MetaVault Mini: Nov 17th Town Hall Recap
A condensed Town Hall doesn't mean alpha wasn't dropped
This is MetaVault, a community-built weekly newsletter that tries to make sense of the Pixel Vault universe: PUNKS Comic, MetaHero, United Planets, DAOs within DAOs within DAOs.
Great Town Hall this week. I tried to link the Twitter profile for anyone who asked a question. If the community is excited about these, I’ll plan to publish the recaps the day-of or the day after every Town Hall.
Giveaway 1: Planets to MetaHero Holders
Snapshot taken on 11/16
Claim will open today and remain open for a week
Giveaway 2: Jupiter Tokens to Planet DAO minters
Next week
Pixel Passes to Core and Special Edition Comic #1 Holders
Next week
Comic #2
GFunk: Trust me we’re going as quickly as we can, but I think the final product is really going to be something that people love and will be historic in this context of the growth of NFTs this year.
December 7th is still the expected release date for the standard comic
Minting: The claim window will be open for two hours for PVFD, then open for four hours to all PV token holders, and then public after
Max mints: No announcement yet – still some conversation with corporate partner, finalizing this week
Sub-5000 Comic #1 Minters: Tentatively planned for the week of the 14th, maybe the week after, still working with Dev Team on how the claim window will work – free claim via whitelisting
Teasers in the coming weeks
Rusty asked about Comic #2 staking for Apes?
GFunk: A little peek behind the curtain: at the outset we thought maybe we redo the concept for Issue #1 with Issue #2, we buy up a bunch of Apes, we do a fractional token, but ultimately what we thought was the best use for Issue #2, seeing this tremendous cross-over between our community with the apes in their infancy —we wanted to make Issue #2 focused on this idea of collaboration within the community. I would say that’s really the differentiating factor in Issue #2, is the collaboration with the Elite Apes, promoting their own brands and the hard work they put in to winning that contest. I would say that’s primarily the unique use case for that issue. It’s not planned to stake or anything. But it is also in conjunction with this major Merch drop, which I believe will be a pretty historic moment in the grander scale of the NFT universe.
Merch
Merch NFT will release approximately three days after the standard comic (December 10th?)
First physical Merch expected to ship in “early 2022”
Reminder: The one-time purchase of the Merch NFT will equate to mutliple “free” physical merch drops over the next six months to a year. GFunk: “At the end of it all, you’ll get a cool NFT collectible so you won’t just burn and lose the NFT portion of it all.”
Elite Apes Week
Special covers for each Elite Ape - “Their opportunity to generate income off of those covers”
Releases are expected the week of December 14th
Different release mechanic – no priority announced for PVFD or PV asset holders – but still through a PV channel
Does not qualify for the Merch NFT
Details still to be nailed down
GFunk on utility for the Elite Apes covers:
Potential that something could be tied to each of those covers – maybe one of those characters decides to have their own tie-in to the comic or maybe we decide to do something further odwn the line. They will be separate and distinct and that’s meant as a reward for those eight having their own special covers for their participation in the project… Possibility of unique utility to those, but as of today, each one is meant to highlight the apes.
Staking
Week of Nov 29th
Details on token allocation to MetaHeroes in the next week or two
Rusty asked for high-level plans for liquidity:
GFunk: Original plan for this secondary pool — the $PUNKS for PUNKS staking — at the outset these buybacks were under the understanding that we would have a decent chunk of ETH, but not an overwhelming amount. But now given the scale of this merchandise deal and all of the funds that will be flowing to it, the updated plan has been to use those funds to purchase more CryptoPunks and create a secondary token of which $PUNKS1 will stake for $PUNKS2. Everyone will have the opportunity to stake and own fractional shares in potentially as many as 16 more CryptoPunks or maybe we go out and buy a zombie, who knows? But the idea is to continue to expand the universe. Our concern is given all of the ETH it becomes inefficient and creates exit liquidity for people to dump tokens into the ETH that the community has captured. This more properly aligns the incentives, providing value to the existing $PUNKS token holders, creating support for the initial $PUNKS1 token, and ultimately making the best use of the funds. We’ll give more information as that gets closer but that’s the plan for $PUNKS1 and $PUNKS2, $PUNKS2 would be coming later.
Rusty asked about Beanie’s tweet regarding staking Comic #3 for MetaHeroes:
GFunk: I had come to a deal with [Beanie] to put his portion of MetaHeroes to a similar functionality as Issue 1 for Issue 3. Whether that be a DAO that collectively holds all of those MetaHeroes, where the comic actually equals ownership in that DAO, or whether we bundle and fractionalize them. I’m not sure what the final mechanic will be. But conceptually speaking, the MetaHero1000 will be tied to the release of Issue #3, so they will be owned by the community in some fashion. Right now we have 500 minted. You can search MH1000 on Opensea and check out the 500 that have been minted. It’s a pretty impressive collection, a ton of cool mutants. And also the four Cores that PV has won throughout this process will be going into that collection, those will also be owned by the community. A way to provide value in a fun manner through Issue #3, I don’t know the final mechanics, but that’s the high level concept.
Duclair asked a question on Sidekick staking: Leveling-up would result in higher yields? A: No information yet – as Sidekicks are released, the mechanics will be announced.
Physical Claim
Rolling it out in its own week so it has proper attention of everyone
Claim window open for two months (still to be determined)
Cases can be mounted and should be able to accommodate grading (VGF is excited!)
Giveaway Timelines / Cadence Moving Forward
Snapshots taken on Tuesdays for that week’s giveaway
Claim window opens on Thursdays and run for a week
If you’re going to be gone for more than a week, put a plan in place to claim the giveaways
All claims, no airdrops
Earth Giveaway to Core Set Holders
Kyle asked if having two core sets in a single wallet would be problematic. A: No.
Special Editions
Rusty asked if the Core / Special Edition holders get only Comic releases or all PV products? A: All!
Ranger asked if there is any future utility for holders? GFunk: “Plan has basically been fully implemented. You get free mints. They will come to you in the form of pixel passes or airdrops – the Merch NFT may just be airdropped.
Origins Stories
Actively moving forward
Origin Story #1: Courtney’s backstory
In talks with prominent, known artist to put his style on this comic
Plan moving forward is a group of diverse artists to put their own spin on the brand
Core MetaHero Giveaway
One giveaway planned before Comic #2 release
Another giveaway before the end of the year
Communications
Shoook asked about improving and expanding communications:
GFunk: I think there’s this perception of our lack of communication but it all ties back to the complexity of the project. If you’re just releasing PfPs and its all pretty straightforward the need for communication is much more minimal and that’s why we’re held to this higher standard of needing to communicate better. I acknowledge that and we are working to getting some newsletters in place and hope to have more formal information on that over the next couple of weeks.
Moving forward the plan is to simplify a bit – but keep the decision-making process as a central theme
Weekly, bi-weekly, monthly newsletters breaking down everything coming up
GFunk: “We want to leave flexibility as things tend to change in this space – but want to give as much insight into what we’re up to”
Game Development Progress?
THump asked for progress updates on the game. TheVirtunaut: “Just sent out a slide deck to a company we’re hoping to work with. There’s one other company that we’re still waiting for stuff to solidify around that… it’s slow there, but making headway.”
GFunk: These initial stages are obviously critical. Our decision on the dev shop that we’re going to work with will have a significant, significant impact on the final product. A) we don’t want to rush that. B) we’re making connections to all of the top dev shops in the world. We will take the time needed to let those conversations play out. Still engaged in the process of finding the best partner possible to make this a long term success. This is going to be a long-term building process, but all along we’ll have fun engagement on the NFT side as we make progress on the game dev side.
We hope to release game play in installments to give people something they can tangibly feel throughout the process. There will be a whole lot of voting and back and forth in the community as we try to make these high-level decisions for the future of the MetaHero universe.
THump’s follow-up question: How long on the release of the game? Two years? GFunk: “Full experience is going to take longer than that. I expect something awesome to be released in that timeframe – but not the full vision of what we’re planning.”
Comic-Con Participation?
VGF: Super high-level, yes, there have been conversations around it. Incorporation of IRL physical experiences around the minting of digital NFTs is something that has been highlighted to us especially post NFT.NYC.
GFunk: Looking for ways to work with the traditional comic world and participate in these Comic-Cons. As of now, general consensus is that there is not a complete embrace of NFTs from the comic book community. Though, a lot of the most notable producers (artists, writers), I’ve noticed a distinct shift over the last few months. We’re looking to work with them more and more. We’d like to do more IRL meetups and find fun ways to interact with our community across the country and world.
Conceptually speaking, in these early days, it might just be us doing our own thing and trying to gain exposure, but really using it for meetups for our own community.
Two Mystery Characters
Astro’s question: Beanie tweeted when the planet mint was ending something that included two comic style characters that were out of context of the tweet. Any information about what that is? A: There is a plan for those characters but for now it’s secret.
Release Pacing
Quarterly: Potentially release the full-size comics (20-30 pages) – maybe spinning out MH into its own comic with fun interplay between them
Monthly (or more frequently): Origin Stories – partnership in the crypto space for release of those comics in the long run, but the first couple through the PV website, prioritizing existing PV holders, but more frequently, lower price point, prioritizing building the stories
Netti Sells an Ape to Live the Good Life
Congrats!


Some Disclaimers: None of this is financial advice. DYOR. And yes, I’m obviously a PV collector and long-term hodlr.