In their first attempt at an NFT project, Tom Williamson and Rob Mehew settled on unicorns. Actually, they’re obese unicorns. Massive 16-bit visual style depicts them as plump and hunched over, unable to stand upright on their own four hooves. The concept was dubbed Faticorns, and they produced 10,000 of the mythical animals before selling them all.
Cool Cats, an NFT project that sought to create 9,999 cartoon cats, was cancelled and replaced by Evan Luza and artist Colin Egan. They were adorable in their blue and illustrated outfits, complete with beanies, bandanas, and flannels for extra warmth and style. It took just eight hours for all 9,999 of them to be sold, bringing them over $400,000 worth of Ether.
I’d like to know what made the kitties so unique. Luza, who goes by ELU online, described them as “cute and cool.” And the purchase of the kitties was a memorable occasion. “It was like opening a pack of Pokémon cards,” Luza said. The Cool Cats NFTs are arranged in a collage for your viewing pleasure.
NFTs of Cool Cats arranged in a collage format. Picture of the Day:
As a result of the success of ridiculously valuable collections like CryptoPunks that have sold for millions of dollars each, NFT projects like Cool Cats are gaining traction. CryptoPunks set a precedent in 2017 with their 10,000-piece projects, all of which are “programmatically generated”—that is, randomised from a set of prefabricated components like smirks, moustaches, and T-shirts—and styled as headshots, which are ideal for Twitter or Discord profile pictures.
The NFT series can be compared to large-scale Pokémon games, with the exception that each creature can only be captured one time. You’ll have to buy one from someone who got into the game early if you want more or never captured one. When it comes to Pokemon merchandise, it’s no surprise that Pikachu and Charizard are going to be more valuable than Cutiefly. As a result of this, in an NFT series like Cool Cats, you’ll see some cats selling for 3ETH (about $10,000), others for 15ETH (approximately $49,000), and all of them over the initial “capture” price of.02ETH (about $42 at the time).
There have been dozens of efforts like this in the last few months, all centred on a single creature. Punk Cats, BlazedCats, Punk Alien Robots, and MoonCats are just some of the feline characters you’ll see in this book. There are also penguins, alien robots, and a variety of big cats (yes, there are two weed-themed cat NFT series).
Apes are currently the largest land mammal. The Bored Ape Yacht Club, which debuted in April, features 10,000 apes with trucker hats, stud earrings, and cheeky grins, all with a punk flavour. Apes cost the equivalent of $186 each when the game first launched. Today’s exchange rate means that even the cheapest ape currently costs more than $80,000, and others have sold for more than $300,000 each.
Outfits and accessories vary among the six apes. The pizza-eating one is wearing a plaid shirt, while the other two are donning 3D glasses.
As a visual representation of the Bored Ape Yacht Club
“We pondered, what kind of folks do we anticipate will frequent this club, this dive bar?” Who do we wish to be? Is there any kind of club that we as individuals would like to be a part of? Co-founder Gargamel, whose alias is Gargamel, reveals to The Verge. Bored Ape Yacht Club came to Gordon in a dream after a night of brainstorming,” says another co-founder.
Many of the projects based on and inspired by CryptoPunks’ massive popularity look like cash grabs for both project owners and NFT holders alike, picking up cookie-cutter JPGs in the aim of reselling them for an unexpected windfall months or years from now. Visit any of these projects’ Discord servers, and you’ll soon witness a discussion regarding “floor prices” — the lowest price an NFT from the series can be purchased for.
According to The Verge’s interviewees, starting or purchasing NFT series was only a small part of their engagement, and often not even their primary focus. Cool Cats owner Spencer Gordon-Sand, a venture capitalist and former ape owner, tells The Verge that when he used to use an ape as a profile photo, “I could DM any other monkey and communicate with them,” he says. “It’s quite simple to join this group of folks.”
Some mix of great art and a great community is the real selling point of the ventures. BAYC, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, was the first to notice this. First-time customers were encouraged to join a “club” in order to expedite the process of acquiring an ape by the creators of BAYC. To access the members-only graffiti board, you must own an ape, which is depicted in the website’s design as an old-fashioned dive bar.
There was a consensus among project leaders that prioritising money above community was a formula for failure. This is a game for the losers, Gargamel remarks, referring to the competition. So, “we’re aiming to construct this over the long term” to produce an unsustainable pump, which is a transient price spike followed by a crash.