Our Story

This is a story of courage, trust, betrayal, and resolve. A story of real people, like you, who went from rags to riches, back to rags and faced the monster head-on, twice.

Telling our story doesn’t make life easier, but nothing easy ever changed anything.

Cast of Characters

Like you, we started as isolated individuals from around the world, sitting at computers. No eye-to-eye contact, no voice, just text on a screen — month after month. This is a journey of two people, that has grown to ten over the course of two years.

We all independently began exploring a category of crypto called DeFi (decentralized finance) in about 2020, as strangers. In retrospect, we all discovered that our typical first experiences involved “farming” tokens and learning how to provide “liquidity” to various protocols.

Crypto Farms and DeFi, 2020

Quickly, most of us made a lot of money on paper. The returns in DeFi were astronomical for a reason: they were not sustainable. After trying several platforms, the idea of DeFi seemed more like a Ponzi scheme. The winners were those who converted their earnings into stable coins as quickly as they made them. Jumping from project to project seemed to be the “name of the game,” but this logic also pounded each of us with a never-ending loop of shilling, FOMO, growing TVL, and dumping. The early investors were dumping on the newcomers — change the site — rinse and repeat. We saw that this was not only unethical but also unsustainable. So, each of us, still strangers, kept searching for a better way.

The Real Opportunity

Coincidentally, four of us joined a new DeFi project community that was backed by a large leading exchange. This felt different as the CEO was visible online, open to AMA discussions, and with financial support, the sky seemed to be the limit. We joined the Telegram communities and saw an opportunity, with a larger investment, to earn elite status (whales) and felt like we finally made it.

The project was doing well in terms of funding and launched a new lending/borrowing platform that showed a lot of promise. For those who got in early, we staked tokens and received a new token which went from “free” to $150 per token in less than two months. Acquiring 10,000 tokens was easy. We were millionaires on paper, and with a solid foundation behind this, nothing could stop it — or so we thought.

A Twist — Monster #1

The growth and ambition of the project were evident. We began to get to know many of the “elite” level people and became vocal leaders in the community in terms of information dissemination, helping with giveaways, and doing our best to grow awareness. Then it got weird.

There was a conference in Asia where the CEO of the project was to be part of a speaking panel. However, due to an apparent illness, he could not show his face but participated. The problem was his voice was not the same guy we had heard before. By this time the market was starting to turn bearish, yet we believed in all and held our acquired tokens, encouraged by the potential and the energy of the elite chats in Telegram. Then the focus of the project shifted. Finally, the market turned, and almost all was lost.

A Revival

After this lived experience, a few people in the elite chat began discussing a new project idea. Many, like us, wanted to invest as these were people we had suffered the other loss with, and surely, they collectively had our best interest in mind. The new project was instantly funded. Hopes were high as it was a clone of the lending protocol, we all just saw potential in. If the CEO of that related lending protocol project had been straightforward, and the exchange behind him had allowed development into the areas he touted, the sky was indeed the limit. So, the “elites” decided to try on our own and convinced us that we knew the right people to do the work. We FOMO’d in.

A Relaunch

The project clone launched with a private sale and a gentleman’s agreement among elites that we would not sell for many months to give it a real chance. Being a clone project, it was up and running quickly and holding its own until the treasury was allegedly “scammed”.

Apparently, something happened where a team member did a private transaction that was sent to the wrong address in an undisclosed OTC sale. This was a significant shock to token holders and investors as we did not know this was or could be happening. So, the project had a big hole to fill, right when things were looking promising. Simple mistake by our friends, right?

The Betrayal — Monster #2

Now many of us very close friends on Telegram, we felt like the team isolated the person responsible and removed them. However, there were also ongoing transactions of private sale investors dumping tokens, which was hurting the price. With the OTC scam behind us and the protocol needing an infusion, we as private investors, decided to step up and shore up losses with additional money for more tokens. We FOMO’d in, a second time.

The more emotionally invested, the less objectively observant you become.

Shortly after our support, the project went dead. The developers simply had little interest in developing more as “the market” was down. Yet a few of us volunteered and were allowed to change the direction quickly, and the price began to rebound while a crypto bear cycle hit globally. After a significant amount of work, we realized that the programming team behind this was taking money out faster than we knew. We lost it all, and one of us had a heart attack, literally.

The Winter

By now, it was clear that we were 0–2 as big investors. Why? Three reasons:

1. Each project we heavily invested in relied on its own DeFi token to pay rewards. Without a strong utility case behind each, they all lost value over time.
2. Our commitment to hold tokens with other elites was not honored by all.
3. Trusting people in authority who were not honest caused confusion.

Two of us, now brothers over the lessons learned, had two choices:

· Quit and go back to corporate life.

· Find a way.

Finding Our Way

We, like you, did not want to quit our crypto journey. We believe in this decentralized way of doing business, earning money, and working with like-minded people. What we wanted to quit was the bad actors.

Like-mindedness — the key to our future.

Two of us spent the next year, full-time, working on the idea. Out of funds, we relied on savings to survive and built a strong resolve that we can and will win. There were dark days as we sat in a bear market, identifying what we wanted to do without having the talent and resources around us to specifically build this idea. Simply, we wanted to build a project of our own. No crooks, only talented honest people who understand how to overcome and thrive.

The road behind us gives us the confidence to navigate the new road before us.

Skew

There is a sequence of events that have fallen into place, that are hard to explain. With limited resources, we hired a team of developers in Japan. While promising, they failed miserably and expensively.

Just when we were at our darkest moments, we came across a newfound friend. An old acquaintance who lived his story in parallel in the crypto world, but with the same outcome. The timing was perfect.

His project was literally on hold, as if the universe set our team into motion — yes, it’s dramatic, but very true. We subsequently found some money to onboard a full-time graphic designer, frontend, backend, and smart contract team from Italy to Portugal and the USA, with others in between.

With a team of 10 well-educated, talented, and seasoned individuals, Skew was born. We have built a tool for our users that is hedged, does not rely on a new token to pay rewards, and have formed a team that we trust and know will always do the right thing, even when no one else is looking.

The Skew Difference

Like you, we simply want to continue our crypto journey with a group of like-minded people who simply want to have a chance to win, without fighting the platform they use to succeed. At our core, Skew is:

· A new platform, not a clone

· A tool to earn yield in stable coins, not a new DeFi token

· A sustainable yield protocol, not a Ponzi

· Vibrant communication from team with community

While the road will rise and fall, we are confident that our team is ready for anything that comes our way. In the immortal words of AC/DC:

Gettin’ robbed, Gettin’ stoned,

Gettin’ beat up, Broken-boned, Gettin’ had,

Gettin’ took, I tell you, folks, it’s harder than it looks,

… It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock ’n’ roll…

Please join us as our journey is your journey. And we’re just getting started…