I must confess that I feel lonely here.
After 2.5 years in Web3, I increasingly feel that very few people still care about the same things I do.
These have been 2.5 incredibly intense years.
I was here every single day, researching, questioning, warning, exposing and trying to make people think a little harder before blindly following the next narrative, token or paid voice.
I genuinely believe I brought more scepticism, more reflection and more uncomfortable truths into this space than I ever thought possible when I took over the MASTR account.
Many of the investigations into Binance, Trump-linked crypto schemes, Pumpfun, Bonk, KOL networks, paid shilling, Telegram groups, the dangers of centralisation and countless other issues may have appeared here before larger accounts and mainstream media eventually picked them up.
And oh boy, have my friends and I helped a lot of people, directly or indirectly.
Thousends of token checks or onchain help for ppl.
I took the hits when these subjects were still uncomfortable.
Later, once the evidence became harder to ignore, everyone suddenly felt comfortable talking about them.
But right now, I am struggling to understand where I still belong.
I have not only been blocked by almost every well-known scammer in this space, but also by several prominent figures and organisations whose behaviour I questioned.
@mert and insider drainers @bubblemaps are only 2 examples among many.
I do not particularly miss either of them, but I mention them because it shows how difficult it is to do this work when scrutiny is treated as hostility and uncomfortable questions are answered with silence or a block.
To underline how difficult it is to remain truly independent here, the most prominent sleuth in this space is sponsored by Binance, and almost nobody seems to care.
What exactly am I supposed to achieve against that kind of structure?
I do not know whether it still makes sense to keep doing what I have been doing while almost everyone else seems to be racing through Web3 without ever looking back.
Behind a screen, consequences feel distant. Reputation becomes temporary. A bad promotion disappears, a failed project is forgotten, a new ticker replaces the old one, and the same people continue as if nothing ever happened.
That is what makes this place so exhausting for me.
I cannot and do not want to live off constant shitposting. I would rather stay quiet.
I do not want to flex my gains or promote the next hype just to collect likes. That gives me nothing except a sense of shame.
So in many ways, remaining alone is an active decision.
But then I ask myself what kind of influence I actually want to leave on this space.
People influence thousands of decisions and then hide behind “do your own research” when those decisions go wrong.
They sell trust, call it marketing and move on before anyone has time to ask what damage they left behind.
Sometimes I wonder whether I should stop resisting it.
Whether I should simply follow the liquidity, stay quiet, protect connections and pretend none of it matters.
But then MASTR would become exactly what I spent 2.5 years fighting against.
I am tired, angry and honestly a little lost. Not because I no longer care, but because I still do, and I am no longer sure whether this space values that at all.
Financially, I am probably more sidelined than almost any account of this size.
When it comes to the people around me, however, I know there are many good and genuinely appreciative people here.
Maybe that is the reason I am still here.
Not for the attention, and not for the next trend, but because some people still value honesty, even when honesty is the least profitable thing in the room.
And I am living proof of that.
