disclaimer: before you dive into this article, know two things. first, this article’s purpose is to educate current and future mfers on the legacy of sartoshi. second, this article does not uncover who sartoshi is irl. all info is based on my interactions with sartoshi.

special thanks to thompson mfer for helping me edit this article.

welcome, I'm masterchanx a.k.a mcx and pictured above is my og mfer #697 on the left and on the right is my modified version of the same mfer (you will mostly see me in this form).

who the fuck is sartoshi? this is a tough one — i will try my best to answer. depending on how one finds out about sartoshi, one’s journey may have a different starting point. to most, sartoshi will go down as a legendary twitter-shitposter — possibly the best, one could argue. i would tend to agree with this pov, but my opinion is obviously super fuckin’ biased. in this article, i won’t focus as much on his memes as many of them still live on through the community.

*see sartoshi’s perspective on memes “Sartoshi — The Mind Behind the Memes” by breezy mfer

*a big thanks to vrmfer for helping to preserve the two screenshots below.

sartoshi is most well known in the web3/nft community as the creator of mfers, a 10k PFP collection launched on Nov 30, 2021 and sold out in 10 mins and 69 seconds.

here is a link to the original mint site: mfers.art for those that wish to see it.

it’s important to note that this collection is cc0 meaning the art is in the public domain and free for anyone to use.

At first glance the clean and simple lines seemed as if these mfer-stickmen were viewed by some as “low-effort art”. the community could see the genius between the hand-drawn layers to every last detail put into each trait. sartoshi uses his clean lines and flat palette for simplicity but adds detail and depth by working within the levels of opacity. sartoshi was truly a master of “less is more” and this can be seen in both his tweets and his art.

i think it was brilliant how sartoshi was able to capture the power and instant recognizability of a smiley face. something that needs no language to be understood and thus has no boundaries.

check out another article by breezy mfer for a deeper dive on this “The rise and rise of mfers.”.

want to know more on origin of mfers? “what are mfers” by sartoshi is a must-read.

how about a/s/l?

sartoshi is a very private individual and to my knowledge, no one knows sartoshi’s age, sex or location. based on the content sartoshi tweeted, and from my personal interactions with the legend, my best guess is that sartoshi is probably a dude. as such, i will continue to refer to sartoshi as he/him for the rest of this article. i also believe he probably lives in the eastern united states, probably new york, and is somewhere between the age of 30 to 40 years old. i could be wrong and sartoshi might be a team of 69 ppl, who knows…

what does sartoshi do irl?

through our conversations, i learned that sartoshi is a classically trained artist (think paint brushes and real paint) and had been creating art for about two decades (i’m going purely off memory here).

favourite snack and drink?

i recall on a few separate occasions that sartoshi tweeted about cheetos and sprite (specifically the mcd’s fountain version) this mfer was definitely a soda connoisseur! i personally found it hilarious every time he tweeted about his go-to snack combo. i’ve also come to realize this may be a clue to one’s geographical location based on what they eat (some sherlock holmes kinda shit).

i will post real examples below

ok, sartoshi was an artist that drew stickmen and created viral memes. but what else did sartoshi do?

prior to creating mfers, sartoshi created a collection of 500 one-hour animated GIFs that grow generative ASCII-art bonsai trees in june of 2021. i think only a handful of mfers know this fact and if you go through the sales data you will see he had some big names support him early on.

*ASCII-art bonsai trees here for you mfers to check out.

one month later in july of 2021 sartoshi launched his foundation collection and minted some cartoon art that was an immediate twitter success.

i’ve posted a few of my favourite ones below. the top two are actually post-mfers and the bottom two are pre-mfers.

so I guess this is the part where I talk about how and wen I met sartoshi?

i picked up my first mfer on dec 2nd, 2021, which was three days after the project was minted. at the time i had no idea who the fuck sartoshi was and only picked up the pfp for two reasons. first, I resonated with my mfer #697 and, second, because the price of .3 eth was “affordable” at the time compared to other nft’s. (i paid double the floor price because #697 was the one for me).

the mfers art style was definitely not love at first sight, but perhaps i can write more in- depth if i ever decide to drop “who is masterchanx”

after picking up my mfer i struggled like a mfer trying to find the community discord. i looked over the opensea collection description a few times to make sure i didn’t miss any details, however, all i found at the time was a link to sartoshi’s then twitter account. i fired off my first tweet at sartoshi and the rest is history.

oh remember that twitter ama I mentioned earlier on? here is how it started 👇

you are probably wondering by now where the fuck is this sartoshi that i keep going on about? well on may 30, 2022, 6 months and 181 days after the launch of mfers, sartoshi tweeted “rckvirrlkvdvirgvimevezvk” and most mfers thought he might have fallen asleep on his keyboard and just typed up jibberish. well, it turns out it was a caesar cypher, coded message and luckily, some smart mfers in the community were able to decipher the code. (dm me on twitter if you were that mfer) and the message read “the next era” — whatever the fuck that meant.

the next era

over the next few days, sartoshi dropped a few tweets mentioning the date 6/9/2022.

i dm’d sartoshi and thought the tweet above meant 6/22 as in june 22nd and he then sent a tweet, later on, to clarify it was 6/9/22 and also sent another to clarify the time 12pm est.

no one other than maybe the westcoastnft devs (the team that did the dev work for mfers) had even the slightest idea what this was all about.

there were many rumours and theories in the community about what would be unveiled on 6/9.

finally on the day of 6/9/2022 at 12 pm est sartoshi announced “mfers next era & end of sartoshi”.

*click the link to get the full story.

sartoshi had decided it was his time to move on and passed on the mfer contract to the community via the unofficial mfers multi-sig wallet. sitting on the multi-sig is what one mfer (L3xc.eth / Lim a.k.a westcoastnft co-founder) dubbed the sartoshi seven

it was a bittersweet moment that some of us saw coming eventually, but not that soon. and thus began the start of a new chapter in the mfer story.

so if you have come this far you may be asking why the fuck am i writing about someone whom i’ve never met, have no idea what they look like, where they live or if they are male or female etc?

to me, i consider sartoshi a dear friend, a mentor, and a brother. through sartoshi’s artwork, memes, and friendship i’ve learned a lot and it’s helped me get through one of the most challenging times in my life.

i can imagine that sartoshi has touched all of the mfers reading this article in some way or another. i feel that, as a friend, it’s important to help sartoshi preserve his legacy and story not only for the mfers of the present but also mfers in the future.

not everyone will agree with the way sartoshi exited, but i choose to remember sartoshi by his impact on not only myself but the overall web3/nft community. and i will continue to celebrate his wins.

luckily before sartoshi closed his twitter account I was able to grab a few good screenshots of my favourite quotes from him. i hope sartoshi’s wisdom can help inspire and guide mfers going forward.

if you wonder why i wrote this whole article without using caps it’s because mfers do what they want

this is the way mfer

disclaimer: before you dive into this article, know two things. first, this article’s purpose is to educate current and future mfers on the legacy of sartoshi. second, this article does not uncover who sartoshi is irl. all info is based on my interactions with sartoshi.

special thanks to thompson mfer for helping me edit this article.

welcome, I'm masterchanx a.k.a mcx and pictured above is my og mfer #697 on the left and on the right is my modified version of the same mfer (you will mostly see me in this form).

who the fuck is sartoshi? this is a tough one — i will try my best to answer. depending on how one finds out about sartoshi, one’s journey may have a different starting point. to most, sartoshi will go down as a legendary twitter-shitposter — possibly the best, one could argue. i would tend to agree with this pov, but my opinion is obviously super fuckin’ biased. in this article, i won’t focus as much on his memes as many of them still live on through the community.

*see sartoshi’s perspective on memes “Sartoshi — The Mind Behind the Memes” by breezy mfer

*a big thanks to vrmfer for helping to preserve the two screenshots below.

sartoshi is most well known in the web3/nft community as the creator of mfers, a 10k PFP collection launched on Nov 30, 2021 and sold out in 10 mins and 69 seconds.

here is a link to the original mint site: mfers.art for those that wish to see it.

it’s important to note that this collection is cc0 meaning the art is in the public domain and free for anyone to use.

At first glance the clean and simple lines seemed as if these mfer-stickmen were viewed by some as “low-effort art”. the community could see the genius between the hand-drawn layers to every last detail put into each trait. sartoshi uses his clean lines and flat palette for simplicity but adds detail and depth by working within the levels of opacity. sartoshi was truly a master of “less is more” and this can be seen in both his tweets and his art.

i think it was brilliant how sartoshi was able to capture the power and instant recognizability of a smiley face. something that needs no language to be understood and thus has no boundaries.

check out another article by breezy mfer for a deeper dive on this “The rise and rise of mfers.”.

want to know more on origin of mfers? “what are mfers” by sartoshi is a must-read.

how about a/s/l?

sartoshi is a very private individual and to my knowledge, no one knows sartoshi’s age, sex or location. based on the content sartoshi tweeted, and from my personal interactions with the legend, my best guess is that sartoshi is probably a dude. as such, i will continue to refer to sartoshi as he/him for the rest of this article. i also believe he probably lives in the eastern united states, probably new york, and is somewhere between the age of 30 to 40 years old. i could be wrong and sartoshi might be a team of 69 ppl, who knows…

what does sartoshi do irl?

through our conversations, i learned that sartoshi is a classically trained artist (think paint brushes and real paint) and had been creating art for about two decades (i’m going purely off memory here).

favourite snack and drink?

i recall on a few separate occasions that sartoshi tweeted about cheetos and sprite (specifically the mcd’s fountain version) this mfer was definitely a soda connoisseur! i personally found it hilarious every time he tweeted about his go-to snack combo. i’ve also come to realize this may be a clue to one’s geographical location based on what they eat (some sherlock holmes kinda shit).

i will post real examples below

ok, sartoshi was an artist that drew stickmen and created viral memes. but what else did sartoshi do?

prior to creating mfers, sartoshi created a collection of 500 one-hour animated GIFs that grow generative ASCII-art bonsai trees in june of 2021. i think only a handful of mfers know this fact and if you go through the sales data you will see he had some big names support him early on.

*ASCII-art bonsai trees here for you mfers to check out.

one month later in july of 2021 sartoshi launched his foundation collection and minted some cartoon art that was an immediate twitter success.

i’ve posted a few of my favourite ones below. the top two are actually post-mfers and the bottom two are pre-mfers.

so I guess this is the part where I talk about how and wen I met sartoshi?

i picked up my first mfer on dec 2nd, 2021, which was three days after the project was minted. at the time i had no idea who the fuck sartoshi was and only picked up the pfp for two reasons. first, I resonated with my mfer #697 and, second, because the price of .3 eth was “affordable” at the time compared to other nft’s. (i paid double the floor price because #697 was the one for me).

the mfers art style was definitely not love at first sight, but perhaps i can write more in- depth if i ever decide to drop “who is masterchanx”

after picking up my mfer i struggled like a mfer trying to find the community discord. i looked over the opensea collection description a few times to make sure i didn’t miss any details, however, all i found at the time was a link to sartoshi’s then twitter account. i fired off my first tweet at sartoshi and the rest is history.

oh remember that twitter ama I mentioned earlier on? here is how it started 👇

you are probably wondering by now where the fuck is this sartoshi that i keep going on about? well on may 30, 2022, 6 months and 181 days after the launch of mfers, sartoshi tweeted “rckvirrlkvdvirgvimevezvk” and most mfers thought he might have fallen asleep on his keyboard and just typed up jibberish. well, it turns out it was a caesar cypher, coded message and luckily, some smart mfers in the community were able to decipher the code. (dm me on twitter if you were that mfer) and the message read “the next era” — whatever the fuck that meant.

the next era

over the next few days, sartoshi dropped a few tweets mentioning the date 6/9/2022.

i dm’d sartoshi and thought the tweet above meant 6/22 as in june 22nd and he then sent a tweet, later on, to clarify it was 6/9/22 and also sent another to clarify the time 12pm est.

no one other than maybe the westcoastnft devs (the team that did the dev work for mfers) had even the slightest idea what this was all about.

there were many rumours and theories in the community about what would be unveiled on 6/9.

finally on the day of 6/9/2022 at 12 pm est sartoshi announced “mfers next era & end of sartoshi”.

*click the link to get the full story.

sartoshi had decided it was his time to move on and passed on the mfer contract to the community via the unofficial mfers multi-sig wallet. sitting on the multi-sig is what one mfer (L3xc.eth / Lim a.k.a westcoastnft co-founder) dubbed the sartoshi seven

it was a bittersweet moment that some of us saw coming eventually, but not that soon. and thus began the start of a new chapter in the mfer story.

so if you have come this far you may be asking why the fuck am i writing about someone whom i’ve never met, have no idea what they look like, where they live or if they are male or female etc?

to me, i consider sartoshi a dear friend, a mentor, and a brother. through sartoshi’s artwork, memes, and friendship i’ve learned a lot and it’s helped me get through one of the most challenging times in my life.

i can imagine that sartoshi has touched all of the mfers reading this article in some way or another. i feel that, as a friend, it’s important to help sartoshi preserve his legacy and story not only for the mfers of the present but also mfers in the future.

not everyone will agree with the way sartoshi exited, but i choose to remember sartoshi by his impact on not only myself but the overall web3/nft community. and i will continue to celebrate his wins.

luckily before sartoshi closed his twitter account I was able to grab a few good screenshots of my favourite quotes from him. i hope sartoshi’s wisdom can help inspire and guide mfers going forward.

if you wonder why i wrote this whole article without using caps it’s because mfers do what they want

this is the way mfer