"Incompetent or foul - doesn't really matter"
Writing this under all 3 founders of Fantasy Top:
While I'm not 100% convinced in the narrative of intentional foul play from the team, the incompetence is of similar weight and I think it's fair they bear responsibility for it.
They have consistently invested little and late in Fantasy. From their own time, to their funds, they've left the project out to dry. Not addressing core issues for months and years, consistently showing neglect to product quality, community relationship, and strategic direction.
Their communication style, frequency, and quality has been terrible, and lead to an alienated and hateful community. The saddest bit is they managed to achieve that after having the most religious user base in crypto. There have been too many community members ready to go miles for this project, and they've consistently been disappointed by not being heard.
Most importantly - all of the founders are completely out of touch. They don't understand their own game. They don't follow it. They are bad players. Travis didn't know how stars work until a few months ago. Mikado was playing Makesy on an off week.
Not having the time or desire to play your own game is enough of a red flag on its own, but when you combine that with actually not listening
The simplest example I have is how they let the top-heavy ETH rewards structure unchanged while frags went down 90% in value. It's the simplest, smallest thing to change, yet they let if completely demolish the mid pack of players by having them compete over $2 in rewards weekly.
Another, heavier hitter is how they have never made any effort to fix the minting algorithm even after it's been discussed many many times and there has been a lot of suggestions given in that direction. The core dopamine effect of fantasy is ripping packs open, and they've left this to die, consistently having burning and minting cards at 70% ROI at best - killing any chance of players supporting the cards economy through buying.
Overall, Fantasy Top has been one of the most painful crypto experiences for me. Not because of money lost (I'm actually not down bad), but because of how much I've liked it, loved it, and how disgusted I now feel with where it is. At a time I was genuinely considering quitting my job to do Fantasy Top full time. This is the potential it had.
At this point I think any further efforts from the team to save this will be fruitless as they have completely lost trust in the space and unfortunately I neither trust their ability to build a good product outside of core, nor expect it to pick up even if they do manage to build one.
The only honourable thing left to do is to design a sunset plan for the project which does right by the players. Anything else I see as a prolonged treasury drain - receiving salaries with no expectations for success, and no accountability.
