At first, Freeman ran into parsing issues. The Sticker Bot would terminate the session when mass requests came from a single account. Then Sasha (from NOT) offered to help and provided API access. However, Freeman took it as a challenge and continued trying to bypass the limitations on his own.
Eventually, he succeeded—though with some issues. Since it was an OTC platform and not a market, listing a sticker required more steps and lacked conveniences like gifting. Also, users were identified by name instead of a unique ID, which posed a risk of sticker pack theft if someone knew the pack number and exact owner name. In the end, only one pack was stolen, and Freeman compensated for it. This issue would’ve been solved with API integration.
Thanks to Tonnel’s strong community and people eager to trade, it took off. Within just a couple of hours, trading volume exceeded 10k+ TON! Meanwhile, in the private chat “Fan Cult,” Freeman was informed about the name-based bug. He replied that he couldn’t fix it at the moment because it required using the API, which involved paying a commission—something he wanted to avoid.
Later, in the same chat, Freeman and Sasha had a conversation. It turned out the commission was meant for royalties to pack creators (Penguins, APE, etc.). That’s what motivates them to keep working on collections, so it was unavoidable. After some thought, Freeman decided it wasn’t worth it and shut down the OTC sticker platform. Freeman and Sasha then worked together to return stickers from the account, and the conversation in the private chat showed the matter ended without hard feelings or conflict. Soon after, Freeman’s server IP was blocked from accessing the Sticker Bot (it turned out to be a CloudFlare issue, not the bot itself). We expect Freeman’s version of the events soon.
Sasha’s market announced a platform for gifts as well, becoming a direct competitor to Freeman. This could’ve drawn users away from Freeman’s market since Sasha’s platform allowed trading everything in one place. So, with Sasha’s market launch postponed, Freeman decided to enter the sticker market. Considering Sasha’s royalty obligations to collection owners—and simple competition—Freeman had to act. It’s great he didn’t just shut everything down, but instead offered an alternative that included royalties for pack owners.
In this story, I can understand both Sasha and Freeman.
Freeman made an amazing solution for gifting and enriched it with features like packs and giveaways. While the launch (gift creation) was Durov’s idea, the secondary market was entirely Freeman’s. Even Fragment’s launch couldn’t change that.
Sasha, on the other hand, focused on stickers. His strength was taking a comprehensive approach. He created the sticker market himself (with contracts from Penguins to Wrestlers) and took on the secondary market too.
I believe issues like the bug, API, royalties, and competition could’ve been solved individually. But altogether, it was too much. Plus, due to royalties, the profit on the other side of the scale was much lower. So Freeman gave up on the idea.
