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The Declaration of Resistance
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We are a resistance force of traders,
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dedicated to stopping further invasion on our hometurf
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by centralized exchange monopolies.
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Together, we will take back what was rightfully ours.
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We are all underpaid laborers
We don't notice it, but we have all been working for Google, Facebook, and Amazon for years.
If you bought a Ford Model T back in 1908, you would only be a consumer: the fact that you bought the car did not make other Model Ts better.
But when you use Facebook, you are, on net balance, a worker. By using facebook, you make facebook a much better product for tens of thousands of other users. You also bring your own fruits of labor to the platform: your relationships, and your own content and data.
In the Internet Era, consumption is inseparable from labor. When you consume, you also work to make the product better.
From the perspective of founders and investors, this is the much-celebrated "network effect". But from your perspective as a user, this is simply underpaid labor. This underpaid labor of billions of users translates to billions in monopoly profits. Herein lies the injustice.
Centralized exchange monopolies
A crypto exchange works in the same way. A successful crypto exchange requires the work of 3 groups: founders, investors, and traders
Founders build products and lead growth. For this, they receive equity.
Investors pay for salaries and expenses. For this, they receive equity.
Traders create network effects. But for this, they receive nothing.
In 2021 when founders are plenty and capital is cheap, the network effect is by far the most precious ingredient of the three. The difference between a tier 1 and tier 3 exchange is almost solely a matter of varying network effects.
Whenever you make a trade,
You create some network effect,
So you deserve to earn some equity.
The Integral Resistance
At Integral we build products that rival those of centralized exchanges, in service of our self-custodial decentralized homeland and its users.
Most importantly we address these economic injustices by distributing the upside of network effects to our community of users so that using the product means owning the product. Each new product we build creates on-chain stickiness that further counters the centralized exchange product lines.
With an effective line of products that directly rival those of our enemies, will have the ability to counterattack to unbundle the centralized exchanges. The key to breaking incumbent network effects lies in mass organization: we must get a majority of users to act forcibly and swiftly at once.
Who are you? Are you crazy? Why are you doing this?
We are anchored by a small band of core contributors who have collectively spent multiple decades doing business with and working at the very types of firms and institutions we seek to disrupt. After we received our training from top US universities and over the course of our tenure at these monopolies, we found the headlines increasingly dominated by chaos and inequality while we helped collect billions in outrageous profits.
We sat in front-row seats of their monopoly show and were increasingly disgusted by it. Early 2020, one by one, we had our Tyler Durden moments and rage quit these monopolies. We believe we can put a stop to this carnage.
That's the origin story of what is now Integral.
Societal Progress
Today, exchange monopolies are like octopuses whose slithering arms reach to strangle all of us. You cut off one arm and two more will grow in its place. We have long made up our mind to persevere and work unceasingly to cut ourselves free, but that is not enough. The turning point will hinge on the collective action of retail traders to seek freedom and cut ourselves away in one fell swoop by rising up and working together as one.
Coming together to make this fateful cut will ensure our victory and guarantee our freedom from the exchange monopolies. We are on the winning side because our enemies represent reaction, and we present progress.
Until victory we must rise up together and keep resisting!
Resist,
and Cheers!
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