Popular NFT brand, Bored Ape Yacht Club, is in talks with venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, to lead a funding round of about $5 billion to raise their valuation, according to the Financial Times. The deal is still a work in progress as no terms have been agreed upon but will surely be one to watch out for.

 

Although BAYC has yet to comment on the negotiations officially, they have previously said they plan to create a strong brand and hand it over to the community. Another source, NFTNick.eth, told his Twitter followers that this would likely be huge for the NFT industry as it will validate the NFT business model if this deal comes to life and the news gets out.

 

Crypto companies generally utilize funding to expand their businesses and scale their operations globally. For example, back in 2013, When Coinbase was valued at $143 million, it received about $20 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz. It is currently valued at $86 billion. Even successful brands like BAYC require external funding to grow faster than what investments from their own profits can achieve. BAYC receiving VC funding will allow the brand to expand its business, and you will expect its valuation to increase in the future as the demand for BAYC NFTs continues to grow.

 

Bored Ape Yacht Club, a collection of 10,000 uniquely generated cartoon images of ape NFTs, went viral in 2021 even before prominent celebrities like Eminem, Stephen Curry, and Jimmy Fallon, amongst others, bought them. The frenzy does not end with merely acquiring a Bored Ape NFT, as ownership connects you to many celebrities and popular influencers who are members of this club. The number of celebrities ‘aping in’ is increasing every week.

 

Bored Ape NFTs, which were minted on the Ethereum blockchain, has recorded more than 393,000 in trading volume and have at least 6300 owners on OpenSea, with the lowest priced Bored Apes selling for about 18.5 ETH at the time of writing. Yuga labs, the team behind BAYC, has remained committed to growing the BAYC brand even further, and this potential deal with Andreessen Horowitz is a testament to their resolve.

 

 

Who is Andreessen Horowitz?

 

Andreessen Horowitz is an investment company based in Silicon Valley, California, founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz in 2009, commonly known as A16z. The company has more than $28b in assets, with investments spanning from Crypto and Fintech to Healthcare.

 

A16z invests in companies across different stages of growth, from seed to startups, mid and late stages. They boast of a strong track record of having backed highbrow companies like Coinbase, Airbnb, Github, and Slack, transforming the then small businesses into giants.

 

A16z are not newcomers in the crypto space. In June 2021, the company announced a $2.2 billion fund to invest in crypto founders, teams, and networks. In addition, the Financial Times reported on plans by Andreessen Horowitz to raise more than $4.5 billion for crypto investments this year, doubling last year’s figures. A16z has been investing in crypto since 2013 and has shown interest in decentralized finance, Web3, creator funds, and the next-generation payment methods.

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Imagine accidentally selling an NFT worth over $1 million for only $26. That is precisely what has happened to Timothy McKimmy, who owned Bored Ape #3475 from OpenSea’s Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection.

 

Because of this, he is now suing OpenSea—whose legal identity is Ozone Networks—claiming they knew of a glitch that made the sale possible. So what does this mean for NFT buyers and sellers? Let’s take a look.

 

About the OpenSea Lawsuit

 

The claim being made by McKimmy is that OpenSea knew of a bug that allows people to purchase NFTs when they’re unlisted on their platform. De-listing an NFT from OpenSea’s platform with their “transfer” feature doesn’t necessarily remove listings on the blockchain’s back end, making it possible for hackers to purchase tokens for far less than their floor price.

 

Previous Victims

Others have fallen victim to this glitch already, and OpenSea has since added a feature that allows users to see their current listings, including those they may have believed were cancelled. From there, users can fully de-list their NFTs by paying Ethereum gas fees. However, those who have already fallen victim to the bug aren’t at all helped by this.

 

The Damages

McKimmy is demanding that OpenSea either return his Bored Ape NFT—which was shortly after resold for 99 ETH (about a quarter of a million dollars)—or pay him damages of over $1 million. He claims the Ape was worth $1.3 million, comparing it to one of lower rarity bought by Justin Bieber for a similar price.

 

Negligence Charges

McKimmy claims that OpenSea was negligent in that they knew about the vulnerabilities in their code but did nothing to fix it. Instead, they continued sales on their platform rather than pausing to rectify the problem despite knowing this.

 

 

Does McKimmy Have a Case?

 

The claims made do seem to have some weight. It’s true that OpenSea had been in communication with other victims of their platform’s exploit and had even made some settlements (though for less than the tokens in question may have been worth at the time), so it seems reasonable to believe that they were aware of the exploit and had done little to repair it.

 

On the other hand, OpenSea did recently add their “Listings” feature, allowing users to see their current listings, including those that they might have previously believed to have been de-listed. This may prevent future incidents but does not satisfy the damages against McKimmy and others in similar circumstances.

 

There seems to be a good chance that McKimmy’s negligence charges could secure a reward from OpenSea, even if his lawsuit, as it currently stands, has some errors (such as naming OpenSea as defendant instead of Ozone Networks, listing the incorrect address, etc.).

 

 

Lessons and Preventive Measures for NFT Holders

In terms of lessons that can be learned from this case, here are a few preventive measures NFT holders can put into place:

 

1. Know the Platform

It’s generally best to deal with platforms that already have a solid reputation in place. OpenSea has been at the center of multiple controversies in addition to this lawsuit, and that should be a warning to buyers to proceed with caution.

 

2. Keep an Eye on Listings

Just because you use a platform’s tool to de-list something doesn’t mean it’s completely gone. Rarible provides a tool where you can check on all current and previous listings, as does OpenSea with its new “Listings” tab, so it’s easy to keep an eye on what’s actually on the market. You may have to pay a fee to completely de-list your token, but that’s a small price compared to the value of a highly appreciated NFT.

 

3. Get Your Legal Stuff Right

The errors in McKimmy’s lawsuit may not altogether avert his efforts to recover damages, but they can still be an obstacle. Make sure you know which company you’re dealing with (not just the first name that pops up on their platform) and the jurisdiction in which they operate. Having some legal help on your side isn’t a bad idea either.

 

 

Lessons and Preventive Measures for NFT Sellers

 

There are some lessons to be gleaned for sellers as well. Even if you don’t lose a lawsuit, it’s still expensive to resolve it, making the following preventive measures invaluable.

 

1. Know Your Customer

While many value blockchain technology for its potential to protect anonymity, it’s still a good idea to know your customers. Doing so can help you avoid dealing with hackers and keep you more secure against liabilities that might result from exploits or illicit activity.

 

2. Review Your Code

To further shield yourself and your users against exploits, it can be worthwhile to review your code and platform activity every so often. Doing so can reveal potential bugs that could open you up to liability. If you find anything, correct it quickly. It may mean taking your system down, but expensive lawsuits can be far more costly.

 

3. Give Users Visibility

One of the issues with OpenSea appears to be the fact that users didn’t have much visibility over their listings. They used the platform’s “transfer” feature, believing that it would completely de-list their tokens when it, in fact, did not. If they had had more visibility, these errors might not have occurred (or at least wouldn’t have been OpenSea’s responsibility). As such, it’s worthwhile to implement functionality that gives your users plenty of visibility over their assets.

 

The Takeaway

 

It will be interesting to see what happens over the course of this lawsuit. The nature of blockchain technology and the various forces at work, in this case, could present some unique challenges when it comes to presenting the case to a jury, and the courtroom proceedings that follow could well shape the case law for future NFT-related suits. But, for now, it’s advisable to play things on the safe side.

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The blockchain never stops working. The Ethereum network verifies and records millions of transactions from thousands of DAPPS every day. Each cryptographically signed transaction is validated, timestamped, and stored in a chronological chain of blocks. Every 14 seconds, a new block of transactions is created. It’s impossible to manipulate or delete the data because the block “chain” would break. 

1.1 million or more transactions are processed each day on the Ethereum blockchain alone, and record-keeping is public. This means anyone can explore, examine, and investigate the Ethereum digital ledger 24 hours a day, for free. You can help yourself to a wealth of information if you know how to look, because anyone can see everything everyone is doing. With that in mind, consider that every fraudulent, unethical, immoral, and criminal transaction that has ever occurred on the blockchain literally happened in plain sight.

 

 

Degens are both night and day traders of NFTs; always on, always working, just like the Ethereum network itself. This casual group of self-proclaimed degenerates has a sleepless ambition in common, which requires a tireless on-chain presence. Unlike large financial institutions, brokerages, and trading houses on the stock exchange, transactions on public blockchains are most often executed by individuals who reference market resources, lists, analytics tools, and their collective instincts and intuitions. Degens gamble with assets in a gamified way, in a friendly real-time competition. They relish volatility in the market because any NFT can be attractive if its price fluctuates often, or dramatically, on a given day. Along with a shared appreciation for NFT art, PFPs, and other collectibles, Degens often work together to capitalize on market inefficiencies and profit from price changes.

Late one night, Direvice and Prez were doing their normal ‘degenning’ on OpenSea’s marketplace. It’s widely known that when an artist is featured on OpenSea’s front page, the coveted effect is a boost of sales that results in most if not all of their art selling out. The perceived value of the art can also increase as much as tenfold overnight. The ripple effect of getting featured on OpenSea spills over into sales of the artist’s work on other marketplaces and even blockchains. You have officially arrived as an artist when OpenSea features you because it is the largest NFT marketplace with 1.6 million NFTs sold last month alone. Degens and other non-fungible flip artists park and refresh OpenSea’s front page constantly. So the first wallet to snag an NFT by a featured artist before its value skyrockets often belongs to a Degen.

 

“When the home page turned to Harry Pack, me and Dire jumped on it to try and snag a Harry Pack right away,” Prez recalled. Unfortunately, they both missed out on the chance to buy four Harry Pack NFTs, which surprised them both. Knowing their refresh game was on point, something didn’t sit right with Degens, who are used to winning.

 

“There was one wallet that had two of them, another two wallets had one each of the four that were listed. I was like, wait a second, how in the heck did somebody get like 2 of these, and two other people got one each, and we didn’t even get one, and we were so quick–this doesn’t make sense.“ Direvice said.

 

Degens tried to let it go, yet because Degens never sleep, their sleepless curiosity became a waking obsession. “I was like, you know what? Who is this dude?” Direvice wondered. “So I dug into his wallet, and I figured it out.”

 

The wallet revealed an unscrupulous routine. Transactions document an ongoing scheme to buy artwork by an artist within minutes of that artist being featured on OpenSea’s homepage. Each time this happened, the wallet would first send crypto to other wallets without any other crypto or NFTs already in them. Then those wallets would buy the art before OpenSea featured the artist on its homepage. As soon as that artist was featured, each wallet sold the art it had just purchased. “When you catch the OpenSea homepage, that’s like an automatic 10x,” Prez said regarding the price of a featured artist’s work. After selling the art and getting paid by OpenSea, the wallets sent their crypto back to the one and only wallet that funded them all. This despicable practice went unchallenged and unchecked for 80 days; Degens tracked everything back to the day Gabe Wiess was first featured on OpenSea’s homepage.

 

To support their research and discovery, Degens made a video. They also have pictures of the wallets involved and every blockchain transaction. “We were trying to figure out the best way to go about it, like whether we should go to OpenSea directly, or like, just blow it up ourselves,” Prez said. “We didn’t know which way to actually do it.” Finally, they decided to seek help from a colleague in the crypto community, and that’s when the results of their investigation leaked.

 

Unmasking a Punk

In a decentralized crypto community, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with anonymous identities. As much as it is problematic, it’s also an accepted norm. Anonymity is even more prevalent among wallet holders, which is safer and more secure when you’re touting a motherlode of crypto. However, decentralized anonymity makes shady deals easier to make, crimes more challenging to prosecute, and scam artists and predators virtually impossible to identify. Yet mistakes are made on the blockchain every day, and bad actors are often careless. Many of them aren’t calculating enough. Some of them rely on the fact that most people simply aren’t paying attention. Like the front page scandal at OpenSea and every other scandal known or unknown, transactions occur in plain sight, right along with everything else on the blockchain. It’s important to note that buying and selling NFTs isn’t regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. What makes this OpenSea scandal noteworthy and unusual is that a suspect was identified by Degen due diligence. What makes this fascinating is that the trail of deceit quickly led from a seemingly anonymous digital wallet straight to its owner by way of one of the most popular, iconic, scarce, and visually recognizable PFP collections in NFT history. 

 

“I was like, I know who this CryptoPunk is,” Direvice exclaimed. “We were trying to buy this stuff to flip it and make the same crypto he made, but he’s first in every one of these OpenSea front page buys because he’s the one who puts them up,” Direvice said.

 

“It’s universally known that if you have one of those, you know that person associated with it too,” Prez said. CryptoWizard agreed. “When I was first getting into the space, I’d see someone had a unique PFP, and I would just go in the collection and put in like three of the obvious traits in the search bar, click, there it is, that’s their wallet,” CryptoWizard said. “I assumed people would be doing the same to me. It’s an open ledger. Get used to it.”

OpenSea immediately implemented new policies regarding team members who “may not buy or sell from collections or creators while we are featuring or promoting them” and are “prohibited from using confidential information to purchase or sell any NFTs, whether available on the OpenSea platform or not.” Nate Chastain has since resigned.

 

 

 

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Opensea, the largest NFT platform by volume, has been failing in its responsibility to pay royalties for secondary sales on its platform. Similar reports from many reputable artists have become commonplace, indicating a pattern propagating on a wide scale. Claims from these artists have been verified with evidence. This failure on Opensea’s behalf spotlights a major issue in Opensea’s smart contract not distributing royalties automatically and, as a result, the unnecessary centralization that arises.

 

Royalty payments for secondary sales on Opensea are not paid out automatically. Their help center confirms this, stating payments happen on a monthly basis when an artist has “accumulated more than ~$60.00 worth of fees.” There are many instances of artists with balances far exceeding this minimum, many of which have been outstanding for months. This issue seems to have become more common recently, with reports of royalties not being received growing especially since August. 

Royalties are one of the cornerstone benefits of NFTs. The ability for sales to provide a continuous income to artists is revolutionary, enabling passive income for artists where none had existed before. This is not a functionality that Opensea innovated; it is a feature of the blockchain itself. Despite this, Opensea has chosen to undertake the process of paying royalties manually. Their smart contract does not address royalties at all, indicating that they are managed off-chain by the platform itself.

Photo Credit: Markus Winkler via Pexels

 

Managing royalties off-chain is an unnecessary implementation of centralization. The only benefit the system offers is to hold payments in order to send them in batches to avoid paying gas on too many occasions. However, this is something that could be managed more seamlessly by a smart contract. Instead, Opensea chooses to take the burden upon it’s shoulders manually, leading to situations like the one we are currently facing. 

 

An artist by the name of Lance Ren was in a Clubhouse room discussing this particular issue when Jen Stein pinged the CEO of Opensea into the room, Devin Finzer. He reportedly faced the group of angry users, and offered them his apologies in regards to the situation. According to Lance, Devin mentioned two reasons for the lack of forthcoming royalty payments: high gas fees and old architecture that has not scaled yet.

 

Assuming Devin’s response is truthful, this indicates a major failure on Opensea’s behalf. They have been quick to brag about the billions in sales they facilitate every month, but being the largest NFT marketplace comes with its responsibilities. This situation indicates that they are quick to relish in their successes, but lack the foresight to prepare for them. Did they not expect to become the biggest NFT marketplace?

This is an issue that must be addressed by Opensea immediately. Funds are being withheld from artists who worked hard for them. The platform does not lack in resources; the 2.5% it collects on sales on its platform equates to a $100 million profit for the month of August alone on its $3.4 billion in sales. Why a company so profitable would be so concerned with gas fees is difficult to envision.

 

 

Photo Credit: EpicThunderCat

 

Meanwhile, artists are missing out on funds they could use to improve their lives or their communities. This limits innovation and growth in the NFT space, as artists rely on their royalty payments; only to get them inconsistently, if at all. Commitments can be made that may be difficult to keep without this important revenue source, as is the case for EpicThunderCat, who was owed 1.1916 ETH over 109 secondary transactions.

 

“I’ve been doing a mental health game basically, and have some super intense plans, but I need them to pay me and it’s negatively impacting my community that they haven’t. I am going to pay my mods with the up front money this weekend because they shouldn’t be punished if Opensea doesn’t do their job; but it’s hard. My collectors and I have all voted on getting a decentraland property. I can’t do it unless they pay me.” – EpicThunderCat

 

EpicThunderCat was finally paid while we had been speaking to gather information for this article. This long-overdue payment corresponds to substantially lower gas fees this week than the week prior and lends to the case made by Devin. Many other artists we spoke to have received their long-awaited payments in the past week. 

Collectible art projects are also experiencing these issues. Rich Beeman from NiftyCastle says that their Deebies project has only ever received a single royalty payment – that was 7 weeks ago at the time of writing. The fact that this issue impacts high-volume projects, as well as individual artists, means that this is both a pattern and a systemic problem.

Photo Credit: Deebies by NiftyCastle

 

Most people do not believe it is out of malice that Opensea withholds payments. High gas fees would be a valid excuse if the system itself were acceptable, but the decision not to include royalties in the smart contract is a decision made entirely by Opensea, placing the burden of responsibility on their shoulders. If they choose to go against the ethos of the NFT space and centralize operations unnecessarily, the least they can do is bite the bullet when gas fees are high, and balance it out when they’re low. 

 

This serves as a reminder of the value decentralization offers: without a single point of failure, a system can continue to operate and overcome issues as a collective. Opensea’s decision to centralize their royalty payments creates a major dependency for NFTs minted on their platform. What if a major bullish announcement is made causing gas fees to spike and never go back down? If current behavior continues, payments may continue to be delayed, or even require fees from artists to be collected.

 

Furthermore, if Opensea ever fails for any reason, artists’ continued royalty payments may not be guaranteed. This is unnecessary and is by design. Artists and upcoming projects should consider this before minting directly on the platform, and consider the benefits a custom smart contract provides. We like NFTs for the permanence they offer. And if Opensea is going to detract from that permanence, we should at least be aware of it.

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With the super hot NFT collectible drop hype cycle going on right now, many in the community are apeing into NFT project after project.  From fucking pickles, bananas, rats, misfits, camels, strawberries, ducks, and now some undead monsters to boot, there is an emerging trend in collectible drops.

We have a large number of NFT drop examples to pick from and many in the community are letting it be known what they don’t want to see more of.

Take this tweet from one of the most vocal on-chain evangelists J1mmy.eth,  founder of NFT42, Nameless, and Avastars

Obviously, there are pros and cons to any line of logic, and J1mmy himself notes that there are some useful reasons to use a delayed reveal mechanic in certain situations, but not in the way we are seeing it used for the sake of pumping the floor price before a reveal.  This is a trend that I agree, we as a community should push back on.

To be contrarian for a moment to J1mmy.eth’s point, instantly revealing when a collectible NFT is minted, whales often have a serious advantage over us mere mortals who would like to participate in certain drops. We must find a solution that keeps things pointed towards a more egalitarian outcome,  in my personal opinion. 

Then there is this rather concise summary of what many in the community are not liking about these recent collectible NFT drops:

I would agree with all of these points.

While I do understand that projects are all working to extract attention from a rather modest NFT-aware userbase, as we slowly creep towards mass adoption. The FOMO mechanics of many of these projects are merely trying to replicate what they have seen work in the past.

If every NFT project team is replicating what they think will sell out the fastest, raise the most funds, or create the most hype and attention then we will keep getting more of the same repeat mechanics in future NFT drops. 

I will not lie and say I don’t fall victim to the collectible hype, but I think we as a community should become more thoughtful in what we vote on supporting with our participation and spending.  In full transparency, I own at least one of each of the NFTs I mentioned earlier( besides a banana).  This is all mostly due to my efforts to diversify which projects I currently own, but low key because I am still butthurt that I didn’t get a few Bored Apes when I had multiple chances to.

For me, bonding curves will keep me out of a project. Anonymous developers just feels like trouble, and no real utility being added to a project just spells a HARD no for me. Now, fun and novelty can be an underestimated utility especially if there is strong community involvement.

 

NFT Collectible Drop by Cake’d Bored Apes
“I Think We Did Too Much” Caked DMT Monster by Cake’d Bored Apes

 

This commentary is mostly referencing these newer NFT collectible drops and not just crypto art that I like or supporting artists that I connect with.  I don’t necessarily buy all NFTs because I think they may be worth more in the future, I will buy something that I really love, if I can afford it at the moment, or if it’s from an artist that is someone I really want to intentionally support because of who they are as people and/or if their work is just really dope.

This would bring me to my next major gripe, especially around Avatar NFT projects. I want to pick what my avatar looks like, and not just randomly receive something I may not like at all. I see the outcome of this quite often when people start dumping avatars they don’t like on Opensea for lower prices than they paid for them. 


Now I understand there are issues with letting everyone just choose what they want, but I am putting it out into the universe. If someone can come up with a novel method that protects the masses from gas wars and whales from just taking over while allowing us to build out avatars that we can love, then I think we would mostly agree: that would be cool!

Perhaps without revealing the rarity of those physical aspects that are ‘choosable’ then we would have a win-win, or if rarity was not tied to only visual attributes but instead non-visual attributes to allow for customization. I know technically this could just be wishful thinking, at least for right now, but if we can send chunks of silicone and metal to Mars I think we can at some point figure out how to let me buy an avatar NFT that I fucking love before it hits the secondary market or I get priced out of what I want.

 

NFT Collectible Drop #6812 by Boring Bananas co.
#6812 by Boring Bananas co.

 

Many projects are thinking in the short to medium term and not thinking about their futures, where new technical possibilities can and will exist. This is where the on-chain gang argument really does shine with merit. Being able to reference things on-chain in the future will be a really powerful asset and boost the longevity of the projects that keep that future-focused mentality. 

I spoke with Michael Keen, founder of NFTcatcher.io, that is building a really fantastic platform that aggregates the most significant upcoming NFT drops in a comprehensive and useful way. I asked him about what he does not like to see in NFT drops because, honesty, he probably participates in and is aware of more drops than any single person that I know. 

Michael echoed many of the similar points listed above with some additional nuance:

He told me “I don’t like to see metadata leaks before a reveal, any issues with the smart contract implementation really scares buyers” and he “doesn’t like to see the developers hiding and not answering questions”

I would like to second the metadata leak issue as there were early rumors that were later confirmed during the Misfit University drop, which can be exploited by the technically gifted over the average user to mint the token ids with the rarest traits.

Crying eyes and duct tape drama debacles aside, a responsive team can work through issues with the community as they arise. I personally watched as NFT Twitter wanted to burn the devs of the Misfit University project at the stake, with the alleged rape culture references, but they were responsive and listened to the community and arrived at a solution that in many ways has saved that project, at least to live or die another day.

If we want to see better NFT Collectible Drops with less of what we don’t want and more of what we do want then we as a community should be having these conversations with the developers and creators of these projects. Above all, we should be putting our crypto where our mouths are and voting with our fungible token spending.

 

NFT Collectible Drop
Image by Strawberry.WTF

 

Main Featured Image Credit: Remix of Slacker Duck & Arabian Camel by Albert Polanco

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Strawberry.wtf is a series of collectible NFTs that were freshly mutated by the strawberry supermoon, which wasn’t fully visible in North America until last Thursday evening when the sunset and the large golden moon ascended into view. That’s when 10,000 mutant generative strawberries overwhelmed an unsuspecting rural town, which in reality could happen almost anywhere because strawberries are the most widely grown fruit in home gardens.

Similar in scope and generative process to other well-crafted NFT collections like CryptoPunks and the Bored Ape Yacht Club, there’s an endearing narrative backstory to inform, entertain, and engage a community of collectors. Yet unlike those sizable projects produced by corporate teams, Strawberry.wtf was masterfully launched by two talented and ambitious independent visionaries with the enduring support of an NFT crypto art hivemind. What makes Strawberry’s NFTs remarkable is their unique utility: an 8-bit nod of nostalgia in the form of a platform game that was literally built to the limitations of a 1989 Gameboy; a throwback to his notoriety as a world-class retro gamer.

 

“It’s devilishly fun, and evil, and all of the spirit of vintage gaming,” Strawberry said. Loosely based on his own life, each level of the game is a bit more challenging than the last. “It starts out hard, and it’s just hard the whole time,” Strawberry admits. There isn’t a physical cartridge yet, but NFT HODLers will have access to this 6-level game by connecting their wallet in a browser that confirms each verifiably unique ERC-721 token. Strawberry hasn’t beaten his own game, yet he says it is definitely beatable. In fact, you can go from the front to the back, and then play your way back through all 6 levels to the front if you want, because different things may or may not happen each time you play. “You’re not rewarded for playing, but it feels fun, and it feels good when you beat it,” Strawberry said.

 

Strawberry WTF
Strawberry.WTF

 

Strawberry.wtf NFTs are meant to be tradeable, giftable, and fun to make derivatives from—so expect to see Strawberry jam sessions. If you collect at least 20 NFTs and hold them until at least July 9th (1 week after the reveal) you’ll be rewarded with a golden strawberry AirDrop, if you’re also among the top 100 collectors on the leaderboard. “That’s when you automatically become a Big Farmer,” says CryptoSpaces1. “But if you sell one on the secondary market and drop below 20 NFTs in your wallet, you lose your status,” he cautions. A leaderboard will keep collectors competitive, and an active Strawberry Discord includes “Strawberry Preserve,” a space to talk and trade vintage video games. There’s already a limited collection of 6th generation strawberry floppy disk collectibles from taylor.wtf that grants 100 collectors access to an external hard drive of digital assets on discord.art. “I’m gonna have a ton of strawberries on the hard drive available for all the disk collectors to make derivatives of,” taylor.wtf said.

 

Taylor.wtf

 

The first 100 Strawberry.wtf NFTs are reserved; 0-4 are for auction; 5-99 are for DeFi friends and giveaways; 100-9,999 will be made available to the public on OpenSea. Up to twenty NFTs can be minted at a time with a flat cost of 0.025 ETH each; the cost of a Gameboy in 1989. Strawberry.wtf allows its community to make iterations to the game until the Gameboy cartridge is full. By sharing its pipeline sprites, assets, and maps, the community can make changes by editing and even adding new characters for everyone with a Strawberry token to experience. 

“I met Strawberry the other night at the NFT event in Venice, and I was so impressed,” says FinkeLand, who discovered Strawberry.wtf NFTs on CryptoVoxels’ homepage. “He showed me the game he developed and it was way over my head,” she laughs. “But he took the time to explain everything.”

 

Metabit Broker CryptoVoxels

MetaBit Broker CryptoVoxels

The derivative market is sure to be teeming with wildly creative Strawberry patches. Derivatives galvanize the NFT artist community around fellowship, FOMO, flipping, and artist collaborations to create more NFTs. cryptowizard77 wants to 3D-print a strawberry pie. fiyahmarshall wants to add his original music. NFT_ish wants a feminine-looking derivative with a cigarette. Almost anything these collectibles inspire is possible because they’re CC licensed. “With projects like this, when you’re allowed to take the entity that you own, and create new works based on derivative works, and then actually sell them for commercial use, that’s kind of a big deal,” AaronHaber said. 

Designing a 10,000-piece art collection of fruitful abominations is no small feat. Each verifiably different NFT has been generated at random, except for the first 100 NFTs, which are reserved for auction, DeFi friends, and giveaways. CryptoSpaces1 assures us that no more strawberries were cherry-picked; they all go through the same pipeline that will randomize each visual element.

 

The process began with Strawberry, who created 20 different characters. Each of the characters has 8 different pixel parts: visual elements that were handed off to CryptoSpaces1, who created the script to mix and match the visual elements based on different levels of predetermined rarity. The script auto generates Strawberry.wtf NFTs; mixing and matching 8-pixel parts like a delicious strawberry smash cocktail of backgrounds, bodies, berries, eyes, noses, mouths, stems (hair), and an extra category. The first 100 tokens also have a special quality to them that’s specific to each DeFi friend; a trait each grateful recipient may consider rare and valuable in this regard. 

 

“Earlier this week, we’ve been making sure that everything aligns; the assets align, and we actually got some really fun, good, happy accidents,” says CryptoSpaces1. Each smart contract will have a seed hash and a base to the provenance hash so the system is transparent. Strawberry has no interest in seeing his NFTs until they’re actually created. He thinks everyone should just enjoy the surprise. 

“I definitely got some feedback from foodmasku,” Strawberry said. “I put some strawberries in their discord and they offered some suggestions. And I was able to create a better distinction between the more feminine and masculine traits.” While some of them will be burly masculine, there’s no real gender to them, and there are some nice feminine qualities,” he mentioned. “I was trying to aim in a direction where they’re gender fluid in a lot of ways. It doesn’t have to be, you can be whatever strawberry,” he added. “You made a big point to make it inclusive,” CryptoSpaces1 recalls.

Darko R

Darko R

You can’t be mad at a strawberry—hence his moniker—as both a world-class retrogamer and now NFT crypto venture capitalist. Strawberry has been a well-known figure in gaming circles and especially World of Warcraft for more than a decade, and in recent years he’s been extremely competitive. Aggressive gaming is like a day job, and “Strawberry” has always been his avatar handle. When he downloaded Clubhouse and met people like snack_man and steviewilliams_, he was all-in with @rarepizzas and the promise of a collaborative NFT artist community. That’s when the gaming Discord groups he’d been part of for years collided with the world of NFTs like a celestial event; his own Strawberry moon was like a cosmic shift. “I will keep the name Strawberry forever. I love the name,” Strawberry says, despite the rumour that if all 10,000 NFTs sell out, he’ll change his legal name to “Straw Berry.”

While Strawberry.wtf NFTs started minting last week, the visual reveal for each unique NFT in the collection, as well as the platform game, happens on July 2nd.

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Matt & John of Larva labs made history today, once again, with their ‘Crypto-punks’ follow-up project: Meebits.  Only a few hours ago, Opensea’s official Twitter account released the following statement: “Meebit #8598 has just sold for a casual 420 ETH (~$1.4m), making it the highest single item sale on the platform to date” – @opensea

 

 

But what is a Meebit and why are people paying so much for them?  According to Larvalabs’ official Meebits webpage: “The Meebits are 20,000 unique 3D voxel characters, created by a custom generative algorithm, then registered on the Ethereum blockchain.”  Are they the same as Cryptopunks?  Not exactly.  Apart from being 3D, generating twice as many of them, and several built-in features, the intention behind this collection is quite different.  To quote Larvalab’s official announcement blog post: “If the Cryptopunks are ideal 2D avatars for Discord, Twitter, and other social media, then we hope that the Meebits will be the 3D avatar for virtual worlds, games, and VR.”  This announcement sparked a lot of excitement from the VR/AR/XR communities that currently populate the existing metaverse options.  However, some practitioners are already pushing for even further interactivity. According to one of the cofounders of the Sandbox Game, one of the most popular metaverses:

“Meebits should be interoperable across all Metaverses. The era of the Avatar has just begun! Can’t wait to see them across @cryptovoxels @decentraland @SomniumSpace and of course @TheSandboxGame where you could equip and play with them!” – @borgetsebastien

However, this world is, quite incredibly, not too far off.  To once again, quote Larvalabs announcement blog post: “Owners of a Meebit are given access to an additional asset pack that includes the full 3D model.” Meebits can be animated or used “as your avatar in the metaverse.”  According to Matt and John of Larvalabs, they “are bullish about the metaverse future,” and “look forward to seeing how the Meebits are used in such environments.” However at the moment is seems as if the focus is similar to that of the Bored Ape Yacht Club team, integrating one’s NFTs into personal or public pieces of digital art.   All Meebit’s unlockable content includes T-pose OBJ files that can allegedly be “imported into any most standard 3D modelling and animation software.”  There have been some 3D artists who have spoken out about the file formats Larvalabs made available to its buyers.  To quote crypto-artist Angie Taylor:

“It’s a bit nuts that #meebits only supply OBJ – quite an outdated 3D format? They should have chosen to go with either GLB – the current standard for Web 3D, 3D NFTs & AR. Or, if they advertise the T-pose as a feature, surely they should use FBX which will include mocap data?” – @theAngieTaylor

Despite this and similar complaints, buyers don’t at all seem to be dissuaded.  With Meebits selling out all 9,000 public pieces in Larvalab’s initial stock on their first day.  This was, of course, apart from the reserve pieces they kept for all buyers of previous works. So if you’re reading this and you happen to own a Cryptopunk or a Glyph then we have good news for you directly from Larvalabs themselves: “We’re giving away free [Meebits] to all punk and glyph owners.”  One of these owners, and a staunch Larvalabs investor is crypto-artist @Hanrgb on Twitter who tweeted that he invested his “artwork revenue in CryptoPunks” 5-6 months ago.  And then “Yesterday sold 3 of them to invest in Meebits.” Ending his tweet by solidifying his stance that “Metaverse native projects are the future.”  When we chatted with Hanrgb briefly about the reason behind his purchases, he smoothly mentioned that: “Metaverse characters can reflect 65 different identities.”  Alluding to the fact that he bought 65 Meebites himself.

One still might ask what makes these rather simple generated renderings so popular? The primary aesthetic differentiating factor this time around for Larvalabs was the signature Meebit 3D voxel-style rendering technique.  Matt and John of Larvalabs are publicly big fans of “low-poly and voxel 3D graphics.”  which they also addressed in in their initial release statement:

“The style has been made popular in the last decade or so by games such as Minecraft and Roblox. We think that, just like 8-bit pixel art, the minimalism and accessibility of voxel art will prove timeless and endearing for generations to come.”

 

On top of all the aesthetic and integrated features, similar to the Cryptopunks, buying and trading Meebits can be done on “a custom marketplace that supports like-kind trading of up to 100 Meebits per transaction” along with all other standard transactions.  Once again, Larvalabs has levelled up their offerings in a number of ways, and we can’t wait to see what they have in store for us next! One thing is for sure, in a similar fashion to Cryptopunks, the real money will be made in the secondary market.  To quote crypto aficionado Piers Kicks, Meebits looks like it’s going to be “the most crowded NFT trade in months.”  Furthermore, according to his Twitter, “If all 9000 were to go at 2.5 ETH in the Dutch auction that’s $70M to @larvalabs…” This would make their sales on par with the likes of Beeple.

We’re sure that there will be many exciting developments regarding Meebits in the coming days and can’t wait to share them all as they progress!

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