[kkielhofner]

In the crypto ecosystem the compliance and anti-fraud space is doing very well (it's about time):

https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/24/doppel-helps-nft-projects-...

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/07/20/ai-based-startu...

https://www.theblock.co/post/159791/center-raises-11-million

Shameless plug - Doppel and Optic are direct competitors for what I've been building:

https://fnftf.io/

(We're the only solution that's publicly available).

Not to mention the various Know Your Customer, mixer detectors, etc such as Chainalysis, TRM Labs, etc.

I know crypto isn't popular on HN - given the amount of fraud, etc I've certainly jumped in here and elsewhere with plenty of comments and my thoughts elaborating on just how bad things are in the space (I do live and breathe it every day). My take is regardless of where you stand on crypto we should all be able to get behind solutions that are trying to clean up the space. Fact is it is here and (little) people are getting ripped off and scammed left and right.

On a side note (and probably worthy of an Ask HN) I've been self funding Tovera for a year and we have yet to land any investment after six months of trying and hundreds of hours (minimum) spent on the effort. Plenty to be said about the good and bad of where we are and how my motivation and mental health is doing. Our three direct competitors are all technically inferior and well behind us yet combined they've raised $27m... Classic story of the value of vision, pitch, and salesmanship vs tech.

[lmeyerov]

Sort of. We do a lot on the graph AI + graph viz as powertools behind investigative teams here, and behind the scenes, it's not such a clean story. Some real growers, but most we've seen hit a surprisingly low ceiling:

- There just isn't that much KYC-worthy commercial+retail transaction volume, and a lot that does exist is from just a handful of big exchanges etc. So there is some revenue here, but not enough for standalone co's at current ecosystem's level. The "real" KYC play is still largely investors speculating on a future years from now and propping these co's up.

- There was a lot of crypto startups needing their smart contracts vetted. Still some $ overhand from last 2-3 years where these are still happening. A bunch of crypto companies cratered, and we'll probably keep seeing that, so uncomfortable inbetween period for these auditors too.

- Two big areas growing are (a) gov are getting more into chasing this stuff down and (b) banks are warming up to crypto offerings. The former is real revenue for teams who know how to work with tricky gov entities, and the latter is POC $. I'm seeing some compliance stuff happening (similar to how Stripe does taxes for you know, imagine someone doing KYC for you accepting ETH), but again, tiny market that's really a speculation for who-knows-when.

It's pretty "easy" to hustle $Xm in services contracts, but big recurring revenue is not so clear cut due to the market.

[bruceb]

I don’t know about much about the space but my first impression is the initial pitch is confusing.

Fight NFT Fraud sounds like a service for company buying/selling NFTs, and needs to stop attacks on their system and is actually slightly vague.

Seems like people can check if a specific NFT is stolen or improperly minted?

Lead with that. CarFax for NFT (but even more important)

Is that NFT Stolen? Check now.

Then after the submission box can go into more detail.

[kkielhofner]

Thank you for the feedback!

Yes, I'm glad the core sentiment and functionality comes across.

One of the biggest issues in the space (for Tovera and FNFTF) is that the crypto ecosystem is so sleazy no one in our targeted user/customer base (slightly sophisticated users and beyond) trusts anything or anyone - and rightfully so.

In reaching out on Twitter, etc getting anyone to engage with something like FNFTF to even upload a PNG/JPG is near impossible. Install a browser extension?!?! Yeah right. Our most common response is "Nice try, scammer".

This is why we have "Show me a Random Ape" and "What have other people searched" buttons. It's practically all anyone who visits the site uses because of the issues I mentioned. So that's why we try to lead with something above the fold.

It's a chicken/egg reputational issue for us. Granted all of this is the creator and collector space - the real customer is an NFT platform, marketplace, etc that would integrate us in the backend somewhere so a user that already trusts wherever they are would inherently trust us.

[bruceb]

Ok I got way to into this. Here are some verbiage changes: https://imgur.com/a/oXGcgcW

Now this is coming from, as I said, a person not in the space. Your users more sophisticated but still think language could be sharper.

If could already show last few NFTs searched for might be the best (yes always easy for person to suggest things they don't have to implement, ha)

[kkielhofner]

Wow, thank you! Don't be surprised if you see some of these suggestions deployed in the near future.

YES - we're already building front-end support for more "wow" factor on various NFT statistics, recent searches, realtime newly minted NFTs, etc. I'm the furthest thing from a UI/UX person but I have faith in the team that we'll be able to certainly come up with something more engaging than what we have today (which isn't saying much)!

Thanks again!