A Guide to OnChainMonkey: A Community Forged On-Chain

OnChainMonkey is known for being the first NFT PFP minted on-chain with one transaction, but they also have a highly engaged community, Banana tokens, and the OCM DAO. These monkeys seem simple upon first glance, made of simple colorful shapes. However, underneath it all, there is a plethora of innovation happening within their community.

With the Karma collection, banana tokens, DAO governance, and missions, the OnChainMonkey family has expanded the Monkeyverse in 2022.

What are OnChainMonkey NFTs?

OnChainMonkey (OCM) is an NFT community created by Metagood. Its purpose is “doing well while doing good.” The team includes Bill Tai, Danny Yang, and Amanda Terry, who are veterans in the crypto space. They also have powerful investors like Roham Gharegozlou (Dapper Labs), Woody Harrelson (actor), Randi Zuckerberg (Facebook), Owen Wilson (actor), and Guy Oseary (VC).

OCM minted on September 11, 2021 as a stealth, free mint. The 10K PFP collection was minted out quickly within four hours, as word of the project got around within the greater NFT community.

The artwork is made up of, well, on-chain monkeys. Although the genesis OCM art is considered simple when it comes to aesthetics, that’s because it was 100 percent created on-chain and coded into existence.

Both the Genesis OCM collection and its secondary Karma collection — which is more focused on the art — offer full commercial rights to their holders.

The core values of the OCM community are !RISE, which is a trend seen often on NFT Twitter. RISE stands for:

  • Respect – Treat everyone with respect
  • Integrity – Strive for the highest ethical standards
  • Sustainability – Create for the future
  • Experimentation – Try new things to find better solutions

OnChainMonkey NFT Traits

Founder Danny Yang wrote an article about how OCM came about, and explained that accomplishing a full on-chain mint is typically expensive due to the high number of transactions needed. The simpler the art, the cheaper it is to mint. He was inspired by Bored Ape Yacht Club and South Park-style art, and optimized for size, not style.

OCM Genesis has seven trait types: background, clothes, earring, eyes, fur, hat and mouth. One of the most fun things that the community has created are “meta-traits.” These are combinations of traits that don’t show up in the metadata. For example, a “Naked Snoutless” OCM combines five traits, and there are only 11 of them.

What is OnChainMonkey NFT

The floor for OCM Genesis is currently 1 Ethereum. The highest sale of an OCM to-date was for a Gold monkey at 50 Ethereum.

OnChainMonkey Desserts

Desserts were airdropped to OCM Genesis holders on February 11, 2022. Desserts work similar to Mutant Ape Yacht Club, where you burn a serum to get a new version of your original NFT. They are used to create a Karma version of a Genesis OnChainMonkey.

From the Genesis airdrops, there are up to 10,000 Desserts available, with the maximum division being 5,550 K1, 4,485 K2, and 15 K3. Each OCM Genesis can eat one of each dessert type.

There was also a public mint of 9,000 desserts with a similar distribution, except just 5 K3, and another 1,000 held back by the team. The traits in these 10,000 are not based off of an existing Genesis OCM. All in all, the entire possible supply is up 20,000 Karma NFTs.

The D3 Desserts create 1-of-1s. The highest sale for a dessert at the time of this post was a K3 (Celestial Cake) which sold for 40 Ethereum.

OnChainMonkey Karma

The OCM Karma collection was launched in July 2022, with art by an Academy Award-nominated team. The benefits of a Karma include membership to the Monkeyverse, voting rights in the OCM DAO, access to Banana tokens, and missions, merch, and more. It acts as the secondary tier of membership to the OnChainMonkey community.

Karma have over 400 possible attributes and are in a much more realistic art style than the Genesis OCM collection. The floor price is currently 0.4 Ethereum. A K3 (“Celestial”) Karma sold for 30 Ethereum, the highest Karma sale yet.

Bananas: The OnChainMonkey Tokens

Bananas are the native token of the OCM ecosystem. They aren’t a true ERC-20 fungible token, but are distributed within the Discord as a token there. They’re sent to people for “spreading good Karma” on Twitter and Discord. Bananas can also be earned on Twitter and Discord by tweeting to @OnChainMonkey and including !RISE.

These tokens are redeemable for merch, and other goods and services. People have even used them to trade for OCM NFTs or other NFTs. Poker games have also been played with Bananas as an entry fee. Card pack breaks — or Banana Box Breaks — have been funded with bananas as well.

The OCM website’s page on $BANANA is currently down, as they continue to build out additional use cases for the token and economy.

Missions

OCM Missions are a fun way to soft-stake OCM NFTs to earn rewards and gain experience to level up your monkey. Missions are experiments and tasks, ranging from holding your OCM, voting in the OCM DAO, participating in an experience, or joining real-life missions.

These Missions take place over a certain number of days. The rewards come in locked crates, which are tied to the monkey. The creates can be opened to reveal “Part NFTs,” which take form in the way of various items. Some examples are Accessory Packs, Tread Packs, Shell Packs, and more.

The OCM team tweeted: “When combined in a certain way, parts can be used to create a utility-based NFT. Utility will vary, but Genesis and Karma holders will get the most utility.”

OnChainMonkey DAO

OCM DAO is a community fund that is governed by NFT holders, rather than the Metagood team, aimed at supporting community-led initiatives that extend the OCM brand into new spheres on influence.

The DAO was funded with half of primary sales from the OCM Karma collection (1,500 ETH), and is consistently funded by 50 percent of royalties from the secondary sales on OCM collections. The OCM DAO treasury currently holds over $3 million in Ethereum.

Those who own OCM NFTs within the ecosystem are able to draft proposals and vote on them. Discussions on the proposals take place within the OCM Discord.

From the DAO’s website, it states: “Proposals via the OCM DAO could fund partnerships with companies, new ventures, derivative art projects, charitable donations, marketing campaigns, both online and in-person events and activations, contests, merchandise, and new hires.” The possibilities for community proposals are wide open.

Proposals on Snapshot are reserved for ideas which require funding over 10 ETH. Ideas under 10 ETH can use Prop House and Small Grants to earn funds to execute their ideas.

Prop House is a way for anyone to make a proposal within the suggested guidelines for a funding round, then the community votes on their favorite ideas over a week. The ideas with the most votes after the voting period win funding. OnChainMonkey has held five Prop House rounds, with 28 winners winning at least one ETH so far.

Small Grants can be submitted through Proxychat.

Some of the community projects funded have been a skate park, custom prints, children’s toys meetups, poker tournaments, and more.

TL;DR — OnChainMonkey NFTs

When looking at listings on NFT marketplaces, less than two percent of OnChainMonkey Genesis NFTs are usually listed. That goes to show how tight-knit the OCM community is. Along with incentivizing Missions by soft-staking, the community has grown to be one of the tightest in all of Web3, and many don’t want to leave it.

In 2023, the OCM team continues to set its sights on expansion, supporting community projects through the DAO, and bringing more use cases for its Banana economy. All the while, !RISE is at the heart of what they do each day.

Follow Corporate Trash on Twitter: @corporatetrash1

Blog image created in collaboration with DALL-E 2 by OpenAI.

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NFT Marketplaces are Going Royalty Free. So What’s Next?

Once seen as one of the most important features of NFTs, NFT royalties have become a hotly contested topic in the space, as marketplaces, collectors, and artists alike search for sustainable business models. As prominent collections and marketplaces switch to remove royalties to gain market share, many argue that it is a “race to the bottom.”

Artists who depend on the royalties from their work to make a living and grow their community are concerned. Projects that have relied on them have begun searching for new options to replace the revenue from royalties. But many say that because royalties aren’t enforceable on-chain, they will never be sustainable.

Are zero percent or optional royalties the a superior model, or could there be other solutions?

What are NFT Royalties?

NFT royalties are a percentage (usually zero percent to 10 percent) that creators set on marketplaces in order to compensate them each time one of their NFTs sells.

In early 2021, when NFT volume picked up, the standard royalty was 2.5 percent. Later on in the year, many increased their fees to 5 percent to keep up building for their highly popular ecosystems.

The free mint meta began at the start of 2022, which was a business model of free minting with a higher royalty percentage. Projects like Truth Labs’ Goblintown are one example of this.

The biggest challenge? It is difficult to enforce royalties on-chain within the smart contract. Therefore, project creators have left it to secondary marketplaces to dictate it. But developers are actively working on ways to enforce royalties by code, or blacklist certain marketplace contracts in their own smart contracts.

The 0% Royalties Debate

Some projects like CryptoPunks have always been at 0 percent royalties — instead keeping a percentage of all minted NFTs. But this was rare when many popular projects initially took off in 2021.

As NFT flipping has become more prominent, many searched for alternatives to OpenSea when selling their NFTs to avoid paying royalties. With each trade, royalties take out a small percentage of profit, which adds up over time. It isn’t just flippers that do this, though; others are looking for savings while selling expensive NFTs.

0% Royalty NFT Marketplaces

X2Y2 released a 0 percent fee P2P listing service, and took some market share from OpenSea as a result. Collectors of many high-value NFT collections, especially Bored Ape Yacht Club, opted to circumvent royalties by listing there and on SudoSwap. Most of the lowest priced Bored Ape listings now are not on OpenSea, but other NFT marketplaces.

Other collectors completed trades with ETH or other NFTs directly with another person, again cutting out royalties altogether — though there is always a risk of being scammed in these transactions.

NFT marketplace LooksRare recently moved to remove creator royalties. However, they are replacing royalties with a 25 percent share of the marketplace’s protocol fees — or .5 percent of sales. However, this fee pales in comparison to most collections standard royalties.

Magic Eden, the top Solana marketplace which has since added Ethereum collections, has also moved to a royalty-free marketplace. On all of these marketplaces above, paying royalties is now optional for the buyer.

Tyler Hobbs’ QQL project blacklisted secondary sales in its smart contract to marketplaces that don’t enforce royalties, including X2Y2. X2Y2 was not happy, claiming Hobbs was compromising holders’ ownership rights. However, this will continue to be a last resort for artists and projects who want to enforce royalties.

Pros and Cons

Pros

The clear pro of NFT royalties are that artists are being paid for their work on a consistent basis, any time their work is sold. This is one of the driving forces and top use cases to bring artists to the NFT space. With these ongoing funds they can continue to build out their project and pay to live.

Lower mint prices with higher royalties can help projects succeed by providing an ongoing source of income. It can also bring more people into the space with a lower cost of entry.

Cons

Royalties can make liquidity difficult. Like it or not, NFT flippers seeking short-term gains are a large source of liquidity in the space. Without them, it will be harder to sell, and volume may decrease. This is especially the case with collections with 10 percent or higher royalties.

When people go off-market for transactions to avoid royalties, they are more prone to be scammed and hacked. But now that Pandora’s box is open, buyers and sellers will continue to skirt royalties, even with increased risk. So, some would say providing a reliable marketplace to do 0 percent transactions will reduce risk.

Magic Eden and Solana

While the largest Ethereum marketplace OpenSea still enforces royalties (for now), Magic Eden recently decided to move to optional royalties. Overnight, around 80 percent of trades that paid royalties decreased to 20 perecnt. They are primarily a Solana NFT marketplace, but also support Ethereum projects.

Volume in general across Solana dipped in the month of October after this news.

While Magic Eden accounted for 86 percent of all Solana NFT volume within the past month, Solanart and Hadeswap started cutting into their market share, and they needed a way to get some back. This move led to an increase in wash-trading and caused influencers and creators to weigh in.

One thing Magic Eden did do, however, was changing it from a seller’s fee to a buyer’s premium. This charges any royalties to the buyer, not the seller.

Frank, founder of DeGods and Dust Labs — the most popular Solana NFT collection — offered his own thoughts around 0 percent royalties and Solana NFTs. He made a controversial decision to set 0 percent royalties for his collections y00ts and DeGods, just a few days before Magic Eden — an investor in Dust Labs — announced the same.

An Unknown Future for NFT Royalties

Many have strong opinions on NFT royalties because of how crucial it is to scale Web3. Until it is possible to enforce royalties at a code-based level in the smart contract, secondary marketplaces will largely dictate what happens.

Without royalties, creators are left with some options. These include increasing prices on primary sales, encouraging tips to the creators, increasing supply, charging for additional utility, and discovering other revenue streams, like merch and events.

Other more system-wide solutions have been proposed to only do royalties on the gains amount, have larger collections create their own zero-fee marketplaces, restrict utility for those who don’t choose to pay royalties, and more.

Time will tell how all of us will come together as a community to incentivize creators, buyers, and sellers if royalties don’t exist.

The image accompanying this article was created using Dall-E 2 by Open AI.

Follow Corporate Trash on Twitter: @corporatetrash1

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A Guide to Wolf Game: High Stakes, High Rewards Blockchain Game

Wolf Game is an innovative game backed by NFT assets that is led by a mysterious “Shepherd,” and has shown resilience, even through the bear market. From its beginnings in November 2021, Wolf Game has spawned a passionate community as it sets it sights on the full game launch in Q4.

The ability to steal NFTs and game tokens from other players introduced an entirely new dimension to game theory in NFTs, and created the first “risk protocol” as well. While many cashed out in the initial wave of hype, many also stuck around in the community to see the game develop in 2022.

It has been quite the journey for the Wolf Game community in the past 11 months.

What is Wolf Game?

On its website, Wolf Game is simply described: “on a farm in the metaverse, wolves and sheep compete for $WOOL.”

Wolf Game was a stealth drop on Ethereum in 2021. All images and data are 100 percent on-chain. It minted in November 2021 with a cost of 0.069420 ETH per NFT. 10,000 Genesis wolves and sheep were initially minted, and wolves ran up to double-digit ETH floors, as they can steal resources from sheep.

In the first mint, there was a 90 percent chance to mint a sheep, and a 10 percent chance to mint a wolf.

Wolf Game NFT art

Wolf Game Gameplay Overview

The game initially worked as follows: Players could stake their wolves and sheep to accumulate $WOOL. The rarer your NFT, (specifically, wolves) the more token you’ll accumulate probabilistically. The game actually created the first mint-and-stake process within the same transaction.

Sheep earned 10,000 $WOOL per day. Wolves earned a 20 percent tax on all sheep $WOOL production (paid when the $WOOL was claimed), split between all staked wolves.

Then, using $WOOL, players would mint Gen 1 wolves and sheep. Again, there was a 10 percent chance to get a wolf, and 90 percent to get a sheep. Also, there was a 10% that the newly minted wolf or sheep could be stolen by a staked wolf. There was also an unstaking risk — 50 percent chance of accumulated $WOOL being stolen by staked wolves.

The issue was, an exploit in the contract meant players could mint guaranteed wolves. Due to this, minting was closed after just three days of the game being live, and a new era began for Wolf Game.

Gameplay V2 and Risky Game

After this exploit, the team rallied and relaunched the game in only a few days after several audits and bounty offers. Continuous security audits were done by “The Herdsman” to ensure no further exploits would damage the momentum of the game.

A few key changes were made:

  • Gen 0 and Gen 1 supply was capped at 10,000 and 3,809, and will be a “core part” of the full-feature Wolf Game.
  • To prevent oversupply of $WOOL, $WOOL pouches were created. These are ERC-20 tokens that are stored within tradable NFTs.
  • From the whitepaper: “Every WOOL Pouch starts with a finite WOOL supply. The first 10,000 WOOL are immediately accessible to the minter. This gives everyone a chance to burn 10,000 WOOL in exchange for a Farmer. The remaining WOOL in the Pouch unlocks at a constant rate over 4 years.”
WOOL Pouch

To decide how much $WOOL was in a player’s pouch, the “Risky Game” was created for Sheep. According to the Wolf Game website:

“Those who chose the Yes Risk option had a 50% chance of winning a large WOOL Pouch; those who chose the No Risk option had a 100% chance of winning a small WOOL Pouch.” With this game, wolves also collected huge pouches of WOOL.

Other Minigames

To add on more levels of gameplay and push the boundaries of Wolf Game, other games have been added. They also experiment with the tokenization and supply of $WOOL.

Alpha Game is a social game where wolves and sheep flock behind their chosen Alpha leaders. It is a bridge to the full Wolf Game, launching in Q4.

Players stake their sheep, wolves and $WOOL with a pack, and gain points over time. $WOOL prize pools vary based on where people finish, but is distributed to winning groups. The amount of points they can accrue varies, depending if they choose to attack another pack or defend.

The community has become extremely passionate about the Alpha Game. While forming packs, people choose sides, and have even created private servers to talk strategy. Leaders include gmoney, AJ Vaynerchuk, and Shamdoo.

Cave Game

Cave Game ran through June 2022. Sheep and wolves would search caves for treasures like gems, merch, and $WOOL. They had a certain amount of energy per day they that could use up. Players could burn $WOOL for a power-up.

Some of these in-game items are extremely valuable, both in terms of Ethereum value and in the value of future Wolf Game gameplay. According to the website, “over 30M $WOOL and over 1,000 Gems were lost to the Caves forever, never to be uncovered.” Oof.

One of the most savage parts? Players competed against their own pack for these treasures.

Cave Game Screenshot

Wolf Game Team

The community pays very close attention to The Shepherd’s tweets — the leader and voice of Wolf Game. After each one, they discuss in the Discord what the ramifications are, or what it may mean. As for the team behind Wolf Game? They remain anonymous, but are clearly highly-skilled, in both smart contracts and art.

Early on, the divisive investor Beanie seemed to be somehow involved in the project as an advisor. Due to this connection, many people in the NFT space were skeptical about the game.

Some even speculated that The Shepherd is Beanie himself. Beanie has since publicly distanced himself from the project on Twitter. Meanwhile, the dev team keeps building towards the full game launch in Q4 2022.

Types of Wolf Game Assets

There are many assets in Wolf Game, many that are being held in anticipation for the full game.

$WOOL

$WOOL is the utility and governance token of Wolf Game. WOOL pouches take form in NFTs which release $WOOL over time.

$WOOL can be used for breeding new wolves, governance, and for minting other resources for the game. The team (“The Shepherd”) has 600M $WOOL that will be unlocked slowly over the course of 4 years. 1 $WOOL is currently worth about $0.07 USD, up from about $0.016 at the start of July.

For $WOOL pouches: “During the 4-year period, you may claim any $WOOL that has been unlocked, or trade your Pouch including the $WOOL inside at anytime.”

Sheep

Sheep are nature’s source of $WOOL. There are 12,006 Sheep. They will be able to be bred to increase $WOOL production, which is the ultimate token of the entire Wolf Game ecosystem. The Wolf Game Sheep floor is currently 1.08 Ethereum.

Wolf Game Sheep

Wolves

Wolves are labeled “the most aggressive actors in Wolf Game.” They will steal sheep and resources — most importantly, $WOOL. They will be able to be bred to increase their pack. There are only 1,727, making them especially rare.

Wolf Game Wolf

Wolf floor is currently 8.2 Ethereum for a Gen 1 Wolf with an5 Alpha Score. The Alpha level of wolves (A5-A8) are very important within the game to acquire additional resources, and higher Alpha levels command a significant premium, as they will steal more resources.

A8 wolves are the highest Alpha level, and there are only 14 of them. NFT whales like Shamdoo, Gary Vee, Gmoney, and more own these wolves.

Land

20,000 Genesis lands will ever exist within Wolf Game. The website says that “each is uniquely abundant and randomly assigned, with varying acreage, resources, and capabilities.” Cultivating land will be a major part of gameplay.

Land floor is currently 0.45 ETH. Land with structures on them (like barns) are more highly valued than others. There is a community map made to see where your land neighbors are.

The highest-valued land is currently Community 0 (400 total). Community 0 lands have skyrocketed to an 8.5 ETH floor, though their utility in the full game is to be announced.

Farmers

Farmers make land better by making resource gathering more efficient. They aren’t required for land owners, but will multiply the capabilities of the land for land owners.

Farmer floor prices are currently 0.5 ETH, but are as high as 7 ETH for “Big Mama” or “Big Daddy” type.

Wolf Game Farmer

Relics

Relics are 1-of-1 artifacts revealed by The Shepherd. Many of these Relics have been shared on Twitter as GIFs since Wolf Game began. These relics tell the lore of the game and are auctioned for $WOOL. Some relics were also found in Cave Game by lucky explorers.

The current relic floor is 4.5 ETH.

Gems

These were used during Farmer reveal to guarantee a rare type of Farmer. However, the only Gems remaining have expired, as Farmer minting has ceased.

Wolf Game Gems

TL;DR — Wolf Game

There is still much mystery behind the full release of the Wolf Game. Hints are revealed through lore almost daily from the @wolfdotgame Twitter account.

The community is speculating that Gen 0 and Community 0 assets are going to be extremely valuable to the game, and has a lot of fun trying to figure out the utility and gameplay for the full game to be released in Q4. This includes mechanics like breeding, taxation, farmer utility, sheep and wolf utility, and much more.

For those looking for more about Wolf Game, the Wolf Game time machine is an incredibly detailed resource to see what’s going on with the game in real-time, and the Farmer’s Almanac also goes into great detail with the current and past states of the game.

Wolf Game is high-risk, high-reward, which is why many of us like NFTs – it’s a match made in heaven. The innovation and levels of gamification that the team has achieved in less than a year can’t be denied. Whatever happens with the full game in Q4, the community could not be more excited.

Follow Corporate Trash on Twitter: @corporatetrash1

The image for this blog is from the Wolf Game Relics collections

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What are Nounlets? Own a Noun, Together, with Tessera

Nounlets are an experiment to allow for collective ownership over one single Noun from Nouns DAO, the project that elevated CC0 to a new level. Each Nounlet represents one percent of a Noun, including a vote in delegating the Noun’s governance rights.

The project is powered by Tessera — formerly Fractional. Noun 315 is the first Noun to be fractionalized in this way; each Nounlet has unique IDs and metadata, but the same head as the vaulted Noun.

The most important part of owning a Nounlet is the ability to vote on a delegate for the vaulted Noun. Collective created a platform for Nounlets to create Delegate Profiles to campaign for votes to be delegated to them.

Once all 100 Nounlets are minted, it’s possible for a Nounlet owner to make a bid to buy the entire Noun out of the vault.

Noun 315, the first Noun that Nounlets is fractionalizing

Why Own a Nounlet?

The main point in owning a Noun is to have a voice in Nouns DAO, which has a treasury of $3.8 million as of posting. One Noun equals one vote in the DAO. Today, you can only participate in Nouns DAO governance by owning a Noun (around 50 Ethereum in current auctions) or participating in subDAOs, like Lil Nouns (which holds 8 Nouns in its treasury).

For each Noun that is forked into Nounlets, one delegate in that Nounlets’ community will represent the Noun in Nouns DAO governance. All Nounlet owners vote on a delegate for the Nounlet. The active delegate will be able to join the official nouns-private Discord channel.

Nounlets aims to be a more accessible, easy-to-follow subDAO of Nouns. Its advantage over a subDAO like Lil Nouns — which has an entire ecosystem of its own — is that you only have one job as a holder: campaign for people to delegate their Nounlets to you, or delegate your Nounlet to someone else.

Delegating Nounlet Votes

Deciding who to delegate your Nounlet to is the most important part of owning a Nounlet. As a Nounlet holder, you have to keep up with whose core beliefs for Nouns DAO you align with, or campaign your own beliefs to earn delegate votes.

But currently, it’s not always apparent why potential Nounlets delegates want votes delegated to them.

Collective created a platform for Nounlets to create delegate profiles. On delegate profiles, Nounlets holders can add context on why votes should be delegated to them, what they believe in, and how they would contribute to Nouns as the Nounlets delegate.

Nounlet Delegate Profiles on Collective.xyz

After reviewing delegate profiles, Nounlet holders can delegate their votes on Collective by clicking “cast votes” and signing the transaction.

You do not have to own a Nounlet to create a Nounlet delegate profile on Collective. Just visit collective.xyz/nounlets and click “Run as Delegate”.

Nounlets Traits

Like Nouns, all of the artwork for Nounlets is on-chain. All of the traits are generated randomly, but have the same head as the Noun they are based off of. For example, all Nounlets for Nouns 315 have a brick head. The traits include Backgrounds (2), Bodies (30), Accessories (137), Glasses (21), and Head (1).

4-Hour Auctions

While regular Nouns have one-day auctions (one Noun a day, forever), Nounlets have 4-hour auctions until all 100 are minted. The first set of Nounlets for Noun 315 took about a month to finish minting.

The final prices landed in the general range of 0.6-0.9 Ethereum for the first set of Nounlets. The very first Nounlet sold for 4.2 Ethereum.

98 percent of the sale proceeds are automatically sent to the original Noun owner, and the other two percent is kept by Tessera. Every time the auction is over and settled, the next auction kicks off. This is a unique way of monetizing your Noun if you have an original one.

TL;DR — Nounlets by Tessera

Nounlets lowers the cost barrier for people to join the NounsDAO and get more involved in Nouns governance. In the Tessera Discord, owners can verify ownership of their Nounlet and connect with other owners. On Collective, Nounlets can create and view Delegate Profile to decide who will hold the governance rights to the Noun.

Alongside Tessera, Nouns is continuing to push what’s possible with subDAOs and on-chain governance. You can follow along in the Nounlets mint process with this Dune dashboard, or at Nounlets.wtf.

Follow Corporate Trash on Twitter: @corporatetrash1

Blog image created in collaboration with DALL-E 2 by OpenAI.

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What are Chromie Squiggles? A Guide to the Colorful Art Blocks

Chromie Squiggle NFTs may look like a simple rainbow drawing, but it is one of the most popular generative art projects in the Art Blocks collection — and in all of NFTs. Their fun simplicity is why they have drawn the attention of many notable people in the NFT space.

Chromie Squiggles are also rather “historical”, especially in terms of generative art NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.

From minting at around $20 to reaching a floor price of $14,000 today, it has made many early investors in squiggles and Art Blocks a lot of profit. The iconic design of a squiggle has been on the jerseys of professional sports teams and been acknowledged across many other top projects in the space.

Plus, did you know they move?

Chromie Squiggle on Art Blocks
Chromie Squiggle #7583

What is a Chromie Squiggle?

A Chromie Squiggle is a generative art project created by Snowfro. Snowfro (a.k.a. Erick Calderon) is the CEO and founder of Art Blocks. The collection is significant because it is “project 0” (the genesis project) of Art Blocks, which today is a generative art powerhouse. This is why Chromie Squiggles are considered a historic NFT.

9,675 of 10,000 available squiggles are minted. The mint is permanently paused and the remainder of the squiggles will be distributed to the community over time.

The art is described by the artist: “Simple and easily identifiable, each squiggle embodies the soul of the Art Blocks platform. Consider each my personal signature as an artist, developer, and tinkerer.”

Chromie Squiggles minted on November 27, 2020 for a cost of .035 Ethereum.

Art Blocks Chromie Squiggles
Chromie Squiggles on Art Blocks website

What is Art Blocks?

Art Blocks is the first generative NFT art platform. Minters get a randomly generated version of the art in the form of an image, 3D model, or other interactive experience.

There are three types of Art Blocks: Curated, Playground, and Factory. Chromie Squiggle is in the Curated collection.

  • Curated pieces are handpicked from a selection board and are the top tier of what Art Blocks stands for as a platform.
  • Playground is for artists which have previously been approved to the Curated collection, but wish to experiment with further projects.
  • Factory is for artists who are not approved into the Curated collection or don’t want to wait for the approval process.

Art Blocks is home to many iconic generative art collections, including Fidenza by Tyler Hobbs, Ringers by Dmitri Cherniak, Crypto Citizens, and hundreds more. The highest-ever Art Blocks sale was for Ringers #35, sold for 2,100 Ethereum in October 2021. This was the equivalent of $6 million at the time.

Ringers NFT on Art Blocks
Ringers sold for 2,100 Ethereum

Chromie Squiggle Traits

Most Chromie Squiggles are Standard, but they also come in Slinky, Fuzzy, Ribbed, Bold, and Pipe form. Each of them are fairly distinctive from each other. Below is a chart from the Art Blocks Wiki showing each of the types and rarity levels.

Chromie Squiggle Rarity

Perfect and Full Spectrum squiggles are rare version of the Standard squiggle. The very few “Hyper” squiggles that exist are sold at a high premium. Squiggle #4697, a Hyper Bold, was the most expensive squiggle ever sold, for 945 Ethereum.

Squiggles Controls: They Move!

Squiggles also move if you click on them on OpenSea, a feature that many collectors don’t realize. The Spacebar changes the background color between black and white, Up/Down changes the speed. Squiggles are vector graphics that can scale at any size without losing their quality.

Unminted Squiggles

300 squiggles that were previously unminted were minted using a queue and tip system in May 2021. The demand for these unminted squiggles were extremely high, even as they minted at their current floor price.

Squiggles have around 2,700 unique holders, and about 2,000 of those only have one. Around 650 holders have multiple. One of the largest holders is NFT influencer GMoney, whose vault has 272 squiggles in it. The current floor price is 10.9 Ethereum.

Squiggles Associated Projects

Since the squiggle is such a popular project, other NFT collections have paid homage to it in the past year. They have done this through direct partnerships, indirect partnerships, and adding traits honoring the squigs.

Moonbirds created a Squiggle trait for 58 of their birds. They gave away a newly minted squiggle to one lucky bird. The LIT project allowed Squiggle holders on their “Squiggle Game” allowlist. The tokens for 2022 VeeCon access were created in the style of squiggles, in collaboration with Snowfro.

Infinite Objects creates physical frames for NFT artwork. They worked with Art Blocks so that all squiggle owners could claim an Infinite Object frame with their squiggle in it.

Perhaps the most significant partnership was with the team WAGMI United, whose adidas jersey has a squiggle as its centerpiece on the chest. This team was the acquisition of Crawley Town FC, an English Football League 2 club, by prominent NFT community members, led byPreston Johnson and Eben Smith.

SquiggleDAO

Holders of Chromie Squiggles got together and created SquiggleDAO in order to strengthen the collector community and permeate Squiggles across the internet. On the website, it says: “The DAO unites people through a shared passion and appreciation for the Chromie Squiggle to learn, connect, and benefit from the continued growth of the art.”

The DAO now holds 275 Squiggles, worth about $10 million. The DAO aims to acquire a large amount of rare squiggles for their treasury.

The DAO came together in March 2021 when five people donated their squiggles to the DAO. They soon released their ERC-20 governance token $SQUIG in November 2021. The purpose of the token is to “enable the members of the DAO to participate in DAO governance. One $SQUIG = one vote.”

Chromie Squiggle DAO Art Blocks
SquiggleDAO

To become a SquiggleDAO member, you need to either hold a squiggle or acquire 1,000 $SQUIG on Uniswap, but you can participate in the DAO without being a member.

Chromie Squiggle by Snowfro — TL;DR

These little squiggles have a storied history in the NFT space. From their creation back in 2020 through the bear market of 2022, they continue to be recognized and celebrated as pioneers of generative art on the blockchain and a pillar of the Art Blocks collection.

The Art Blocks platform has grown and expanded since Squiggles have been minted, and new art on the blockchain continues to be inspired by the rainbow squiggles.

Follow Corporate Trash on Twitter: @corporatetrash1

Disclaimer: At the time of publishing, Corporate Trash owned one Chromie Squiggle.

Blog image created in collaboration with DALL-E 2 by OpenAI.

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What is an NFT DAO? Here’s How to Get Involved

NFT DAOs are some of the most exciting and innovative applications of building a community with Web3 technology. DAOs — or decentralized autonomous organizations — empower NFT communities by allowing them to vote and decide on various aspects of the project they hold, including how to spend the funds in a community treasury.

But many owners of NFTs with DAOs don’t really know how to participate in them. Contributing to DAOs can be a rewarding experience that keeps NFT holders engaged in the project, its ecosystem, and the community.

What are NFT DAOs?

DAOs use the power of smart contracts to trustlessly execute a demand. These demands are what the DAO decides via on-chain votes.

DAOs use decentralized governance instead of a hierarchy to make decisions for the project — primarily how to use the funds in the treasury. They also allow for publicly viewable and transparent transactions for that community on the blockchain.

Some NFT DAOs (like APE DAO, rest in peace) issue a token for their holders to represent partial ownership in a vault of NFTs. This article focuses more on DAOs which are for holders of those specific NFTs — where one NFT equals one vote in the DAO.

When an NFT is sold from a collection like Nouns, the smart contract can automatically send a portion of that revenue to its DAO treasury to support future proposals. Sometimes this is a manual process for NFT DAOs.

More often than not, NFT DAOs are not fully decentralized. This means treasury funds are held in a multi-sig wallet, with all transactions needing majority approval (signatures) from the founding team before being sent.

A few examples of NFT projects with DAOs (with a treasury) include:

How to Participate in an NFT DAO?

There are multiple ways to get involved with an NFT DAO and win funds to build from the community treasury with your big idea. But it starts even before the idea, by being active in the community, then submitting a proposal.

Understand How the NFT DAO Functions

Every NFT DAO has their own process for taking an idea to on-chain proposal voting, then to execution. Before you dive into an NFT DAO, it’s a good idea to understand the basics of how the DAO functions.

Here are a few questions to answer, amongst others:

  • What is the DAO typically used for? Look through past votes and what has passed.
  • What’s the vision for the DAO? This is often answered in the DAO’s documentation.
  • How does an idea go to proposal for a final vote?
  • What is usually included in a proposal? (i.e. rationale, budget, goal)
  • What is the voting quorum? 10 percent is standard, but some DAOs have dynamic quorum based on ask.

Tune into Discussion

Before you have even considered posting or sharing your proposal, the community should know who you are by being a genuine, active participant. If you’re not already a part of community discussion and contributing, your idea — no matter how good — is likely to fall flat on its face.

This is especially true of NFT communities, where community members garner unspoken reputation and trust over time just by showing up on Discord and Twitter.

Every proposal has a quorum — or minimum votes to pass. To reach that quorum, you’ll need the community behind you. To get the community behind you, you need to be somewhat known within it.

Test your Idea on Discord, Discourse, and Twitter

Before an idea gets to proposal, the community needs to see it, vet it, and changes will likely need to be made. Each NFT DAO has their own process to go from idea to proposal, but in all of them, there is discussion before going to a final vote.

By sharing your proposal idea wherever it’s relevant, you’ll be able to refine it and get it just right before sending it off to vote. Keep in mind, if you fail on the first vote, you can always refine more with community feedback, then propose it again.

Create a Proposal

Proposals from community members are how DAOs decide how to allocate their funds. One NFT equals one vote, and the entire community can vote on a proposal, on-chain.

Each DAO has their own rules and regulations about who can create a proposal, and what information they need with the submission. Some proposal creation processes are extremely in-depth, while others have less criteria. A general rule is that you need to own at least one NFT to submit a proposal.

The TriWizzy Tournament proposal posted to the Doodlebank — the Doodles treasury.

The basic needs are: a summary of the proposal, why it benefits the community, approximate budget, time duration, who is involved and why they are passionate about it. It’s somewhat similar to a business plan in Web2, or preparing a new strategy document for your boss — except the entire community will vote to approve it.

For example, projects like CryptoCitizens utilize proposals for community votes on which city they will do IRL mints in next. The more CryptoCitizen tokens one owns, the more weight their vote has. 1 NFT equals one vote.

Vote on Proposals

Participating is not just about getting your own proposals to pass; it’s about contributing to existing ideas and proposals in the community as well.

An owner of an NFT which has a DAO can use their token to vote on proposals for the future of the organization. Regular DAOs are for people who own fungible tokens, but NFT DAOs are for those who own ERC-721 (or sometimes ERC-1155) tokens.

Nouns DAO Proposal Voting
Nouns DAO Proposal Voting

There is no need to have an additional governance token; the NFTs themselves can suffice for voting power. However, sometimes DAOs create a token so that those outside of the NFT holders may also participate. A DAO is governed by code, not by people, so there is no way to cheat an on-chain vote.

By voting, you signal the types of ideas you support. With a platform like House of Nouns, you can validate your votes with a comment on why you voted how you did.

Connect with Community Members

Get to know who is submitting proposals by finding their username, ETH address, and social profiles. Many DAO voting operations platforms convert ETH addresses into ENS names, so that it’s more clear who exactly is writing the proposal. This allows holders to reach out and connect with other community members if they can also help bring the proposal to life.

Additionally, you can Etherscan token tracker to find the biggest holders in any project, and message to them for direct feedback on your idea or proposal.

NFT DAOs likely have a huge pool of talent right within their holders. DAO proposals help publicly surface and apply these skills in order to move the NFT community forward.

TL;DR: Contributing to NFT DAOs

It is said that up to 90 percent of eligible DAO participants are passive. They don’t engage in voting, creating proposals, or building a name for themself within the DAO.

For an NFT DAO to be successful in accomplishing its goals, it needs wide representation across its holders. Contributing isn’t only fun, but it allows NFT holders to directly affect the future of the collection.

Getting involved is a win for the builders within a project’s community, but also for the project itself.

For creators: Collective can help keep your most active collectors engaged. Reach out today to set up your community and NFT DAO governance on Collective.

Follow Corporate Trash on Twitter: @corporatetrash1

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NFT Investments: Biggest VC Funding for NFT Projects in 2022

Billions of dollars of venture capital funding have been invested into NFT start-ups in 2022, as massive VCs like a16z aim to expand their crypto portfolio. Whether it’s an investment of $1 million or $100 million or beyond, these types of investments bring headlines that grab Web2’s attention, as well as the NFT community.

Interest in crypto and NFTs has skyrocketed in the past few years, from both consumers and investors; the bull run of 2021 brought more attention to the space than ever. But VCs investing in the NFT space want companies and teams that are focused on the long haul.

Here are some of the NFT projects that have landed massive funding rounds from VCs.

Note: For the purpose of this article, we are focusing on NFT-focused company rounds of over $50 million in Q2 and Q3 of 2022.

Genies: $150 million (Metaverse Avatars)

With their $150 million Series C in April 2022, Genies continues to roll out avatar creation tools that enable anyone to create their own avatars, avatar fashion collections, and avatar homes and experiences. The raise brought Genies to a $1 billion valuation.

The company has already partnered with both Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group to be their official avatar and NFT provider.

Genies on Flow Blockchain

Genies is on the Flow blockchain and uses Dapper Wallet for collectors to buy exclusive digital fashion items. They recently released a beta program for creators who want to sell their original designs for Genies avatars.

While there is currently no secondary marketplace, users can equip their avatar with accessories and apparel that they buy. Drops on The Warehouse are popular and can sell out quickly, depending on the supply.

Rario: $120 million (Sports Collectibles)

Singapore-based Rario is an officially licensed cricket NFT platform. With its massive $120 million Series A investment by Dream Sports, it will connect Rario to 140 million cricket fans in India. It’s Dream Sports’ biggest investment to-date after it’s $800 million raise ($8 billion valuation) in 2021.

Rario NFTs

Cricket is the second most popular sport in the world. Rario enables fans to connect as a community and buy the most exciting moments in the sport. The platform is run on Polygon and also has Animoca Brands as a partner.

Magic Eden: $130 million (NFT Marketplace)

Magic Eden’s giant $130 million Series B round came just three short months after their $27 million Series A. The new investment made Magic Eden a unicorn at a $1.6 billion valuation. They weren’t the first Solana NFT secondary marketplace, but they grew to be the volume leader.

At the time of the round, Magic Eden made up nearly 97 percent of all secondary Solana NFT volume.

Not long after, Magic Eden announced that they would support Ethereum NFTs, in their efforts to dominate more of the secondary NFT ecosystem. While the young marketplace is still fighting for market share, they’re working to expand their products to draw people aware from giants like OpenSea.

They recently launched an Ethereum NFT aggregator beta called Magic Ethen.

Animoca Brands: $75.3 million (Open Metaverse)

Animoca Brands raised over $75 million at a $5.5 billion valuation to promote digital property rights for online users. They aim to deliver true ownership of assets and data through blockchain and NFTs.

They are closely tied to The Sandbox Game, Revv Racing, and — perhaps most famously — Otherside, the metaverse game from Bored Ape Yacht Club. Animoca is passionate about asset inoperability and promoting an open metaverse for all.

VeeFriends: $50 million (NFT Ecosystem)

VeeFriends is entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk’s first NFT project. Launched in 2021, it has aimed to bring likeminded NFT collectors together and celebrate each of the unique human traits that are embodied in the cartoon collection. In addition, it was one of the earliest promises of IRL utility for an NFT; a VeeFriends doubles as a ticket to VeeCon, a popular Web3 conference.

VeeFriends

With the $50 million round (valuation not disclosed), GaryVee will build out the IP of the 283 characters in the VeeFriends universe. He has already expanded the original VeeFriends with VeeFriends 2, Book Games, and an UNO deck in partnership with Mattel.

Unstoppable Domains: $65 million (Web3 Domains)

While many are familiar with Ethereum Name Service domains that end in .eth, there are other Web3 domains. Unstoppable Domains provides full domain ownership as NFTs to domains like .nft, .wallet, and .crypto. They have registered over 2.5 million domains.

Unstoppable Domains raised $65 million lead by Pantera, valuing the company at over $1 billion and putting them in the unicorn class.

Unstoppable Domains Raised $65 million for web3 domains
Unstoppable Domains raised $65 million: Web3 profiles

Unstoppable supports decentralized, digital identities which can be used to log in to over 400 Web3 dApps. The funding will be used to strengthen partnerships to their already impressive list (including Moonpay, Polygon, Blockchain.com).

Ready Player Me: $56 million (Metaverse Avatars)

ReadyPlayerMe raised a $56 million Series B in August. The company is laser focused on cross-platform full-body 3D avatars, delivering the same experience across games and metaverse layers. Ready Player Me has partnerships with over 3,500 developers, including Somnium Space, VR Chat, RTFKT, and Spatial. The platform also works with massive brands like Dior, Adidas, and WB.

Ready Player Me Avatars

Before it was Ready Player Me, the company was Wolf3D. It worked with large companies to build them their own avatars. This began their tech which allows people to create a metaverse avatar from just a selfie, which people can do now on their website.

PROOF Collective: $50 million (Membership & NFT Ecosystem)

PROOF Collective is is a private, limited NFT membership collection targeted at NFT collectors and investors. On the PROOF website, it says “Membership includes access to our private Discord, early access to the PROOF podcast, in-person events, and other collaborations created exclusively for PROOF Collective members.”

PROOF has other collections which make up its ecosystem. Some of these collections include the PROOF Pass, Moonbirds, Oddities, and Grails.

Moonbirds NFT Marketplace
Moonbirds NFTs on secondary marketplace

In the latest Future PROOF event, the popular company announced they had raised a $50 million Series A. They also discussed future collections like Moonbirds Mythics, plus an ERC-20 token coming in 2023. The Kevin Rose-led company has gained a devoted fan base. They sport their Moonbirds profile picture as their online personas.

Limit Break: $200 million (Blockchain Gaming)

This one came out of left field for many in the space. Veteran Game of War mobile game creator Gabe Leydon left his company Machine Zone to explore crypto gaming. His new venture Limit Break is pioneering the “free-to-own” gaming model, and VCs are betting big on Leydon’s vast experience in the mobile gaming space.

DigiDaigaku is Limit Break’s first NFT project.

Limit Break gives away NFTs for free, and then the community evangilizes themselves to become strong advocates for the games. Their first NFT was DigiDaigaku, a seemingly normal everyday free mint which went on to reach 10 Ethereum floors and higher after the news that Limit Break had raised $200 million to build out free-to-own games.

Doodles: $54 million (NFT Ecosystem)

Doodles is one of the most popular NFT collections on Ethereum, with art by renowned illustrator Burnt Toast (Scott Martin). At NFT NYC 2022, the team announced many updates and plans for their ecosystem at an Apple-like keynote. These include Doodles 2 that will bring Doodles to all, Dooplicators, Genesis Boxes, music NFTs led by Pharrell and Columbia Records, and more.

Doodles promo image recently posted to Twitter

After a divisive hiatus from Twitter, Doodles broke their silence with the news of a $54 million Series A round (valuation undisclosed) led by Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian fund 776 Ventures. The funds will be used for additional collector experiences, new tech, product development, media, and many new hires. The team also plans to hire across many roles.

TL;DR — NFT Investments from VCs

A report from Reuters says that 2022 is on track to surpass the $26.9 billion of NFT investments in 2021. Even in a quieter market, crypto and NFT companies are gaining the attention of venture capital investors.

Throughout the remainder of the year, we’ll likely see several additional $50 million funding rounds for other Web3 companies. These companies focus on strengthening decentralization, gaming, NFT purchasing, digital identities and more.

Follow Corporate Trash on Twitter: @corporatetrash1

The image for this blog was created by Dall-E 2 by OpenAI.

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What is Gutter Cat Gang? The Membership to the Gang

Gutter Cat Gang has continued to claw its way to blue-chip status a year of building its passionate community and expanding with Gutter Clones.  The team has accomplished a lot in just a year since minting.

Since Gutter Cats launched their initial 3,000 Gutter Cats, there has also been expansion into various species, clone NFTs, IRL events, and collabs with mainstream brands like Puma.

These post-apocalyptic cats have spawned a community whose rallying cry of “Gang Gang” has become a common greeting on NFT Twitter. With Roadmap 2.0, the project has ambitions of creating a token, a game, and expanding their exclusive membership PFP across the metaverse.

What is Gutter Cat Gang?

Gutter Cat Gang (known as GCG) is a generative NFT PFP collection of 3,000 cats on the Ethereum blockchain. They are set in a crime-ridden world after the apocalypse in 2050. The website states they are “an underground Web3 social club where your NFT doubles as your membership token to the Gutter Cat Gang.” The floor is currently 6.4 Ethereum with about 1,800 unique holders.

GCG Team

The founding team is made up of three people, according to the Gutter Cat Gang website. They are known to the community as Gutter Ric, Gutter Dan, and Gutter Karlee. Dan later decided to fully dox, and some other members of the team have partially doxxed.

Gutter Cat Gang Team

GCG Mint

The original GCG collection minted on June 8, 2021, for a cost of .07 Ethereum each. It was initially criticized by some in the community for copying the style of Bored Ape Yacht Club, which had minted out about a month beforehand. Thousands of BAYC, CryptoPunk, and GCG-inspired NFT collections would soon follow.

Gutter Cat Gang’s supply is much less than BAYC — 3,000 instead of 10,000. This was one of the first post-BAYC PFP collections to have a substantially lower supply than BAYC or CryptoPunks.

Gutter Cat Gang Mint Note

The launch itself was also marred by going live at a different time than initially communicated, which initially slowed the progress. Regardless, the collection sold out in less than 10 minutes.

The team soon refunded those who lost more than 0.03 Ethereum in gas fees when trying and failing to mint Gutter Cats.

Gutter Cat Gang Traits

The cats are made up of 125 possible traits across nine different categories — Background, Eyes, Mouths, Hats, Shirts Earrings, Necklaces, Fur, Beards. The rarest fur is gold tattoo. Two hats are the rarest traits of all, with just 11 each: BTC and Horny hats.

The Gutter Cat attributes are in the style of popular streetwear and memes.

The highest GCG sale at the time of this post was for this sixth-rarest cat #2860. It is a gold tatted cat with a gold earring and gold chains. The buyer paid 58.8 Ethereum for it, but later sold for 45 Ethereum.

Gutter Cat Gang Highest Sale
Gutter Cat Gang Highest Sale — #2860

Gutter Species: Second Tier Membership

While Gutter Cats remain the top level of membership, the Gutter Species are the second tier of Gutter memberships. These species are 3,000 each.

In July 2021, GCG announced that the second species would be Gutter Rats. All GCG holders were able to claim one Gutter Rat for free.

Following this, the team introduced Gutter Pigeons and Gutter Dogs as the third and fourth species. Everyone with a Gutter Cat and Rat in the same wallet could claim either a Species 3 or 4 Mint Pass (at the time, the species were not disclosed). The rest were given to either Cat or Rat holders and via public sale.

Gutter Cat Species — Pigeons, Dogs, Rats
Gutter Species

The traits for Rats, Pigeons, and Dogs brought new visuals to the collection. There are even two 1-of-1 NFTs for Pigeons and Dogs, each of which is the record sale for each species (30 and 40 Ethereum respectively). The top selling Gutter Rat has green tattoos and sold for 10 Ethereum.

Gutter Dog NFT 1-of-1 by Gutter Cat Gang

Holders of five or more Gutter Cats are known as “Kingpins” in the GCG community. They get access to a special Discord channel. Holders of any of the “OG Species” NFTs get access to “Gutter Picks,” a popular alpha channel for community members.

ERC-1155 vs. ERC-721

Dogs and Pigeons are under the ERC-721 NFT token standard, but Cats and Rats are ERC-1155 (check out our NFT terminology guide for more on the differences). Gutter Juice and Clones are also in the ERC-721 standard.

In the Discord FAQ channel the day after Gutter Cat minting, the team stated: “We chose ERC-1155 [for Gutter Cats and Rats] because we wanted to keep the future of the Gutter as flexible as possible (e.g. potential breeding, integration with future metaverses, games, etc.).”

However, it seems the team has transitioned to ERC-721 for newer NFTs in their collection.

Gutter Juice and Clones

To bring more members into the gang, the team announced Gutter Juice and Gutter Clones in March 2022.

Gutter Juice

28,000 juices exist; 12,000 were given to existing holders of corresponding Gutter species NFTs, and 16,000 were sold via Dutch auction. The auction got all the way to the bottom price of 0.1 Ethereum.

Once the juice is used to mint a Gutter Clone of the corresponding species, it cannot be used again and is burned. Gutter Juices can be used independently, and do not require any other NFT to mint a clone.

Gutter Juice

Gutter Clones

Gutter Clones are the third tier of membership into the Gutter Cat Gang, behind Gutter Cats and Species. Holders of Juice can either put your existing Gutter species into the Clone Machine with a Juice, or use the Juice to mint random traits of that species.

Clones have highly unique new sets of traits that are “mutated” from existing ones, giving them an entirely new, high-tech look.

Gutter Clones on Momentranks
Gutter Clones on MomentRanks

The highest-selling clone so far is actually for the “juiced” version of the highest-selling Gutter Cat. Clone #1818 sold for 8.88 Ethereum in all its gold-tatted glory.

Gutter Cat Gang Roadmap

In late 2021, the 2022 roadmap was revealed. It includes a number of events, partnerships, and utility for the collection, many of which have already been executed this year.

Metaverse Plans

House of Kibaa partners with GCG to provide holders 3D versions of their PFPs to use in the metaverse. They are also working on their own metaverse and building out their gutter presence.

GCG has a 3×3 plot of land in The Sandbox game, which will be used to build Gutter City in partnership with Blaze Games. Gutter City has been alluded to many times by the team in both digital and IRL experiences.

IRL Events

The GCG has been known for their fun and interactive IRL events, whether it’s at NFT NYC, Art Basel Miami, an exclusive golf event, a merch pop-up in Chicago, or an arcade in LA. These IRL events give collectors a chance to meet up in person and expand the #GangGang ethos to more people in the community.

In 2022, the Gutter had a large presence at NFT NYC, including collabs with Stadium Goods and Puma. GutterCon 2022 was held in Las Vegas in September, with access for all holders of OG collections and Clones. Guttercon included a poker tournament, brunch, a golf outing, a pool party, and free entry to Omnia and Hakkasan night clubs on the Las Vegas Strip.

There is a Gutter Cat DAO which enables holders to vote on certain community topics, and is working on a GCG documentary. Along with IRL events, there have been multiple GCG merch drops, and partnerships with streetwear brand Diamond Supply Co. and Jugrnaut.

Gutter Cat Gang Partnerships

The team has focused on sports and streetwear brands for their key partnerships. Malik Monk — a Gutter Cat holder — wore a cat on his shoes during a Christmas Day NBA game. The shoes were commemorated in the first Gutter Kicks NFT, which was auctioned off for charity.

A partnership with Puma was announced, and GCG is co-sponsoring a basketball tournament and team which was shown on ESPN. The jersey for their team is even available to purchase.

NBA star Lamelo Ball wore a Gutter Cat on his Puma shoes in a game. The best part? The shoes were designed by a GCG community member.

Gutter Cat Art and Comics

Holders of Gutter Cat Gang NFTs have received many NFT art airdrops from featured artists. Some of these artists include Alienqueen, Mark Watts, Gring, Pop Wonder, EpicThunderCat, and Sad Girls Galaxy.

Gutter Milk Bar – Mark Watts

$GANG Token, Shop and Game

The $GANG token has been announced to launch in Q3 2022. The token will be made by Horizen Labs, the same company that worked on $APE token for Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Rumor has it that a certain amount of $GANG will be airdropped to holders of OG Species and possibly Clones. All of the tokenomics, distribution, and use cases for $GANG are still to be announced. The team has confirmed that a $GANG only shop (marketplace) will be launched, where you can buy Gutter ecosystem NFTs in $GANG.

What is DNA-2 from Gutter Cat Gang?

In September 2022, Gutter Cat Gang announced 4,000 DNA-2 Gutter Juice NFTs, which will be used to mint new DNA-2 Gutter Clones. The Juices were minted in a dutch auction, which ended at 0.3 ETH.

Two same-species DNA-1 Clones must be used alongside the same-species DNA-2 Gutter Juice to get the new DNA-2 Clone output. One of the DNA-1 Clones will be burned in the process.

Gutter Cat Gang said a small amount of “utility tokens” will be required to use the Clone Machine with DNA-2 to get a new Gutter Clone.

Minting for DNA-2 Clones using the Juices is set to begin in October.

TL;DR — Gutter Cat Gang and Gutter Clones

Gutter Cat Gang was one of the biggest NFT drops soon after Bored Ape Yacht Club minted out in early May 2021. The number of holders is lower due to the lower supply of the OG Species, but this community remains extremely tight-knit through Discord and NFT Twitter.

With the 2022 Roadmap in full swing, the community is excited for the $GANG token, more IRL events, and big-brand partnerships. GCG has set a high bar for themselves, especially since they have only existed for one year.

All of the Gutter Cats, Pigeons, Dogs, Rats, and Clones are ready to see what they have in store.

Follow Corporate Trash on Twitter: @corporatetrash1

The image for this blog was created with DALL-E 2 by OpenAI

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PROOF Collective Updates: The Future of Moonbirds and PROOF

PROOF Collective recently announced new utility and collections for their Moonbirds NFT ecosystem, though some won’t arrive until 2023. In their Future PROOF event in August, many of the team showed up on livestream to discuss future plans for Moonbirds and beyond.

These included updates for the PROOF pass, Grails, Moonbirds, Oddities, IRL events, their upcoming token, their impressive Series A funding round, and more.

What is PROOF Collective?

PROOF Collective is a private, limited NFT membership collection targeted at NFT collectors and investors. On the website, it says “Membership includes access to our private Discord, early access to the PROOF podcast, in-person events, and other collaborations created exclusively for PROOF Collective members.”

There are 1,000 PROOF Collective NFTs, and they sold out on December 11, 2021, at a Dutch auction price around 1 Ethereum. It was the original access NFT for all things PROOF. The floor is now 48 Ethereum.

https://youtu.be/DinbkxbYMPg
PROOF Collective NFT

The founding team includes:

The team recently added Punk9059 as the Director of Research for PROOF.

Grails

Grails is an NFT collection of unique pieces of art, only available to mint by PROOF pass holders (and nested Grail trait Moonbird holders). The trick is, the artists’ names are not revealed until after the minting window has closed. This brings in mysterious and fun elements, as people try to guess which artist has created their favorite work.

What is PROOF Grails NFT: Season 2
PROOF Grails Collection

Moonbirds

The PROOF team launched Moonbirds on April 16, 2022. Moonbirds NFTs are a collection of 10,000 owl-themed pixel PFPs with additional utility and its own sub-communities. Moonbirds can be nested (a form of staking) to receive rewards, both digital and IRL.

As the community grew larger and stronger, they got a surprise: Holders used to have commercial rights to their Moonbirds, but PROOF switched this to CC0 (public domain). While this was a controversial decision, the team has moved forward in building for the future of Moonbirds under the free-to-use license.

Moonbirds on Collective.xyz

Oddities by Gremplin — Nouns and Cryptoadz artist —were airdropped to nested Moonbird holders as a secondary PFP in June 2022. They will be used in the gamification for Moonbirds Mythics.

Future PROOF Event

On August 30, 2022, Rose and Mezzell led a livestream that detailed the future of the PROOF ecosystem. This was a much-anticipated event, and many different updates were given, from Moonbirds utility to the future of PROOF.

Future Proof Event

PROOF Collective Art: Grails

During the event, the team discussed plans for future art collections and art collaborations. These will likely be limited to holders of the PROOF pass only. Alongside Grails — which will happen three times per year, there will be more collabs with other artists in the space to unlock their creativity in the space.

Genesis aims to bring traditional artists into Web3, by having them create their first NFT collection with PROOF. Curated will have current PROOF artists curate other top artists, continuing PROOF’s mission to be a place for upcoming and diverse artists.

PROOF Collective Art
PROOF Collective Art

Moonbirds DAO

The Moonbirds DAO will be established with a treasury, initially funded from PROOF. A portion of future royalties will then be added to the treasury. Since Moonbirds art is CC0, the main purpose of the DAO is to choose which derivative projects can use the “Moonbirds” name (which is not CC0), and grow the community.

Moonbirds Mythics

The Moonbirds community will be expanding with Mythics, a 20,000 PFP collection. The PROOF team went deep into the story of what Mythics are all about. Basically, the Oddities found eggs deep underground which were hidden for many years. The Mythics will be in these eggs.

In order to get a Mythic, you can burn an Oddity, but only 25 total can be burned per day. Nested Moonbirds also have a chance of getting a Mythic, again only 25 will be chosen per day. Both collections have an equal shot at scoring a Rare Mythic.

Moonbird Mythics Concept Art

More details will be revealed as the team gets closer to the launch. Moonbirds Mythics aren’t expect to release until Q1 2023, at the earliest.

An additional note from this event: original Moonbirds art is moving on-chain, rather than being stored on IPFS.

PROOF Collective Funding Round

PROOF received $50 million in funding, led by a16z, for its Series A round — a massive investment to move the project forward. The funding will be used to scale the Moonbirds team and build a social platform for PROOF collectors and artists.

The quote from a16z’s press release states: “We believe that the next generation of massive mainstream media franchises will be community-owned and governed, and PROOF is one of those companies demonstrating just that. “

Wen PROOF Token?

There wasn’t too much information released about this during the event, but the team did say they are planning to release a fungible token. This is the first confirmation that a PROOF token is coming. ETA is 2023.

Proof of Conference

A future web3 conference led by PROOF was announced during the event.

PROOF pass holders will get priority access, and other PROOF PFP holders (Moonbirds and Oddities) will be able to get discounted passes. The team says the conference is set for “mid-2023.”

With VeeCon being a massive success in 2022, web3 conferences are continuing to grow, especially ones that are curated to bring together the best of the best in the space.

They also announced smaller casual meet-ups that will take PROOF on a European tour, including Lisbon, Paris, Berlin, and London. They are also considering Asia and Australia for more international meet-ups.

TL;DR — PROOF Collective Updates

Since its start in December 2021, PROOF Collective has accomplished a lot. They aim to bring new artists in the Web3 world, and strengthen their own community — PROOF, Moonbirds, and Oddities collectors — at the same time.

There have been a few challenges along the way, with Ryan Carson abruptly departing, as well as the surprising CC0 news. However, the sentiment remains positive around the different facets of their ecosystem that PROOF is building, and their status in the NFT space.

You can see the full breakdown of the event in this Twitter thread by Proof moderator bennyhsu.

If all goes to plan, 2023 will be a banner year for PROOF. Expanding with Mythics, holding an IRL conference (a la VeeCon), and dropping a (useful) fungible token are all on the radar for the first half of the year.

Follow Corporate Trash on Twitter: @corporatetrash1

The image for this blog was created by Dall-E 2 by OpenAI.

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What is Tom Sachs Rocket Factory? A Complete Guide

Tom Sachs Rocket Factory is a sculptor-inspired space NFT project which has evolved into an out-of-this-world ecosystem. It’s the genesis NFT project from New York contemporary artist Tom Sachs. This community has gone from minting free NFT patches to assembling the parts for their NFT rockets, and then watching their physical rockets get launched in real life.

Tom Sachs’ imagination has taken collectors into a metaverse Mars to collect rocks, brought them together for real life events and launches across the world, and has continued to surprise holders with massive partnerships and announcements.

So how did Tom Sachs Rocket Factory get started, and where does the Rocket Factory go after the launches?

What is Tom Sachs Rocket Factory?

Tom Sachs is a NYC-based contemporary sculptor that often blurs the lines between mass produced and handmade. His works are in major museums around the world including the Guggenheim and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he has partnered with massive brands through his career. His deep fascination with space led him to create the Rocket Factory.

On July 23, 2021, Tom Sachs released a free-to-mint Test Flight Crew Patch which would act as an early mint opportunity for the main Rocket Factory collection. Just ahead of this launch, Tom Sachs released a whitepaper which outlined his views on Web3 and the NFT ecosystem. This would be the basis for how the Rocket Factory would be built.

According to the whitepaper, “Tom Sachs Rocket Factory is a trans-dimensional manufacturing plant.” The project was one of the first and biggest to experiment with burning NFTs to create new NFTs.

The Ethereum NFT project is a collection of 1,000 hand-drawn rockets with 113,500+ trait combination possibilities, launched on August 1, 2021. The Rocket Factory NFTs are made up of three components which are burned when assembling the final rocket.

Rocket Components and Traits

Rockets are made up of a nose cone, body, and tail. Only 1,000 complete rockets can be made with the 3,000 components that were launched. Each component features a well-known brand’s logo and color scheme.

Tom Sachs Rocket Factory: Perfect Rockets

The parts are branded with 1-of-30 brands, also with varying rarities. 100 components have 10 types of available special stickers on them, making them ultra rare. The brands which only have 3 components each in the collection are: Apple, Coca-Cola, Miami Vice, Tiffany & Co., Purple, and Yoda.

There are two types of rockets: a Perfect Rocket and a Frankenrocket. Appropriately named, Perfect Rockets are made up of three matching parts, or that they are mismatched. Tom Sachs has hinted that based on the brand type of the Perfect Rocket — or creativity making a Frankenrocket — there would be future surprises involved.

Tom Sachs Rocket Factory Types

Completed launched rockets have a floor of 3.45 Ethereum at the time of this post. Unlaunched rockets command a premium at a 6 Ethereum floor. 907 rockets have been fully built, out of the possible 1,000. Components have a floor of 1 Ethereum each.

There have been massive sales of rarer rocket components and assembled rockets. An Apple body component was sold for 110 Ethereum in August 2021. In April 2022, Tiffany & Co. purchased their Perfect Rocket for 115 Ethereum.

Tom Sachs Tiffany & Co. Rocket

Phase I: Physical Rockets

The rockets aren’t just NFTs — they are physical, handmade, small-scale rockets which are launched into the sky. The physical rocket is an exact replica of the assembled NFT rocket, created by Tom Sachs himself.

If the rocket can be retrieved, it bolsters the utility of the original rocket NFT — the owner is shipped the physical rocket (which has been launched), and the video of it being launched. This all for a cost of just 0.1 Ethereum. Owners are invited to the launch event if they can make it. On August 28, 2021, the first ten rockets were launched.

When a rocket is launched or pending, there is a metadata change to the NFT and a visual addition of fire under the tail. Rockets are available for purchase on secondary or on the Rocket Factory’s native marketplace. The final physical rocket launch was on August 1, 2022 — there will be no more rocket launches.

Tom Sachs Rocket Factory Launch

Phase II: Mothership and Mars Rocks

Phase II of the project kicked off in March 2022, with the claiming of Mothership ticket NFTs for existing Tom Sachs Rocket Factory holders. According to the Medium post, “In Phase II, our Rockets will rendezvous with the Mothership, travel to Mars, mine the surface, extract its resources, and return to Earth laden with Mars Rock NFTs.”

The number of stickers that a rocket has correlated to the number of free Mothership Ticket NFTs one could claim. In May 2022, the details of the mission to Mars were released. Ticket NFT holders were airdropped a Spacesuit MMU JetpackWearable and invited to mine for Mars Rocks in the metaverse.

5,000 possible Mars Rocks could be minted that week in May, with 15 different rock types available. The rest would go on sale in a public mint on June 1, 2022. Future use for the rocks is to be announced.

Tom Sachs x Nike Partnership

Nike is one of the brands on these hand-drawn rockets, and Tom Sachs announced that he worked with the giant brand to design a pair of Nike sneakers — the Tom Sachs General Purpose Sneaker. He had already worked with Nike for over 10 years, and this shoe marked that milestone.

The shoes did not launch on the Nike SNKRS app, but on Tom Sach’s website instead, for a price of $109 each. They are described as “an understated do-everything shoe created to work with every possible scenario.”

In June 2022, those who owned rockets with a NikeCraft component could claim a pair for free. Another General Purpose sneakers colorway, “Archive”, was free-to-claim for NikeCraft component holders during a 15-minute window on September 1.

This is one example of how branded rockets may derive future rewards for NFT holders.

There have been many sales on popular shoe marketplace StockX for the General Purpose shoe, which are now at a price of around $250 each.

Tom Sachs NikeCraft Shoe

TL;DR — Tom Sachs Rocket Factory

The roadmap for 2022 is detailed below, which includes the launch of Phase III. Tom Sachs Rocket Factory has a lot planned for the Rocket League community. Pioneering bridging digital to IRL experiences and highly interactive metaverse missions seems to be just the beginning.

Tom Sachs Rocket Factory Roadmap

The Tom Sachs Rocket Factory ecosystem is a great example of how artists in traditional mediums can bridge to Web3 and NFTs to provide additional value, and secure new sources of revenue. The project has also connected digital art to rare physical items — an aspect of NFTs that will continue to grow.

The Tom Sachs Rocket Factory community is extremely passionate about upcoming missions, phases, the art, and opportunities to meet IRL or in the metaverse.

Follow Corporate Trash on Twitter: @corporatetrash1

The image for this blog was created by Dall-E 2 by OpenAI.

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