My playground was AOL, Homestar Runner, Netscape, Coffee break arcade, Slime volleyball, Limewire, Dreamweaver and so many other random websites.

Despite spending my entire youth creating and interacting on the internet, domain names were the only thing I could own. And I owned A LOT of them. Some of them were pretty good but most of them were terrible. That part of the internet always felt a little weird. You never really owned your identity, the content you created, the followers you gained and basically anything you did on AOL → Forums → MySpace → Facebook, Yelp, Twitter…

One day in 2018, I discovered this website called Crypto Kitties. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. The website allowed you buy these internet cats with crypto currency. The cats had traits like fur, eye color, pattern, mouth a birthdate and even parents.

The best part was that I “owned” them outright and they lived in my Ethereum wallet. I could take them with me anywhere I went on the web. If cryptokitties.co went away, I still had them. I don’t what I would do with them… but the idea that they were mine, just like domain names, was pretty magical.

I’ll never forget yelling to my pregnant wife in the other room…

Me: “Hey babe, I just bought our future kids some crypto kitties.”

Her: “What the hell did you do to our kids?”

Sweetheartz is an NFT that’s designed to be gifted vs. just collected

• 10K hearts with lovable Web3 messages

• Mint to your Valentine’s ENS name / ETH wallet or your own

• First 100 mints we’re free — .014 ETH after that (in honor of Valentine’s Day)

• Each heart is unique and come in over 100 Web3 messages, 45 heart colors, 40 backgrounds and 11 different rare accessories. Every color is named after one of our favorite NFT projects / Web3 startups including Orange DAO 🧡

Here’s the backstory...

The idea

We wanted to create an NFT that was designed to be gifted vs. just collected or used in a game.

I’m obsessed with candy hearts, especially the SweeTARTS Candy ones.

We thought a "digital candy heart" would be fun for Valentine’s Day.

The name

We went back in forth on the following names...

• Valentoken

• Sweetheartz

• Cryptohearts

Scott Hickle and other friends shared that overuse of what is (token, crypto, fungible, etc.) was getting old so we went with Sweetheartz.

The style

Everything was designed around the heart.

We first tried a realistic candy heart. The font felt awkward and it was difficult to remix.

So we went with the more digital style.

The heart messages

OG candy heart messages (be mine, true love, say yes) was our original plan.

Then we thought it would be fun to add a few Web3 messages.

What started out as a short list... turned into a Google sheet of +200 Web3 strings.

Most messages were inspired by:

• @mikedemarais, @damedoteth & 🌈 crew

• @VitalikButerin soulbound ❤️

• @cdixon token

• @dhof on chain

• @drckangelo’s web3 terms

• @MilkRoadDaily newsletter

• #NFT hashtag & many others

• @kylemccollom proof reading 🙏

The colors

OG Valentine’s Day colors was our original plan...

Then we thought some rare colors would be cool...

Then we thought it would be cool to name every color after our favorite NFT/Web3 projects.

We ended up with ~45 heart colors and ~40 backgrounds including:

• @AzukiZen red

• @newshadesDAO pink

• @opensea blue

• @a16z purple

• @rainbowdotme rainbow

• @LinksDAO green

• @decentraland dirt

• @lootproject black

https://twitter.com/QuickNode/status/1491454619566100480

Rare items

What’s a good NFT without some rarity?

We took inspiration from photos of heart tattoos and Valentine’s Day crafts on Pinterest.

We ended up with ~11 different rare attributes including:

• Wraps (wings)

• Headwear (halo)

• Finishes (broken)

The website

Our goal was an NFT that was meant to be gifted.

Paying gas 2x to mint + send isn’t a good experience.

We made the site so that you could mint directly to your Valentine's wallet.

It's simple:

1. Paste ENS name / ETH address

2. Connect your wallet

3. Mint 💌

We also had fun with a Rainbow wallet inspired heart animation 😍

https://twitter.com/jaymehoffman/status/1492191049619591177

The results

Over 100 people minted Sweetheartz in the first couple days before Valentine 🥰

Some stats:

• 50% minted to another wallet

• Average user paid $31.22 in gas 🤮

• Almost $5k paid in gas fees - dune

The community

The open and welcoming Web3/NFT community was the best part about shipping this fun project 🥰

Shout out to everyone that helped and gave feedback including team Newzip @kylemccollom @sayangel @ScottHickle @ShaneMac @jpren @mattes @_DavidHead and more 🙏