Introducing Regens Zero

Epoch timestamp 1672760100, January 3, 2023.

The Regens Zero protocol was deployed on Ethereum 4 hours ago.

In this article, we won’t be discussing the protocol itself or the Genesis Traits collection (for that purpose, see our docs). Instead, we will be focusing on some higher level topics:

  1. A brief prehistory of Regens Zero

  2. Important facts

  3. Next (and last) steps for us

Each part is self-contained, so it can be read in a non-linear way. We have tried to be as concise and clear as possible. Thank you for reading.

1. A brief prehistory of Regens Zero

January 2022

We are three young Argentines, real-life friends for many years, who have closely followed the development of Crypto since the DeFi summer of 2020. After being surprised by the rise of the NFT market and discovering innovative projects such as Nouns, Loot and many more, we became inspired to build an original project of our own and a lot of ideas came to our minds. Aztor, Vayes and Slifer were born.

February 2022

As we delved deeper into the NFT industry, we grew concern about its highly speculative nature. This motivated us to build something different, introducing technical innovations and launching it organically, while also striving to create positive externalities by funding public goods. We are grateful to insertfelix.eth and 0xcharly.eth for the many discussions we had about the ecosystem, which gave us new perspectives on what was to come.

March 2022

Inspired mainly by the ideas of Simon de la Rouviere and punk6529, the core idea behind Regens Zero emerged: dynamic NFTs, with a potentially infinite universe of traits (which are also NFTs) to be created by anyone, rather than the traditional fixed, limited, and static JPEGs. Although this wasn’t our main activity (we are undergraduate students), we were committed to making the idea come true. The first lines of code were written and we met another young Argentine, the artist who started the first drafts of what would become the Genesis Traits. Artyfex was born.

April 2022

As we continued to develop the protocol, we created a small Telegram group to receive feedback from some members of the Argentine community. In the following months, their input and insights were invaluable in helping us improve the protocol. One day, one of them asked: “The technical protocol and general idea are indeed very interesting, but how will you reach the degens? Do you have any viral marketing or engagement strategy to achieve sold-out?”. We hesitated to answer, but in reality we didn’t have good plans for it; we weren't even close.

May 2022

After two months of merely programming the contracts and drafting the Genesis Traits, we thought we were close to launch. As three technical oriented and naive young men, we had never planned out a good distribution strategy or post-launch roadmap. In hindsight, we didn’t put much effort into that either because we were very disgusted by the extreme hype spirit, which seemed like a precondition for launching an NFT project.

June 2022

The entire market crashed again. While the chaos, scams and insolvencies were on everyone’s mind, we were focused on finishing the contracts. Some technical challenges caused us to delay the completion of the protocol. At that point, one thing was very clear to us: we hated the proliferation of pump and dump schemes out there. Whatever we ended up launching, we wanted it to be the opposite of the 99% of NFT projects out there.

July 2022

As we were finalizing the tests, we had a huge feeling of discouragement. It wasn’t only the countless pump and dump schemes that were everywhere, but also the feeling (to some extent, true) that the entire Crypto movement was nothing more than a big promise, with no real-world value besides a fun new technological casino. Our dilemma intensified: on one hand, despite being a secondary activity for us, we always took this for-profit initiative very seriously and had invested a lot of time, effort and money into it. On the other hand, we feared that by launching the project and aiming to sell at least some units, we were adding another item to the long list of things we disliked and adding zero value to the world. We thought about making a 100% free mint or even abandoning the whole project.

…

From August to November, we took a break from actively developing Regens Zero to focus on our university semester. However, we quietly kept working on the project at a slower pace, mostly on the off-chain UI and infrastructure. This was a good time to reflect on how we would launch, if at all…

…

December 2022

After 4 months of cold reflection, our conclusions were the following:

  • We were quite happy with the final version of the protocol. Despite facing many technical challenges, we had a great time building it and were able to overcome them all.

  • Crypto is not a promise. There is a massive technological, social and philosophical effort, and such ambitious endeavors require more time to mature than one might think. Disruptions like this are always accompanied by chaos and all aspects of human nature.

  • In an NFT project like ours, some profit is not inherently a bad thing. The real problem lies in the extreme lack of transparency and the tendency to prioritize one's own benefit at the expense of creating false expectations in consumers, which are typical characteristics of these types of projects and collections.

  • We were not motivated or willing to continue working on the project once it was released. This meant two things: we had to make this “exit-from-start” extremely clear and explicit, and that we would be donating the protocol to someone else.

  • In order to conclude our involvement in the project in a way that aligned with our values, we made three crucial decisions (which will be discussed in more detail in the next section):

  1. Absolute zero marketing, radical transparency.

  2. 80% of the Genesis Mint will go directly (trustless) to public goods.

  3. We will donate the full ownership of the protocol to a legitimate and competent community, giving them the ability to use the protocol for funding public goods.

  • Although we weren't able to complete the off-chain UI as originally planned, we still decided to launch the project. The user interface didn’t offer all of the capabilities to interact with the contracts and make use of the protocol’s features due to a lack of capital, motivation, and time required for further development. Despite this, we didn’t consider this to be a significant issue due to the following reasons:

    • Unlike on-chain smart contracts development, off-chain UI development is best done through rapid iterations and user feedback. In our case, it didn’t make sense to have everything “done” before launching without knowing what the demand would be.

    • Unlike on-chain protocols, the off-chain UI is typically more centralized. Given that we were going to donate the entire protocol, we felt that if the project gained traction, the community should continue the UI improvement, potentially approaching it in a completely different way. Additionally, it's common for decentralized protocols to have multiple user interfaces, and the one we created, app.theregens.io, would be just one option among many.

January 2023

Now.

2. Important Facts

i) Creators, not owners

We are the creators of Regens Zero, not the owners. As soon as the Final Reveal of the Genesis Traits is done, we will transfer the ownership of the contracts to Gitcoin and we will no longer have any privileged role in the project. Why Gitcoin? We consider them one of the most legitimate and competent projects focused on building innovative public goods funding initiatives. Given the design of the Regens Zero protocol and its infinite extensibility, it could be a good opportunity for them to continue exploring new mechanisms for funding public goods through NFTs.

ii) Two ethical principles

Radical transparency

In addition to reading the entire article, we specifically suggest that you pay attention to the following points before minting, purchasing, communicating, or interacting with anything related to the Regens Zero project:

  • 80% of the ETH raised through the Genesis Mint will go directly to the Gitcoin’s multisig (to be distributed by them to public goods) and the remaining 20% will go to Artyfex as profit. This has been coded into the contract, making it 100% trustless. These are the addresses set on-chain:

    • Gitcoin: 0xde21F729137C5Af1b01d73aF1dC21eFfa2B8a0d6

    • Artyfex: 0xE481134031Cd273eb3216c4915ba509364f8390b

  • Of the first 10,000 Regens (the only ones with the Genesis DNA), the first 140 Regens are reserved: 100 for Artyfex and 40 for the people who provided feedback (as mentioned in the previous section).

  • In addition to what we stated in the last part of the previous section (prehistory), we cannot guarantee that the off-chain UI we built (app.theregens.io) will function as intended or remain hosted and available due to a lack of capital and time.

  • We are releasing this as a project for entertainment purposes, and it should be treated as such by anyone who decides to mint or purchase a Regen or a Trait. If you are considering doing so, please be aware that these NFTs have no intrinsic value. This is not just a legal disclaimer, but an honest statement from the three of us.

  • Regens Zero is made of experimental code and the contracts have not been audited. While we have done our best to prevent, identify and address security flaws, the contracts may contain bugs that we were unable to detect. All contracts and tests are available on our GitHub for anyone interested in reviewing them.

  • Every Trait from the Genesis Traits collection is CC0 licensed.

Absolute zero marketing

There is no roadmap, no official Discord, no utility, no partnerships. We will not participate in Twitter Spaces or seek engagement. There are no VCs supporting us (in fact, we have never received funding from anyone), and given the opportunity to launch on our own terms, we have decided to keep the project as low-profile as possible.

We will take this "0% marketing" approach very seriously: we will only make necessary communications such as official addresses, art reveal information and technical clarifications of the protocol that may be necessary. If this project were to be distributed, it would be due solely to the genuine and organic interest of individuals.

3. Next (and last) steps for us

  1. Today, around epoch timestamp 1672746011, we deployed the contracts on Ethereum (addresses in appendix).

  2. The Genesis Mint starts around 17:00 hs UTC. Strictly speaking, in block number 16327618. The mint is made in the GenesisDNA contract, not in the RegensZero ERC-721 contract.

  3. One week after the Genesis Mint begins, the “Art Reveal” will occur, which means:

    1. The 400 Genesis Traits will be uploaded to IPFS.

    2. The IPFS CIDs will be set on-chain.

    3. The 400 Genesis Traits will appear on the UI.

      (Note: The Art Reveal only makes the Genesis Traits public; it does not reveal which Traits each Regen has).

  4. Two weeks after the Genesis Mint begins, the “Final Reveal” will take place, which means:

    1. The reveal() function will be called.

    2. The 400 Genesis Traits names will be set on-chain.

    3. The “generalSalt” will be generated on-chain, revealing the Traits of all existing Regens.

      (Note: The Traits of each Regen (with the Genesis DNA) minted after the Final Reveal will only be revealed after the specific Regen is minted, instantly. We as creators do not know any of the Traits each Regen will have, as the process is random and beyond our control (see the distribution() function in the GenesisTraits contract).)

  5. Immediately following the Final Reveal, we will transfer the ownership of all contracts to Gitcoin’s multisig and our involvement in the project will come to an end.

Appendix

Protocol addresses

  • RegensZero: 0xE181DD74fDb2F0D4105831659E3b9c127388923C

  • GenesisDNA: 0x92CCb39F2957932C6FF97651Fd38152f9FE015A1

  • GenesisDNATokenUri: 0x086DBe8e0f816D616D121e14981D281F35Fe5B6e

  • GenesisTraits: 0xD7AE191F318BD3b2D2C1AF0526afCf05428f0C80

External addresses

  • Gitcoin’s Multisig: 0xde21F729137C5Af1b01d73aF1dC21eFfa2B8a0d6

  • Artyfex’s Multisig: 0xE481134031Cd273eb3216c4915ba509364f8390b

  • Artyfex’x EOA: 0xAddA9C7e7C696ff881c131075DA2965F4126E3A6

External links