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 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.
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
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
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.
