What a mess. In fact, a $100 million market cap vanished more quickly than you can say “rug pull.” And so the Doodles NFT values plummeted right with it. The initial hype was deafening. Now? Only the deafening silence of disappointment and a vivid cautionary tale for the whole of Web3.
Hype Is Never A Strategy
Let's be blunt. The DOOD launch wasn’t a strategy, it was a Hail Mary disguised as innovation. They airdropped billions of tokens, hoping for… what, exactly. Loyalty? Engagement? Sustainable growth? The actual experience was a free-for-all rush for the exits by airdrop hunters looking to dump their tokens.
This is all giving me serious dot-com boom vibes. Remember Pets.com? All the hype in the world couldn’t save a business model that just didn’t pencil out. DOOD suffered a similar fate. A community airdrop isn't utility. Gamification and better governance are great concepts, but they don’t constitute real value. After all, you can’t construct a tower of innovation on a base of chimeras.
Where Was The Strategic Planning
While maybe a technically reasonable move, the decision to launch on Solana just seemed so out of touch with the Doodles community. Ethereum is their home. Why make users jump through hundreds of hoops just to get them to use a new wallet? It’s akin to putting a McDonald’s franchise in a Burger King. Confusing, and ultimately self-defeating. This is not a case of who is technically superior, it’s a case of knowing who your potential customers are.
Here's the hard truth: the Wild West days of crypto are numbered. We require more robust and well-defined guardrails—not to dampen innovation, but to safeguard consumers and encourage long-term, sustainable deployments. The DOOD debacle is the poster child for why. The perfect storm of unchecked hype combined with unclear utility sets the stage for rampant speculation and, eventually, disappointment. If we don't get ahead of this, the government will do it for us, and we won't like it.
Brand Cannot Overcome Bad Economics
Doodles has a great brand. McDonald's, Pharrell, Adidas... they've got the partnerships. They got a Binance listing! No matter how strong a brand is, it can’t outlast awful economics. That the same positive trajectory would follow Shibarium’s comparison to Pudgy Penguins’ PENGU token is compelling, but not a certainty. What made PENGU’s recovery possible was its discovery of niche, of purpose. DOOD must match that, and soon.
The Doodles team are excited to bring DOOD to Base. Good. What will it actually do? How will it generate value for holders that isn’t speculative? Until they answer those questions, DOOD will remain a cautionary tale: the dangers of prioritizing hype over utility and the importance of building a solid foundation before reaching for the moon. Restoring this lost trust cannot be achieved with aspirational language alone. It will take accountability, transparency, and a compelling vision to move forward. If not, it’s just going to be another token in the fast-accumulating digital graveyard.
What of the over 700 investors that lost money in this? They are angry, and rightfully so. This is more than a financial loss, this is a colossal breach of trust. It’s a question the Doodles team has to grapple with on a daily basis. They must respond with sincere empathy and a clear commitment to doing whatever it takes to fix what’s broken. The price of letting this anger go unaddressed is going to be much greater than the price of dealing with it head on.
