Strategies for Dealing With a Bear Market | BanklessDAO Weekly Rollup

Catch Up With What Happened This Week in BanklessDAO

Jun 25

Dear Bankless Nation 🏴,

Another week full of activity, and more reasons to feel bullish on BanklessDAO.

The Podcast Hatchery has a lot going on. This week’s episode of Making Bank features Senad, and an interview with 0xJustice of the GSE will be released in a few days. Sats and Gwei, another Hatchery original, is heating up as they continue to give crypto updates on a weekly basis.

The AV Guild is on a mission to bring educational content your way, and what better way to start than by producing some videos on the utility of the BANK token? Trust me, you will want to watch them all and subscribe to the BanklessDAO YouTube channel while you’re there.

James Baker's 5Ps are relevant this week, as we approach the end of Season 4: "prior preparation prevents poor performance." Some guilds are already preparing for Season 5 by drafting up proposals and budgets; it’s a good time to book a retrospective with the Project Management Guild and do some reflection on our direction.

Siddhearta has all the reflective vibes you need in this week’s editorial; let his wise words wash over you and perhaps heal some of the hurt caused by the bear’s claws.

Together we are greater than the sum of our parts. bDAO strong!!!!

Contributors: theconfusedcoin, Paulito, WinVerse, d0wnlore, Trewkat, siddhearta, hirokennelly.eth, Ornella

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Writing is a core competency for Web3 work, whether it’s writing articles, proposals, or pitching your next project idea. But let’s face it, writing is hard; it is intimidating to put your work out into the world and it is hard to ship consistently.

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What’s New

🎙 BanklessDAO Podcasts

🌏 cNPS Survey Results: Season 4 Month 2

We measured the community’s satisfaction with BanklessDAO and achieved a Community Net Promoter Score (cNPS) of 55, a 3-point increase from the May score. While bDAO members are concerned about the price of BANK, talent retention, and onboarding difficulties, the sentiment of the respondents is quite positive, a notable feat especially in light of current rocky markets. This analysis pertains to the survey of BanklessDAO members taken during the Coordinape period ending June 8, sampling 137 Guest Pass holders, 67 L1 contributors, and 77 L2 contributors — a total sample size of 281 members.

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Strategies for Dealing With a Bear Market

Author: siddhearta

We can learn to stay calm wen bears attack. Credit: Ornella

This is my first crypto cycle. I got into crypto after the 2020 crash and despite some wild swings along the way, I have never had a desire to capitulate (also known as selling and leaving) until just recently.

While riding a bull market and pocketing some gains draws most people to crypto, what really excites me is the incredible potential this technology has to not only transform our financial system, but to change the way we work together to solve interesting problems.

Sure, at times I’ve felt certain that BTC was going to $100K. In the past year, how could you not get excited by the amount of industry adoption and nation states exploring the use cases of crypto. Many times I have thought that we were moving past the pump-and-dump days. And of course we would go through super cycles with major pullbacks, but never the 90% drawdowns that crypto experienced in its earlier cycles. This time was different and anyone could look around and see how this was true.

Of course, those ideas proved to be mistaken. Far-fetched hopium pipe dreams.

sassal.eth 🦇🔊🐼 @sassal0x

The bounce will come when no one thinks the bounce will come And it will be biblical

We are definitely feeling the pain right now. BTC is currently down nearly 70% from its all-time high, and ETH is down about 80%. We have seen mass liquidations, whole chains go to zero, and hedge funds facing insolvency. The global economy is under serious pressure, with countries facing high inflation, stock markets already in recession territory, and the Russian-Ukraine war and COVID stressing supply chains as we head into summer facing global food shortages.

Everywhere we look there is fear, uncertainty, and doubt. FUD.

How to Deal With FUD

It is normal to be experiencing grief amidst all of this tumult. I have it, you have it, it’s normal. As the markets swing, so do our emotions. As hope and fear rise and fall we cycle through the five stages of grief, with most of us getting stuck at denial, anger, and depression.

All seems lost, the path ahead seems hopeless, and all that we have worked so hard towards and believed in so deeply seems to have been wasted. It is hard to accept our current circumstances, but without acceptance we are unable to work with our present reality. Unable to work with things as they are, we end up feeling stuck, overwhelmed, and at a loss for how to course correct.

How can we deal with this state of overwhelm and uncertainty?

It starts with awareness. Awareness leads to understanding, and understanding leads to acceptance.

First you need to be aware of your emotions, your intention, your fear, uncertainty, doubt. Notice how you hold that in your body. Maybe your shoulders are tight, maybe your chest is constricted. Most likely even your jaw is tight. It takes tremendous energy to hold all of that stress in our bodies, and so we end up feeling exhausted and worn out just trying to maintain our composure.

You are not your emotions. Emotions come and go, cycle and change. Just like the tides rise and fall based on the gravitational pull of the moon, our emotions rise and fall based on the gravity of our hopes and fears. Yearning and denial keep us locked in a cycle of reactivity, leaving us caught in the churning waves of emotion and unable to regain our ground.

You are safe. Despite the intensity of your situation, look around you, notice the space around you. Notice your body, your breath, connect with your senses. What do you hear, what do you see around you? Right here, right now, you are safe. Your portfolio looks like shit, I agree, but you are safe.

DavidHoffman.eth 🦇🔊🏴 @TrustlessState

🗞WEEKLY ROLLUP📺👀 Fed raises interest rates📈markets down bad📉 CeFi caught w/o swim trunks🩳 DeFi armor stronk🪖 -Celcius locked user withdrawals -3AC insolvent; owes BILLIONS @BanklessHQ in trouble for a meme (but not really) Tune into the chaos! shows.banklesshq.com/p/crypto-crash…

David and Ryan laid down some hard truths that we need to accept, and recommended three useful strategies for dealing with a bear market in the recent Bankless Weekly Rollup:

We are in a bear market and it could take awhile before it is over. Things will likely get worse before they get better. - RSA

What are you going to do? It all depends on your conviction.

Sell and Leave

If you look around and have no conviction in crypto or the markets over the long term, you can take your money and leave. There is no shame in this. You may have made a bunch of money during the last two years, or lost a bunch; what is important is your conviction. Quitting may feel like failure, but it's also the quickest way to regain control of your time, energy, and attention.

Trade the Pumps and Dumps

A lot of people who have conviction in crypto fall into the trap of trying to time the markets and trading the pumps and dumps. If you are not a professional trader, don’t trade pumps and dumps as it is a game that most people lose. Trying to time the market is an easy way to get rekted. Don’t default to trading the pumps.

Hold Through the Pain

If you have conviction and are not a professional trader, then you can choose to hold through the pain. This cycle isn’t over. You don’t need to worry about luck or timing the markets, you simply hold through the dark crypto winter and turn the bear market into a build market.

If you’ve decided to hold through the pain, then you have accepted the current market and economic situation and now you can start to be productive again. You’ve made the decision, you no longer need to wake up every morning and decide what to do based on the temporary price fluctuations of the market.

Now that you’ve decided to be productive, what do you do?

Turning a Bear Market Into a Build Market

Mental health is challenging in a bear market. There is so much noise, so much wild movement, that it’s hard to decide what to do. It is hard to know where to start, much less how to continue from day to day. The key for turning a bear market into a bull market is to develop your self-management skills, build something, and level up along the way. Here are some best practices everyone can start to build into their day:

Self-management

The first thing you need to do in bear markets is take care of yourself. You need to come back to the fundamentals and place a priority on your mental health and well-being. Here are five elements you can start building into your day:

Silence: Delete your price apps. Stop checking the price every hour and waging psychological warfare against your conviction. Start building periods of silence into your day. Meditate, go for a walk, exercise, immerse yourself in the natural world, and breathe the fresh air. Cultivating silence is about creating and honoring space in our day. Silence in our mind, room to rest, time to breathe. To be silent is to be open to the present.
Reflection: Take time each day for reading, writing, and contemplation. Reflection allows us to see our values clearly and see what it is we are worrying about. Bring the shadows into the light, and continue to work on being present and receptive to your current situation.
Commitment: Commitment brings our values to life and turns an idea into action. It is easy to get swept away by distraction and busy work, to death-scroll through Twitter. Commitment means we are showing up for the things we care about in our life. Commit to reading, exercising, and learning a new skill. Commit to joining a DAO that aligns with your values, to building that project, or to trying something new.
Discipline: Discipline is the work of honoring our commitments. It is the work of showing up, pushing through resistance and discomfort, and staying the course. Sometimes in the course of doing the work, we need to take time for silence and reflection and make a decision about which of our commitments really matter.
Joy: What are we doing all of this for? To live the life we imagine, to enjoy our life as it is, to be able to share the gifts we have found along the way with others. To be able to be present and enjoy time with our friends and loved ones, contribute to meaningful work, and follow our hearts. Sometimes the result we are looking for is not as far off as we imagined. We just need the space, time, and attention to be able to see it and then enjoy the act of bringing it to light.

Focus on Building

With a solid practice of self-management skills, you can use the bear market as a time for building something. Find a community that you connect with, join a DAO, raise your hand and unmute your mic. Figure out how you can get involved in projects. Start sharing your skills.

If you are a writer, write about Web3 and build up a portfolio of thoughtful work. If you are an artist, start creating designs for POAPs, articles, or NFT projects.

Bankless 🏴 @BanklessHQ

Just build it. (Art by Crypto Bushi)

Level Up Your Skills

In the course of building something in a community, you’ll discover new opportunities and have a chance to develop your skills. Learn as you go. Get involved in governance processes. Take on new roles and explore the boundaries of your comfort zone. Enjoy building meaningful connections with other bear market builders as they are the people who will be there to pick you up when you fall.

When in Doubt, Zoom Out

You might have a strong practice of self-management skills, be committed to building in the bear market and leveling up your skills along the way, but still you get the bear market blues. I feel you; it is rough out there.

When doubt strikes, as it will, check back in with your conviction and then zoom out.

Break the habit of checking prices daily (or hourly) and looking at the past four weeks. Zoom out. Look at the one- and four-year cycles. What do you want to accomplish over the next year? Where do you see yourself in four years?

If you need help, seek it out. Work with a professional to take care of your mental or physical health. Work with teachers to educate yourself or to broaden your perspective. You don’t need to do this alone, nor should you.

The bull market is over. We are in a bear market, which is the perfect opportunity to start building: build your daily practice, your portfolio, and the industry.

Awareness leads to understanding, and understanding leads to acceptance. It’s time to plan for your future.

If you have conviction and feel overwhelmed, join BanklessDAO and find the support of friends on a shared journey.

You are not alone and all is not lost. Let’s start building, together.

🎣 Phishing School

Authors: d0wnlore and the InfoSec Team

Try Another Wallet: Diversifying the Ecosystem

In a past Phishing School article we mentioned that one of the ways to protect yourself from phishing attacks while using MetaMask is to personalize your MetaMask UI as much as possible. This can aid you in telling the difference between a legitimate MetaMask popup versus a fake one.

Another way of protecting yourself would be to use an alternative wallet, especially if used in the desktop browser context since that environment is what many scammers prey on (if you use the MetaMask browser extension, this is the context you are using it in). This is similar to the old adage that you have, arguably, a stronger security posture if you do not use Windows as your main operating system. Windows’ popularity and other factors have lead to a cycle of exploit developers and scammers targeting it more than others (though this cycle has started to break with more attention on mac OS as an exploitable environment due its popularity with certain demographics).

If you are still using MetaMask as your main desktop browser wallet, this week’s Phishing School is a call to action for you to explore the wallet ecosystem. Perhaps there is another desktop browser wallet that you would find easier on the eyes or simpler to use. MetaMask is by no means a bad wallet and there are reasons — besides being one of the first to market — why it still remains a dominant player.

Bankless HQ recently produced an article on various browser and mobile wallets that you should use as a starting point in your journey towards exploring the self-custody wallet ecosystem. Though I’ll note some caveats with the HQ article:

If a wallet supports Chrome, it’s very likely to work in Brave as well, as the internals and extension architecture is largely the same. Note that there are enough differences between these two browsers that there could be bugs while using a wallet in Brave but not in Chrome.
The article does not exhaustively cover the wallets available for users of EVM-based chains, especially newer ones. The list is missing wallets that are built upon smart contracts, like Argent, as well as wallets that more closely align with crypto and the open source ethos, such as Tally Ho.

If you look at the Twitter thread you will see the venerable MetaMask listed first. This makes sense given the popularity and maturity of the wallet. However you will also observe this as one of the cons of MetaMask:

“Popularly targeted by phishers on social media (likely here now)”

This is very true. Whenever the InfoSec Team is acting on phishing website reports or we are doing proactive research ourselves, the vast majority of these dodgy sites will provide instructions for MetaMask or attempt to spoof the MetaMask UI itself. That being said, it’s important to use a wallet with enough development and community maturity that it is relatively bug free and does not expose you to dangers that would not be present in another wallet.

If you are using MetaMask, consider playing around with alternatives. Start with a new “burner” wallet and play around on the Ethereum testnets to get a feel for it. Then start looking towards moving your day-to-day transactions towards it once you become more comfortable and confident in not only the wallet itself, but the team and community that supports it as well.

🏛 Governance

Proposals in Discussion

An Idea to Improve Coordinape [Draft 2]

Based on the amazing feedback received from members on the previous proposal, a few changes have been made. We removed references to stripping L2 status for non-participation, added participation requirements for L1 and L2, and reaffirmed that Guest Passes cannot allocate GIVE (for sybil resistance). The intention of this proposal is to make Coordinape easier and more effective in rewarding contributors.

✅ Action Items

🗳 Forum: Provide feedback on how to improve Coordinape.

🎙 Action: Go get your tickets for ETH Barcelona.

📖 Action: Sign up for the Writers Genesis Cohort.

🏃‍♀️ Catch up: Review this week's Community Call notes or listen to the recording.

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