Thirty TON. One hundred dollars. That’s the ticket into First Force’s brave new world — and the price of entry to their future with their TAC-inspired NFT drop on TON. Come on now! Is this bright future really for all, or just another gilded cage made of hype and speculation?
Is This "Community" Wealth for Everyone?
According to First Force, these Soulbound Tokens (SBTs) are intended for the builders and early supporters of TAC. Their goal is to deliver the best Ethereum innovation right into Telegram’s interface. Sounds noble. Let’s break it down. 10,000 NFTs, eternally minted to your crypto address, unlocking entry to “future community-driven experiences.” Who exactly is this community? Is it the average Telegram user, struggling to make ends meet in a world increasingly dominated by crypto bros and venture capitalists? Or is it really just limited to a small pool of early adopters? Just so you know, these whales don’t think twice to shell out $100k on a non-fungible digital collectable.
Think about it. Now, $100 doesn’t sound like a lot of money to you or I. Perhaps. But for a person living in a developing country, that’s a large portion of their monthly salary. Are we truly promoting a global community when the cost of admission bars such a large part of our society from access? This is not to shit on innovation but rather to ask if innovation is inclusive. Imagine if at least some of these NFTs were reserved for low-income users. Imagine if a small fraction of the revenue went to an initiative that directly assists the less fortunate members of TON’s ecosystem. Now that’s the kind of revolution I could support. Instead we have a restricted mint, a stupid whitelist and first-come, first-served rush to the bottom of the barrel. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Just like every other NFT drop that promised you the moon and ended up well, usually just a whole lot more of the same.
Soulbound: Empowering, or Enslaving?
The Soulbound aspect is particularly unsettling. These NFTs are irrevocably linked to your wallet. You can’t sell them, you can’t trade them, you’re just stuck with them. Their reasoning is that this stops speculation and makes sure that only the real members of the community can possess the tokens. Doesn’t this open the door to a different type of digital disenfranchisement? What if you fall on hard times and you want to be able to liquidate your assets? What if you just decide you no longer want to be associated with the TAC community? Instead, you’ve now got a digital albatross hanging around your neck.
It’s the modern equivalent of company towns of the late 19th century. In return, miners were paid company scrip, which they could only cash in at the company store. They were, in effect, indentured to a cycle of never-ending debt and reliance. A scrip experiment with SBTs Would SBTs be the crypto scrip equivalent? An anti-competitive tool to lock customers into a particular ecosystem and milk them for as long as possible? It's a question worth asking.
Economic Intervention or Fleeting Trend?
As a result, the TON token has experienced significant appreciation and First Force is riding that wave. But beyond the hype, is this NFT drop a sustainable model for community funding, or a flash in the pan? Look, I get it. Projects need funding. Communities need resources. But there are much better ways to accomplish these aims without imposing artificial scarcity and weaponizing FOMO.
Imagine if First Force focused on different funding models altogether, such as DAOs or community-first initiatives. What if they focused on driving tangible value for the TAC token first? Rather than simply creating a memento NFT, they would have had a far larger effect. These are difficult questions, but they’re necessary ones if we hope to develop a crypto ecosystem that’s sustainable and equitable by design.
The TACMAN artwork, pretty as it is, becomes a monument to this conundrum. Flag of convenience Is it really a tangible symbol of community empowerment, or merely a masked marketing aggregation? I can't help but wonder if the energy and resources poured into this NFT drop could have been better spent on initiatives that directly benefit the TAC community, regardless of their ability to afford a $100 digital token.
Ultimately, the First Force NFT drop raises fundamental questions about the nature of community, equity, and value in the crypto space. It’s not enough to just throw some “this is community driven, trust us” sticker on a proposal and declare victory revolution. We have to start asking difficult questions, rethinking the approach that got us here, and holding far greater accountability for the projects we continue to fund. Otherwise, we’re just recreating the new financial system along the same lines of the previous inequities that existed before. And what's revolutionary about that?
