The Metaverse Podcast - NFT Innovation, with Nate Alex of Secret Project Team
Primer: Can NFTs die? Yes, they can! In this episode of The Metaverse Podcast, Nate Alex shares about ChainFaces Arena, an arena where ChainFaces can fight to the death to earn prizes. He talks about his philosophy, his team, and what they have learned from building ChainFaces Arena.
Background
An NFT collector. Used to be a flipper in the early days
Was the Co-Founder of NFT42, building out their smart contract functionality
His coding skills are in the top decile globally
Shitposter Extraordinaire
This is his 2nd time on The Metaverse Podcast
“Shitposting probably being one of my top skills.”
- Nate Alex
ChainFaces Arena
At the end of last year, he was feeling stagnant. He wanted to build an innovation studio consisting of super devs
In November 2021, he started working on multiple secret projects. One of these projects is ChainFaces Arena
Kane Wallman reached out to him and they teamed up to build it
“A large percentage of the NFT creator community is only focused on putting a cute picture or a cool looking picture on a token, and that's it. And then pumping and dumping the shit or like hyping people up and they're really trying to control and create like supply-demand mismatches. So the floor goes up. So people talk about it, and they're not doing anything innovative.”
- Nate Alex
Their motivation is to actually create cool stuff. In contrast, the NFT community is only focused on profile picture NFTs
ChainFaces Arena is a mini-game that adds deflationary pressure on the collection — NFTs are able to die on the arena
So far, 12,775 ChainFaces have died in the arena and have been sent to a graveyard contract
The game is incentivized with Ether
There is also a dynamic upgrading in the art. Scars are generatively created and applied on-chain to the ChainFaces
Currently building ChainFaces HD, an aesthetic professionally-illustrated upgrade of ChainFaces
What He Has Learned From Building ChainFaces Arena
Realized that his original idea of an all developer team is silly
Realized that he needed operational people and a community team
Currently building the team out and making strategic hires
Thought that the deflationary aspect of ChainFaces Arena would result in a stronger market. It did not materialize as people treated their ChainFaces like a throwaway ticket in the arena
Decided that they need to strengthen their brand before their next innovation project
His Mindset
With all the projects he has launched, he approached them with an experimental mindset
Now, he’s pivoting out of that a little bit with the concept of a secret project team
His team has the resources and the skill set and they want to do really polished projects going forward
When he created SquigglyWTF, people approached him to say that they created their own projects that were inspired by his
Snowfro shared that Nate’s work was what inspired him to finish building Art Blocks
What Made Him To Have This Vision To Scale Beyond Himself To A Studio/Startup?
His original vision is to grab all the innovative developers and put together a super team to build the coolest things
However, he knows that his project will be copied by many others
For example, there are tons of copycats of Bored Apes
He hopes that their projects will be more engaging rather than simply talking about what the floor price is like
At the final night of the ChainFaces arena, there were only 20 ChainFaces remaining. There was a bounty of 7 ETH per face and the stakes were high
The winner only bought 1 face and entered with it. He walked away with $160,000
“The stakes were super high. We're all like cheering it on and shit. It was a really cool experience that you just don't really get that with other NFTs. It's hard to really share what it was like to be there. It's really like you had to be there at the moment. But it was enjoyable to just be part of that chat and be part of that sort of history.”
- Nate Alex
His plan is that every project he creates has to have something where people go “oh man, this was really fucking cool when this happened, or when that happened”
Would He Call ChainFaces Arena Play-To-Earn?
No, he wouldn’t call it play-to-earn
The arena mechanic is just one of many ideas they have
There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit because nobody is tackling this space. People are just hiring good artists to drop a 10k PFP without innovating and pushing the space forward
What Are Some Things That He Wants To See People Doing More Of In Terms Of Innovation?
Wants people to move away from this idea of scarcity within NFT collections
What they did is to allow holders to take their original ChainFace and upgrade it. The collection size remains the same and they grow the universe by building a new brand. This creates more demand for the new brand while keeping the supply the same
Have aligned with the Space Doodles project because they are doing something different
Is friends with Poopie from Space Doodles. They have a similar 4+ years of background in crypto and knows how the whole 10k PFP projects would end — much like the ICO hype in 2017
“You get bag holders who will hold this shit down 99% over the next three years. Well, some LARP ass team never completes any of the big things on their roadmap, like launching t-shirts is fucking easy, so that's not a roadmap or milestone in my mind. Saying that you're going to launch a Metaverse experience in Q3 and your only qualifications is cloning an NFT contract, it just doesn't give me any real confidence they can do this shit.”
- Nate Alex
What’s The New Model Or Potential Pathways That Projects Can Explore?
Does not know where the space will go, but strongly believes that the strongest brands will be brands that are innovating
There will still be teams launching 10k PFP projects but it will be on a smaller scale with way less interest from the community
His team has already shown that they have technical muscle and will outperform teams that are lying
The normal model of a 10k PFP project:
Launch a project
Do a whole lot of marketing to ensure that it is oversubscribed
Team LARPs about what they are going to do
Team says that they are going to do an airdrop
Provided some alpha on what they will be releasing:
Storylines that have never existed before
Open commissioning/marketplace
Dynamic updating of tokens
Wants to create something totally original
ChainFaces Assets As Part Of One’s Identity
Have seen some people using ChainFaces with scars as their profile picture
When ChainFaces die in the arena, the whole background turns red
Some people put dead ChainFaces as their profile picture
However, the market has not shown a premium for ChainFaces. He attributed it to their visuals
With their next professionally illustrated upgrade, the ChainFaces symbols will map to their actual facial features, so that it becomes visually closer to a PFP project
Designing The Arena
Realized that this was one of his biggest mistakes
Quick profiteers could join the arena early on, claim the bounty, pull out of the arena, list their ChainFaces at below mint price and still turn a profit. This exerts a downward pressure on the ChainFaces market
Wished that he had designed the arena in such a way that people had to stay for 500 rounds before they could claim their bounty
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