As Tari continues to mature as a project and seeks broader adoption within the blockchain and digital asset space, I wonder if the “Soon” turtle mascot is serving Tari’s best interests in image and marketing?
The “Soon” turtle started as a self-deprecating response to Tari’s extended development timeline, and we can all appreciate the humour behind it in the early stages. However, I think it’s worth asking whether a joke born from a perceived weakness should define the public face of the project into the future.
I’m not suggesting the community lose its sense of humor or that we scrub every trace of “Soon” culture from our history. It’s part of Tari’s story, and there’s nothing wrong with community members referencing it nostalgically among ourselves. My concern is specifically with its role as an official or quasi-official mascot in outward-facing branding, marketing materials, and first impressions for newcomers who have no context for what they’re looking at.
Tari has real technology and real ambitions in privacy-preserving digital assets. Our public image should reflect that seriousness and clarity rather than lead with a mascot that confuses newcomers and unintentionally echoes a children’s cartoon franchise.
I agree that Tari should be able to present itself seriously to developers, businesses, and people seeing the project for the first time. The technology has matured a lot, and the branding should reflect that.
At the same time, I would not retire Soon completely. It has become part of Tari’s identity and community history. Most crypto projects would probably love to have something that recognizable develop organically instead of paying a marketing agency to manufacture a personality for them
The distinction I would make is between Tari’s primary brand and Tari’s community culture.
Let the Tari name, logo, technology, privacy, Ootle, and applications lead the serious outward facing material. Keep Soon around for community posts, memes, events, merchandise, and places where that personality actually adds something.
There could also be room to evolve the mascot side rather than simply retire it. Cats are obviously a huge part of internet and crypto culture right now, so introducing cat characters alongside Soon could be a pretty natural transition. You keep the history and recognition of the turtle while giving the community something fresh that fits the current meta.
That feels stronger to me than replacing Soon outright. Soon can stay part of Tari’s story while cats gradually become part of the broader visual identity and community culture.
That way newcomers are introduced to Tari for what it is today, while the community does not have to throw away one of the more memorable pieces of its history just because the turtle took a little too long getting here.
I like cats a lot…in particular stealth looking cats
I personally love the turtle. I mean I think the overall aesthetic of the turtle could use a bit of a facelift and maybe the name soon could be revisited but the turtle feels somewhat inherent to the community / project identity at this point.
The Ultimate Privacy Metaphor (Camouflage): The snow fox’s primary survival trait is blending seamlessly into its white environment. This provides a brilliant visual metaphor for Tari’s headline technical differentiator: privacy. It represents transactions that are present and moving securely, but remain entirely invisible to the outside observer.
Thriving in the “Crypto Winter”: Arctic foxes are engineered to survive and thrive in the harshest, most volatile environments on Earth. In the context of cyclical crypto markets, the snow fox signals resilience, longevity, and a protocol built to operate flawlessly regardless of external market conditions.
Agility and Lightweight Architecture: Unlike bears or bulls (which carry heavy financial market baggage) or wolves (which can feel aggressive), a fox is nimble, fast, and lightweight. This perfectly mirrors the technical goals of a modern crypto protocol: fast transaction speeds, low latency, and efficient scaling.
Approachable Security: Foxes are perceived as highly intelligent, resourceful, and cunning, which speaks to advanced cryptography and security. However, they also have an approachable, friendly appearance, which helps soften the often intimidating user experience of privacy-focused Web3 technologies.
Borderless Navigation: The snow fox roams across vast, borderless tundras without restriction, directly symbolizing the decentralized, permissionless, and global nature of a cryptocurrency network.
Soon was never slow for the sake of being slow. That turtle stood for something: L1 and L2 built carefully, security and stability first, no shortcuts. In a space full of projects that ship fast and break things, “Soon” was a promise that Tari would get the hard parts right before racing ahead. That patience is exactly why the foundation is solid today.
But that phase is done. The careful groundwork, the privacy, the Ootle, the primitives are built. So the turtle doesn’t need to retire, it needs to level up.
The next turtle is going all in. This one builds dApps and ships. Same shell, same history everyone recognizes, but the energy flips: from “Soon” to shipping. From patiently laying rails to riding them at full speed.
Retiring Soon throws away years of earned recognition. Evolving it keeps the story intact and gives it a second act that matches where Tari actually is now heads-down, building, shipping.
Soon built the foundation. This turtle ships on top of it.
i agree the turtle needs to be evolved instead of retired … 5 people from the price chat pledged 100k XTM to set out a bounty to evolve soon from slow builder to shipper … i think if 10 people commit 100k XTM we can put a bounty to the public and get a nice reskin .. no AI slop .. with all the primitives so we can iterate ourselves and make any meme
the current pledges came from myself … 0xhra , Joseph, ApplewithWirms, Terrence
Apologies for the AI slop in some of the concepts, but I still think we should really be pushing the turtle analogy rather than moving away from it.
Now that Soon is growing up a bit, I was originally playing around with ideas of him getting older as well, hence the teenage turtle type stuff and the more electric vibe as a way of showing the technology progressing.
But the more I think about it, I reckon the part that makes the most sense for L2 is probably the shell itself.
A turtle can still poke his head out when he needs to. The L2 keeps activity confidential by default, but transactions can be selectively exposed when there’s a reason to… That’s where I think the shell analogy works nicely: privacy and protection are built in, without meaning everything has to stay hidden forever.
It also gives us a pretty clean way of separating Soon from the L2 without having to invent some completely different branding direction for it.
Soon can still be Soon. The turtle can still be the mascot and have all the personality around it.
But the shell itself could become the emblem for the L2.
I think that gives it something a bit more serious and useful for interfaces, docs, apps, diagrams, dev stuff etc, while still very obviously belonging to Tari.
And there’s plenty you could do visually with the shell over time too. The electric / circuitry / shielding ideas still fit, but now they’re being applied to something that already has a reason to exist rather than just adding techy stuff for the sake of it.
I dunno, I just think there’s something pretty neat about the L2 being represented by the thing that’s been protecting the turtle the whole time.
