This article was originally published on The Daily Chain, 21st April 2021.
When Elon Musk tweets, stars blush. When he tweets, dogs howl, rockets launch and cryptos are born. The master of meme and world’s top influencer doesn’t just move markets in 180 character or less, he creates them.
“Nicheman — his superpower is appealing to small audiences”
When four friends from Europe (Sung JinWoo, Nicheboi, Cyber Niche Man, and Giovanni) read Elon’s bulletin, it inspired them to repudiate the malaise set on by the stay-at-home pandemic in which livelihoods and lives ebb away.
Nicheman isn’t a figure from history or fiction. No notable reference to a Nicheman has been made until that tweet, and all we know about him is that his superpower is “appealing to smaller audiences”. Yet for our four protagonists, that was all they needed to know and a crypto called Nicheman was duly born.
Christened on Binance Smart Chain and baptized on Pancake Swap, Nicheman has now been animated as an astronaut, a token symbol for the unwitting superhero of small audiences.
A new website with imagery to suit the meme was made, and a whitepaper published to outline the mission, and there’s even a rap for propulsion. It is bizarre and wonderful and totally and utterly crypto.
Yet this may have all escaped my attention were it not for the fact that the community moderator, Melissa Lefort, donated $1200 bought with Nicheman to a local charity for autism.
There are many scams on the BSC train. The possibility that this Canadian was sincere in her actions, and that Nicheman was indeed born from a positive and creative energy, aroused my curiosity.
An obvious test of sincerity soon came to me, and I asked Lefort why she had chosen autism for her charitable donation.
Melissa told me she’s a former preschool teacher, and has worked with lots of autistic children. “I saw that they were having a hard time accessing resources to get school-ready and were not able to get the communication support until it was quite late,” she explained.
“I also have a brother diagnosed late with autism who has faced some of the same access struggles. So the cause is very dear to my heart.”
“There isn’t treatment as it isn’t a disease, but there is learning to navigate and communicate especially with non verbal individuals. It’s critical to be able to communicate effectively before starting school.”
Melissa Lefort is indeed sincere, and earnest. So I wanted to learn more.
For the purpose of a hand wavy technical introduction, we can say that Nicheman is a community-run DAO governance token. The contract enforces taxing transactions, some of the proceeds of which are used to boost liquidity on Pancake Swap and payout hodlers, with another small percentage burnt making it deflationary.
“Inspired by a viral tweet from Elon Musk, a leader in the world of crypto and technology, Nicheman was born. This message, how Nicheman’s superpower is appealing to smaller audiences, was the perfect catalyst for a project with the grassroots soul of a small, niche community, but the vision and potential to create, connect, and sustain a global network of local-minded, globally-conscious individuals.
“The core team members, four best friends who dreamed of creating a unique community-based crypto project, were much too familiar with the idea of being small forgotten cogs working within a big machine. That was daily life, until the Nicheman project launched.”
Nicheman whitepaper
Charity is a strong focus for future development, and with custom NFTs, yield farming and an exchange (Nicheswap) are all on the roadmap.
After meeting Melissa I fired off a salvo of questions which she and the team fielded adroitly.
We’ll have to wait a bit to see if Nicheman makes it to Mars, but in the meantime here are some words from its team, and I thank them (including Sparrow Nicheman, another community mod) for their time.
How did the project get started?
The project actually started in our minds about a month ago, where after experiencing a few of the famous “rugpulls” people have been victim to in the world of BSC, we wanted to create a safe space for people to be able to invest in. A place where people can soundly sleep on their investment without the worry of their funds disappearing over night. Not only have we achieved this, but we have on top built a real community where everyone pulls through the good and the bad together, where investors have a say, and everyone is willing to help each other whatever their level of familiarity in crypto.
What is a “Nicheman”?
Nicheman is a superpower, dedicated toward those small audiences. Even if the name originated from a now famous Elon Musk tweet, the idea was already there, but this message was the spark as it symbolized exactly what we set out to achieve.
Charity is a focus for Nicheman, yet this might have started quite by accident. Can you talk about Nicheman charitable donations and where you go from here?
Although it wasn’t built in to the initial development of the token, Charity has a core role within our community. We quickly realized the power that the coin held, the community had quickly assembled; and we knew then that we could do so much more together. Right away the developers wanted to pursue a charity funded from their own personal wallets. I recognized how underfunded the Autism community was in my region, and with the token launch having been World Autism Awareness Day — we knew a donation to a team members local community along with this important cause synergy we were looking for. We are in the works of creating a community charity wallet and in alliance with our community actively looking for niche charities that our efforts could impact the most, with personal connection to the members of Nicheman.
Who’s in the team?
The team started with 4 anon devs, me included. After watching the project grow exponentially, we onboarded Sparrow and Melissa here present to help with what was originality the marketing section, but they have shown themselves to be much more than that. They are now part of the essence of what we built. On top, we do have a team of community mods that stand at over 15, whose opinion is highly valued in the direction that we take.
Nicheman has a mascot its own rap, a first for such a small project. How did this come together, and does the mascot have a name?
We worked with our contacts to create something different, something that was not before done in the world of crypto. On top of blockchain, Nicheman aims to become a real bridge between this world and the outside world. Being involved in music, gaming, helping charities and offering aide to small business are small parts of what we are aiming to achieve in the long term.
Please give us an overview of how the contract works.
The contract is actually very simple, and works with a reflective yield (passive farming) and tax system. For every transactions in or out, 10% is taxed (5% is redistributed amongst the current holders, the other 5% redistributed to lp 50/50 in Nicheman tokens and BNB). With the original dev token being burned and the 8 following manual burns we have organised, this means that the burn wallet is now the biggest holder so out of the 5% redistributed, there is a constant automatic burn with every transaction meaning a continuously reducing supply.
Why did you launch on BSC?
We launched on BSC as, for us, it is really close to the ethos of DEFI, and being able to have the small audiences contribute at reduced fees compared to the ETH network.
What’s on the Nicheman roadmap for the weeks and months ahead?
On the roadmap, we plan to integrate our friendly mascot as a part of a series of NFTs. some of them will be made available through our future NFT marketplace, while other more exclusive pieces will be made available through niche auctions with the aim of raising money towards the charities that are close to us.
Further down the line, we plan also on introducing a yield farming system as well as a decentralised exchange on our platform to allow transactions to be made directly through us as opposed to having them done externally on PCS. We are also looking at ways that we can bridge a gap with the real world by introducing a gaming element to Nicheman, as well as organizing a structure to help real life businesses that are considered niche or have been greatly affected by the effects of the recent pandemic
Nicheman has charisma, and a well-meaning and energetic team and community to take little space-dude where no little space-dude has been before.
If you’d like to find out more about Nicheman, or get involved in its charity work and community, check out their website and twitter, and join their community.
