Hell Nah Bro!

I’m not spending money for white text on a black background, we’ve reached the top, winter is here!!!

Sound familiar?

Yea, It’s probably because that’s the exact same thing I said to myself when Loot developer Dom Hofmann dropped the contract and all hell broke loose.

Dom Hofmann

It’s Just Words, Right?

Yes, at first glance dear reader you would be correct, that this is indeed merely white text, on a black background, however some words have colors and some even have numbers on them, exciting ser. Both of which represent rarity and strength levels of the various LOOT cards.

Now before we get too deep in the weeds I think it’s important to outline which types of buyers make up the NFT market today. There is no one way or another that’s right because it’s mainly based on your own personal goals and risk appetite.

Oh and before we get started* *This is not financial advice**

Currently there are 3 primary types of NFT buyers in the space right now:

Flippers — The classic buy low, sell high strategy, most commonly associated with 10k PFP (profile picture) projects. These participants will try to position themselves well ahead of what the general NFT populace considers “hot” by minting upcoming drops as soon as the contracts go live. They stand to profit handsomely by reselling these highly desirable pieces on the secondary markets, Pranksy a well-known whale falls within this category. More recently we’ve seen the rise of smart contracts being deployed that mint in excess of the limitations of the smart contract design, for instance one wallet held 7% of the total supply in the TheSevens drop.

TheSevens mint prices on Sept 7, 2021 @Zeneca_33

Collectors — These are your buy and hold purchasers, more commonly associated with 1/1 art pieces, you know like traditional art. The line of thinking is these are generational pieces that may never change hands nor hit the open market for 10–20 years, normally due to a life changing event for whatever reasons. This crowd gravitates towards the generative art collections like Fidenzas by Tyler Hobbs and Squiggles by Artblocks founder Snowfro.

Builders — Then you have the third category of participant in the space, whose main focus is to just fucking build, they are a mysterious breed but have always graced the internet with their shadowy coding skills. This category will be the subject of our article and the one in which I believe will continue to shape the landscape of Web3.

Top Down vs. Bottom Up — That Is The Question

The image you see above so eloquently describes a fundamental shift in the future of NFT’s it might make your head spin. Author @tandavas states

“Loot is something different. It’s something that has never been done before ever. It’s a paradigm shift in the NFT space.”

And the author would be right, I don’t know if you recognized by now, but the top down model feels incredibly similar to a corporate company or web2 startup that so many of us have grown accustomed to.

Bored Ape Yacht Club, and 99% of PFP projects take the top down approach because that is something familiar to humans, we tend to be creatures of habit. The top down model for any new industry is the only way to bootstrap it, Bitcoin had Satoshi, and Ethereum has Vitalik. There always has to be a visionary that can see the future where others do not.

Now depending on how long you’ve been in the space you’ve probably heard some people say that 99% of current projects will most likely go to zero. Don’t shoot me I’m just the messenger, blame Gary Vaynerchuk instead. j/k

But in all seriousness, we need the top down model at first until we run enough experiments to find the proper approach to the bottom up model that the rest of the NFT community can run with and tweak for their own purposes.

So What is LOOT?

8,000 bags of Adventurer gear, which includes items for the chest, foot, hand, head, neck, and waist area. In addition to accessories like a ring and a weapon. It didn’t cost anything besides the gas fees to mint LOOT when it was announced, and was finished only 4 hours later.

The Birth of Loot

It’s worth noting that the Loot Id#’s 1–7777 are what were offered to the public, with #7778 — #8000 being reserved for the contract deployer to grow the community, engage in partnerships, as well as being able to realize any upside the project may have in the future.

So What’s The Hype All About?

The minimalist nature of the project, is what the fuss is all about. No art, no stats it’s just a blank canvas for anyone to build whatever they can imagine and therein lies the beauty. You see flippers won’t get it immediately, and collectors absolutely can’t wrap their minds around the concept because like art it’s so abstract, oh the irony.

Loot Was Decentralized From Day 1

Unlike most drops today, that are headed by 2 or more people, Loot was launched by one developer Dom Hofmann and instead of dictating the direction of the project, or charging for the drop, Dom merely released it in the wild with no promotion, pre-launch, or fanfare.

Within a matter of days the community began building rarity scripts, Google Sheets, and tools to find the most prized Loot bags in the lot. Shortly after all the rarest bags had been swept from the secondary market, groups started to form around related bags. Ancients.market, Crowns.market, and others culminated into 10 specialized market trackers to watch the floor of these coveted bag items.

Discord is a great product but when you’re trying to organize over 4,000 people around certain initiatives, the noise just becomes too much and things need to be broken out in order to gain focus. Community members then brought a forum online to create better structure around specific topics and ideas.

It’s truly a sight to behold when a large group of like minded individuals come together on a common goal, it’s truly the epitome of decentralization.

Builders Just Blew Up The Ecosystem
Given there was no initial direction, guidance, or roadmap the community just came up with the tools they felt they needed most at that early stage.

• Loot Subgraph — A subgraph for Loot bags, owners, and transfers.
• Loot SDK — A TypeScript wrapper to query the loot subgraph.
• Loot.js — A javascript library that allows you to interact with loot and more loot contracts.
• LootComponents.sol* *— A utility contract that easily interacts with Loot properties.

No permission was given, no roadmap was followed and yet the community was able to bootstrap a rather impressive tool set for their burgeoning economy.

Where Is LOOT Going?

🤷 Your guess is as good as mine, it’s way too early to tell, the project was just launched on August 31, 2021 so the experiment has just begun. From Katana Gardens, to the Divine Roles and the immense utility provided by the early builders, who put the proper tooling in place to allow more than 82+ derivative Loot projects to spring to life in a matter of days.

I’m excited for what the Loot community will build, but more importantly I’m excited for the lessons that will be learned organizing 4,000+ individual stakeholders around either a common goal, DAO, or sub-DAOs. The uncertainty of it all is what makes this space so invigorating.

Until next time!

Hit me on Twitter @gigabit_eth

Disclaimer: The author does not own any Loot bags.