Bastard GAN Punks V2 enthusiast
Bastard GAN Punks V2 enthusiast
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In the last couple of months the NFTX $BGAN Vault has seen a lot of volume. Yet the opportunity to earn from this volume is somewhat unknown. So here’s how it works: anyone can stake $BGAN to earn $BGAN from vault activity. This inventory (single sided) staking earns a smaller APY than a liquidity providing position, but the risks for single sided staking are somewhat less. With liquidity providing the user adds equal values of $BGAN and ETH, and they take on the risk of impermanent loss but the reward is much greater than single sided staking.
https://twitter.com/PunksGan/status/1565443306829451264?s=20&t=7TBEPcAWEnN5v-jj0XYmMQ
Here are the steps to becoming a liquidity provider:
https://dirtbaglu.medium.com/a-step-by-step-guide-to-nftx-fdf0fec2cf4b
Berk is cooking something up! He’s said multiple times before that the goal with Glicpixxx is to design clothing with the patterns. Maybe Berk is moving closer to achieving this. Last month he released the Glicpixxx remix generator, and now he’s producing large format prints of these images. What’re you making, Berk?
https://twitter.com/berkozdemir/status/1565365139095883786?s=20&t=OtV1zrNGz9kpClnUh28-Ww
Berk has been very busy this month! XULCPTURES have been teased for a few months, and with their release this marks another chapter in the GLIX ecosystem. If you’re unfamiliar with GLIX check out Glicpixxx.Love.
https://twitter.com/berkozdemir/status/1574774081748074496?s=20&t=h66cEaCYu0S3Fqy6r9cjqA
https://twitter.com/berkozdemir/status/1574688983568642049?s=20&t=rjLRZwx7ztM92RRN4jYMYg
Community members bgans.eth and dirtbaglu have joined the FloorDAO Ambassador Program. The TL;DR is these two will give BGAN Punks and Bastard DAO updates to the FloorDAO community on a regular basis in order to better facilitate the partnerships between DAOs. So far there are Ambassadors for Milady Maker and Squiggles DAO as well.
https://twitter.com/bastarddegen/status/1565763597690871808?s=20&t=OtV1zrNGz9kpClnUh28-Ww
FloorDAO has introduced a new FIP which allows the active community members to vote on which vault to compound their yield income into. This gauge vote is scheduled biweekly, this round was won by their gFLOOR-ETH LP in an effort to bring their treasury and market cap closer to equilibrium. $BGAN was a close 2nd, and will likely win future votes. This FIP strongly incentivize other DAOs and NFT communities to hold gFLOOR in order to vote for themselves. And since Bastard DAO has a sizable gFLOOR bag, this recent victory benefits us as well.
https://twitter.com/FloorDAO/status/1570869887769391106?s=20&t=rjLRZwx7ztM92RRN4jYMYg
Lyssandros has created a twitter list for the BGAN community. Be sure to follow to keep in touch with day-to-day happenings, memes, and shitposts.
https://twitter.com/Lyssandros_S/status/1566712448517898241?s=20&t=RjMGy_8cQqz3fIfFCGt5Qw
Ayo the new BGAN Comic just dropped!
https://fplusultra.substack.com/p/double-helix-a-bastard-gan-punks?sd=pf
M4T--BGAN Punks biggest whale--recently had some of his collection featured at La Biennale di Venezia. “Every odd-numbered year, more than half a million art enthusiasts descend on Venice to visit the Art Biennale, a show on which all other biennales are based. For over 120 years, Venice Biennale has been one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world” (source).
https://twitter.com/M4T_NFT/status/1572987123489284101?s=20&t=rjLRZwx7ztM92RRN4jYMYg
Berk also shared that BGANs will be apart of an Australian university study. Even in this bear market people are still interested in NFTs as art and tech.
https://twitter.com/berkozdemir/status/1573356639478222848?s=20&t=eXCfJKgmwLh-kpFUnEBd6A
PrinterPunk has been sharing BGANs and Glicpixxx with checks notes Steve Aoki!
The BGAN Lawyer continues his contributions by tackling some of the nuances of our space from a legal perspective. This time he’s challenged the accusation of Bastard GAN Punks (Versions 1 & 2) allegedly being “just another CryptoPunks derivative.” Read on to hear the final verdict.
https://bganlawyer.substack.com/p/cc69?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
BGANx: BGAN Accumulation Distribution Machine
It was Friday September 17, 2021, six months after the celebrated reveal of Bastard Gan Punks V2 collection, when a mysterious NFT collector named “BGANx” set about stockpiling a whale-worthy amount of BGAN Punks NFTs. It all began with Bastard #3441, their first purchase, an alluring Hyped AF Bastard and it carried on until November 10, 2021 ending with their last purchase Bastard #10389. In 54 days BGANx accumulated a whooping 169 BGAN Punks including all sorts of Hyped AFs, a Floaty, Hybrids, Glitchies and Calms! The name BGANx was being celebrated and romanticized almost every day by BGAN holders. This buying pattern which came 6 months after mint, signaled conviction and passion towards the art ;which, was the needed certitude that some holders sought. Although BGANx’s purchasing activities pointed to one wallet (created on August 10, 2021), they were accumulating a month earlier using a different address known as “OnlyRares” (created on September 16, 2020). In fact, their earliest BGAN Punks purchase was recorded on August 28, 2021, another mesmerizing hyped AF #4433 in addition to 12 other Bastards all bought on the same day. Later on, two additional BGANx wallets were created on December 16, 2021, specifically for further collecting of BGAN Punks. Benefitting from discounted prices, for 6 days, both wallets collected in-concerto 44 Bastards. In total, BGANx collected 226 BGAN Punks over a period of 4 months using 4 different wallets. The mystery whale never placed an offer, they always paid the asking price. They only listed 35 BGANs in total.
Fast forward 9 months, right after BGAN Punks’ great FloorDAO victory in June 2022, BGANx decided that it was time to take some profits. They began listing a very small number of their holding for a high asking price in July and even accepting some enticing offers, all of which coincided with the short-term bull-run that BGAN Punks enjoyed. When that bull-run started to settle down in August, our enigmatic superstar set about unloading most of their BGANs into NFTx vault and SudoSwap pools. The two December wallets started this process around the end of July in the middle of the bull-run, followed by OnlyRares and finally the BGANx wallet on August 5, 2022. For 48 days, most of their Bastard NFTs were sent to the vault, leaving them with their current holdings of 17 BGANs consisting of 5 Hyped AFs, one Floaty and 11 Glitchies (one of them sitting in the OnlyRares wallet). BGANx’s selling pattern in the last two months was not restricted to BGAN Punks. They were and still are in the process of liquidating many of their accumulated NFTs. A large bulk of their assets have been sent either to vaults or sold to bot offers. Around 30-40 (possibly more) wallets direct their returns to a central wallet: 0x268F49C82786801D9C7D948AAc96dF942165e8A2 created in December 2017 which in turn compiles ETH and sends it to a Binance wallet.
While the BGANx story is interesting and might be discouraging at first, it is important to see it in the context of how NFT collections and holders evolve overtime. BGAN whales in general are long term holders. In fact, since minting very few whales have sold/liquidated their holdings. BGAN Punks have a fair number of whales and most of their BGANs lie dormant in their vaulted wallets with no sign of “changing hands”. Yet, “changing hands” is necessary, it’s good for volume and it attracts interest. Small holders looking to increase their share of grail BGANs, newcomers looking to explore and collect superior Bastards to make a strong entry to the collection, makes it important for large investors like BGANx to allow for such distribution even if it pushes back momentum sometimes. Many of BGANx’s Bastards were quickly eaten up by small passionate holders, by whales, and by new collectors. As a result, distribution is better.
BganPunks stats:
In general, the BGAN ecosystem is a healthy one. From 2815 holders (25% unique holders), 40% own 2 to more than 100 BGANs signaling a collector mentality among holders, 72% have held and are still holding for more than 1 year reflecting strong conviction in the art and the future of BGANs. Distribution in BGAN Punks is good but it can be improved. According to the fat middle theory of BGANs top-tier grail Bastards account for 32% of the whole collection. Most of these highly-sought-after BGANs are not listed and have been sitting in wallets since mint. While this signals art appreciation and conviction, it would be beneficial if some of the whales decide to let them change hands (for the right price). Holders’ metric is important, and a steady rise of unique holders is a positive sign that the project is growing its reach. The optimal target would be around 40-50% unique holders. What is more important in this situation, is the profile of holders. A lower number of highly energetic and engaged holders can have a much better reach than having a higher number but who are quick flippers. The quality of BGAN holders is admirable.
To end these bastardous thoughts, it may sound counter-intuitive that some BGAN Punks whales like BGANx are selling, but for the long-term upside, these events are healthy and essential. RoosterM put it nicely out there, I quote:
“BGANx is for the people”.
If you’ve been active in the Bastard DAO at all since its inception, then chances are you know about Snooplion. Snoop has been a multisig signer since day one, and has spear-headed a handful of proposals that have shaped the DAO into what it currently is. Most recently Snoop is recognized for for his work with establishing Provenance within the collection, forming the House of BGANs, debating trait proposals, and countering the infamous trait locking proposal.
He’s been in the crypto space since 2015. And was originally drawn to Bitcoin and Ethereum based on its founding principles the themes of which remain prevalent in our short interview.
I first looked into BTC in 2011 but didn't really understand what was going on. And then in 2015 I was living in SF and a friend explained the space to me in a way that finally clicked. That was around the time I started thinking through some ideas around the problems of our education systems and online discourse and the need for new systems running on alternative infrastructure with different incentives. In 2017-18 I participated in some of the ICO craze and started playing around with solidity and converting my various software projects into projects that were blockchain compatible. So long story short, I had ambitious ideas for replacing some of our old systems with new systems and my social network pointed me to the infrastructure of Ethereum primarily as the place where I could try to realize some of those ideas.
On his first NFTs and how he found BGAN Punks:
I minted some cryptokitties in 2017, and then didn't do anything with NFTs until I minted bgans in 2021, which I had a friend recommend as a pretty cool new project when minting first launched.
But once Snoop was asked about his thesis on the success of NFTs, things started getting really interesting. Snoop said that he briefly studied philosophy in college, but his strong background on the subject along with sociology, and psychology were largely independently learnt. Yet his understanding of the subject and the role these sciences play on blockchains is relevant when diving deeper into his ambitions outside of BGAN Punks.
My longer term thesis for NFTs falls back on the idea that NFTs are data objects on chain. In javascript for example an object looks something like:
{ title: 'BGAN #5768', id: 5768, }On Ethereum an NFT looks like:
{ title: 'BGAN #5768', id: 5768 }So this is just to say they are the same data structures, but NFTs enable some functionality that is impossible in some cases or at best much more complicated in traditional software development. The amount of work required to launch a mobile app on iOS compared to Ethereum is absurd. But at a fundamental level, crypto plays with deep philosophical questions that often escape our attention. Like why is a piece of art valued or not valued and how/why does that value change over time? This is analogous to BTC forcing more people to ask the question "why does money have value?" for the first time in their lives. In addition to forcing people to ask more frequently about things they normally assume, programmers understand how data objects work, how they are used in software programs and the huge range of things non-technical people do with them anytime they use the internet. The people interacting with data objects don't know they are interacting with data objects, they don't need to know that or even what they are and the same will be true about NFTs. But NFTs have an advantage in some cases because there is more that you can do with smart contracts, real ownership of data objects, and the rails of decentralization and composability that chains like Ethereum introduce.
Monetization models will continue to be disrupted, and various kinds of markets that were previously impossible to deploy will emerge and scale improving how our society interrogates information and makes decisions. Science will give birth to variants outside of the university system that live entirely on chain. Real world governance will move from IRL infrastructure to on chain infrastructure. New social networks, communities, and religions (though they won't call themselves that) will all be born and exist entirely on chain in a distributed way. All of these things will utilize some version of NFTs.
Last year I deployed a project called
“How do you think the inflow of minds will migrate on-chain? We’ve started to see the transition of coders/devs for economic reasons. But scholars have some other motivations. Maybe it’s like a Field of Dreams—if you build it they will come— type deal?”
Yeah, it's a good question. I think for cases like political science and economists there is already sufficient reason for them to be paying close attention. I just don't think that's super clear to those people yet. Like it's probably most clear to monetary theorists or something, but I don't think it's very well understood that we are deploying government infrastructures from scratch quickly and easily. But I think everyone will be incentivized once there are some examples of high quality signals coming out of this space.
So once a DAO, that is effectively just a discord of people discussing ideas and building knowledge gains a status that extends beyond the crypto space then we'll be somewhere very interesting. Could be a university like mechanism, or a publication, or any number of other variants. Like the only difference with something like Harvard and Yale is that they have been around for longer and so their status as a knowledge creator / transferring mechanism is better understood by the system as a whole, which has allowed for it to embed itself into the society and translates to the degree necessarily having value. Maybe being in a specific discord for a few years will be enough to get an interview for a highly sought after job in the future.
It really just takes one of these things to get running and noticed, and then a few others will clone and run their own knowledge production functions. And then you can imagine existing real world institutions migrating online in order to participate in the same way.
To me there is so much upside in the idea of Harvard's experts debating all topics together in a forum that the public could view without participating directly. Like wouldn't trust in institutions go up if we could just see how their products are made? Not only would we get a sense for the quality of the dialogue between all of these experts, but we'd be able to see the degree in which nuance is present in these various places.
Even institutions like NYT or Fox news are compatible with this structure. At the most fundamental level, all these organizations do is create various kinds of knowledge. And in a case where the NYT isn't comfortable debating whatever the topic of the day is in public, that's fine, they should just lose to the next competitor that is willing to create the incentives for higher quality exchanges of ideas.
So maybe we just need a couple of high quality examples to spawn from this area of focus to get people thinking about what is actually going on here. That blockchain is a decentralized infrastructure that every single organizational structure in our current world can be migrated over to is quite the reveal.
And it's telling that every time I have a chance to describe the stuff I'm working on, I get responses like "wow, that actually makes blockchain sound interesting." Of course it is! Name one other time in the history of the species that we unlocked the ability to simulate real life instances of decentralized economies and governance with real people, freeing us from our limited references found in history!
“I think I agree with you that modern societies are kind of like at the cusp of a new Age. The Internet gave us chat rooms, forums, worldwide communication, and now blockchains where participation is verifiable.”
Right, its the permission-less security combined with ownership capabilities that translates some of the real world only functions to the digital realm.
“I know that you and I and some of the other Signers have talked about the direction of the Bastard DAO and where we’d like to see it’s focus lie. Do you want to share your thoughts on this for the Newsletter?”
Yeah sure.
My general thesis for the DAO is that it should aim to spread awareness of the collection to high quality targets. One of the trickier parts of doing this well, which is also true for any early stage organization, is understanding what high quality targets look like and how to reach them. BGANs sitting in between generative art collections and PFPs as a hybrid of the two ideas means the target audience is something like art appreciators who are also interested in PFPs, a very small group at the moment. BGANs are really unlike any other project in this space, something I see as a good characteristic long term, but it also means BGANs were more incompatible with the froth present in the last bull. An abstract, aesthetic AF, GAN generated art project, released by an artist and musician, utilizing artificial intelligence with GPT-2 generated punk inspired lyrics, released before the world had any idea what an NFT is? I don't think a project description could be further away from "10,000 Cute Corgis!" In time more art appreciators will learn about and be attracted to the art being created and deployed on top of Ethereum and BGANs are so obviously blue chip in that regard. Sometimes a product is just early to market and it takes a minute for the market to mature, and in the case of art, early is actually good, while in tech it might mean your startup dies and someone else reaps the rewards a decade later, see General Magic.
At the same time it's also been really cool to see other aspects emerge and evolve over time, like the trait side of the DAO and the capital / asset management side, buying up supply, staking, working with floorDAO etc. The main value proposition of this organization is that it allows for someone to come up with an idea and then go get it done within the context of BGANs. So in this regard I'm excited to see what other surprises might pop up in the future.
In summary, I don't think the DAO needs to be acting for the sake of "DEVS DO SOMETHING," I think the DAO should be patient and really prioritize things that will help the project get the right eyeballs on the art over time. I think BGAN art will also be doing this on its own over time, spreading on its own merit, but since the DAO exists and has capital to deploy it can help nudge this process along when someone steps up with an idea that makes sense.
In our current state the Bastard DAO is really paving its own path, which is never an easy task. Sure we could model the DAO off of the success of other DAOs, like Squiggle DAO for instance whose solely intention is maintaining Squiggles as a store of value. Or maybe we could follow Larva Labs who innovated, and then were bought out. But no, the power and appeal of the Bastard DAO and BGAN Punks is giving its members the freedom to write their own fate. In time, our DAO may become the place where great minds congregate. It could very well be Snooplion’s gravity that attracts them.
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/thomas8104/viz/BGANTreasuryDashboard/BGANTreasuryDashboard
Ether: 37.88Ξ + 6.09 WETH
Bastard GAN Punks V2 NFT: 100
NFTX Vault: 17.01 xBGAN/WETH
Claimable $BGAN: 5.15
30,306,980. $BASTARD
SushiSwap LP: 10,954 BASTARD/WETH
$gFLOOR: 1,478.91
1Ξ paid to Social Media Team (Masal and Printer Punk)***
1Ξ paid to Multisig Signers (full list of signer addresses)***
1 Bastard GAN Punks V2 NFT for BotM***
Paid to Snooplion
0.25Ξ paid to DirtbagLu for Newsletter publication
2 of 3 months per this proposal
0.5Ξ + 1,592 USDC for BGAN Comic via Summer of Writing per this proposal
1.3Ξ for Maria Abramenko articles to be published in Nasty Magazine via Summer of Writing per this proposal
0.75Ξ for BGAN Lawyer articles per this proposal
*** Occurs monthly
0.366Ξ (🧸)
In the last couple of months the NFTX $BGAN Vault has seen a lot of volume. Yet the opportunity to earn from this volume is somewhat unknown. So here’s how it works: anyone can stake $BGAN to earn $BGAN from vault activity. This inventory (single sided) staking earns a smaller APY than a liquidity providing position, but the risks for single sided staking are somewhat less. With liquidity providing the user adds equal values of $BGAN and ETH, and they take on the risk of impermanent loss but the reward is much greater than single sided staking.
https://twitter.com/PunksGan/status/1565443306829451264?s=20&t=7TBEPcAWEnN5v-jj0XYmMQ
Here are the steps to becoming a liquidity provider:
https://dirtbaglu.medium.com/a-step-by-step-guide-to-nftx-fdf0fec2cf4b
Berk is cooking something up! He’s said multiple times before that the goal with Glicpixxx is to design clothing with the patterns. Maybe Berk is moving closer to achieving this. Last month he released the Glicpixxx remix generator, and now he’s producing large format prints of these images. What’re you making, Berk?
https://twitter.com/berkozdemir/status/1565365139095883786?s=20&t=OtV1zrNGz9kpClnUh28-Ww
Berk has been very busy this month! XULCPTURES have been teased for a few months, and with their release this marks another chapter in the GLIX ecosystem. If you’re unfamiliar with GLIX check out Glicpixxx.Love.
https://twitter.com/berkozdemir/status/1574774081748074496?s=20&t=h66cEaCYu0S3Fqy6r9cjqA
https://twitter.com/berkozdemir/status/1574688983568642049?s=20&t=rjLRZwx7ztM92RRN4jYMYg
Community members bgans.eth and dirtbaglu have joined the FloorDAO Ambassador Program. The TL;DR is these two will give BGAN Punks and Bastard DAO updates to the FloorDAO community on a regular basis in order to better facilitate the partnerships between DAOs. So far there are Ambassadors for Milady Maker and Squiggles DAO as well.
https://twitter.com/bastarddegen/status/1565763597690871808?s=20&t=OtV1zrNGz9kpClnUh28-Ww
FloorDAO has introduced a new FIP which allows the active community members to vote on which vault to compound their yield income into. This gauge vote is scheduled biweekly, this round was won by their gFLOOR-ETH LP in an effort to bring their treasury and market cap closer to equilibrium. $BGAN was a close 2nd, and will likely win future votes. This FIP strongly incentivize other DAOs and NFT communities to hold gFLOOR in order to vote for themselves. And since Bastard DAO has a sizable gFLOOR bag, this recent victory benefits us as well.
https://twitter.com/FloorDAO/status/1570869887769391106?s=20&t=rjLRZwx7ztM92RRN4jYMYg
Lyssandros has created a twitter list for the BGAN community. Be sure to follow to keep in touch with day-to-day happenings, memes, and shitposts.
https://twitter.com/Lyssandros_S/status/1566712448517898241?s=20&t=RjMGy_8cQqz3fIfFCGt5Qw
Ayo the new BGAN Comic just dropped!
https://fplusultra.substack.com/p/double-helix-a-bastard-gan-punks?sd=pf
M4T--BGAN Punks biggest whale--recently had some of his collection featured at La Biennale di Venezia. “Every odd-numbered year, more than half a million art enthusiasts descend on Venice to visit the Art Biennale, a show on which all other biennales are based. For over 120 years, Venice Biennale has been one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world” (source).
https://twitter.com/M4T_NFT/status/1572987123489284101?s=20&t=rjLRZwx7ztM92RRN4jYMYg
Berk also shared that BGANs will be apart of an Australian university study. Even in this bear market people are still interested in NFTs as art and tech.
https://twitter.com/berkozdemir/status/1573356639478222848?s=20&t=eXCfJKgmwLh-kpFUnEBd6A
PrinterPunk has been sharing BGANs and Glicpixxx with checks notes Steve Aoki!
The BGAN Lawyer continues his contributions by tackling some of the nuances of our space from a legal perspective. This time he’s challenged the accusation of Bastard GAN Punks (Versions 1 & 2) allegedly being “just another CryptoPunks derivative.” Read on to hear the final verdict.
https://bganlawyer.substack.com/p/cc69?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
BGANx: BGAN Accumulation Distribution Machine
It was Friday September 17, 2021, six months after the celebrated reveal of Bastard Gan Punks V2 collection, when a mysterious NFT collector named “BGANx” set about stockpiling a whale-worthy amount of BGAN Punks NFTs. It all began with Bastard #3441, their first purchase, an alluring Hyped AF Bastard and it carried on until November 10, 2021 ending with their last purchase Bastard #10389. In 54 days BGANx accumulated a whooping 169 BGAN Punks including all sorts of Hyped AFs, a Floaty, Hybrids, Glitchies and Calms! The name BGANx was being celebrated and romanticized almost every day by BGAN holders. This buying pattern which came 6 months after mint, signaled conviction and passion towards the art ;which, was the needed certitude that some holders sought. Although BGANx’s purchasing activities pointed to one wallet (created on August 10, 2021), they were accumulating a month earlier using a different address known as “OnlyRares” (created on September 16, 2020). In fact, their earliest BGAN Punks purchase was recorded on August 28, 2021, another mesmerizing hyped AF #4433 in addition to 12 other Bastards all bought on the same day. Later on, two additional BGANx wallets were created on December 16, 2021, specifically for further collecting of BGAN Punks. Benefitting from discounted prices, for 6 days, both wallets collected in-concerto 44 Bastards. In total, BGANx collected 226 BGAN Punks over a period of 4 months using 4 different wallets. The mystery whale never placed an offer, they always paid the asking price. They only listed 35 BGANs in total.
Fast forward 9 months, right after BGAN Punks’ great FloorDAO victory in June 2022, BGANx decided that it was time to take some profits. They began listing a very small number of their holding for a high asking price in July and even accepting some enticing offers, all of which coincided with the short-term bull-run that BGAN Punks enjoyed. When that bull-run started to settle down in August, our enigmatic superstar set about unloading most of their BGANs into NFTx vault and SudoSwap pools. The two December wallets started this process around the end of July in the middle of the bull-run, followed by OnlyRares and finally the BGANx wallet on August 5, 2022. For 48 days, most of their Bastard NFTs were sent to the vault, leaving them with their current holdings of 17 BGANs consisting of 5 Hyped AFs, one Floaty and 11 Glitchies (one of them sitting in the OnlyRares wallet). BGANx’s selling pattern in the last two months was not restricted to BGAN Punks. They were and still are in the process of liquidating many of their accumulated NFTs. A large bulk of their assets have been sent either to vaults or sold to bot offers. Around 30-40 (possibly more) wallets direct their returns to a central wallet: 0x268F49C82786801D9C7D948AAc96dF942165e8A2 created in December 2017 which in turn compiles ETH and sends it to a Binance wallet.
While the BGANx story is interesting and might be discouraging at first, it is important to see it in the context of how NFT collections and holders evolve overtime. BGAN whales in general are long term holders. In fact, since minting very few whales have sold/liquidated their holdings. BGAN Punks have a fair number of whales and most of their BGANs lie dormant in their vaulted wallets with no sign of “changing hands”. Yet, “changing hands” is necessary, it’s good for volume and it attracts interest. Small holders looking to increase their share of grail BGANs, newcomers looking to explore and collect superior Bastards to make a strong entry to the collection, makes it important for large investors like BGANx to allow for such distribution even if it pushes back momentum sometimes. Many of BGANx’s Bastards were quickly eaten up by small passionate holders, by whales, and by new collectors. As a result, distribution is better.
BganPunks stats:
In general, the BGAN ecosystem is a healthy one. From 2815 holders (25% unique holders), 40% own 2 to more than 100 BGANs signaling a collector mentality among holders, 72% have held and are still holding for more than 1 year reflecting strong conviction in the art and the future of BGANs. Distribution in BGAN Punks is good but it can be improved. According to the fat middle theory of BGANs top-tier grail Bastards account for 32% of the whole collection. Most of these highly-sought-after BGANs are not listed and have been sitting in wallets since mint. While this signals art appreciation and conviction, it would be beneficial if some of the whales decide to let them change hands (for the right price). Holders’ metric is important, and a steady rise of unique holders is a positive sign that the project is growing its reach. The optimal target would be around 40-50% unique holders. What is more important in this situation, is the profile of holders. A lower number of highly energetic and engaged holders can have a much better reach than having a higher number but who are quick flippers. The quality of BGAN holders is admirable.
To end these bastardous thoughts, it may sound counter-intuitive that some BGAN Punks whales like BGANx are selling, but for the long-term upside, these events are healthy and essential. RoosterM put it nicely out there, I quote:
“BGANx is for the people”.
If you’ve been active in the Bastard DAO at all since its inception, then chances are you know about Snooplion. Snoop has been a multisig signer since day one, and has spear-headed a handful of proposals that have shaped the DAO into what it currently is. Most recently Snoop is recognized for for his work with establishing Provenance within the collection, forming the House of BGANs, debating trait proposals, and countering the infamous trait locking proposal.
He’s been in the crypto space since 2015. And was originally drawn to Bitcoin and Ethereum based on its founding principles the themes of which remain prevalent in our short interview.
I first looked into BTC in 2011 but didn't really understand what was going on. And then in 2015 I was living in SF and a friend explained the space to me in a way that finally clicked. That was around the time I started thinking through some ideas around the problems of our education systems and online discourse and the need for new systems running on alternative infrastructure with different incentives. In 2017-18 I participated in some of the ICO craze and started playing around with solidity and converting my various software projects into projects that were blockchain compatible. So long story short, I had ambitious ideas for replacing some of our old systems with new systems and my social network pointed me to the infrastructure of Ethereum primarily as the place where I could try to realize some of those ideas.
On his first NFTs and how he found BGAN Punks:
I minted some cryptokitties in 2017, and then didn't do anything with NFTs until I minted bgans in 2021, which I had a friend recommend as a pretty cool new project when minting first launched.
But once Snoop was asked about his thesis on the success of NFTs, things started getting really interesting. Snoop said that he briefly studied philosophy in college, but his strong background on the subject along with sociology, and psychology were largely independently learnt. Yet his understanding of the subject and the role these sciences play on blockchains is relevant when diving deeper into his ambitions outside of BGAN Punks.
My longer term thesis for NFTs falls back on the idea that NFTs are data objects on chain. In javascript for example an object looks something like:
{ title: 'BGAN #5768', id: 5768, }On Ethereum an NFT looks like:
{ title: 'BGAN #5768', id: 5768 }So this is just to say they are the same data structures, but NFTs enable some functionality that is impossible in some cases or at best much more complicated in traditional software development. The amount of work required to launch a mobile app on iOS compared to Ethereum is absurd. But at a fundamental level, crypto plays with deep philosophical questions that often escape our attention. Like why is a piece of art valued or not valued and how/why does that value change over time? This is analogous to BTC forcing more people to ask the question "why does money have value?" for the first time in their lives. In addition to forcing people to ask more frequently about things they normally assume, programmers understand how data objects work, how they are used in software programs and the huge range of things non-technical people do with them anytime they use the internet. The people interacting with data objects don't know they are interacting with data objects, they don't need to know that or even what they are and the same will be true about NFTs. But NFTs have an advantage in some cases because there is more that you can do with smart contracts, real ownership of data objects, and the rails of decentralization and composability that chains like Ethereum introduce.
Monetization models will continue to be disrupted, and various kinds of markets that were previously impossible to deploy will emerge and scale improving how our society interrogates information and makes decisions. Science will give birth to variants outside of the university system that live entirely on chain. Real world governance will move from IRL infrastructure to on chain infrastructure. New social networks, communities, and religions (though they won't call themselves that) will all be born and exist entirely on chain in a distributed way. All of these things will utilize some version of NFTs.
Last year I deployed a project called
“How do you think the inflow of minds will migrate on-chain? We’ve started to see the transition of coders/devs for economic reasons. But scholars have some other motivations. Maybe it’s like a Field of Dreams—if you build it they will come— type deal?”
Yeah, it's a good question. I think for cases like political science and economists there is already sufficient reason for them to be paying close attention. I just don't think that's super clear to those people yet. Like it's probably most clear to monetary theorists or something, but I don't think it's very well understood that we are deploying government infrastructures from scratch quickly and easily. But I think everyone will be incentivized once there are some examples of high quality signals coming out of this space.
So once a DAO, that is effectively just a discord of people discussing ideas and building knowledge gains a status that extends beyond the crypto space then we'll be somewhere very interesting. Could be a university like mechanism, or a publication, or any number of other variants. Like the only difference with something like Harvard and Yale is that they have been around for longer and so their status as a knowledge creator / transferring mechanism is better understood by the system as a whole, which has allowed for it to embed itself into the society and translates to the degree necessarily having value. Maybe being in a specific discord for a few years will be enough to get an interview for a highly sought after job in the future.
It really just takes one of these things to get running and noticed, and then a few others will clone and run their own knowledge production functions. And then you can imagine existing real world institutions migrating online in order to participate in the same way.
To me there is so much upside in the idea of Harvard's experts debating all topics together in a forum that the public could view without participating directly. Like wouldn't trust in institutions go up if we could just see how their products are made? Not only would we get a sense for the quality of the dialogue between all of these experts, but we'd be able to see the degree in which nuance is present in these various places.
Even institutions like NYT or Fox news are compatible with this structure. At the most fundamental level, all these organizations do is create various kinds of knowledge. And in a case where the NYT isn't comfortable debating whatever the topic of the day is in public, that's fine, they should just lose to the next competitor that is willing to create the incentives for higher quality exchanges of ideas.
So maybe we just need a couple of high quality examples to spawn from this area of focus to get people thinking about what is actually going on here. That blockchain is a decentralized infrastructure that every single organizational structure in our current world can be migrated over to is quite the reveal.
And it's telling that every time I have a chance to describe the stuff I'm working on, I get responses like "wow, that actually makes blockchain sound interesting." Of course it is! Name one other time in the history of the species that we unlocked the ability to simulate real life instances of decentralized economies and governance with real people, freeing us from our limited references found in history!
“I think I agree with you that modern societies are kind of like at the cusp of a new Age. The Internet gave us chat rooms, forums, worldwide communication, and now blockchains where participation is verifiable.”
Right, its the permission-less security combined with ownership capabilities that translates some of the real world only functions to the digital realm.
“I know that you and I and some of the other Signers have talked about the direction of the Bastard DAO and where we’d like to see it’s focus lie. Do you want to share your thoughts on this for the Newsletter?”
Yeah sure.
My general thesis for the DAO is that it should aim to spread awareness of the collection to high quality targets. One of the trickier parts of doing this well, which is also true for any early stage organization, is understanding what high quality targets look like and how to reach them. BGANs sitting in between generative art collections and PFPs as a hybrid of the two ideas means the target audience is something like art appreciators who are also interested in PFPs, a very small group at the moment. BGANs are really unlike any other project in this space, something I see as a good characteristic long term, but it also means BGANs were more incompatible with the froth present in the last bull. An abstract, aesthetic AF, GAN generated art project, released by an artist and musician, utilizing artificial intelligence with GPT-2 generated punk inspired lyrics, released before the world had any idea what an NFT is? I don't think a project description could be further away from "10,000 Cute Corgis!" In time more art appreciators will learn about and be attracted to the art being created and deployed on top of Ethereum and BGANs are so obviously blue chip in that regard. Sometimes a product is just early to market and it takes a minute for the market to mature, and in the case of art, early is actually good, while in tech it might mean your startup dies and someone else reaps the rewards a decade later, see General Magic.
At the same time it's also been really cool to see other aspects emerge and evolve over time, like the trait side of the DAO and the capital / asset management side, buying up supply, staking, working with floorDAO etc. The main value proposition of this organization is that it allows for someone to come up with an idea and then go get it done within the context of BGANs. So in this regard I'm excited to see what other surprises might pop up in the future.
In summary, I don't think the DAO needs to be acting for the sake of "DEVS DO SOMETHING," I think the DAO should be patient and really prioritize things that will help the project get the right eyeballs on the art over time. I think BGAN art will also be doing this on its own over time, spreading on its own merit, but since the DAO exists and has capital to deploy it can help nudge this process along when someone steps up with an idea that makes sense.
In our current state the Bastard DAO is really paving its own path, which is never an easy task. Sure we could model the DAO off of the success of other DAOs, like Squiggle DAO for instance whose solely intention is maintaining Squiggles as a store of value. Or maybe we could follow Larva Labs who innovated, and then were bought out. But no, the power and appeal of the Bastard DAO and BGAN Punks is giving its members the freedom to write their own fate. In time, our DAO may become the place where great minds congregate. It could very well be Snooplion’s gravity that attracts them.
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/thomas8104/viz/BGANTreasuryDashboard/BGANTreasuryDashboard
Ether: 37.88Ξ + 6.09 WETH
Bastard GAN Punks V2 NFT: 100
NFTX Vault: 17.01 xBGAN/WETH
Claimable $BGAN: 5.15
30,306,980. $BASTARD
SushiSwap LP: 10,954 BASTARD/WETH
$gFLOOR: 1,478.91
1Ξ paid to Social Media Team (Masal and Printer Punk)***
1Ξ paid to Multisig Signers (full list of signer addresses)***
1 Bastard GAN Punks V2 NFT for BotM***
Paid to Snooplion
0.25Ξ paid to DirtbagLu for Newsletter publication
2 of 3 months per this proposal
0.5Ξ + 1,592 USDC for BGAN Comic via Summer of Writing per this proposal
1.3Ξ for Maria Abramenko articles to be published in Nasty Magazine via Summer of Writing per this proposal
0.75Ξ for BGAN Lawyer articles per this proposal
*** Occurs monthly
0.366Ξ (🧸)
So in terms of where things are going with NFTs, I don't think people can begin to imagine the role they are going to play in this civilization. But at the same time it's very clear to me that this is the space to be in as we ramp up real economic simulations and real governance simulations at a scale we could've only dreamed about 20 years ago. I expect high quality participants will migrate here in short order once this space is known for doing more than creating cartoon picture ponzis. Not only attracting economists and political scientists, but technologists, futurists, politicians, philosophers and so on. It's the most exciting place in the world.
So it's clear to me we have a pretty huge PR problem at the moment, but I think that can be overcome and the bear market will probably help a bit.
So in terms of where things are going with NFTs, I don't think people can begin to imagine the role they are going to play in this civilization. But at the same time it's very clear to me that this is the space to be in as we ramp up real economic simulations and real governance simulations at a scale we could've only dreamed about 20 years ago. I expect high quality participants will migrate here in short order once this space is known for doing more than creating cartoon picture ponzis. Not only attracting economists and political scientists, but technologists, futurists, politicians, philosophers and so on. It's the most exciting place in the world.
So it's clear to me we have a pretty huge PR problem at the moment, but I think that can be overcome and the bear market will probably help a bit.
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