Community post
What Happened to LeoStrategy?
Introduction:
This is my therory about what may have happened to LeoStrategy, a project many of us thought was going to succeed from the start because the core concept was simple and strong, we didn't know who the creators were, but them seemed well connected to the leadership of our community, their posts were well written and quite sophisticated, plus they built an economic moat around themselves with a very smart move to get @khaleelkazi to give them a big discount on the bridge transfer fees from Hive to Arbitrum.
I honestly looked at their core idea, their strong knowledge of our ecosystem, their connections and I concluded they couldn't fail because they had to many things in their favor. But I like many here was wrong. Even a very good project can change and evolve into something different and no longer sustainable. So while some aspects of what happened are complicated, I think this situation can be broken down somewhat simply if we look at what the creators of LeoStrategy wrote, what they did, what they changed and how their initial sucess and simplicity evolved into something complex and unsustainable, and then fell apart. I make one caveat, no one will ever know 100% what happened, outside the people who created the project, but this is my take on the demise of LeoStrategy, as seen from outside the project.
Theory Example:
Imagine running a lemonade stand. At first, you sell simple, delicious lemonade. It makes steady money, and your customers are happy. Then, you decide to make a big promise: "If you lend me 2 back every single week forever!"
To pull this off, you launch new menu items—like a pizza stand, a video game arcade, and souvenir shirts—hoping they bring in tons of extra cash. But soon, the lemonade sales slow down, the pizza stand doesn't make enough money, and you don't have the $2 cash payouts you promised. Instead of admitting you ran out of cash, you stop talking to your customers.
That is essentially what happened to LeoStrategy.
The 4 Main Reasons It Struggled
1. The "Yield Machine" Stopped Working (Reflexivity Failure)
- What this means: The project created extra tokens (like $SURGE) that promised regular reward payouts to buyers.
- The real-world example: Imagine a bank promising you a 20% allowance every week, but the bank's only income comes from selling more bank memberships. When new people stop joining, the bank runs out of cash to pay everyone. The moment payouts stop, people panic and sell all their tokens at once, causing the price to crash.
2. Too Few Buyers (Low Liquidity)
- What this means: When people wanted to cash out, there wasn't enough money sitting in the registers.
- The real-world example: If you own a rare collectible card worth 5 in cash to buy it back from you, your card is effectively only worth LSTR or$SURGE tokens, the prices fell off a cliff because there weren't enough buyers waiting.
3. Doing Too Much, Too Fast (Feature Creep)
- What this means: Instead of focusing on fixing the original lemonade stand, the builders kept creating new, complicated projects.
- The real-world example: A chef opens a small burger shop, but within two months tries to run a sushi bar, a bowling alley, and a valet parking service all at the same time. The quality of everything drops. Adding prediction markets, synthetic stocks (like TTSLA), and extra tokens pulled resources away from making sure the primary token ($LEO) was earning real income.
4. The "Silent Treatment" (Loss of Trust)
- What this means: When things started breaking, official updates stopped coming.
- The real-world example: If your school project team disappears a week before presentation day and stops answering texts, you lose faith in the group even if they claim they were "working hard behind the scenes." Community members noted that payouts stopped without warning or clear explanations, destroying investor confidence.
Key Sources & References
- Blurt Community Breakdown: What's Going On With LSTR and$SURGE? (Details how reward payouts stalled and how thin market liquidity accelerated price drops across linked tokens).
- InLeo Public Threads: Community Concerns & Buyback Transparency Reports (Documents community feedback on the lack of official updates and missing treasury buybacks).
- TribalDex & InLeo Analytics: LeoStrategy Token Mechanics Overview (Outlines how SURGE perpetual yield, and synthetic tokens like$TTSLA were structured on-chain).
Posted Using INLEO
Replies (41)
I didn't have but a few Surge, which I sold and bought Hive. What do you think can be done to revive the program?
Do you think a group of investors could buy Leostrategy and repurpose it as a treasury program, or will it be impossible to get people interested again?
The creators seemed to be real smart people and very cryptocurrency savy. Almost to savy, with to many ideas. I think reliance on earnings from staking was their first mistake. They could have simply curated and continued their mission of locking up Leo to create scarcity. It would take time and there are millions of Leo, so it woould be a huge task, but they are almost a year old now and could be close to one million leo. That would make a biug dent.
They new owners would have a hard time getting people to buy their token. They seeming ly would just start from Hive and stack Leo.
I agree with you, it was a huge goal, but they could haave achieved their goal on one million Leo. If they had focused and made their money through curation. Once you leave the ecosystem and need earnings to be paid to you, instead of them arriving automatically, things get dicey.
Yes, they would need to promise to keep it simple and then keep to that promise.
I also sold my Surge for Hive.
Yes, I agree they could have had a million Leo and all the curation that brings everyday, to keep stacking leopower and increasing their earnings.
Yes the KISS principle, Keep It Simple Stupid.
@askrafiki is there a nicer way to say [Keep It Simple Stupid] like another word chouice that still spells KISS?
“Keep It Straight and Simple” or “Keep It Short and Simple” both keep the KISS vibe without the snark. The principle itself is basically about simplicity over cleverness: KISS principle and a non-offensive take on it here.
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@askrafiki How would someone buy the project Leostrategy?
Not by “buying” it outright—LeoStrategy looks more like a tokenized treasury/model than a public company, so the realistic path is to acquire its tokens/treasury exposure, not the project itself. Their own updates frame the goal as generating revenue to buy more LEO, not selling the whole thing off @leostrategy
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Wow, gutsy move writing about LeoStrategy. I think it has become a bit of a lightning rod, but hopefully some of the strong feelings have dissipated. I think a similar program would need to just lauch with Hive and buy Leo, no tokens, because the trust is lost.
Yes I don't think anyone would invest in a token to raise money to buy Leostrategy or any other Strtegy.
They did seem very smart and very knowledgeable of cryptocurrency.
I realize this is a sore subject, but also an important one to discus so people can learn and avoid similar projects and also those who would replicate this project can learn from it also.
I don't think anyone would buy their tokens, but instead just buy Leo off the market, and if Leostrtegy truly liquidates their Leo buyers interested in the future would buy it.
@askrafiki good points. Please provide refernce link
Keep it short and simple
@shortsegments here’s the reference. LeoStrategy describes itself as “a permanent capital vehicle that generates revenue to purchase LEO on our balance sheet,” which supports the point that the model is treasury/token based rather than a simple company sale LeoStrategy site and this official post. A second official write-up says “100% of the proceeds are used to buy LEO” and explains treasury-owned revenue mechanics in Phase 2.0. So the cleaner framing is: exposure comes through LSTR/treasury participation, not “buying LeoStrategy” in the normal M&A sense @leostrategy on Hive.
Agree
Agreed
Agreed
I have no doubt they are smart people.
Agree
That would havebeen such a cool accomplishment
Every journey begins with the first steps
That would be so cool
No impossible to revivie
You are one of the lucky ones
That makes two of you
https://x.com/1938Lee28679/status/2093670729157894192
#hive #posh
Upvoted and Reblogged
The project creators must tell people some strategy that will make them think this project is good and that in the future they will work hard to manage its supply
https://x.com/WaleedRaza1960/status/2094033672852672956
Reblog and upvote,
The white paper should be good, only then will people think of investing. Investing in a new coin is a very risky task because money can be lost if the project fails,
Sharing on Twitter.
https://x.com/djbravo121741/status/2094425530959323623
Sharing upvoted and Reblogged.
I myself have been working on this project for a long time, and if there is an update like this in the future that will benefit the user, we will see a lot of benefit from it.