If you want the "TLDR," this post from my new X account, @0xEPR, sums it up quickly.

Eric P. Rhodes

@0xEPR

On July 4, 2019, SΞCONĐ RΞΛLM, my pseudonym, minted his genesis piece on @SuperRare. This May, we minted "The Death of Second Realm." But it wasn’t until I deactivated his old Twitter today, with 15k followers, that I finally felt free from his social chess.

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2:15 AM • Jun 5, 2025

Okay, What!? Why!?

It came down to one question:

Does keeping this account pull me deeper into social chess, or does letting it go give me more freedom from it?

For me, the answer was clear. Letting it go was the only move that felt honest.

So what is social chess?

It’s the invisible game we all play when we’re trying to win approval, stay relevant, or signal value. It’s performative, strategic, and exhausting. It shows up anytime you're curating thoughts to stay in good standing, or when your next move is influenced by people who are watching.

How does that relate to abandoning 15,000 followers on Twitter?

For years I went by the name SΞCONĐ RΞΛLM, a moniker that carried its own weight. He stirred the pot, often with purpose. He questioned the status quo, and many of the things he championed like remixing, decentralization, and broader opportunities for creators have since become foundational to Web3.

That became clear to him in late 2022. By then, I had already started stepping away. On June 4, 2023, he published a post honoring the work we’d done. And in May 2025, we minted the terminus piece, “The Death of Second Realm."

The truth is, we said what we came to say.

The two movements he helped ignite, Trash Art and Alt-Punks, proved to be ahead of their time. Remix culture and CCO are now woven into the fabric of Web3. His Unofficial Punks reshaped how people engage with CryptoPunks as a template. They opened the door for a sprawling, decentralized art movement. And they did it without permission. He also launched one of the earliest SocialFi protocols with The People's Potato, pushing the boundaries of what community ownership could look like online.

But even if Second Realm was right about a lot of things, he left behind wreckage. He burned bridges. He left a sour taste. And that baggage still lingered on that old Twitter account.

Also, between 2023 and 2024, I struggled to find my voice as Eric, without him. Because for nearly 30 years, Second Realm wasn’t just a pseudonym. Prior to crypto it was a place I carried inside for so long. A place I went to when struggling with anxiety and depression. A shelter. A tool. A mask. An edge.

So over the last two years, I minted very little.

Instead, I started playing with bigger systems. I was thinking about Primitives and emotion-based frameworks. I became inspired by questions about emotions, memory, and ephemera. And that expansion was supported by returning to school, getting a masters's degree, and studying AI's emotional impact on the future of workers.

So yeah, this wasn’t just a rebrand. It was a reset. Not just for how I show up online, but for how I think, build, and speak as myself.

The final step.

And one I had to be truly ready for, was letting go of his voice entirely.

Six years to the day after minting our genesis piece on SuperRare, I deactivated the Twitter account - with 70,000 tweets and 15,000 followers - tied to that entire era.

For the first time, I feel free, not just from SΞCONĐ RΞΛLM, but from the second realm I carried inside for so long.