Two years ago, as the dust of NFT hype was settling, we shipped Highlight: the first open-to-all generative platform on Ethereum. Robust, self-sovereign, and focused on helping anyone, anywhere realize their creative value.
While markets fluctuate, creativity doesn’t, so we launched for the constant, not the cycle. What inspired us most was the independent, permissionless ethos behind CryptoPunks, XCOPY, Jack Butcher, Kim Asendorf, and so many other legends we’ve since been honored to work with.
From inception, Highlight was designed to be open and free for creators -- no velvet rope, no shadowy Discord mods deciding your fate. Just clean smart contracts, precise UI, and a straight shot at finding your audience. We’ve always been invested in making software that’s real enough to feel human, degen-coded at the edges, but polished enough to go mainstream. In the back of our heads lived this hazy idea of helping a kid in Manila or Lagos drop something incandescent at midnight and wake up with enough money to pay rent. That’s who we built for.
We’ve also never seen ourselves as gatekeepers. While we respect those who play that role, we strongly believe the creator is the platform. That means most valuable work comes from independent releases -- culture that’s conceived, produced, and sold on its own terms. If we’re only here replicating the traditional art or media world’s elitism, gatekeeping, and 30-50% take rates, it’s just never been that interesting to us.
After we launched, we watched the market continue to slowly crash around us. Trading volumes tanked and kept tanking, marketplaces attacked each other like vampires, airdrops came and went, and countless projects and collectors vanished like floor prices after a reveal. But we doubled down on our conviction that digital culture had staying power beyond the boom. From the outside -- judging by the worried looks from SaaS-founder friends or a quizzical glance from my father-in-law -- this seemed more like delusion. After all, startups are an act of desperation and every founder is deluded enough to start something. But when the meta shifts every other week you stop hoping for perfect conditions and just build toward what feels inevitable.
It wasn’t easy, but by early 2024 we started generating real revenue. With some wind in our sails (or at least a leaf blower in our hands) we hiked our ambitions and started developing a broad marketplace to serve everyone from PFP junkies to high-end collectors, and go head-to-head with OpenSea. (A story for another time, but it turns out engineering a fully indexed blockchain app across 15 chains meant living in constant negotiation with RPCs, rate limits, and the ever-shifting edge cases of half-shipped technical standards. Any seasoned builder reading this will know that in crypto, standards are mostly vibes, and uptime is something you earn one 2AM hot fix at a time.)
As the slump dragged on, we hustled to grow in a space that had emptied out but not gone dark. We maintained our sanity by setting non-negotiable growth goals -- hell or high water, month after month, we’d beat the prior month by 20%. That meant expanding support across multiple chains and mint types -- broadening our reach while doubling down on what we do best: the most powerful creator tools on EVM.
Our goal was always to start a sustainable business that could fund itself without endless VC. In that push, we tried to serve everyone: fine-art collectors and gallerists seeking curated drops and polished UX, crypto-native artists and degens, the occasional museum or mainstream brand, and a long tail of free-mint experiments. That range stretched our focus and made cohesion harder. Still, we generated healthy revenue, even as it became clear by the end of the year that the space wasn’t poised for a prophetic rebound. Turns out that focus, discipline, and shipping always work, even when the signal’s faint and the noise is gone.
As we wrapped up the year, finally with some serious tailwinds behind crypto, though not NFTs, we decided to chart a new course. Since shortly after the U.S. presidential inauguration, we’ve been exploring a new direction. We’re now heads down building it.
It’s both very different and within the space, and a better fit for where the world is headed. It’s innovative, reaching into the future instead of trying to summon the ghosts of 2021. It's for the kid, up past midnight with a spark and just enough in her wallet to cover gas.
I’ll have more to share soon, but wanted to leave a few reflections as we work on what’s next.