!