Badfish
Hey Gake, it’s a pleasure to meet you and thanks for taking the time. Let’s kick it of by getting to know a little about you.

How did you get into Web3?

Gake
Honestly, I don’t really have a storied Web3 background per se. I started off dabbling in crypto at the end of 2021 when NFTs were all the rage. Since then, my journey has been a pretty tumultuous one — going into the bear, capitulating and selling everything I had, pivoting into shitcoins on ETH trying to flip it all back. It’s something many of us have gone through. It’s not as easy as a lot of people make it look. Eventually I did lose everything on ETH and only came back at the start of this year in hopes of making everything I’d lost back again. This time though I’ve been quite successful and I think that’s a testament to the never give up, never surrender attitude that you have to have to make it in crypto. It’s a game of peaks and valleys and you’ve got to persevere through the tough times to make it to the top.

Badfish
What a wild ride man, congrats on the recent success. My own journey is not so dissimilar from your own, though I’d say my lows weren’t as low and my highs certainly not a high, but it’s been a bumpy ride through NFTs a few years ago and memecoins now.

So, tell me about Pixi. From what I understand, you led, or at least helped lead, what has become a pretty successful CTO. I know we’ve got at least a couple Pixi PFPs in the Mag of Meme Telegram.

Gake
Yeah, so I found Pixi like I find any other memecoin, just hunting in the trenches. I thought Pixi was a super unique and novel concept with its ability to fit into the infinite PFP meta, not unlike what you might consider our non-pixelated cousin, Michi. It launched almost a month ago now as a spinoff of the Mario Cat game (Shobon no Action) and quickly took off. It topped at around a $6M market cap and was quick to retreat and bottomed out under $1M towards the end of May, but we’re experiencing a bit of a resurgence again now. 

The CTO is and always will be an uphill battle against new metas and the tokens that launch and steal people’s attention and liquidity. Despite that difficulty, or perhaps as a result of, it’s given me a lot of perspective on what it takes to run a successful project and has been a deeply enriching part of my journey, both in Web3 and personally. The thing about a CTO is that even though you may be leading it or help leading it, it wasn’t your idea to begin with, and you’ve already got a community behind you when you step into that role. It’s a motivating position to assume and something I wholeheartedly believe in.

Badfish
I’m fascinated by CTOs and how they’re a sort of relaunching of a project with a strong community already behind it. One of the hardest aspects of any new project is building community, and while the CTO has it’s own difficulties relating to ownership, finances, team, etc. having that strong community presence from the get-go must make up for a lot of the other obstacles.

What are some difficulties you’ve faced through the process of helping take over?

Gake
Pixi took a major hit when the website got delayed due to some personal stuff that web dev had to take care of. That led to a lot of selling pressure and FUD as we’d communicated the site would be up by a certain date with our in-house Pixi maker. This space moves fast and most people are unforgiving when that sort of thing happens. A lot of people did stick around and we’re grateful for them but ultimately it led to that major dip to around $600K and we’ve been working to come back from that. Twitter verification was another thing that held up back, though on a smaller scale and something a lot of new projects run into if they haven’t locked in all their info a week or so ahead of launching.

Another thing that took a lot of time and thought, though not necessarily a setback in the same sense as the delayed website, was reorganizing the team. We kept on most of the original team, including mods, the web dev, and some others. But we also had to fill some gaps with art, establishing partnerships, marketing strategies, and other things to help get the project back on track and into growth mode. Getting a team in place and reestablishing trust within the community allowed us to stabilize our floor and start working our way back up.

Badfish
Well it looks like you’ve done a great job of that so far. Maintaining a million dollar memecoin in this space is not an easy thing to do, despite there being many of them. So congratulations on that.

Now that the project has recovered and looks to stable, what’s your pitch to attract new users? Why should I buy into Pixi today?

Gake
Great question. Usually when people ask this sort of thing I break it down into three categories:

We are a first mover, not a derivative.
I truly believe we possess the potential to reach the top alongside major players in the memecoin space like Michi, WIF, BOME, and others. Despite the first-mover being a major advantage in traditional business, it can actually be a hindrance in Web3. Degens are always rushing to get into obvious derivative plays early because they are recognizable and have the virality already associated with them. How many dressed up cats, Books of this or that, and animals with hats have we seen reach millions? Too many to count. But as a first-mover in our category, we’ve got something unique that has staying power, and in hindsight it will have been obvious.

Infinite memeability
The Pixi meme truly has infinite possibilities. Sure, the base is modeled after the Shobon no Action cat, but our origins need not define our future. We are constantly adding new traits to our generator, creating honoraries for influencers in the space, growing our meme library, and adding animated GIFs to our arsenal of assets. Our community is active in pushing the boundaries of the meme and helping us decide what direction to take things. We will never stop adding to the Pixi library and hope it will one day become recognizable across all of crypto.

 Sustainability and treasury
After the takeover I committed a large sum of personal funds to the liquidity pool. I am running the project out of my personal pocket, and I’m fine with that as I am lucky enough to have the funds to do so and believe in Pixi that much. The liquidity pool is on Meteora and earns 1% in transaction fees, all of which are sent to a community wallet that will be used for the project. Despite maintaining control of the Pixi.sol wallet, I will not be taking any of the earnings personally and we are working with the team to set up a proper multisig treasury wallet. It’s easy for us founders to say we know that we don’t do anything nefarious with the control we have, but instilling trust in the existing community and with new members is important for the success of any project.

Badfish
Well said Gake. It’s certainly a compelling project for many reasons and one I’ll be keeping an eye on for my entry. I know you’re incredibly busy these days so want to thank you for taking the time to chat and congratulations on everything accomplished so far with Pixi. The future seems bright and I wish you and the team all the best.

Gake
Thanks for having me Badfish. Great to meet you and good luck with the Mag.