I analysed a major metaverse project, and believe it will fail.

SOLICE is advertised as a virtual reality metaverse project on the Solana blockchain. Despite looking legitimate and showing amazing potential, I believe it will fail.

The fundamental basis for my conclusion is that the product is highly incentivised for the uber-wealthy mass holders. The airdrop rewards, price and distribution of their NFTs, staking APY, and the ICO was all catered to super wealthy investors only. I’ll outline my experiences with this project below.

The original buy-in via was for whale holders only and set at 0.07c. After the public launch on gate.io, they mass dumped after it climbed to $4. Now those rich have all left and the bag holders are stuck with something still heavily overvalued.

The price of their NFTs which launched publicly (after a buy-in lottery) are set to a floor price well above most investors. Even with the price of SOL still undervalued, you’re still looking at about $1000 per NFT, and due the mystery box concept, you don’t even know what you’re getting.

Fast forward a few weeks, and the launch of the NFTs was a dismal failure. The products were lame and not up to the standard promised. Many users reported disappointment at the mystery box rarity concept. One user in particular spent approximately $10k and received only generic items - worth significantly less than their investment. The NFTs are suppose to be unique, but most are straight up duplicates with the tiniest alteration to each. A gamble of course, but when one user receives a legendary item on their first try amongst a fouled-up launch protocol, questions need to be asked. Even the names of the NFTs are terrible.

To provide an example, one user bought two avatars at launch. They were advertised as unique NFTS. Cost approximately $1000 each. This is what they got.

#525

​

#529

Meanwhile, the top ten wallets for this product still hold 95% of all the tokens for the entire project. It is said that these are locked for two years, but it is not clear exactly how and when they will be distributed.

Users have tried to seek clarification on issues but are met only with silence or the most vague of responses. It took them days to even acknowledge there was a problem with the launch of the NFTs, and even now they are still putting the blame on one of their partners. Something they will later do again...

…and when I tried to politely question all these points, I was instantly banned. I have a second account to continue to monitor their interactions, but I do not say anything for fear of being Insta-banned again.

I was “fortunate” to get into this project on launch, and cashed out my initial investment at the beginning. But since then, I’ve become completely disillusioned by the devs and the entire team. I never hope anything fails. You should always do your own research. But after my experiences with this token, I’m out.

More recently, land was released for sale. This is something that many users had been requesting for quite some time. Yet once again, the requirements to purchase are hugely restrictive. Some users who have been in from the beginning but missed out on the purchase of an avatar are just learning that an avatar is required for the purchase of land now too. This is despite avatars originally only being made available on whitelists or via a lottery. And of course, the lottery winners were the mass holders and, with many avatars re-listed now on Magic Eden with an insane markup.

Oh, and if you want to buy land or an avatar, but you have your SLC staked, then you have to buy more SOLICE to buy land right now. The releases are conveniently timed so that anyone who staked can not withdraw their funds in time to purchase the NFTs. But don't forget, you need to hold an Avatar at a cost of more than $1000 to be able to qualify to be whitelisted, to be able to buy land.

Should it come as a surprise that the launch of the land sale was also a disaster? Probably not. Again, users have no choice what land they are buying, only the size of it. For all they know, they're buying a piece of land on the outskirts of town surrounded by nothing. The partners were all given the larger more enviable blocks of land as part of the launch program. The developers are blaming the blockchain for the problems (it's never their fault!) but essentially the issue is users have paid for their land but transactions failed etc and locked their funds. So users ended up with nothing and had to prove their failed transactions to get a refund, oh and they still didn't get any land. Now it's also starting to emerge that several users (insiders?) gamed the system and managed to obtain land items, and still get their tokens refunded. The devs even had to go through and release a Google Sheet explaining which wallets were allowed to get land, but if anyone else tries to buy, they're keeping your tokens too.

Hundreds of users are now asking what happened to their NFTs. They bought heavily driving the price up in preparation for the recent sale, and were still unable to secure land, even if they had already offloaded thousands to secure the avatar requirements. Some are even complaining that they're stuck with useless tokens now that they cant sell because the price is crashing. The only remaining land for sale is the 1x1 block, at a cost of around $600.

There are multiple reasons I’ve outlined and multiple reasons I haven’t. But the biggest telling of the corruption of the Devs and mods is that anytime a user challenges a reason or justification, they are instantly banned. This has created one of the loudest and most cult-like echo chambers I have ever seen.

As always, DYOR, but get out of this project if you can.