The past few months have been challenging for crypto, with markets cratering due to macro factors.
As tends to happen with cryptocurrencies and volatile assets, periods of downtrends like this are hijacked by malicious actors who tend to use them to spread unfounded rumors — either due to pure malice or to crash the price of a token in order to accumulate at very cheap rates.
We’ve seen a lot of these rumors aimed at Floki lately — especially heightened since the decision to blacklist certain wallets to enforce a return of excess tokens gotten due to a V1 inflation bug. These rumors are mostly being spread by blacklisted parties refusing to return the excess tokens they got.
A particular rumor being spread is that the Floki team is misappropriating treasury funds and “cashing out,” which is dangerously malicious and untrue.
So we’re going to look at some numbers to keep things in perspective.
(summary at the end of this article if you want to skip the epistle)
How much do crypto companies spend on sports partnerships? A few examples.
We’ll start by putting things into perspective.
First, let’s take a look at numbers for mainstream sports partnerships involving some of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency brands (brands we have deep respect for to be clear!):
1. The Binance x Lazio football partnership: The world’s biggest crypto exchange Binance signs a 2-year sponsorship deal with Serie A club SS Lazio for $35 million.
That’s $17.5 million per year.
This 2-year deal will have the Binance logo featured on Lazio’s Jersey and in all their marketing communications.
2. The Bybit x Red Bull Formula 1 partnership: Highly respected exchange Bybit signs a 3-year sponsorship deal with Formula 1 team Red Bull for $150 million.
This deal aimed at giving Bybit mainstream exposure to the massive Formula 1 audience essentially costs Bybit $50 million per year.
3. The Tezos x Manchester United football partnership: Popular blockchain Tezos signs a multi-year sponsorship deal with Premier League clob Manchester United $27 million per year.
The deal gives Tezos mainstream exposure by featuring Tezos branding on the Manchester United jersey and in their marketing communications.
So based on the above numbers:
Partnering with two major football clubs and a formula 1 team costs three of the world’s most respected crypto brands $94.2 million per year.
How much does it cost to develop a blockchain/NFT game? A couple examples.
We’ve taken a look at numbers/data for sports partnerships from some of the world’s biggest crypto brands. Now, let’s take a look at data on how much it takes to develop utility.
Specifically, since our flagship utility project is a blockchain game, let’s take a look at the cost implications of developing blockchain games by looking at a few examples:
1. Illuvium did a $51.6 million ICO sale and had a seed raise of $5 million to build its Play2Earn NFT blockchain game.
2. Yield Guild gaming has raised a total of $22.5 million to build its NFT gaming economy.
3. Sky Mavis has raised over $161 million to develop its NFT gaming ecosystem.
4.There are several other examples of blockchain gaming companies raising between $20 million to several hundreds of millions of dollars to develop their Metaverse/NFT game.
Floki Operations/Expenses: A Quick Overview
To address the FUD about team mismanagement/misappropriation of funds, we will be highlighting four key areas our expenses at Floki are focused on so that you can review our activities and make your own judgment.
The four areas we will be looking at include:
- Marketing.
- Valhalla development.
- Philanthropy.
- Team operating expenses.
Let’s start with marketing.
MARKETING
Floki and Mainstream Sports Partnerships
To reiterate, the crypto marketing deals highlighted above (based on publicly available data!) shows that it cost three respected crypto brands $94.2 million per year to secure two football club partnerships and a Formula 1 team partnership.
So what kind of mainstream sports partnerships does Floki have:
Football:
- SSC Napoli in the Serie A.
- Cádiz CF in the La Liga.
- FC Twente in the Dutch Football League.
- FC Spartak Moscow in the Russian Premier League.
- Fenerbahçe S.K. in the Turkish Super League.
- Bayer 04 Leverkusen in the Bundesliga.
- Kerala Blasters FC in the Indian Super League.
- FC Goa in the Indian Super League.
That’s 8 major football clubs Floki signed a partnership/sponsorship deal with for a complete season/year.
Formula 1:
- Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN in the Formula 1.
That’s one major Formula 1 team Floki signed a partnership/sponsorship deal with for a complete season/year.
To put things in perspective, Floki currently has a 1-year/season deal with 8 football clubs and a Formula 1 team.
Beyond mainstream sports partnerships, let’s also take a look at some of the massive mainstream marketing campaigns we’ve done:
Floki was featured on billboards/banners/buses in about a dozen countries including
- The United States.
- The United Kingdom.
- Ireland.
- The Netherlands.
- Denmark.
- Germany.
- Finland.
- India.
- Australia.
- Spain
- Dubai
- Israel
- Switzerland
Floki has also had major airport marketing campaigns in:
- The Heathrow Airport in the UK.
- The Istanbul Airport in Turkey.
- The Dubai International Airport.
- Frankfurt Airport.
We’ve had major TV campaigns as well:
- A massive 2-month TV campaign in the United States.
- A massive 2-month TV campaign in Turkey.
So let’s put things into perspective:
Based on the above facts, we can establish that Floki currently has/has had:
- Partnerships with 8 major football clubs for 1 year/season.
- Partnership with a respected Formula 1 team for 1 year/season.
- Major marketing campaigns in about a dozen different countries.
- Airport marketing campaigns in 4 of the world’s biggest international airports.
- Extensive TV campaigns in two of the world’s biggest countries.
When we consider the fact that it cost the crypto projects mentioned above $94.2 million/year to partner with 2 football clubs and a Formula 1 team for 1 year, an outside observer would expect that the above partnerships would cost Floki at least $100 million.
In reality, we haven’t spent as much on all of Floki marketing initiatives combined.
In fact, Floki hasn’t seen revenue of up to $100 million since its inception. We’ll get to the numbers in a bit (which anyone can verify on-chain!).
VALHALLA
It’s no secret that Floki is building a Play2Earn Metaverse NFT game called Valhalla.
Valhalla is our flagship utility product and an NFT game currently being developed by a team of over 20 people.
The alpha version of the Valhalla Battle Arena is currently live on testnet and playable at: valhalla.game.
While we can’t yet disclose exact numbers being spent on the game for obvious reasons, we highlighted numbers for some of the major NFT games being developed earlier.
According to data from BlockchainGamers.biz, most blockchain gaming companies raise upwards of $20 — $30 million to develop their game, and the biggest blockchain games we’re familiar with today generally tend to raise hundreds of millions of dollars.
Valhalla is being developed for a fraction of that.
PHILANTHROPY
Floki is popularly known for our philanthropy and focus on making a real life positive impact on fellow humans.
For example, moves like our $1.4 million donation to the Million Gardens Movement to fight food insecurity is why The Giving Block rates Floki as the second most charitable NFT project in the world.
Certainly these philanthropic contributions come at a cost.
The $1.4 million donation to the Million Gardens Movement was a pure community effort; it was done through a sale of 10,000 NFT avatars named “Flokitars.”
We sold out these NFTs in 32 minutes, raised $1.4 million, and donated all the proceeds to the movement. So this donation did not come from the treasury wallet/tax funds.
Other initiatives like the four schools we’re building in Nigeria, Ghana, Guatemala, and Laos, etc, have been paid for from the Floki multisig treasury wallet, however.
TEAM OPERATIONS EXPENSES
Floki has a team of over 40 people directly working on the project. This does not include the team of over 20 people working on our Metaverse NFT game, Valhalla.
The Floki team consists of our lead dev, web/graphic designers, core team, admins, and mods that are paid on a monthly basis from the multisig treasury wallet.
It’s worth noting that there are other miscellaneous expenses that include payment for CEX listings, market making, partnerships/integrations, and other miscellaneous expenses.
FLOKI REVENUE NUMBERS
With major areas of operations/expenses established, exactly how much does Floki make?
Let’s take a look at revenue numbers from the Floki multisig for perspective:
We’d like to establish that Floki’s only source of revenue at the moment is a 3% buy/sell tax that goes to the Floki multisig treasury wallet automatically in the form of ETH/BNB (depending on the chain the tax is deducted on).
To be very clear: At the time of writing this, we haven’t sold tokens to pay for any of our marketing initiatives/development activities.
Marketing/development/philanthropy/team and all the activities listed above have always been paid from the 3% buy/sell tax accruing to the Floki treasury multisig wallet in ETH/BNB where they are swapped into stables and disbursed.
The Floki multisig wallet is publicly available and disclosed in the Floki whitepaper.
So here are the numbers:
Exactly how much has Floki earned since inception? Below are numbers based on a snapshot taken on the 20th of April, 2022.
- Total ETH accrued up till April 19, 2022: 8,671 ETH
- Total BNB accrued up till April 19, 2022: 53,003 BNB
To make this number make sense, we’re taking the average price of both ETH and BNB from when we started taking the 3% buy/sell transaction tax to our multisigs using historical data from Investing.com.
The Floki ETH multisig became active in August, 2021 while the BSC multisig became active in July 2021:
- Average ETH price from August 2021 to April 2022 = $3404.94
- Average BNB price from July 2021 to April 2022 = $441.77
In essence, this means the Floki multisig (BSC and ETH) accrued the following amounts up to the time specified above:
- 8,671 ETH x $3,404.94 (avg. ETH price) = $29,524,234.74
- 53,003 BNB x $441.77 (avg. BNB price) = $23,411,425.1
Total amount accrued to ETH/BNB multisig = $52,935,659.84
PUTTING THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE
To summarize things for those who might not have the time to go through a long block of text, referencing publicly available data from major media publications and reliable sources we established that:
- It cost three major brands $94.2 million to sponsor/partner with two football clubs and a Formula 1 team.
- The average blockchain gaming company raises $20 million — $30 million+ for operations and development.
Floki on the other hand is:
- Partnered with 8 major football clubs and a Formula 1 team.
- Building a disruptive Metaverse NFT game named Valhalla (alpha live and playable on testnet).
- Running IRL marketing campaigns, TV campaigns, airport marketing campaigns in over a dozen countries.
- Maintaining a team of 30+ people (working on various aspects of the project on an international level).
- Actively contributing to philanthropic causes.
Floki has done/is doing all the above without having generated more than ~ $52.94 million in revenue (from a 3% buy/sell transaction tax) since inception. At the time of writing this, we’ve also never had to sell FLOKI tokens to fund any of these activities.
The above facts establish a few things very clearly:
- Compared to major crypto brands out there we’re getting much better deals on marketing and utility development and paying significantly less.
- The claims that the team has access to hundreds of millions of project funds is untrue because Floki has never generated that much in its lifetime. Our multisig wallets are publicly available and on the blockchain so anyone can verify this.
We’d like to strongly emphasize that you ignore fudders making spurious claims especially when it comes to Floki’s operations numbers and expenses.
These fudders often make these claims without referencing any blockchain transaction or by taking random blockchain transactions and giving them false contexts that show their lack of blockchain experience or clear malicious intent.
What we’ve achieved (and our achieving) compared to the funds we have has never been done in this industry:
- Our multisig wallets are out there for all to see and analyze on the blockchain.
- You can easily compare what other major brands in the industry are spending on similar deals (marketing/sponsorships/utility) and make your assessment.
If there’s anything the Floki team is guilty of, it is consistently spending a lot less than our competition to get better deals for Floki’s 400,000+ holders who put their trust in us.
