“Most people buy NFTs that they get referred to by someone they trust (friend, group chat, influencer, etc.). Hard to prove, but if there was hard data supporting this — most NFTs aiming for ‘mass adoption’ with big collabs might need to consider pivoting.”
Frank DeGods is the pseudonym of Rohun Vora, a former UCLA film student who later founded two of the top nonfungible token projects on Solana: DeGods and y00ts. The pseudonym “Frank” was inspired by the musician Frank Ocean. The LA-based NFT founder was exposed to movie sets as early as 15, which inspired his film studies — but he dropped out of UCLA to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams.
One of Frank’s earliest business pursuits was Duffl, which used hacked Bird e-scooters to deliver groceries to customers. He was later accepted to the startup fund and program Y Combinator, where he was able to raise $1.3 million. Soon after, he joined a coding boot camp and landed a job at Main Street, a software development company. Frank worked there as a one-person marketing team, raising a $500-million valuation. He then went deep into the Solana ecosystem and established significant clout with the community after starting DeLabs. His work in the ecosystem, specifically with DeGods and y00ts, has made him a well-known figure in the blockchain space.
Frank doxed himself in November 2022 after maintaining an anonymous identity for quite a while. He tweeted a screenshot from his personal Instagram account, revealing his identity as Rohun Vora. The hashtag #doxxwithfrank trended on Twitter soon after, and y00ts’ floor price skyrocketed to 138 SOL and DeGods’ to 349 SOL. The Web3 community has been largely supportive of Frank’s doxing. It also seems that the move did him good, as the community expressed increased trust in him even more after he revealed his identity — a phenomenon repeated with other doxed Web3 founders.
Twitter also took to lauding Frank’s entrepreneurial spirit, praising his resilience in chasing his tech aspirations and later on succeeding in the NFT space. He maintained some candor post-doxing: “On the bright side, [I] won’t have to wear a mask to the Art Basel events, lol,” he shared on Twitter.
Frank previously tweeted that 2023 would be “the year of DeGods & y00ts,” and in true manifestation fashion, he received a $3-million grant to move y00ts from Solana to Polygon. Posting as Vora, DeGods published a Discord statement announcing that DeLabs will use the funding for hiring efforts and launching a cryptocurrency incubator to support the DeLabs NFT ecosystem. The funds are reportedly a “non-equity grant,” meaning that Polygon will not receive a stake in DeLabs in exchange. Frank shared that the move was made to bolster the company.
“DeLabs, as a company, has been understaffed for a while, and securing extended runway with non-dilutive capital, is huge for us because it means we can be a little less conservative in our monthly burn,” he shared. Frank also disclosed that while there were “much larger offers,” DeLabs chose to go with Polygon.
