Today, we are launching our third NFT project, the Meebits! This post will go into some of the details about the project, its launch, and the marketplace we built for it.
The Art
If the Cryptopunks are an ideal 2D avatar for Discord, Twitter, and other social media, then we hope that the Meebits will be the 3D avatar for virtual worlds, games, and VR. We are bullish about the metaverse future, and we look forward to seeing how the Meebits are used in such environments.
We also love low-poly and voxel 3D graphics. The style has been made popular in the last decade or so by games such as Minecraft and Roblox. We think that, just like 8-bit pixel art, the minimalism and accessibility of voxel art will prove timeless and endearing for generations to come.
Writing a generator of voxel characters was a lot more challenging and involved than writing a 2D generator. We've been tinkering with voxel generation for a few years and are really proud of where we ended up. There are lots of little details we hope you notice, including Autoglyphs-style generative tattoo patterns on certain Meebits. And there are some cool rare types of Meebits, but we will wait for the community to discover them rather than list them all here!
It's not quite ready yet, but soon we'll have an asset pack available for each Meebit that allows the owner to take a "T-pose" version of the avatar and use it in any game engine, 3D studio, or virtual world that supports the rigging of humanoid avatars for animation. This will allow owners to bring their Meebits to life. The example shown here was made in just a few minutes with Adobe Mixamo.
As with the Cryptopunks, there is a file hash stored in the smart contract. Once all 20,000 Meebits have been minted, we'll release the file matching that hash on IPFS. This will contain all the attribute and voxel data for each Meebit, so they can live on in perpetuity.
The Launch
We think we've come up with a fair and generous launch plan that includes both a community grant and a public sale.
Community Grant
The Cryptopunks and Autoglyphs community represents some of the earliest pioneers that helped create the NFT movement, and we want to reward Punks and Glyphs holders for helping turn these projects into what they have become. So, every Cryptopunk or Autoglyph is essentially a ticket that can be used to redeem a free (except for gas fees) Meebit. Of course, you still keep the Punk or Glyph that you own, the Meebits contract will simply mark that punk or glyph as "used" once the Meebit has been claimed. You don't need to rush out and do this right this moment, as we've reserved enough mints for every Punk and Glyph to redeem a Meebit, and we will keep the Community Grant period open for 7 days. We understand that some Punks and Glyphs may be in cold wallets, multi-sig wallets, etc. So this should provide ample time to get the claims done.
Some disclaimers and warnings: if you are buying a Punk or Glyph during the Community Grant phase of Meebits, be aware that it may already have been used to mint a Meebit, or that it might even be used just prior to the purchase of it (perhaps even in the same block)! Also, those of you who know us know how important strict decentralization is to us, and this applies to the Community Grant. We wrote a smart contract that gives out free Meebits according to the fair rules governed by that contract. If you own a Cryptopunk or Glyph in some exotic way that does not allow you to use that contract to claim your Meebit, then that's between you and the blockchain. We don’t have any special buttons we can push on our side to change the rules.
The Sale
The remaining Meebits that aren't locked up by the Community Grant are available for sale. We are setting an initial price, and then this price will slowly decrease to 0 over the course of the week, or until the Meebits are sold out. As we mentioned above, the Meebits selling out will not affect community grants in any way.
Minting
We ran our generator and created all the Meebits ahead of time, but the Meebits contract assigns completely random mint numbers. This means that nobody knows what Meebits they will get, including us! We hope you get a Meebit that you love. But just in case you don’t... read on about trading in the marketplace below!
The Marketplace
Because the Cryptopunks pre-dated the ERC-721 standard and NFT marketplaces, it had its own marketplace built right into the smart contract. Once the NFT standard and general marketplaces emerged, we thought this might cause the Cryptopunks to get left behind. But instead, things like the Wrapped Cryptopunks connected it to the standard marketplaces, while having a custom, purpose-built marketplace made for a great user experience for collectors.
So with Meebits, we wanted that same kind of experience, but with some upgrades. So, it's a standard 721 token, but it also has its own marketplace built in. This marketplace not only allows you to buy and sell for ETH, but also offer complex trades, with any number of Meebits on either side of the deal, plus some ETH on either side as well.
We think being able to trade Meebits for Meebits is going to be really fun. For us, this evokes the kind of collecting we did as kids, where money was rarely involved in transactions.
Furthermore, proposing a trade simply involves signing a message with your wallet. No Ethereum transaction is required, and therefore no gas expenses. Only the 'taker' of the deal pays a gas fee. This should drive a lot of liquidity as negotiation can happen quickly and easily off-chain.
We are just getting started fleshing out this new market, so in the coming weeks, expect lots of new features to make trading more convenient, plus the analysis tools that we've all grown accustomed to on the Cryptopunks site.
And finally, as with the Cryptopunks market, it is decentralized and we charge no fees.
We hope you love the Meebits as much as we do! 😶
Matt & John