Originally posted on PunkScape.xyz on Sept. 25th 2022

Damn… One Year. Has it been one year already??!

Whenever i think about the origin of Scapes, i go back to this thread.

July 2021. I had been itching badly to build in web3. I had been learning Solidity since February and building my open source contract extensions while properly diving into Ethereum and i just really really wanted to apply what i had learned so far. Then, Jack Butcher had this idea (TBH reading back on our conversations, the whole thing was all Jack and i ran with it wtf).

Anyways. It instantly clicked… Hell yeah — of course! If punks are your digital identity… Punks need a home right? Your digital identity needs a home! Many punks are so similar — with a custom background you can truly build a brand around it…

At the time, it was an experiment. One of many. “Let’s see if there is any merit to this; let’s see what people think”. “Build in public”, “Talk about what you’re doing”… “Alright” i thought…

There i was, publishing that thread to my 300 Twitter followers 😅.

To my surprise, it was my best performing tweet ever. Got over 60 likes in a couple days, even people like Taylor Gerring (early days Ethereum Foundation) started following the project. I’d lie if i said the public validation wasn’t what pushed me to build this out (60+ likes might not sound like a lot, but to me, it was incredible 🌅).

So there i was, on & off drawing these little 72x24 pixel landscapes for a couple months and building out smart contracts, testing stuff on Rinkeby, figuring out how they should look on OpenSea etc etc.

As you know, one part of the project were the OneDayPunks. But as they were just black&white copies of their CryptoPunk counterpart, the (Punk-)Scapes were definitely the first one i ever made from the standpoint of “designing a collection”. And while i was writing out the code to generate the scapes, between testing different collection dynamics and rarity distributions, iterating on different compositions and placement of layers i was learning so so much — it was probably one of the most intense learning endeavors of my life thus far. There is just nothing like actually doing it and pushing through to the end. Stupid details like combining multiple metadata fields into single visual traits took me days to get right. I built out a website with proper profiles for each punk. A unique minting flow, where you actually “minted” your banner while looking at your profile. Figuring out how to test the whole UX from the perspective of a CryptoPunk without owning a CryptoPunk and so on and so forth.

“Why is everything so quiet in this server?”
”I’m building.”

While at the time i must have been a big burden to my dear family, i also look back to those intense days of focused work with gratitude and joy. Looking back on these intense sprints of work, where we don’t yet know if sth will work but have enough faith to push through — that’s what makes me happy with myself and my work. And while there have been a few of those over the past year (like the Gallery27 launch), nothing compares to those months of first building out the project. I hope i’ll get many more of these sprints over the next few years.

And then came mint day… The mint had three phases. During the first 24 hours, the mint was restricted to OneDayPunk holders. During the second 24 hours post mint, CryptoPunk holders were allowed to mint Scapes. Only then did the sale open up to the public. I thought had to do it this way, because i promised each ODP to have access to one Scape, that would be reserved for them for one day.

Out of 10k unique wallets holding ODPs, only ~15% minted a Scape. Would it have gone differently if it was entirely open? Maybe, who knows… One interesting learning was around the communication with the CryptoPunk community. Most of them had no idea who i was, and what my intentions were. Most couldn’t read my smart contracts and trust was (understandably) scarce — to a point where even the moderators in the punks discord told people not to touch the PunkScape contract (no hard feelings, each one of the mods now own scapes 🤗). Little things like requiring them to log in with their punk wallet for the mint were just dumb oversights on my end. For future endeavors in crypto & web3, the most important design decision is “building for trust”. It doesn’t matter whether your intentions are pure — you could be just another fake identity trying to hack people and steal their assets.

After a small increase of sales when they became available to the public, the mint slowed down a lot. To a point where we had like 2.5 thousand mints for the entire week after, with just a few new mints each day. In any case — all this was still a huge success for me though, far beyond original expectations for the project.

Even though it looked like the project wouldn’t mint out for months (if ever), the core community that was forming around it was already incredible, and our Discord was nice, civil, intelligent and excited about the project. People started ideating what could be built on top, creating memes and tweeting about the project.

Another learning here is to build on top of existing infrastructure. I made a big deal about integrating with ENS usernames for the OneDayPunk and CryptoPunk profiles early. That attracted the finest of the web3 community. People that actually cared about decentralization, and understood the premise of digital identity.

And one thing i had complete oversight of is how amazing PunkScapes would work with other pixel art projects, besides punks. I didn’t think anyone would be interested beyond the punk community but boy was i wrong. Most of the traction towards the end of the mint actually came from the CyberKongz community. And Scapes worked absolutely great with them. So another learning is to while it’s wise (and so beautiful about the space) to build on top of existing infrastructure and communities, it’s not wise to box oneself in completely with the branding of a project. “PunkScapes” weren’t just for punks. And i had the biggest trouble warming up to the idea to change the brand (which we only did like 9 months later, and the process of which isn’t completed yet). So — name things in ways that make them widely applicable while still building and adding value for specific niches.

One thing was certainly new to me: After the success of the OneDayPunks mint, and with the last couple days of PunkScape sale pump, there were instantly many people who wanted to contribute somehow. Getting that right — with whom, how much and with which incentives to deepen collaboration is an incredibly difficult task.

I especially want to thank Hearsay for all his permissionless work on the project. He instilled the idea of building a team around the project, became the first team member only a couple weeks after mint and co-lead the project during those months. Soon after, Frankfarnam (King of Memes → Marketing), and Akuti (Botmaster, King of Tech and AI) joined.

Together, we figured out what to do for Gallery27, which according to the dates in the PunkScape metadata started on 02/02/22. I could have never built that alone…

Akuti gamified world building with Scapes by building an incredible “Merge” bot. I don’t think anything like it exists in the NFT space.

And while we were building out Gallery27, Bxb joined to create 10k generative music tracks — one for each Scape — Scape.Radio.

Hearsay worked tirelessly on Chapter II, animating over 120 scape traits, and building everything in a way that allowed for interactivity and the playfulness we’ve all come to love about “Chapter II: An Interactive Experience”. All this was just one upgrade to scapes after another…

We hosted hackathons, and artathons, celebrated the co-creation of memes, and figured out how we could market the project without making it a cheap shill.

We built the “Builder Tool”, which made the scapes compatible with now over 40 other projects (and counting).

Together, we created an NFT auction house called “NFPeace” that automatically and trustlessly sent 100% of auction proceeds to humanitarian support in the Ukraine.

We built out proper profiles with deeper ENS integration for anyone owning a punk.

We put all Scape elements on chain in our new “Scapes Archive”.

We teased the tech we’re exploring for “Chapter III”.

And we made it to become the stage design for a main fashion show during the September 2022 New York Fashion Week.

What an incredible journey it has been so far.

Scapes might be tiny.
Our community might be small.
Our floor might be shrubbery.
But we’re here to stay.

And thank you all for your incredible support over the past year! It means the world…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SCAPES!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SCAPOOOORS!