2 Weeks Ago, I published the "Not Bored Ape Yacht Club" (NBAYC) collection of 10,000 non-fungible tokens on the Solana blockchain.
NBAYC was supposed to be a parallel series of "Bored Ape Yacht Club" (BAYC) on Solana with different trait configurations created via retraced assets from the original collection on the Ethereum blockchain.
It was launched on the "LaunchMyNFT" platform at a supply of 10,000 and priced at 0.01 SOL (valued 0.34 cents in USD as of writing) each before the price was subsequently raised to 0.0369 SOL (valued 1.26 dollars in USD as of writing) to justify the labor cost of going through hundreds of art assets and having them redrawn one by one.
After a single Twitter influencer promoted us, we reached a total of 2,661 minted tokens and decided to burn the remainder of the supply in the prediction that the collection would not fully mint out.
To burn a portion of an NFT collection's supply means to remove it from circulation by sending the tokens to an unusable account/address that can only receive tokens.
Upon the collection "minting out", we applied to the biggest and most popular marketplace in the Solana blockchain space: Euclid Labs d/b/a MagicEden. We wanted to have the collection listed on their web3 marketplace website to allow holders of the non-fungible NBAYC tokens to trade their collectible art in exchange for SOL.
However, we were rejected multiple times on account of a "copymint" clause in their terms of service contract. This was in spite of our art being re-traced and re-generated with extra trait configurations and outputs. The term "Copyminting" has been described and tokenized by Ozone Networks d/b/a OpenSea as copying 'authentic' NFT content.
Whatever that means.
We'll leave it up to CryptoPhunks to fight that battle of what is considered satirical appropriation and what is not.
Regardless, we fought verbally with MagicEden and received multiple rejction notices in return that cited team/community discretion. This wasn't my first time being rejected by MagicEden, as other projects I have rewrapped and made derivative artwork for have been rejected in the past.
We even tried changing the name to Stinky Apes and they still rejected us from their platform. Oh well. Now it was up to our NBAYC community to decide what we would do with these non-fungible tokens that could only be traded on the alternative marketplace of lesser popularity, CoralCube.
Yikes.
We decided to do something for our small community of less than 200 people. We had been built from the hype of a single Twitter influencer in the Solana space's promotion. And together, we decided to have some original artwork made to rebrand the community as the 'cat brotherhood who lost their money to monkey pictures' as a joke. We were inspired by other pixel art projects in the space like Xth St Terriers, GhostKidDAO and Los Cactus Hermanos to create lore for our tiny community.
The community’s Solana addresses holding the NBAYC tokens were to be snapshotted and the list of addresses were to receive an airdrop of ‘Los Gatos’ tokens when they were released. The amount was to be decided. As of 6/11/2022, 3 AM UTC, that is only promise that has been made for the project, and that promise has been fulfilled.
I was too busy working on other derivative degen projects like "Cets No Creck" at the same time as Los Gatos rebranding from NBAYC to promise anything else. My hopes had been to experiment with the conceptual movement of degen mints and derivative art in the Solana NFT space.
ALL of my recent NFT projects have been derivatives of other, bigger projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club and/or degen mints w/ original artwork. I want to start a clubhouse collective for derivative artwork and have begun working on establishing a written plan for that idea.
These so-called "degen mints" in the NFT space are unlike normal NFT collection offerings, which promise functionality for their digital asset. Degen mints promise no future utility or roadmap for their digital asset.
Usually the only thing that comes from a degen mint is a cluster of possible perks for those that hold the digital asset. The fulfillment of these perks is in no way correlated to the purchasing of a ‘degen mint’ NFT.
People purchase ‘degen mint’ tokens in hopes of a quick flip.
Not for utility.
Twitter influencers play a major role in deciding the value of a "degen mint" non-fungible token. They promote these high-risk, low-reward projects to their followers. To name all of the parties participating in the promotion of degen mints would be exhaustive.
Los Gatos was a "degen mint" capped at 5,000 supply and sold at 0.0369/0.069 SOL (valued 1.26 dollars to 2.39 dollars in USD as of writing) that was created to provide another opportunity to members of the tiny NBAYC community to have a collection listed on MagicEden.
That's it.
We weren’t trying to be the next big NFT project on Solana with hyped marketing.
We never promised any real utility in order for people to buy our art collectibles.
Our art was just *so* fire that once we published it on LaunchMyNFT launchpad to allow our existing members to mint their tokens, it caught on with an existing DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) collective in the Solana space and became hyped.
And that’s how it should be for a ""#degenmint", really.
Just fire art and a community that likes the art.
A degen mint cannot be classified as an investment contract under the conditions of the United States Supreme Court test for determining the status of digital assets called the ‘Howey Test’ because it promises no functionality; it just generates hype.
No intended purpose or functionality from the Los Gatos token was promised. It was literally just art stored on IPFS that was tokenized on the Solana blockchain as collectibles on the LaunchMyNFT launchpad and got hyped up for no reason other than Twitter influencers retweeting and promoting it as the ‘next play’.
Most derivative art has no inherent value outside of the sphere of conceptual appropriation of the art it mimics.
Neither does "degen mint" art promise any utility or functionality behind it.
People purchase derivative and "degen mint" art tokens because they like the art & want to hold it and/or trade it to other people who also like the art as digital art collectibles on secondary blockchain marketplaces.
Likewise, Los Gatos are just non-fungible digital collectibles on the MagicEden marketplace that are able to be traded in exchange for SOL.
There is no promise of increase in market value attached to them based on some marketed roadmap utility.
It was simply hyped asf.
My plans for Los Gatos now and for all other derivative projects I have created is this:
Organize these derivative projects under one branded umbrella operating as a community-centric clubhouse w/ no false promises of utility
Create a new type of digital license for derivatives and digital collectible art traits, then publish it on opensource.org or GitHub
Educate people on derivative/degen art by extending the reach of derivative/degen art across every possible blockchain
Change the very stigma behind derivative/degen digital art
Challenge what it means to be a 'derivative/degen mint/copymint' non-fungible project with the argument that NFTs cannot be copied, nor should they be forced to have utility in order to be successful.
I plan to do this with zero promises of some increase in market value by way of functionality from holding any digital asset created prior to and/or under this umbrella.
Just fire art tokenized on blockchain(s). Nothing more, nothing less.
This is Los Gatos. This is real, digital art.
This is the new meta.
No utility is required.
No purchase necessary to support it.
Because you shouldn't have to promise utility to put out 🔥 artwork and let people collect it on the blockchain.
Art should just be art.
-@jpegdon