Special Edition: Say Hello to Jenkins
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Special Edition: Say Hello to Jenkins
Identifying similarities in the broad ambitions of Pixel Vault and Jenkins the Valet
This is MetaVault, the best way to keep up with the Pixel Vault universe: PUNKS Comic, MetaHero, United Planets, $PUNKS, $POW, and lots of DAOs.
As you saw in the recent Wild Speculation post, FilmBook is an incredibly inventive Pixel Vault collector. He looks at a project from every angle. During a recent Jenkins the Valet (JTV) Twitter Space he took the stage and asked some great questions and I realized, “Oh damn, he’s a Jenkins collector too!” I DM’d him and we started chatting about Jenkins, their Roadmap 2.0 announcement, and the striking similarities between PV and JTV. So I asked him if we was interested in introducing the MetaVault readers to the Jenkins project? He jumped at the opportunity. Here’s FilmBook on how to think about Jenkins the Valet as a Pixel Vault collector.
Close your eyes and imagine we’re in mid-August 2021. Punks Comic #1 is selling on secondary for about 2 ETH. We had these cool Mint Passes, but MetaHeroes hadn’t released yet. The Planet DAOs were announced and there was some sort of game linked to it. Wait, we can burn a Comic #1 for a Moon DAO token?! What’s a Moon DAO token? The ecosystem was about to expand rapidly.
Now open your eyes. The vast ambition of Pixel Vault in August created a feeling that anything was possible. That’s where Jenkins the Valet is today.
JTV started with a pretty simple premise: write a book from the perspective of a Bored Ape that looks like a valet, as if he was an actual living character valeting at the fictional Bored Ape Yacht Club. The project has grown to include:
The first book (both an NFT and physical) which is being written by 10x New York Times Best Selling Author Neil Strauss
Innovative licensing (over 4,000 avatars licensed their Bored Ape or Mutant to share in proceeds from the book sale) and voting / ownership portals
A new world called Azurbala that will be created by a very impressive screenwriter named Emma Needell
Two DAOs tentatively called "CharacterDAO" and “MediaDAO” which will own a large portion of the character and actual BAYC avatar called Jenkins, as well as manage the creative direction of all future JTV projects
And that’s just scratching the surface.
For those of you new to JTV as both a character and project, welcome, glad to have you, and excited to vibe with you. This post’s goal is to provide a little commentary, education, analysis, and maybe some wild speculation on one of the most exciting teams and communities in the Web3 space. How about a fun comparison experiment?
Founder’s DAO = JTV Genesis Writer’s Room NFTs
The Pixel Vault Founder’s DAO (PVFD) was the “burn” result in the first burn / stake decision. Burn your Punks Comic #1 — get a Founder’s DAO token designed by Fvckrender. The 5,902 PVFD tokens represent fractional ownership in the Founder’s DAO wallet, which consists of top tier 1/1 art, a 25% allocation of $PUNKS, and all genesis mints for each PV release. The PVFD is also the center of mass when it comes to the PV community. They’re huge supporters of the company, get a bit rowdy at times, and continuously push for innovation. The Discord channel is full of alpha and wagmi vibes.
JTV's genesis NFTs provide access to the Writer's Room and the ability for their holders to license an avatar to a particular JTV project and provide story inputs. These NFTs come in 4 different types: Valet Tickets, Yacht Keys, Valet Stands, and Yachts. All provide different levels of voting power during story development in the Writer's Room and a certain level of story presence guaranteed for the owners' licensed avatar in the book/movie/tv show/project. There are only 6,942 genesis Writers Room NFTs that will ever exist and these holders are viewed as the people who helped build JTV, are valued as partners by the team, and will be heavily involved in governing, shaping, and owning (!) Jenkins, his Mutant, and a BAKC named GoodBoy ( both the characters and avatars themselves) and future IP going forward. These holders are also massive JTV supporters.
Sound a bit like the PVFD to you?
Punks Comic #1 = Book 1 NFT
Punks Comic #1 was the NFT that started the PV journey. Illustrated by the brilliant Chris Wahl (MARVEL, Tank Girl, DC Comics) with story by the stellar Josh Blaylock (GI Joe, Voltron, Mercy Sparx). In addition to the art, it established the Wonka-style game theory that has become PV’s trademark. Burn or Stake. This set the wheels in motion to introduce Mint Passes and the MetaHero Universe with avatars that are generated at time of mint. Punks Comic #1 is an OG NFT in the space.
As for JTV, all genesis Writer's Room NFT owners will be able to claim a free NFT of the yet to be named “Book 1” starring the character Jenkins the Valet. Written by Neil Strauss (NY Times Best Selling books like The Game, and legendary autobiographies from Jenna Jameson, Marilyn Manson, and Motley Crue), the Book 1 NFT is almost certainly going to be a highly coveted NFT as it may be Strauss' 11th NYT bestseller and the first mass community-generative book (I’m also confident it will be a damn good read). And I don’t want to undersell the community-generative aspect. Thousands of Writer’s Room NFT holders submitted names and backstories for their licensed Apes and Mutants. These backstories will be folded into the book written by Strauss and help guide the storyline!
The Book 1 NFT will have burn or stake game theory too! Burn for a pfp of a character in a JTV created universe called Azurabala. Stake for tokens representing governance of “MediaDAO.” The JTV team also recently announced that Writer’s Room NFT holders will get on the “WriteList” allowing them to mint an additional Book 1 NFT for public mint price. Surprise bonus!
Certainly we can see some similarities to Punks Comic #1 with the Book 1 NFT.
MetaHero Universe = Azurbala
As mentioned above, if you held Punks Comic #1, you were able to buy a Mint Pass from PV for 0.08 ETH. You could burn that Mint Pass for a MetaHero identity, a superhero avatar that is PV created IP and will live in the MetaHero Universe, compromised of 9 planets and the Moon called the United Planets. Each planet is owned and governed by the respective planetary DAOs with overall governance controlled by the UPDAO. The universe will be featured in a future AAA video game (and maybe in the interim staking game?), where the avatars will be playable and things like Land, Resources, Wearables, etc.. may exist and be acquirable. And there’s growing lore around the Universe: it will be home to future avatars called Sidekicks, something went down on Jupiter, and there’s weird stuff coming out of this account linked to the Moon (we think). The MetaHero Universe will be formally introduced in Punks Comic #3 and likely to expand through a future comic vertical of its own, the video game, and maybe future TV shows? Movies? Very excited to see how Gfunk, Josh, and the team transports us all to the MetaHero Universe.
For JTV, if you burn the Book 1 NFT, you are eligible to acquire a mint pass, which is then redeemable for generated-on-chain character avatars from the mysterious new world JTV has created called Azurbala. Azurbala has been created for JTV by screenwriter and producer Emma Needel (The Water Man) . We’ve already learned a TON about this place. It’s a Jungle capital city, situated ”just below the snow capped mountains of Giant’s Peak and just above Mercy’s Edge”. There’s a polytheistic religion called Sa’Bala. There’s five factions that battle over power and control. It’s illegal to read in someplace called The Sprawls (incidentally where the Book 1 NFT burning takes place). There’s a resource called Marrow that MAY be harvestable by your Azurian avatar character. The world Emma and the JTV team have built already feels like a real place. From the second your avatars are born, they will be characters in this world and apparently react on chain to the happenings in Azurbala. Crazy excited to see what this means. Every avatar also comes with full commercial rights.
PV and JTV. Worldbuilding, Web3-style.
Innovative Web3 Technology
The PV team are constant innovators and leaders when it comes to Web3 technology. Mechanisms like burning, staking, mint passes, game theory, mass scale generative minting, the newly introduced Queue Coin concept — some of these have become ubiquitous to most of us across Web3, but PV was the first team to employ, and certainly popularize, these tools. So much so, that if PV wanted to have their own technology arm of the company (maybe they’re already pursuing this?), where they could, say, license their mass scale generative minting technology to big brands wanting to come into the space, they could probably do it. Seems like it’s safe to say, more technology innovation is coming.
The Jenkins team are also pursuing things like burning, staking, and game theory, but have delivered some pretty impressive and innovative tech themselves. While Book 1 is being written by Neil Strauss, all Writer’s Room NFT holders are able to login to an incredibly slick voting interface on the JTV website that allows you to allocate any number of your votes to specific answers when story/narrative questions are posed. See example below. The team asks the holders “ What role do Mutants play in the club?” and then WR NFT holders are given 5 choices to vote on. Neil takes all of these proposals and uses them to inform the direction, characters, etc… within Book 1. The interface and voting mechanisms themselves are as well-designed as anything I’ve seen in this space, and could become the gold standard for things like DAO voting going forward. Within this same Writer’s Room portal, we have the first instance of mass IP licensing in the NFT space, all custom designed and seamlessly executed by the JTV team.
Decentralized Studio System
GFunk himself refers to PV as a “studio for web3”. PV wants to create unique IP, world build, and design the media that we use to interact with that IP. They’ve made no secret they are pursuing gaming, television, and movies, and want decentralization and community involvement at the core of those pursuits. PV are signed to one of the biggest talent agencies in the world, WME, and have been clear as to how integral that relationship has been to get them into rooms they previously did not have invites to. They are leveraging industry connections from the VCs that recently invested $100M in the company to stand-up an entertainment advisory board to strengthen this strategic objective. They are focusing heavily on story, have big plans to add more and more new IP, and they want to empower the community to help bring these stories to life.
For JTV, if you choose to stake your Book 1 NFT, you will acquire tokens which represent governance of the tentatively named, “Media DAO”. In JTV’s own words:
Media DAO members will brainstorm, define, pitch, and ultimately produce the crypto-native IP that will help to define the Metaverse. Members of Media DAO seek to lead the wider DAO movement by demonstrating that a community of creatives can collectively develop highly sought-after content. We believe that this community can become a decentralized media empire.
Media DAO will collaborate as a community to own, create, and incubate all of the franchises (including a significant stake in Azurbala) and content that will be produced by the JTV project going forward. JTV, yes the character Jenkins, is represented by world renowned agency CAA, so one can assume their network may play a critical role going forward as well.
Additionally, by staking your Writer’s Room NFTs, you earn governance tokens in the tentatively titled “Character DAO”. Character DAO will own a significant stake in the “core” NFTs: Jenkins the Valet, Jenkins the Mutant, and their BAKC, GoodBoy. Character DAO will govern the characters future, deciding where the characters will appear, which projects they will be licensed to, brand partnerships, or anything else the DAO may decide. Any licensing fees acquired by the Character DAO characters will flow back to the Character DAO treasury for future use. Maybe the DAO decides to buy a few other blue chip avatars and develop characters around them? Or maybe they decide to license leading Azurian personalities from Azurbala!
Lots of Similarities, but Some Incredible Differentiators
While we’ve just spent a fair amount of time discussing some similarities between these two projects, let’s acknowledge the unique features of JTV and the innovation on display.
Writer’s Room NFTs (WR NFT) can be licensed for every single new project under the JTV umbrella. That means holders that licensed their WR NFT with their own BAYC or MAYC (or partnered with a BAYC/MAYC owner to split their share from the licensing pool-so very Web3) to the Book 1 project will receive royalties from Book 1, any Book 1-based other media that comes out, including derivative projects. In perpetuity. Auto-sent to their wallets. Then if JTV decides to partner with another blue chip NFT project like Cool Cats or Doodles, each WR NFT holder can license their own Cool Cats or Doodles avatar to that project. Or partner with a Cool Cats or Doodles owner. And then collect those royalties from that new project. On top of the royalties from Book 1. And then an Azurabala project. And on and on, stacking royalty streams. You get it. Do you like passive income?
To celebrate 1000 ETH in secondary sales months ago (over 4000 ETH in secondary sales right now and climbing), the JTV team decided to develop a free NFT drop for holders. This has been confirmed to be a Jenkins-centric piece of art from the phenomenal jakethedegen.
We mentioned the potential staking of Azurian avatars for Marrow ($MARROW?). Well apparently there’s a bit of a risk game associated with harvesting Marrow. Harvesting raw Marrow can cause Myrrosis, which can poison you and can only be reversed with something called Diopcide. Seems like maybe it just won’t be static staking? They have also teased other “games” surrounding Azurbala.
The next JTV project we may be hearing (literally) about is called “The Jenkins Audio Experience”. There’s apparently already a deal in place with a partner to bring this to market, and the concept is fully baked. This will involve multiple avatar communities.
Is Jenkins the Valet the Next Pixel Vault?
To go back to where we began… put yourself back in August 2021. The possibilities. The excitement. The new NFTs that were about to hit your wallet. What followed from Pixel Vault was a rocket ship to things like the Planet DAO mint, the adidas drop, a Coinbase partnership, and the $100 million VC funding round with a possible valuation in the $1B range. Is Jenkins the Valet about to see a similar trajectory and join PV in the stratosphere? Maybe. I’m sure excited to be along for the ride. The possibilities are truly endless for this project, and opportunities to analyze and speculate are abundant. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time for a dedicated newsletter that dives deep into the JTV ecosystem?
Some Disclaimers: None of this is financial advice. DYOR. And yes, SpaceWalk and FilmBook are obviously PV and JTV(!) collectors and long-term hodlrs. Not a whale by any measure (maybe a squid?).