We are many.
Some have called us an army of ninjas, spreading the word and thought of our leader throughout the cryptosphere. Others think we can only be automated bots with sophisticated machine learning algorithms, directed by the supreme leadership of a fusion neural AI people have come to call the Dark Knight.
They’re right, of course.
How else do we respond so quickly to people on our hundreds of groups, at any time of day, with such detailed knowledge of almost 100 different projects? How else do we manage thousands of community members, seek out and destroy hundreds of security threats, spammers and scammers?
Only robots and ninjas controlled by a mysterious figure called the Dark Knight could do that, right?
Setting things straight
Fortunately, the facts behind what AmaZix is — who we are and what we do — is a lot less dramatic than that, and a lot more logical… despite the flattering impression our robot-like efficiency seems to have made on some.
When the six founding members of AmaZix (we refer to them fondly as the AmaSIX) first set up the company, the AmaZix website and much of its branding displayed the motto:
“World’s Leading Community Management and Engagement Firm”
At the time, in mid-2017, that was our aim. Today, we would like to believe this has become reality, and still carry that motto. Today, we would like to show you some aspects of what goes on every day behind that simple phrase.
What we do: Keep people informed, keep them safe
We work in an incredible space, coming into contact with some of the most brilliant ideas our generation has seen. Only ten years since entering public consciousness, Bitcoin and all the blockchain/crypto innovations spawned thereafter are already making their mark — today, we control our own money, we work in decentralized manners, processes are becoming more efficient across so many industries, and people are becoming more empowered in their everyday lives.
But it can be a bewildering space for newcomers. With new ICOs cropping up every day, new technologies and solutions purporting to revolutionize this industry or decentralize that sector, there is so much information to sift through… and so much misinformation to discard.
Keeping people safe in our communities, protecting them from scammers, ensuring they are updated on the latest developments with 100 projects, clarifying the misinformation — this is all in a day’s work for AmaZix.
Taming the Wild West of crypto isn’t easy! It is estimated that 78% of ICOs ever launched in 2017 have turned out to be scams (SATIS Group for Bloomberg, 11 July 2018), while 10% of funds raised have been lost to hackers (Ernst & Young, 2017).
AmaZix moderators don’t just monitor for fraudulent activities. Our own moderation statistics show that the top deleted messages are for:
- Unsolicited promotion of products or services unrelated to the channel — 40% of deleted messages
- Negative or abusive language — 30% of deleted messages
- Fraud — fake ETH addresses, advertising fake bonuses, cloned accounts etc. — 20% of messages
As of mid-July 2018, AmaZix’s moderators (and yes, our actual army of bots helping them) have collected this data:
| Days on duty: 124 | Managed groups: 139 (+ some deleted) |
| Known users: 470,507 |
| Bans: 54,400 | Automatic bans by the bot: 25,549 (47%) | Banned Users: 21,799
| Deleted messages: 39,051 (approximately) | Total events: 918,679
| Avg. daily bans: 521 | Avg. daily banned users: 262 | Avg. daily deleted messages: 374
What we don’t do: Raise funds, make markets
This is particularly important to point out. While the AmaZix assessment process is an important starting step in accepting projects to partner with, the objective of the assessment is only to ensure that we work with the projects that have a high business viability and sustainability. Our extremely rigid assessment process screens out about 80% of applicants.
In short, an AmaZix partner is found to be an actual project, with the right business plans in place and solid development objectives.
AmaZix does not raise funds from its communities, nor do we aim to influence token price/demand for our partners’ ICOs. In fact, AmaZix has no ability to make markets, and has no intention of doing so. Aside from the ethical issues and conflict of interest that were to arise from such intentions, market making is far from our objectives.
As such, discussions about ROI of partner tokens are taken keenly out of context and bear no relevance to the work AmaZix does.
One might be tempted to judge success or even project legitimacy on token pricing, but without the context of market sentiment and environment, information will always be skewed to current conditions.
For example, in the bull market of December 2017 to January 2018, practically every cryptocurrency and digital asset experienced incredible surges of price growth, while in the current downtrend, the opposite happened. A random pick of a basket of currencies in the Top 100 would invariably show similar ROI.
Pantera Capital (who owns Xapo and Coinbase, the largest custodial service provider and exchange in the US), whose crypto hedge fund is one of the biggest in the world, made 25,000% growth at the end of the 2017 bull run, but lost almost half its portfolio value in March (CNBC).
Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) — the world’s largest blockchain alliance that includes Fortune 500 alumni — shows similar stats from partnered projects, with some losing even 95% of their ICO value.
Does this mean Pantera Capital and EEA have been partnering with failed projects? Certainly not. One has to be extremely careful when looking at a single intersection of data during a bull or bear market.
And this is why AmaZix doesn’t play the price game. We’re not market makers.
Does AmaZix dump? Our policy on tokens
AmaZix only accepts top-tier projects as clients and as such, usually hold tokens long term. In fact, we have only sold project tokens from a few projects that we left, or that we have already been with for more than six months. Dumping tokens is simply not in line with our long-term objectives.
What we do: Advocate for blockchain and crypto
Our success is directly tied to what we do: manage and engage with communities, keeping them informed and safe. But AmaZix are also true, passionate believers in the decentralized technologies we promote.
Leading on from there, we hope to help our partners get the support their ideas and solutions deserve — every project that leads to actual products being used, and to actual solutions being developed is something we hope we contribute to.
And this is why AmaZix features the progress of our partners in their various fields and industries: their findings and use-cases in the real world — because it is all of these things that will foster adoption of crypto in everyday life. It is when people and businesses use blockchain and crypto applications as a norm, that brings out intrinsic value, true value — far beyond price speculation on the open market.
What we do: Use a new breed of human engagement to push crypto adoption
One of the things that we tried to bring in this space was the closeness of projects and communities. Often times, the community can feel far removed from the high-level goings on in blockchain projects, often waiting for information to filter down from project owners to its supporters.
AmaZix tried to change that, believing that communities should be brought closer to projects, to instil a sense of ownership and to help build more informed communities, turning them into vocal advocates for the technologies they support.
This human engagement — something AmaZix pursues very deliberately — is often overlooked yet is part of what makes us special. We feel that this interaction with our communities, and giving them the same interaction with project founders, bridged by our moderators, is something that the industry realizes can be very valuable. So much so that others in community management are beginning to replicate our efforts.
Where bounty campaigns used to be straightforward marketing tools that other managers simply automated, AmaZix pushed for more human engagement through Community Rewards. We created channels for users to discuss topics, we manually reviewed content created for partners, created guides for users to improve their quality and engagement of content, we had support staff and mods discuss in real time with users.
We engaged upcoming crypto influencers to create and host unique content for partners, with our own Crypto Sally hosting AMAs with project founders and fielding questions from the community.
We’ve always been listening to our community too. Thanks to the feedback (and yes, even criticisms) from our community, AmaZix has improved its banning policy over time, making moderator rules more permissive. We are always refining our guidelines and rules as a direct result of community feedback.
Our moderators (all humans, we assure you) are always encouraged to introduce more of their personality in their daily interactions and to respond properly when engaging with difficult situations.
AmaZix works hard to be an efficient organization but we always remember our roots and behind that efficient work ethics is a lot of humanity and personality. 150 different ones to be exact!
So the next time you come in to one of the groups we moderate to say hi and you’re wondering if the quick response has got to be one of our robots or asking yourself why Dark Knight never sleeps… we must admit that our attempts to clone our CEO as a fusion-powered neural AI have so far failed.
So until our experiments succeed, you’re just going to have to deal with the personal touch of our very, very human moderators. Sorry to disappoint you ;)
By AmaZix Editorial on August 1, 2018.
Exported from Medium on January 30, 2020.