Current State of the Artemis Protocol

Here’s a quick summary of this long article: I don’t believe the Artemis Protocol is positioning itself for success.

As someone who is financially invested in the Artemis Protocol, its success is important to me. However, recently, I have grown to doubt the team’s competence, and decided to do some research on my own. I initially sent this article to the team, and we chatted about it. At first, the article was to be kept between us. The discussion revolved much around how they communicate with the community.

However, following the discussion, a community member pointed out on Discord that they had never announced winners for contests that had been held (See observation #4 for details), and the team ignored the question. This was the trigger to me sharing the article.

OBSERVATION #1 — OUTDATED DOCUMENTATION

The documentation provided by the Artemis Protocol team is currently outdated and unreliable. Going through the documentation is a nostalgia trip, we get to see was Artemis was supposed to be by now — Oh, the memories of hope. To be clear, I understand that delays happen. The problem here is that we have no update on the state of anything.

30 days ago, more information was to be released in the coming days

• The incubator page mentions that information is coming in the coming days. The last update to the page was 30 days ago.
• The xMIS page mentions that xMIS will go live in Q4 2021. Unless there is a surprise xMIS launch within 24 hours, that deadline has passed.
• The Artemis Earn page mentions an upcoming guide on how to use Artemis Earn, which seems to only exists on a third-party Medium, which is only linked in Discord.

Still staying tuned!

Additionally, the following is written in the ArtemisPad page, which was not done, to my knowledge, for the past IDOs:

Projects wishing to distribute tokens through the ArtemisPad will be reviewed by Harmony Universe, a platform known as the central hub for Harmony Protocol projects, once the review is published, Artemis Governance will fairly decide if the project should be launched on the platform through voting.

OBSERVATION #2 — PLATFORM PROBLEMS

Along with the outdated documentation, we are treated to a platform that is functional, but full of bugs and other issues.

I have no doubt that some of the following comments are things being worked on, but I believe the number of problems with the platform deserves mention. The Artemis team has had time to address these issues, and they have not communicated a timeline for corrections.

For starters, I want to focus on the most important part of the platform — The ArtemisPad, where past, present and future IDOs are presented and held.

• The ArtemisPad page still has Immortl ONE IDO as « Current », even though it has been closed for over a week.
• The finished IDOs, as seen with the Lumen IDO, have no token address, no project information, no archive of dates, no statistics on the IDO. Following the Immortl ONE IDO, the Discord received constant requests for the token address

For comparison’s sake, here are how other launchpads present their IDOs:

Information on a completed IDO on Avalaunch

Upcoming IDOs on Polkastarter

Information on an upcoming IDO on Solanium

Other than the ArtemisPad, a few other problems come up on the Artemis Protocol:

• The governance page leads to a bug when clicking on a past proposal
• The hades tab is currently bugged. According to information on the Discord, the page needs to be accessed through a different link. That link has not been provided on Twitter or the Discord’s « Links » tab.
• The incubator tab is currently undergoing maintenance and has been since the new site’s launch a month ago. There has not been an update on when to expect it to be ready.

OBSERVATION #3— POOR LAUNCH COMMUNICATION

Since launching its new platform, the Artemis Protocol has launched two IDOs (Tranquility City and Immortl ONE). I took the time to analyze how they supported their launches, and how that compares to other launchpads.

• Artemis does not publish guidelines on how to participate. Compare this so Solanium, Avalaunch, and Polkastarter outline how to participate in an IDO. For the Immortal IDO, this tweet led to an IDO guide posted by Immortl, on their own Medium, but I couldn’t read it since I don’t have a paying Medium account.
• EDIT: Upon looking further, it seems that they did publish guidelines for the Tranquility City IDO on this Medium page. It, however, is a different Medium page than is linked on their website, so I don’t know how the community was expected to see it.
• Of all the launches I’ve compared it with (Solanium, Avalaunch, Polkastarter, Avalaunch), Artemis Protocol tweeted the least about its launches. It tweeted 7–9 times before, during and after the launches, while the other platforms tweeted between 10 and 25 times. To be fair, more research would be needed to see if number of tweets and type of tweets correlate with success of an IDO.
• Artemis held its AMA in Discord and did not keep an archive of the AMA or publish a recap of the AMA — The only of the platforms I looked into that did not do so. Additionally, contrary to most other platforms, Artemis did not offer prizes to the community for participating in the AMA.
• There is no clear information available on how Artemis manages IDOs that did not achieve their funding goals. In the case of Immortl ONE, which did not meet goals, the remaining tokens were burnt, but it is unclear if this will always be the case.
• The only available information about upcoming IDOs (Xenon Finance and SlothFi) is the short mention on the website, in the ArtemisPad tab. There is no information on each project, such as a date, description, or necessary MIS for participation. It seems like Artemis is letting upcoming projects market themselves. SlothFi has been posting a lot on Twitter recently, but Artemis has not helped with promoting the project.
• The Tranquility City and Immortl ONE IDOs had different MIS requirements for participation. It is unclear how much will be needed in the future, and what determines the number of MIS needed for an IDO.

OBSERVATION #4 — INADEQUATE COMMUNITY BUILDING

Artemis’ Twitter account was created about 3 months ago, and it has since then failed to build an active community.

• The Discord channel is lifeless. There is no discussion, other than the occasional member asking a question that should not need to be asked (ex. Token address, how much MIS will be needed in the next IDO, where the Hades pool is, etc.). I can’t comment on Telegram, as I don’t use it.
• After the Immortl IDO, there were a lot of questions and complaints about how the IDO was handled and how projects were chosen (ie. The vetting process). When doubts on the credibility of the Immortl ONE team were raised, the team’s initial response was to shift responsibility on the community for doing the vetting. When the community pushed back, it was told that the team would take the time to go over the questions/complaints and address them. There has so far been no follow-up. To be clear, the complaint here is not that people did not like the project, but that the team refused to answer questions about the vetting process and instead shifted blame onto the community. Mistakes happen, but refusing to answer to the community’s worries isn’t okay. I believe that transparency is key, as we say this week with Magnet DAO (one of Artemis’ partners) launch delay.
• There has not been an active effort on Artemis’ part to become a central part of the Harmony ecosystem, as we have seen other dApps try to do. Here are a few examples: MagnetDAO, Avalaunch, VenomDAO, Trader Joe. Becoming central to the ecosystem requires frequent communication and contributing to the ecosystem through ressources, visibility and education.
• This is an add-on to my initial article — They held contests without announcing winners. When this was brought up in Discord, the question was ignored. This is what triggered my posting of the article.

OBSERVATION #5 — INEFFECTIVE BRAND MARKETING

As the first established launchpad on Harmony, Artemis Protocol had the first-mover advantage and could have positioned itself as central to the success of future Harmony projects. It has, however, failed to establish a brand as a successful launchpad.

• There is little available information on the team. I understand that not everyone wants to be doxxed, but it adds another level of doubt. From my understanding, some are known, as they have attended events, but I can find no information on them. See how Magnet DAO promoted each of its team members to raise awareness on their competence.
• When Tranquility City stomped on its IDO goals, raising 700–900% over the goal, Artemis Protocol should have been celebrating how its community managed to fund the project with such success. There was no such communication.
• We have seen most other platforms use homemade visuals to give their brand a constant identity. Artemis’ visuals are basic and unimpressive.
• There are no additional efforts to bring awareness to the Artemis Protocol, as seen here with Avalaunch.

OBSERVATION #6 —LACK OF INCENTIVES

A successful launchpad needs to have a community that is willing and motivated to invest in each new project. If not, there is a higher level of uncertainty on the launchpad’s capability to finance each new project.

• There are currently no incentives for holding MIS, leading to a price that fluctuates heavily before, during and after each IDO. The team has mentioned on Discord that they are reworking the use of MIS.
• There are currently no incentives for regular participation in each new ID. For example, see Avalaunch airdrop page. New IDOs on Avalaunch often come with airdrops for those who participated in past IDOs. Avalaunch has also surprised their community a few times with surprise airdrops for those who participated regularly in IDOs, leading people to keep participating in the hopes of future airdrops

CONCLUSION — OVERALL OUTLOOK

Following this article, I can’t say that I have renewed confidence is Artemis Protocol’s future. With new competitors emerging (Onepad and HarmonyLauncher), it feels like Artemis is on the verge of having wasted its first-mover advantage. The platform offers nothing new compared to existing launchpads in other ecosystems and doesn’t even offer what should be basic information for a launchpad. It also isn’t showing signs of learning from past IDOs, as it doesn’t seem to be approaching SlothFi and Xenon Finance’s IDOs with more communication.

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