MetaVault: Jan 19th Town Hall Recap
This is MetaVault, a weekly newsletter that makes sense of the Pixel Vault universe: PUNKS Comic, MetaHero, United Planets, $PUNKS, $POW, and lots of DAOs.
Before jumping into the recap, let’s address the elephant in the room: the extensive allegations
against Beanie published by NFTethics in a mega Twitter thread. Through exhaustive research and the transparency inherent to Web3, the account uncovered a lot of unsavory past and current actions by Beanie and others. See the thread for yourself.
I’ll admit that I came to PUNKS Comic in early May via Beanie. I suspect that a lot of early collectors did too. Over the intervening months, his sorta “proud assholery” didn’t affect my investment habits. I thought he asked really smart questions in the PV Town Halls and I appreciated when he admitted to making bad calls on various projects. He was often on the forefront of innovation in the space and constantly pushed it forward.
I wasn’t a fan of his attempted takedown of Zeneca and other antics, but I overlooked it mostly because I thought he was just “playing the heel.”
I dedicated a section of this newsletter to him called The Beanie of the Week to highlight some of his takes — both good and bad. When he announced back in December that he was divesting his PV assets I changed it to Community Shine and admitted that it kinda sucked to lose this irascible character.
What I didn’t realize was that he didn’t stand for my most cherished ethos in the NFT space: wagmi. If the allegations against him are true, he didn’t want to see each of us succeed. He wanted to get rich, even if that meant fleecing you and me.
There are a lot of people saying “told ya so.” And it looks like they were right.
What’s next for all of the projects that Beanie was either actively, passively, or previously involved in? I won’t pretend to know. Each will handle it in their own way. GFunk published a solid response on Twitter a day ago, and here’s what he had to say in the Town Hall today:
As you all saw, that was ultimately not the way I was hoping to end up revealing that we had parted ways with Beanie. Certainly, the information that came to light on Monday was not something that we enjoyed reading. Certainly undermines the trust of not only our team, but our community. And anybody that knows me, knows that I take this like extremely seriously.
And so, while this has been in process for several months, behind the scenes, ultimately I decided on Monday that it was time to formally announce the complete separation from Beanie.
We are under agreement to recapture all of his assets. All PUNKS Comics (#1 and #2), the Founder’s DAO tokens, MetaHeroes, etc. Those will all be flowing back to Pixel Vault the company for future use. Whether it be team compensation, fun things with the community.
Beanie is no longer affiliated in any way with Pixel Vault. We have broken off completely. He is not a shareholder of Pixel Vault today, nor will he ever be in the future or any of his entities. You know, not the way I wanted to see this all happen, but, got to do what's best for the community, what's best for all of our employees. And certainly, what's happened in the past few months is not something that I felt was a good reflection of my beliefs or Pixel Vault.
NFT Twitter has asked: “how will we know Beanie is fully divested and PV has full control of all of the assets?” Reasonable question. It’ll be up to this community to continue to bring that question to GFunk and the team.
I’m sure we all look forward to moving beyond this and growing the community with positive, wagmi vibes into the future.
Now to the recap…
Origin Stories
The first Origin Story comic, focused on Courtney’s backstory, will be released on February 1st (or thereabouts).
It’s limited to 5902, which reflects the exact number of PVFD tokens.
You will be able to claim an Origin Story comic for each PVFD token held.
There will be a snapshot prior to Feb 1.
Mint cost is .1 ETH.
Released through punkscomic.com with future releases of Origin Stories still planned for the Coinbase NFT platform.
Here’s GFunk with more details:
Really excited about this series. This is going to be probably the largest source of IP growth here near term for Pixel Vault. Really getting to dive into the backstories on characters and explore a lot of the characters that you know might not get as much page time.
I've seen the art coming together, it looks amazing. Chris Wahl will be on this one and Origin Story number two, which is yet to be revealed. And then we'll start working with other artists throughout the community, potentially cycling through different guest writers. It's meant to be sort of an ensemble cast, very sort of community-driven. We’ll likely introduce voting mechanics, allow people to submit requests and portfolios to potentially illustrate or write for an Origin Story issue.
Elite Ape Special Covers for PUNKS Comic #2
Likely to release on February 8th.
The mechanic is a random draw of 1000 Ape Coins at a time. Those selected can mint (or not). Then another random draw for the next batch of 1000, and cycle through until all 6,000 Elite Ape covers are minted.
Mint cost is .1 ETH.
Elite Apes are working “behind the scenes” on fun giveaways tied to their covers.
A lot more info to come in the next couple of weeks.
Sidekicks and Mint Pass #2
Planned to drop Mint Pass #2 near the end of February, after the conclusion of the Planet Giveaways
No mint cost, it’s a claim based on the number of Planets held
Reminder: Sidekicks will not be sold — you’ll use a Mint Pass #2 to mint the Sidekick.
The team is noodling through ideas on ways to allow the Sidekick community to perhaps get to a MetaHero generative identity via giveaways.
GFunk brought up a great point that I didn’t consider when I lamented that Sidekicks weren’t generative in a recent newsletter:
GFunk: The focus for the MetaHero generative identities was on the tech. We really wanted to make use of the technology: code is art. And so these were entirely generated at mint. And that has a lot more complications than your typical project that you see.
So Sidekicks, not being generated at mint — still being generative art, but selected prior, this idea of artist’s selection, as most of the other very popular projects in the ecosystem. Add to that the different mechanics for leveling up, enabling people to perhaps see their lower level tiers as they continue to burn upward. I think that people are really going to !vibe with their Sidekicks in a way that maybe not everybody did with their MetaHero.
It just depends what you look for in a project. I think that MetaHero stands on its own as an amazing feat of both art and technology. But Sidekicks, maybe people end up with art that they prefer. So it's, it's all about personal preference.
MetaDoods!
Rusty brought forward a derivative project called MetaDoods that about 20 people in the Founder’s DAO community is building (full disclosure: I’m one of those 20!). Here’s Rusty’s description:
We got together and started creating a project called MetaDoods, which is essentially a derivative project of MetaHeroes with fun, cartoonish characters. One of the artists had drawn up a few characters and we really liked the idea and so we gathered some of the talented people in the Founder’s DAO.
We want to launch a fun project, you know, with some cartoon art. But we also want to have some utility that benefits both the Founder’s DAO and MetaHero communities. We've heard a lot of discussion over the $POW pool being light. And so part of our goals with the MetaDoods project would be to purchase MetaHeroes with some of the proceeds, and also provide some liquidity towards the $POW.
GFunk and Jacob were fully onboard with the project. The licensing that PV setup for MetaHeroes makes it pretty straightforward to build a derivative project like this. As Rusty said in the Town Hall, we’re working to build fast while also getting it right. But it’s not a profit seeking project — it’s more about building something cool with PV frens and providing value back to the community. More to come on this super fun project! (Here’s a link to the Discord if you’re curious.)
Misc
PUNKS Comic #1 Physical Claim. Hope to roll out the claim in the next few weeks. Supply chain issues regarding the protective covers is causing the delay. PV has secured a lot of covers, but not enough for all Comic #1 holders at this time. They’re evaluating splitting the claim in two phases to get physical comics in the hand of early claimers now, then ship the rest when the rest of the protective covers are sourced.
Planet Giveaway #3 - Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. Expected to start immediately after the close of Planet Giveaway #2 on Jan 21.
Next Core Giveaway? No date set yet, but the intent is monthly giveaways and possibly more frequent. Possible update in the next Town Hall.
$PUNKS Treasury. DAO voting is being stood up now. The PV team is excited to see proposals on how to use the funds and ultimately which direction the community wants to go.
Founder’s DAO Legal Formation. Jacob and Arr00 will be focusing on this in the coming weeks. Updates to come in the next week or two.
$POW Grants. PV is evaluating the use of $POW as a grant to incentivize the community to build alongside them. Theoretically, projects in the community would apply for a $POW grant, the DAO would vote on the most promising projects, then the project would use $POW to fund the build-out of their project. Really interesting.
Community Contributions to Comics. The team is working to figure out voting mechanics, likely to be via the Founder’s DAO. They’ll possibly offset the cost of voting (because voting happens on-chain there’s a cost to voting).
MamaDuke$. GFunk’s former EA in title, but she supported all sorts of activity across the company — and now she’s Director of Talent and Culture! Congrats!
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?).
I’m certainly not defending Beanie by using the word “allegations,” but I’m not a lawyer and don’t pretend to be one on the internet. I have no way to prove or disprove the statements published by the NFTethics account. Best to be careful here…