What We Achieved In 2021
So much in such a short period…
2021 was not only a transformative year for crypto, but Samoyedcoin (SAMO) too. For those who might have forgotten, SAMO was born in April 2021. Since then, we’ve become the largest “memecoin” on Solana, which many believe to be the next big Layer-1 blockchain. Although we intend to spend 2022 proving to the world that SAMO is a trend-defining community coin, the hardest form of dogmoney in the game, and Solana’s ambassador, it’s essential to reflect on how far we’ve come in such a short period.
SAMO Is Born…
SAMO was born in April 2021 with a max supply of 14B SAMO. Although initially released as Solana’s first memecoin and in tribute to FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried and Solana’s Co-founder Anatoly Yurkavenko, SAMO has evolved into a community coin. We remain concentrated on becoming Solana’s ambassador by pushing the limits of what’s possible for a Web 3.0 community and filling the role of a friendly community guide dog for the Solana and broader cryptoasset ecosystem. Since then, we’ve seen tremendous growth, laid the foundation for future developments, and have set our sights on where we want to go and how we intend to get there.
Honorable Mentions
SAMO was highlighted in several well-established news publications, such as Nasdaq, Business Insider, Money.com, Decrypt, and Solana News. We were mentioned in Binance Academy and AAX Academy. Not only that, but SAMO made an appearance at Solana Breakpoint 2021 in Lisbon, being first featured as part of the Solana ecosystem and mentioned during BetDEX’s Co-Founder Nigel Eccles’ keynote presentation.
Burn SAMO, Burn!
Several notable burns took place in 2021, including the start of our final burn where 54% of SAMO’s total supply is burned over a year. The burns that took place in 2021 and the burns slated for 2022 not only substantially reduce SAMO’s max supply by 9.254 billion SAMO, but serve as a reminder to the community that the team remains committed to its word. Although the last remaining 3.5 billion SAMO will be burned in 2022, the following burns took place in 2021:
- The Initial Burn: Approximately 0.29 billion SAMO (2.07% of total supply) was “burned” on a vanity address at launch. The address can be found here.
- Burn Event #1 (The Anatoly Burn): As a tribute to Solana’s Co-Founder Anatoly Yakovenko, approximately 0.7 billion SAMO (5% of total supply) was “burned” on May 2, 2021. The address can be found here.
- Burn Event #2 (The SBF Burn): As a tribute to FTX’s CEO and crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, we burned approximately 0.7 billion SAMO (5% of total supply) on Jun. 1, 2021, following a community vote. A Proof-of-Burn can be found here.
- Burn Event #3 (The Final Burn): In Jul. 2021, we kicked off our final burn event — which was created to burn 54% of the total supply over three separate burns: an initial burn, a monthly burn for 1-year, and a random “special burn.” Exactly 1.5 billion SAMO (10.7% of total supply) was burned on Jul. 3, 2021, as part of our “initial burn event,” followed by 500 million SAMO burned on Aug. 28, 2021, which marked the start of a 12-month burn of 500 million SAMO (42.8% of total supply). On Dec. 25, 2021, 60 million SAMO was burned as part of the final burn event’s random “special burn.”
A Change of Direction
Although initially released as a memecoin, we spent time in 2H2021 reflecting on the future of SAMO — particularly in light of how other “memecoins” have positioned themselves within crypto. Seeing the opportunity for SAMO to lead the charge on what’s possible for a Web 3.0 community, we thought it was necessary to define SAMO’s vision, mission, and strategy.
Defining our vision, mission, and strategy came off the back of a change in leadership mid-summer. While some community members were concerned about SAMO’s future, what followed was new additions to the team that allowed for both the team and community to assist SAMO’s rise in the second half of the year and set the path ahead. As hoped, community members received the change in leadership as a tailwind for SAMO and many continue to believe the reorg to have been a net positive for the community. In addition to several members joining the team, two members were hired full-time to lead SAMO’s community efforts: GoodSamoSamo (GSS) and Swick Samo.
GSS joined the Samoyedcoin community in May 2021 and remained active until being brought on full-time in December 2021. GSS has been following crypto intimately since 2016, is a former Wall Streeter turned crypto enthusiast and spent nearly 4-years working in crypto full-time. He has held several roles at one of the most prominent players in the industry. In GSS’s latest role, he was in charge of growing and scaling a team of market analysts & researchers.
Swick Samo is a former operations manager turned SOL and SAMO enthusiast. Despite having followed crypto since 2017, it wasn’t until 2021 that he discovered the potential of the SOL ecosystem, fell in love with the Samo Famo, and joined the SAMO team full-time. He is also a known community member of the SOL NFT scene, has organized multiple Solana events, and is well connected within his local community of crypto addicts.
The SAMO Mods!
The SAMO moderator team has expanded to 10 total members as of year-end. Although team members are from all around the world and come from all walks of life, they’re all equally as passionate about SAMO, crypto, and the opportunity to make a positive impact within our community. Our team of moderators is as follows:
Integration Into the Solana Ecosystem
Last year’s surge in demand coincided with SAMO becoming increasingly more integrated within the broader cryptoasset ecosystem. Between centralized exchange listings, decentralized exchange listings, liquidity pools, yield farms, decentralized apps, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and more, SAMO became a bigger part of the Solana ecosystem than we had anticipated. As we grow our presence within the Solana DeFi sector, we intend on continuing to help educate community members about the world of DeFi — how to borrow, lend, staking, and provide liquidity to various platforms, as well as the potential risks associated with participating in DeFi.
Centralized Exchanges
The ever-growing demand for SAMO and the rise of the Samo Famo attracted the attention of several reputable centralized exchanges. SAMO closed out 2021 with 11 centralized exchange listings when all was said and done.
Decentralized Exchanges
Notwithstanding SAMO listed on several centralized exchanges, we were also fortunate to be listed on several decentralized exchanges — such as Raydium and Orca. Even as of year-end, the bulk of SAMO’s trading continues to take place on these decentralized exchanges, which serves as a testament to SAMO being, amongst all else, an onboarding and marketing vehicle for new users of the Solana ecosystem.
We Were Featured in Several NFT Collections
Amidst the boom of Solana NFTs, SAMO was fortunate enough to be featured in some of the most popular Solana NFTs of 2021. To those who were kind enough to show the Samo Famo love, we appreciate you! ❤️
Decentralized Apps (dApps)
BetDEX
In Nov. 2021, it was announced that SOL, USDC, and SAMO would be accepted as wagers on BetDEX, the world’s first decentralized sports betting protocol. BetDEX, which is expected to launch in 1H2022, was founded by former FanDuel executives. According to a press release, BetDEX recently raised $21 million in an investment round led by San Francisco-based crypto investment firm Paradigm and Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Multicoin Capital, Hack VC, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sino Global Capital, Solana Ventures, and Everblue Management also participated in the fundraising round.
GM Index
On Nov. 18, 2021, Symmetry, a permissionless and composable index protocol on-chain, announced that SAMO would be part of its “Meme Index (GM)” alongside DOGE, SHIB, and others.
Sol Casino
On Dec. 9, 2021, SAMO was added to Sol Casino, the first live playable casino on Solana that allows users to play several casino games using SPL tokens (such as SAMO).
The Samo Famo EXPLODED
Going International
Thanks to the help of community members, we were able to grow our international presence in 2021 considerably. As of year-end, SAMO has more than 18 international communities, and Samoyedcoin.com has been translated into 14 different languages — all of which took place at the community’s request.
VIP Roles: FAMO & SAMILLIONAIRE
As part of a broader community-building initiative, we created the “FAMO” and “SAMILLIONAIRE” verified Discord roles for community members. Thanks to our friends at Grape Protocol, those with more than 100,000 SAMO (FAMO) and 1 million SAMO (SAMILLIONAIRE) can now get special access to a separate Discord channel with exclusive events, giveaways, prizes, alpha, and more.
SAMO Holders
Despite being only eight months young, airdropping to 2,000 early community members, and retracing from an all-time high of $0.25, SAMO now ranks as one of the most widely held tokens within the Solana ecosystem. In just the last 3-months of the year, the number of SAMO holders has gone from roughly 10,000 to 50,000.
The only thing more notable than the number of SAMO holders growing despite recent price action is the growth of holders, which formed an “S” shape. This shape is also known as an “S growth curve,” which is found in the growth of social networks, technological innovations, business cycles, and more. That is to say, an initial surge in growth eventually slows but ultimately sets the foundation for another abrupt jump in growth.
Memes…Lots of Memes…
If there is anything that crypto has proven to the world, it’s that communities can form, exist, and thrive thanks to the power of memes. As that great SBF once said, “Memes are really f***ing important!” Given the impact of memes and the rise of the Samo Famo, we were ecstatic to see so many incredible SAMO memes crafted. For this reason, we rolled out “The Hall of Memes” on our Discord so the very best SAMO memes (+200 as of year-end) will forever be recognized as part of SAMO’s history.
Collaborations, Contests, & Giveaways
In 2021, we had several noteworthy collaborations, contests, and giveaways. We held 25 Days of SAMO (which was later extended to 31 Days of SAMO thanks to the BetDEX team), a rare 1-of-2 NFT giveaway, a custom SAMO NFT giveaway, a SAMO Swag Design contest, and gave away a rare SAMO Stompers NFT thanks to CryptoKickers.
Not only that, but we collaborated with GenesysGo to host a SAMO airdrop to those who staked their SOL with the GenesysGo validators. Also, we hosted the Solana Euro Fantasy League, participated in Grape Protocol’s Hearthstone Battlegrounds Tournament, joined Grape Protocol’s Poker Tournament, participated in Grape Protocol’s Call of Duty Warzone Tournament, collaborated with The Caveman Club for their $CAVE airdrop, collaborated with Mesopotamia Art for SAMO NFT auction where 90% of proceeds were used to buy and burn SAMO (roughly $13,000 worth), teamed up with Million Monke and Socks On Solana for a special giveaway, partnered with UNQ Club for SAMO holders to earn Neutrino, and held our very first SAMO Raid.
Our First Charity Donation!
In the spirit of giving back, we held our very first charity donation in 2021. In addition to our $30,000 worth of SOL donation, the SAMO community raised an additional $9,000 worth of SOL for a total donation of $39,000. Thanks to The Giving Block, we donated SOL to Wyoming-based Dogs For Better Lives, a non-profit that trains rescue dogs to help those in need.
Tools & Website Update
Last year, we released our SAMO Airdrop Tool, rolled out SAMO Tips (as part of the Solana Hackathon), and launched our SAMO DEX with the help of GenesysGo. We also revamped and redesigned Samoyedcoin.com alongside updating the website to support many different languages.
Wen NFTs?
Although originally slated to be released in 2021, SAMO NFTs were delayed for an early-2022 release due to a combination of volatile market conditions, technical issues with Candy Machine V1.0, and design revisions. However, we’ve made meaningful progress and have never felt more confident about the imminent roll-out of SAMO NFTs. We expect the community to feel the same in due time.
What’s Ahead?
As previously stated, the growth we saw in 2021 far exceeded our expectations and was most certainly a pleasant surprise. While we’re incredibly pleased with just how far this pup has come in such a short time, we have no intention of slowing down. We expect 2022 to be an even bigger year for us and will be the year that we show the world that SAMO is a driving force in redefining the value, impact, and function a Web 3.0 community can have not only in crypto but in the world.
For those who might have missed it, we recently published our 2022 roadmap detailing initiatives that will keep us plenty busy. We intend to execute aggressively but also know other opportunities will arise for Samo Famo to expand and have a lasting impact on the Solana ecosystem.
We’re beyond excited and hope you feel the same too. Thanks to everyone who has been part of the journey. It’s each and every one of you that makes the blood, sweat, and tears all worthwhile, so thank you.
