At its peak in August 2021, the NFT world was on fire. Weekly NFT sales volume reached over $2.2 billion from August 23 to August 29, 2021. Everyone was a crypto art expert, celebrities were launching collections, and "probably nothing" was the most optimistic phrase in any investor's vocabulary.
Then reality hit. By September 2024, NFT sales had fallen to the lowest volumes since 2021, with monthly sales typically ranging from $350-560 million, a gut-wrenching decline that sent most founders running for traditional tech jobs.
We Interrupt This Transmission for a Slight Detour: What the Hell Are NFTs Anyway?
For those who've been blissfully living under a rock (or just have better things to do than follow crypto Twitter), NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are unique digital certificates that prove ownership of digital items like art, collectibles, or access passes. Think of them as digital deeds for virtual property, except instead of getting a house, you get a JPEG that costs more than your car.
Cross-chain technology allows these digital assets to move between different blockchain networks, solving a major problem where your digital collectible bought on one platform couldn't be used on another.
But here's what the headlines miss: while the hype died, the fundamentals didn't. The global NFT market is still projected to reach $231.98 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of over 33%. Major brands like Nike, Adidas, and Starbucks continue investing heavily in NFT infrastructure.
Enter Ethan Rife, who chose to build during the bleakest stretch of the crypto winter. His story captures what a founder's journey actually looks like: how despite multiple setbacks, refusing to give up led him to find product-market fit with Kingdomly, the NFT platform he built.
The Professor Who Vanished
Ethan's entrepreneurial journey started with clarity: "I had some money I had inherited when I was younger and I wanted to multiply that. It was my goal to multiply it by a lot."
The strategy was simple: build something valuable enough to attract VC investment, then scale it. Ethan pitched his finance professor who ran a crypto VC fund on scaling Axie Infinity gaming guilds. The response was encouraging: "Go build it."
So he did. Starting in 2021, Ethan launched his own Axie Infinity Guild, then evolved into developing scaling technology for others. Everything was proceeding according to plan until 2022 arrived with the subtlety of a crypto winter sledgehammer.
"I just couldn't even get hold of him," Ethan recalls about his professor. "So I was on a bit of an island having already invested like a decent amount into trying to make it work."
The promised VC interest evaporated, leaving Ethan to fund development himself while navigating a collapsing market. Despite being abandoned, he kept building, pivoting from guild scaling to an NFT rental marketplace, then to what would become Kingdomly Creator.
FOUNDER LESSON #1: Verbal interest from potential investors is worth exactly nothing.
Set hard budget limits before you start, and never assume promises equal commitments until contracts are signed.
The Brutal Math of Early Startups
By 2023, Ethan had found a technical co-founder and launched Kingdomly Creator. Their first real test came through Tez from the Honeycast podcast in the Berachain ecosystem, who wanted to launch an NFT collection but lacked technical expertise.
Since Berachain mainnet wasn't live yet, they launched these collections on Arbitrum, where the Berachain community was buying NFTs while speculating on future value when the chain would go live.
There was competition from another platform called Scatter, but the differentiator wasn't technology or pricing; it was approach.
"We pride ourselves in really wanting to serve our customers," Ethan explains. "We want to give them the best possible experience from end to end. We want to handhold them."
They launched the Honeycast collection successfully on Arbitrum, followed by other projects including Beradoge, which also launched on Arbitrum and did 120K in volume. But here's the brutal reality: "All in all that year in 2023, we only did about I think 6K, 7K in revenue."
Successful launches, growing reputation, and $7,000 in revenue for an entire year after investing $50,000, all from serving the Berachain community through Arbitrum launches.
When Everything Falls Apart
September 2023 brought the setback that separates real entrepreneurs from wannabes: "my technical co-founder decided to leave."
After finally gaining traction, Ethan lost the person who could actually build the product. "I just needed a break," he admits. "I'd invested around 50K of my personal money and only received 7K in revenue."
So he shut down the platform and got a sales job selling roofing in Austin, Texas. "I made I think 80K in three months worth of sales just due to some very fortunate events."
That success rebuilt his confidence and proved his execution abilities weren't broken. After proving he could still win, he headed to Thailand "to reset and kind of get a bigger view on life."
FOUNDER LESSON #2: Sometimes you need to win at something completely different before you can tackle the main challenge again.
The Call That Changed Everything
Picture Ethan at a Villa in Koh Samui when his phone rang with the call that would flip his trajectory. Someone from Berachain called: testnet was live, and they wanted him to get 15 collections launched before mainnet.
Any rational person would have declined and planned their AI pivot. But Ethan made a different choice: revive the platform for the Berachain ecosystem.
This time, he approached team building differently. "I had a great friend of mine who's now the CTO step into the role. We saw great improvement in production quality and continued to hire more friends around that CTO."
His advice to other entrepreneurs: "It's probably better not to co-found in the beginning. If you can earn 70, 80K a year, take that role and take half your compensation and just hire somebody abroad that's relatively affordable."
FOUNDER LESSON #3: Using your earning power to fund talent acquisition gives you more control and fewer complications than equity partnerships.
The Philosophy of Shipping Ugly
When Ethan restarted on Berachain testnet in 2024, he embraced a philosophy that would horrify perfectionist founders: "There better be a few bugs in it when you deliver it to them. Otherwise you shipped too late."
"Use your talent to get a product idea in front of somebody as soon as you possibly can. And if they like it, build it as soon as you can, as ugly as you can."
Some experiments failed spectacularly. "We spent months working on something called guilds, which got very little usage," but others succeeded and funded further development.
The Market Context That Made It Work
Ethan's success came from perfect timing. Berachain launched when the broader NFT market had contracted by over 97% from its peak, creating massive opportunity for platforms serving the remaining serious builders.
While most competitors were dead or pivoting away from NFTs, Kingdomly had the field largely to themselves in an emerging ecosystem. Being early in a new ecosystem mattered more than having the most advanced technology.
The $10 Million Breakthrough
The relaunch strategy worked. "We ended up launching maybe around 100 plus collections for the Berachain ecosystem last year and helping them raise more than seven million through these NFT collections," Ethan explains.
The platform that had generated $7,000 in its first year was now facilitating millions in collection launches. The day that really validated everything: "we earned an incredible $21,000 in fees in just roughly four hours with a single NFT collection."
Three times their entire first year revenue, compressed into a single afternoon.
FOUNDER LESSON #4: Small contrarian choices compound into impossible-to-replicate competitive advantages.
The Global Talent Strategy
As Kingdomly scaled, Ethan's hiring approach created another advantage. "I don't hire from the US right now because I think you can get great talent abroad that's much more affordable."
His philosophy: "We still pay above market rate for every jurisdiction we're in. The people that work with me are what most people would say potentially underqualified and overpaid, but part of my job is to invest in them personally."
His team spans Europe, India, Nigeria, and the Philippines, all earning above local market rates while enabling lean operations. It's global arbitrage with a conscience.
FOUNDER LESSON #5: Global talent arbitrage works when you treat it as opportunity creation rather than cost cutting.
The Philosophy of Percentages
Ethan's success wasn't built on revolutionary insights or perfect timing. It was built on understanding: "Life is about percentages. NBA players shoot 40% from three-point range and that's great. Don't get obsessed about having to hit every shot. Just keep shooting and optimize to shoot as many shots as possible."
Ethan's journey proves that persistence isn't about never failing. It's about maintaining the capacity to restart after devastating setbacks while staying open to opportunities that don't fit your original plan.
Your Turn: The Actually Practical Playbook
Want to build something sustainable? Here's what Ethan's journey teaches:
Prepare for setbacks and maintain resilience
Set clear budget limits before starting
Build confidence through wins in adjacent areas
Stay open to pivots when opportunities arise
Choose team structures that minimize complexity
Consider hiring talent instead of giving away equity
Build relationships before you need technical help
Keep employment relationships clear and simple
Compete on caring when you can't compete on features
Handhold customers through your process
Respond personally to problems and questions
Make people feel heard, not just served
Prioritize learning speed over perfection
Ship functional products with known imperfections
Get customer feedback before building additional features
Iterate based on real usage, not theoretical needs
Scale ethically with global talent
Find great people in overlooked markets
Pay above local rates while maintaining lean operations
Treat remote work as opportunity expansion, not cost cutting
Focus on sustainable growth metrics
Optimize for customer retention over acquisition
Build features people actually use and pay for
Choose profitability over valuation in early stages
Play the long game with percentage thinking
Don't expect to hit every shot
Optimize for taking more shots, not perfect shots
Learn fast, fail cheap, iterate constantly
The magic isn't in revolutionary technology or perfect timing. It's in consistently choosing customer value over founder ego, practical solutions over impressive complexity, and sustainable growth over venture theater.
Sometimes the best business strategy is being genuinely helpful and not screwing people over. This type of disruption matters more than you can imagine in 2025.
Ethan Rife is the founder of Kingdomly, a cross-chain NFT platform that proves you don't need to code to build great software. You just need to care more than your competition. You can find him on X @EthanEdwardRife and explore Kingdomly at kingdomly.app. He's currently expanding into mobile-friendly Web2 integrations because apparently solving one impossible problem wasn't challenging enough.
Visit https://boom.money to learn more about the project or follow us on X @boom_wallet
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