Discord Planned To Integrate Ethereum. Huge Backlash Made Them Cancel Everything

At least Discord knows where it’s standing now. We all know how much we’re still early in cryptocurrency. The general public is so confused about all this. Discord’s founder and CEO Jason Citron hinted at possible integration with the Ethereum ecosystem, with NFTs, and with the incumbent Web3. Then all hell broke loose. 

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Discord fanatics spammed Citron’s answers and canceled their subscriptions to their Nitro premium service. They took to Twitter to vent their frustration to their own workers. These videogame culture icons rallied the crowd and received hundreds of likes and tweets. Their motivations? Environmental concerns. They consider NFTs to be a fraud. And that they’re ruining video games somehow.

Sight…

Let’s unpack all of this.

Discord’s Web3 Plan Unveiled:

Packy McCormick is the creator of content This article is extremely long about Discord’s history and how it could evolve. It ended with NFTs and cryptocurrencies as well as their multichain wallet and a poorly-conceived new token. It could not be! It’s obvious that should be the direction that a successful but not entirely profitable company like Discord should go, right? It was ended:

“We strongly believe that the company should follow its users’ pull into web3. The company’s biggest successes to date came when it decided to build the communications infrastructure for gamers; now, it has the opportunity to build a more complete set of tools for this game that we’re all playing all across the internet.”

McCormick seems to have overestimated crypto’s potential. The game isn’t for everybody. Some people actually hate the game with passion. Discord’s Jason Citron replied with an image that showed some kind of integration between the service, Metamask, and WalletConnect. It also featured the Ethereum logo accompanied by the popular meme phrase “It is unlikely that anything will ever happen.”  

This tweet got hundreds of responses. They criticized their plans and denounced NFTs. This is actually quite funny, when you stop and think about it. Discord’s logo is a videogame controller, and that community was their original audience. Video games require a lot more electricity to play than all the other blockchains.

ETHUSD price chart for 11/12/2021 - TradingView

 Source : BTC/USD at TradingView.com| Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com

Is Discord and Web3 a match or not?

It seems so. If you read the article that started it all, it’s hard to argue with its logic. McCormick stated:

“The last of these gestures at Discord’s grip on web3. This platform has become the most popular for coordination of all kinds of projects such as NFTs, DAOs and crypto investment groups. It’s genuinely startling how quickly this has become a norm in the sector.”

Many DAOs, NFT projects and other organizations run Discord communities. It seemed like an easy bet. TechcrunchIt went even further. 

“With MetaMask support, Discord could become a place where people display their NFTs in galleries linked to user profiles or choose “verified” avatar images, with ownership backed up through the blockchain.”

Twitter Crypto appears to be working without complaint on this. This could not have happened. De Discord is different. McCormick asked,

“What would it look like if Bored Ape holders could buy and sell within the same channels they host conversations? What if members of the Bankless DAO could buy new tokens in-line with a discussion about them?”

We’ll probably never know.

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The aftermath

Many people are not well-informed on cryptocurrencies. They were shocked by the articles that discussed environmental dangers blockchains could pose. However, there’s something else going on here. Discord seems technologically driven, and it is also a community that values art. While they ought to support NFTs and are strongly against it, they do not. It’s almost a manic way of saying it.

Discord has a 3D artist who reacts like this:

Another Discord employee is here, also retweeted these two terrible-terrible takesThe following information is available about the event

From where is this rage? Or is it just the environmental situation? They work for a tech company that uses dirty electricity. This is not about money laundering and scams. The art industry is built on money laundering and scams. No, there’s something else here. The crypto world arises a rage in them that shouldn’t be ignored. Check the replies under Citron’s tweets and you’ll see.

Speaking about Discord’s CEO, he backpedaled his company’s whole Web3 plan with a PR friendly: “TEveryone, thank you for your feedback. This internal idea is not currently being developed. For now we’re focused on protecting users from spam, scams and fraud. Web3 is full of great things, but we still have a lot of issues to solve at our scale.” And to drive the point home, they told Techcrunch that the screenshot came from a hackathon: “We’re always exploring and hacking away at things we think will improve Discord for all the communities we serve.

Yeah, sure Discord. You are our belief.

Featured Image: Discord’s Ethereum plansCharts created by TradingViewfrom this tweet | Charts by TradingView

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