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Making sense of the rapidly evolving Web3 and NFT space

MetaVault #4: Six-week Sprint

Expect a massive six-week sprint of releases to end the year

SpaceWalk

Nov 15, 2021

This is MetaVault, a weekly newsletter that tries to make sense of the Pixel Vault universe: PUNKS Comic, MetaHero, United Planets, DAOs within DAOs within DAOs.

The Highlight Reel

The PV team held a big Town Hall this past week. They announced the sequence and timing of the next batch of activities, giveaways, and releases (with the caveat that dates are subject to change). 2021 is ending with a BAM!

DONE! New Moon DAO Token Airdrop. All Moon holders now have their replacement moon token. By the way, check out the Dark Moon version.
DONE! Issue Refund to Exploited Moon Buyers. Righteous!
DONE! PUNKS Comic #1 Special Edition Airdrop. Love the cover variation created by Chris Wahl.

November

Giveaway 1: Planets to MetaHero Holders. Week of Nov 14.
Giveaway 2: Jupiter Token to Planet Minters. Week of Nov 22.
Issue PixelPass to Core and Special Edition Comic #1 Holders. The PV Discord shows this as falling between Giveaway 2 and 3.
Giveaway 3: Mercury and Venus Tokens. Week of Nov 29.
Launch Staking (Comic/PUNKS, MH/POW). Week of Nov 29.

December

Giveaway 4: Earth and Mars Tokens. First week of December.
Launch Comic #2. December 7th! GFunk felt pretty confident about this date in the Town Hall.
NFT Merch Mint with Corporate Partner. “Inside a week of the Comic #2 Launch.”
Launch Physical Comic #1 Claim. After Comic #2 launch - likely to be the third week of December.
Giveaway 5: Jupiter and Saturn Tokens. Same week as claim of Comic #1 physical.
Giveaway 6: Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Last week of December?

January

Launch MintPass #2 Claim. GFunk said this would get launched prior to the “turn of the year,” but the published timing on their Discord is January. I’m leaning more toward January.

Planet Giveaways

Jupiter, Je t’aime. Oh, how we love Jupiter — despite her offline attitude. All planet minters will be getting their Jupiter DAO tokens the week of November 22nd. This will act as a claim, not an airdrop. We’ll have to go to the site and authenticate with the wallet that minted the planets.

As a reminder: For every planet minted, we’ll be eligible to claim a free Jupiter. Minted one Neptune DAO token? Awesome, claim your free Jupiter token. Minted all 9 planets? Cool, claim your 9 free Jupiter tokens. Minted 10 Jupiters? Great, claim 10 more Jupiters for free.

Staggered Release. In classic Pixel Vault style, the team listened to the community and will address the supply shock concern with a staggered release of the giveaways. Instead of dropping 40k+ planet tokens in an instant, every week they’re giving away tokens, starting closest to the sun (Mercury and Venus). The snapshots will be staggered too, which is awesome for people still working their way to a genesis PV asset (Comic #1, PVFD, MetaHero, Mint Pass #1). You have until the last weeks of December to acquire a genesis PV asset and be eligible for the planet giveaways.

CtrlShiftN created slick spreadsheet to help community members figure out what their chances are in the giveaways.

Staking

Stake and Potatoes. In the last week of November, holders of PUNKS Comic #1 or a MetaHero will be able to stake their asset for $PUNKS or $POW tokens, respectively. It’ll be interesting to see what the price of these two tokens does upon launch and in the subsequent months. And maybe more interestingly, what does it do to the floor for the comic and MH? Reduced supply on the market could drive higher floors.

Staking Valuation. Someone like Economist, CtrlShiftN, or Abraham is much better suited than I am to help the community understand what valuation to expect. There’s some good analysis in Economist’s original stake or burn post. Maybe we could peer pressure one of them to write a Staking Valuation guest post in the MetaVault newsletter the week before staking launches… 🤣

PUNKS Comic #2

Basics

Chris Wahl and team are finishing the comic
26-28 pages for the comic with a few pages of cool posters and art (32-pages total)
PV has produced teaser videos that they will release in the next few weeks
There have been rumors in the Founders DAO channel of an announcement on November 19th, could we get the formal announcement with a teaser?

Release

“Roughly December 7th”
10,000 comics for mint
Priority given to PVFD holders — with reasonable transaction limits
Any remaining will become available for public minting
Additional 5,000 comics to be available for free claiming by Comic #1 sub-5000 minters the following week — not the week of the initial minting
Priced at about .1 ETH — GFunk made it clear that this could change depending on the price of Ethereum
Yes, if you minted and sold your Comic #1, you’re still eligible for the free claim of Comic #2

Merch Tie-in

Merch NFT to launch the week after Comic #2
If you minted Comic #2, you’ll be given priority to buy the Merch NFT
Free minters via Comic #1 will not be given priority in the Merch drop
Merch NFT is a one-time buy, multiple redemption asset
First physical merch release to start shipping next year (February timeframe)

What? Let’s unpack this super interesting mechanic that GFunk was calling Forging.

The Merch NFT acts like a Mint Pass of sorts. We buy the Merch NFT, then burn it for the first Merch release. But when we burn the NFT, it’s immediately swapped with a new Merch NFT for the next release. Rinse and repeat. If you continue to hold it, you’ll continue to be able to redeem for new Merch releases.

This “Forging NFT” concept could be huge, not just for PV, but for both the NFT and apparel industries. Why would a major apparel company want to take a risk with new IP, even IP as successful as PV or BAYC or Cool Cats or CryptoPunks, and leave themselves exposed to the possibility of mounds of unsold merch? It has to be hard for their forecasters to estimate how many BAYC hoodies they could sell. This mechanic offsets that risk entirely. All of the funding is secured within the launch window. Demand will immediately be known and production will be spun up to match.

I foresee Forging NFT tiers in the future where a Tier 1 can claim any two items, Tier 2 can claim 1 hoodie, and Tier 3 claim buy 1 t-shirt — for every drop! I think we’ll have Merch Season Passes. Buy the Summer Season Forging NFT and get merch from all drops for the summer.

Everyone likes to talk about the Supreme-indication of the NFT world. Wouldn’t Supreme love to sell a “T-shirt Season Pass Forging NFT” for $1,000 ( < .25 ETH) that allows holders to claim a t-shirt from every drop in their Fall release schedule? Maybe they use Chainlink VRF to giveaway BOGO hoodies to T-shirt holders. The mechanic would drop mounds of money in their pocket on the day of minting.

Sorry, got carried away there a bit. But I love this concept.

A Couple of Communities

Did I hear this right?

… this merch drop in collaboration with this large corporate partner and a couple other communities here in the NFT space.

GFunk said “a couple of different communities” multiple times in the Town Hall. Ok, so we know there’s the mysterious corporate partner and BAYC. Who else? Cool Cats? Toadz? Bloot? Is GFunk finally extending a loving hand to the Blooters out there?

Weekly Alpha

As if there wasn’t enough alpha, here’s a bit more:

Special Edition Cover. In addition to the cover variation reveal, um, special physical prints with a foil cover?!

Dark Moon. And so it begins, the market valuation of the Dark Moon.

POAP for 6-month Anniversary. At the beginning of the Town Hall VGF announced that a Chris Wahl-designed POAP would be released during the Twitter Space to celebrate the PV 6-month anniversary. Super cool!

Origin Stories. Some juicy tidbits from the Town Hall. GFunk:

Really cool launch mechanic — first one or two editions will likely be dropped through traditional channels and likely restricted to PV holders, and then there is actually something really, really big in the works for Origin Stories. I cannot definitively say what it is, but it will be a really cool launch mechanic moving forward.
The first I would say one or two will likely be dropped through our traditional channels and will likely be restricted to Pixel Vault holders in general. And then we're looking to do something that makes Origin Stories publicly available and really expands our community moving forward — likely with issue three.
So depending on the timeframe, that, what will I call it? Partnership — will likely take shape sometime in January or February. But we are looking to get a couple of origin stories out before the end of the year.

PVDAO Airdrops. At the very end of the nearly two hour Town Hall, GFunk goes and says this:

I have talked about how our set holders will get these exclusive pools of tokens once we convert to PVDAO. And with some of our more recent conversations that have stemmed from NFT.NYC, I may be accelerating that timeline.
So the conversion to PVDAO is obviously a huge step for us. You know, I would like to keep some level of control over the business in its infancy, but as this is a Web3-focused business, we do want to open it up to the community and reward the community in a very real way — as you all have helped build this alongside us.
So similar to what you've seen with, you know, now ENS a couple of days ago, Super Rare did this months ago and sort of paved the way for this mechanic of drop. But it would be those that hold assets and have participated in our ecosystem, that would be receiving these tokens. So set holders would be receiving a special allocation of those tokens.

Upcoming Roadmap

With all of the updates above, I have a shortened roadmap update here. A lot of this is speculative — as always, look for official announcements through PV’s Twitter accounts.

Special Planet Minting Bonus - Unconfirmed. Not sure if this is still in the works, but I’ll track for a few more weeks.
MetaHero Core Giveaway - Confirmed. TBD. GFunk said in the next week or two. With a packed month, this might slip right.
Origin Stories - Confirmed. TBD. Expect these to start rolling out with a fairly normal cadence either by the end of the year or early next year.
Game Platform on Mercury - Confirmed. TBD. Expect big news on who the game studio partner is later this year or early next year.
3D Avatars for each MetaHero - Confirmed. TBD.
TV Series - Unconfirmed. TBD. Expect big news far in advance of a series ever being made.

By the Numbers

PV Unique Holders: 9,748
PV Core Sets: 1,592 (this number was 1,619 before the moon exploit — I expect it to go back up when the Special Editions are included in the counts)
PUNKS Comic #1: 3,371
MetaHeroes: 5,780
MP#1: 3,898
MH Cores Remaining in Giveaways: 110
United Planet Sets (All 9 planets + Moon): 75

MetaHero Highlight

The first Mutant minted, the first sold. S/O to MetaHero320 — an active member in the Discord and PV Twitter.

Beanie of the Week (BOTW)

Solid dig by Sunshinetrader and good comeback from Beans:

Some Disclaimers: None of this is financial advice. DYOR. And yes, I’m obviously a PV collector and long-term hodlr. Not a whale by any measure (maybe a squid?), but want to be transparent on what I’m hodling:

Punks Comic #1: 1 (Token ID 3954)
PV Founders DAO: 1 (Token ID 4521)
Mint Pass #1: 1
MetaHero Generative: 1 (Token ID 644)
Planet DAO Tokens: Earth 1, Mars 1, Jupiter 1, Saturn 1, Uranus 1, Neptune 3