AMA with the Keeper

AMA with the Keeper:

Q: Could a sinner yearning to cleanse his soul enter the purgatory together with all his sins & key in his wallet or should he transfer those upfront to your address?
A: One will not be required to transfer/burn either the Key or the Sins to obtain Purgatorio, or any other rewards.

Q: Would you be so generous to give me the word of wisdom about the role that @Walletsy has on the accomplished sinner's way to purgatory?
A: Walletsy is a tool that allows for Discord role verification based on NFT ownership; ie token-gated access. The access is in the NFTs ;) .

Q: Hello, I was hoping that rektguys will get more chances to get lucky on the 7 sins but seems going forward the AL is becoming more difficult for an entry, i hope you consider something for that - thanks
A: Thank you for your concern. I shall take this into consideration for the remaining 4 drops.

Q: Will studying Dante’s Purgatorio be of any help in revealing OSF’s Purgatorio?
A: While I highly recommend studying the Divine Comedy in its entirety, having knowledge of it will not be necessary in completing the quest for Purgatorio.

Q: keeper, wen jpeg summer 2.0 begin?
A: Squire, the 7 Deadly Sins could be jpeg summer if you truly wanted it to.

Q: What’s in the box?!?
A: Your deepest, darkest fears

Q: Is purgatorio reserved for only 1 traveller?
A: Purgatorio is a 1/1 NFT, meaning it can only be owned by one wallet. That wallet could indeed by owned by one traveller, or more should you choose to work together.

Q: Why is there 261 of "The key to your sins" while the other 3 are only 77 ?
A: The Key was an airdrop to the Patrons of the RLD. It serves as the Key to the doorway to access the various riddles of each Sin.

Q: Do we need to buy sins to participate and win in the puzzle?
A: In its current form, owning a Key and Sins is required to access each riddle. I must warn you I have fallen ill, and if the incumbent adventurers are unable to solve the riddle in a timely manner, the riddles may be fully released to the public. I must add, in case OSF has not communicated it clearly, I have commissioned a one-off piece of artwork to be an edition that is rewarded to all full set (key+sins) holders, independent to the riddles.

Q: Thanks for organising this! What will the collection lead to, is the focus solely on art (with the sins and key unlocking the purgatorio) or will there be some form of additional utility?
A: As mentioned above, full-set holders (key+sins) will receive a reward. With regard to future utility of the NFTs, I shall leave that up to OSF.

Q: Hi Keeper, huge fan, thanks for making this ama possible. So, anyway, here's my question, really hope you like it, put a lot of thought into it, kinda nervous to just hit you with it. Anyway, here it comes, pls don't be mean, I'm just curious and wanna know:

Wen moon?

A: Patience, traveller. Remember, each sin is an edition of just 77...use the scarcity as your potion to take you to wherever you want to transcend to.

Q: How does an average joe keep up wit dis schinangins!
A: I have heard that the various discussions channels within this discord cater to heightened levels of knowledge.

Q: Keeper when next you ask @osf_nft to raffle off opportunities to mint the sins, can you get him to raffle for only those who haven't had a chance to buy at mint price. It helps all of us get a chance at being sinners
A: Thank you for your comment, duly noted.

Q: I’m good at collecting the sins, but horrible at solving riddles, am I rekt?
A: While you may not obtain purgatorio, a reward awaits you.

Q: When will it get sent to my wallet
A: Manifest, young traveller, and maybe you shall receive.

Q: Keeper, what is your private key Ser?
A: It is in the arms of the travellers now.

Q: Keeper you said the August airdrop for the mighty RLD holders could be a little different this time. Can you tell me more about that?!
A: This was in reference to the Key, which I commissioned an airdrop for earlier than ex

Degenz Re-Launch

We’ve been working hard on revamping Degenz this year, and are delighted to make a few announcements today!

Degenz was originally intended to be a pfp project, but has since evolved into something completely different, focusing on access to information and a knowledgable community. To date, we have achieved the following:

* produced >70 long form NFT reports at an average of 5 per week
* hired 6 research analysts to join the team and help with the above
* daily morning commentary on markets, crypto & NFTs
* allowlist raffles for coveted drops including Chimpers, Red Lite District and WVRPS
* guaranteed allowlist spots for rektguy
* organically grown a Discord community from 2k to almost 10k members

One of our biggest challenges this year has been branding and marketing. What are Degenz? What are Re-Genz? What is the difference in utility and what do they actually give you access to? So we’ve spent some time and money in re-branding the whole project, in order to have a more simplified structure and to deliver a clear and concise message.

**The Degenz Access Pass (DAP)**

![Degenz Access Pass (DAP)](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/K_7nQDYfacxkaeKpXWQ0m.png?height=1000&width=1000)

**Every Degen and Re-Gen NFT will be airdropped a DAP. The DAP will serve as your access pass into the Degenz ecosystem, this will include the following:**

> > 1. Access to gated areas of Discord, including daily market commentary and NFT resources channels
> > 2. Access to deep-dive NFT reports via the new website
> > 3. Access to exclusive, FREE NFT mints with a handful of curated artists (similar to how we did rektguy). We’ll be announcing the artists soon 👀 !
> > 4. Access to future token-gated IRL events
> > 5. These will all be LIFETIME benefits.

* As a result, ALL utility features that exist for Degenz/Re-Genz will be MIGRATING to the DAP, a single ERC-1155 NFT which we hope will simplify the structure and branding.
* Degenz/Re-Genz will have some benefits going forward (such as secondary allowlist access to NFT drops), but will primarily be a community pfp project.
* Degenz/Re-Genz holders will be airdropped DAPs for EACH NFT that they hold, as per the following schedule. We are conscious that collectors had spent more ETH on rarer items (and have looked at data for which traits have been more coveted), so we wanted that to be rewarded:

**DAPs to be airdropped (per NFT held)**

**Degenz**
Whales: 5
Frens: 5
Wizards: 2
Ramen Heads: 2
All other: 1

**Re-Genz**
Females: 2
Ramen Heads/Golden Ramen Heads: 2
All other: 1

We will be taking a snapshot of current holders on Tuesday 14th June, at 5PM EST, after which the DAP will be airdropped.

**PLEASE NOTE: This will be an AIRDROP, you will NOT need to connect your wallet to anything or claim anything - please be aware of scams**.

**New Website**

Earlier this year we decided to use Nightshift to focus on a brand refresh for Degenz as well as create a new website allowing for token-gated content. Nightshift has worked with Coinbase, MoonPay and RugRadio among others and are experts in web3 branding. Our new website will grant web3 access to all NFT reports, so you can finally say goodbye to the Google drive!

![New Degenz Website](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/NdHvzD5q4OftAFpRNWcjS.png?height=112&width=958)

**New Hires**

We’re focused on expanding our team as our requirements grow. We’ve so far hired 6 research analysts who have been writing the NFT deep-dive reports, in addition to Mando and myself. We’re in the process of hiring a “Head of Research” who will be responsible for building out and developing our gated content. I’m also delighted to announce that **sashanft.eth** and **berndawgler.eth** will take on new roles as “Community Managers”. Both have done remarkable job for us since the beginning, and we’re excited to see them build this community even further.

We are always on the lookout for talent, and although we are not specifically hir

OSF art, rektguy and beyond

**Origins** 
  
 I was sitting at my desk in a new role, trading Middle East and North African credit. I literally had no idea about emerging markets, and tbh I just wanted to spend more time looking at NFTs, but I had to force myself to make an effort. I’m a weird learner; when I’m genuinely interested in things I can absorb information like a sponge and regurgitate it perpetually with enthusiasm, but when it’s something I’m not interested in, it takes me A LOT of effort to process something. So here I was, trying to learn about Lebanon and Tunisia, when all I could think about was that I definitely would have caught CrypToadz had I not been in the office. As you can see below, I didn’t even get as far as writing down the Tunisian President before I descended into a mindless doodle, now known as “rektguy”.

![the OG rektguy](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/hwUn2eHGImouvKTaubJM5.JPG?height=1258&width=1886)

**History of being an online degen** 
  
 From the ages of 13-18 I spent all my time online. I taught myself how to code, and was active in the digital art community, in particular DeviantArt where I’d post surreal/planetary-style art. I didn’t have enough money for a stylus (although I was working my way towards one by flipping mobile phones on eBay until I got scammed), so I used to draw with my mouse which was ultra painful. I also used to spend a lot of time on Invision Power Board forums and learnt how to skin an entire forum, and used to skin forums for people. In these days there was no crypto so I just did it for free, mainly for clout. Of course, after I turned 18 and went to university, I viewed myself as having “grown up”, and left behind a life of a teenage online degen because I figured I better do things that were more conducive towards getting a “good career”. I’ve always had an artistic ability (something that seems to run in my family), but never saw it as something I could make money out of.  
  
 **Creating again** 
  
 When I stumbled across NFTs last year, I felt a huge wave of nostalgia. It felt like the old DeviantArt days. My instant reaction was to want to jump back in and create stuff, but I was so blown away by the talent out there (and how much digital art had evolved) that I didn’t make a serious attempt, and just focused on collecting. So I spent months without creating anything artistically, before I decided to mint [“gm” on Foundation](https://foundation.app/@OSF/foundation/101618) for a bit of fun. This was the first on-chain mint of rektguy, who at this point was still unnamed. It was a semi-autobiographical character; I was just trying to depict a certain “feeling” about the web3 environment, and indeed in October we were just coming off the back of an insane NFT bull run coupled with upwards price action on crypto. I’m always focused on “feels”, and how well I can depict them on a canvas. For “gm”, it was meant to be an “all is fine in the world and I’m chilled” kind of vibe. Anyways, I liked how it came out so I minted it, and it sold for 0.5ETH. 

!["gm", October 2021](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/umD4ktbtpG_3hQfN-bVuH.jpg?height=1900&width=2600)

I wasn’t really focused on the price but I enjoyed the feeling of someone else actually liking my art and wanting to spend money on it. I hadn’t quite experienced anything like it. So I kept creating, and over time a community gradually formed around my art, primarily through the edition [“Red Lite District”](https://opensea.io/collection/osf-rld), which acts as a utility token for lifetime monthly airdrops. 

![Red Lite District](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/gkpBXr2cwlGIZ3Z5v4yn2yMXrayD0v-zCwEYfxi2NV_L3uy1J0786PX2XHzAT_5UnzNybPkJUzaJNWcIRcBLvK0h6a5FJPzOmzpnrw=w600)

**Developing rektguy** 
  
 As my creations started to gather more of a following (for which I still have to pinch myself over btw), I saw an opportunity to give it a real go and make it something big. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking

The Rise of Degenz

**Failing in 2021**

Degenz was launched on the 5th July 2021 as a profile picture project (PFP). We were 4-5 months into our NFT collecting journey with lots of connections in the space, an understanding that PFPs could be the future but with zero experience from a creator standpoint. It was the early days of experimenting with PFP utility and it became apparent as the year went on we had misjudged massively what would drive long-term value to an NFT project - despite our efforts (airdrops, comic strips, Re-Genz), the Degenz ecosystem ended 2021 with a floor price of zero.

**The Comeback Story**

Coming into 2022 we felt an acute sense of responsibility to those who had trusted us to deliver. We knew we were not the type of people to wallow in failure - if anything we like a challenge. We’ve both spent our careers pulling ourselves out of holes and this was no different. 

Firstly, we knew we had underestimated the time and effort it takes to build a community. We decided to quit our full-time jobs in January and went from spending 6 hours a week on Degenz to spending 12 hours a day turning it around. Secondly, we had misjudged how to leverage our strengths and weaknesses. Our original idea for Degenz to thrive as a comic brand would likely never work because neither of us have any experience or interest in that field. We asked ourselves - where does our expertise lie? 

We’d both spent a decade each in a professional trading environment, at Barclays and Goldman Sachs in London and New York. Here we traded high-yield and distressed debt which is an asset class that often sees wild price swings (sometimes to zero in 24hrs!), is traded over-the-counter and involves detailed analysis of teams, products and businesses. The parallels to trading NFTs were huge. Our experience and knowledge trading this asset class were undoubtedly the biggest contributors to our success as collectors and that’s what we identified as our edge to drive utility to the project. Let’s turn Degenz into a space where we can share this experience and knowledge to help people.

There are a lot of alpha groups in crypto and NFTs which claim to help newcomers. Most of them are garbage. Many are run by people who’ve managed to amass large followings and have a focus on unsustainable short-term flips or pump-and-dumps where the communities themselves are unknowingly often exit liquidity. We wanted to offer an alternative. So we structured Degenz as an “NFT resources” community. We also wanted to focus on an organic growth + low hype strategy. This would give us time to build and foster a community who saw the longer-term vision of the space.

We started with giving unbiased opinions on how we evaluate projects, what we viewed as the key long-term drivers and what were the major red flags. We also stayed far away from calls like “buy XYZ at this price” or “lets buy this together”. We would focus on writing balanced commentary, offering analysis on good and bad outcomes and a full evaluation of each situation. We wanted to create an environment where users picked up the tools to analyse projects, built effective thought processes and use what they’d learnt to make their own decisions as traders, creators and builders. What started off as a forum for learning and discussion, turned into a Discord with daily market commentary, a shared drive with nearly 70 long-form reports on NFT projects and a daily show on Rug Radio where we try to share advice on the space

During our time in the space we were also lucky to build some incredible relationships with top creators and builders. Initially this allowed us to give our community access to various new projects. We were not unique in offering allowlist spots, but we tried to be very selective and over the last few months we have been lucky to give holders access to projects such as WVRPS, LAYERS and Chimpers. As OSF’s art has also continued to take-off, we have been able to reward the community with allowlist mints for 