<aside> 📌 TL;DR: The Insanitarium will be paused indefinitely. People who minted are refunded. txn: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x49ccc57db78ecb53a46465d7c2d7ce8e17099b363d8279686f286dcb862ffb20

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We wanted to do a lot of things for The Insanitarium but sadly, it is hard for us to continue mostly because of the limited funds and current market conditions.

Below are some of the things we have done, mistakes & lessons learned, and what’s next.

What We Have Done So Far

The following are the things we have done for The Insanitarium:

• Airdrops

  • All Genesis holders have received a candy airdrop and participants during our December safe spaces event were airdropped an artwork/custom made chibis by mrtwoseven

    

  

• Game Nights & Giveaways

  • We had a couple of Skribbl and Jackbox Party game nights where we gave away some ETH / Discord Nitro. We also have partnered with some projects to giveaway some WL spots (like Kumo and Planktoons) and NFTs (like Flowtys & Mars Cat)

    

• Safe Spaces

  • Genesis holders have the benefit of booking a 1/1 session with our Registered Psychometrician, @nightcall. We also had group safe space sessions where we are are asked questions about life. Hopefully this have helped aid a bit in this overwhelming space.

    

• Shared Degen/Alpha

  • Community have shared a bunch of alpha/degen plays that hopefully made people profit. One of the notable ones is Fractal, most people got in very early (<1000 members) and received a hexa Fractal airdrop which at one point was selling for a 40SOL (~1.5E floor).

Some Mistakes & Lessons Learned

We learned a lot from this experience. Sharing some of it here.

• Timing the market

  When we launched, ETH was at its all-time high and gas prices were insane. Launching during that time was like attacking a dragon with a knife. You stood no chance.

  Market timing can make or break a project. Wrong timing can lose the momentum you have built pre-launch and it’d be hard to bounce back.

• Building the community

  Community is one of the most important things when launching an NFT project. If you want to sell out a 10k collection, there must be a vast enough community to help you spread the word. For The Insanitarium, we were just a tiny community which lessened the chances of success.

• Finding a Niche

  We wanted to do a lot of things for The Insanitarium and that made it crazy. It became all over the place and lost an actual identity. We failed to find a niche.

  When building a project, find a niche and make your vision clear.

• Prepare for the long-term

  The Insanitarium raised a minimal amount which limited us on what we can do. We tried to budget it as much as we can to things that can bring value (trying influencers for marketing, safe spaces mod, giveaways, etc.) but still struggled.

  As we observe the state of the market, small projects will be the ones that will struggle the most. Even if you continue delivering what’s on your roadmap, if it’s a bear market, volume is just non-existent and royalties will slow down. Projects need to be prepared enough when this happens, unfortunately, we were not.

  We planned to relaunch but after observing the markets, we concluded that we are still not prepared enough for it. This is why we decided to pause The Insanitarium indefinitely.