Future PROOF
Today we present our vision for the coming months.
youtube.com/watch?v=DinbkxbYMPg
In the last 6 months
- Moonbirds launched
- Oddities launched
- NFT NYC events
- 100 PROOF podcast, weekly Parliaments and Discord Town halls Q&As.
- Full time PROOF analyst with two deep-dive reports and hired a Director of Research
- Grails II completed
- Now a team of 30
PROOF European Tour
Libson
Paris
Berlin
London for Frieze
Fun casual meetups. Less of a party and more of a way to chat with others and getting to know each other.
Stay tuned to Discord for all the details.
Also considering Asia and Australia for the future.
PROOF of Conference
Multi-day celebration of every aspect of web3.
Art exhibitions, IRL mint experiences, and talks from leading figures in the space.
Interest-based social events that are designed to facilitate connections between community members.
It’ll also be a party and celebration of all things web3.
PROOF Collective members will be receiving a VIP pass for free.
Moonbirds and Oddities have discounted passes and first access when tickets go live.
We’re aiming for mid-2023. Dates and more details next month.
The PROOF Collective.
Our mission with the collective was always twofold.
1. How do we make sense of the noise. Bringing clarity, insights, and a point of view to the NFT world.
2. How can we unlock exclusive access to this community of collectors?
Outside of the early podcast access, we’re actively building out a team to support the Collective with data and editorial-driven insights.
@punk9059 Director of Research will share that plan.
Have three main goals.
Provide the PROOF collective with insightful, data-driven, actionable analytics about NFTs.
Build the dialogue around NFTs in the Collective
Establish PROOF to the whole NFT ecosystem as a go-to place for institutional level research on the NFT space.
Monthly
@wardaddycapital has been publishing monthly Deep Dives that explore new industries and sectors of the NFT ecosystem.
The goal is that one year later, you can see that @wardaddycapital and the team got ahead on the trends that matter.
Daily
A daily newsletter that will be available to the Collective every morning.
Find charts that are interesting in the space. See what's moving. What the main themes the past 24 hours are.
Weekly
A weekly cadence of reports on trends and themes that are interesting from a statistical or thematic perspective.
If there are things that are interesting and you want analysis on, let us know. We're here to serve you to help you and make your insight better.
@eli_schein sharing ongoing efforts to bring world class artists to PROOF.
Our role in this space:
- be a steward for creative expression
- Launchpad for outstanding artists to share their work
Today, we’re excited to announce a series of curated products.
Grails will now be a 3 time a year event.
-same quality, fun and surprises
-With new curatorial focuses, themes and mechanics
-Curation for season 3 is already underway, and we have some outstanding artists committed to participate.
Collaborations
Traditionally, our collaborations have been focused on static drops of artwork.
Going forward we want to find ways to unlock creativity with the artists we work with.
One way is to make our smart contract expertise available to the artists who we collaborate with.
You can imagine a world where this leads to novel drop mechanics or generative projects never before possible.
We’ll be releasing the names of the first Collaboration soon.
PROOF Curated
A new product that will invite top artists and curators - the names you recognize and know - to curate a limited release of their favorite emerging artists in partnership with PROOF.
These curated drops can come with Grails like reveals, or brand new drop mechanisms we’ve yet to announce.
A wonderful way to once again put artists at the forefront of everything we do, while empowering curators to truly help shape each release.
The first Curated will be in partnership with a season II Grails artist. More on that coming soon.
And finally Genesis. This is where we’ll bring established traditional artists and creators into NFTs for the very first time.
Grails - same fun reveal mechanic
Collaborations - extension of collabs we've done in the past and explore what's possible with smart contracts,
Curated - curated releases focused on emerging artists
Genesis - traditional artists will release their very first NFT for PROOF
In total, we’re targeting 10 events a year, almost one every month and we’re laying the foundations to make sure we deliver on this cadence now.
You can expect us to hit full stride by early next year.
Moonbirds
To date:
- 200k ETH in total volume traded
- #8 all time volume on Opensea
- 95% holders nested
First updates from @divergenceharri
The first is that we aren't just putting the birds on-chain, we're putting them in-chain.
Now, I know that a lot of people will be wondering what on earth I'm talking about, and what the difference is.
What I mean is that the bird images you see in OpenSea, and in your wallets and galleries, will be constructed by the contract itself from art layers stored on chain.
This is unusual but certainly not unique. On Chain Monkey is an example of a PFP collection made like this, and there are generative art projects which take it even further and put the code right into the contract.
But at the moment the market doesn't distinguish between that approach and other projects where the code used to create the art is archived somewhere on the blockchain but the NFTs themselves point to images stored off-chain.
Both approaches have their places, so this isn’t one-upmanship. We just think it's confusing when the same name is used in multiple ways, and are keen to make that distinction easier to understand.
The second thing this unlocks is that Proof Collective holders will be able to activate a special background for their birds, as long as they are in the same wallet as their collective pass.
When that bird is sold or transferred, the background will change back to the original. This doesn’t impact rarity. It’s a little fun flex.
This is not a trivial piece of work but its the primary focus for our smart contract team now that grails is done, so it won’t be long.
The future of Moonbirds from @JustinMezzell
We're grateful to have a collector base that is filled with initiative, creativity, and entrepreneurial drive.
You've done amazing things with Moonbirds brand and we want you to do more alongside us.
A question we ask ourselves internally is how do we grow the Moonbirds brand into a truly global household name? A top 2 or 3 PFP project.
First, internally here at PROOF, we’re building out a business development team to focus on Moonbirds.
This team will be tasked with creating partnerships with other large brands to create cultural moments that further the Moonbirds reach and exposure.
Also a DAO that empowers you all to build creative Moonbirds projects alongside us.
And then, to go along side that, dedicated PROOF team members to help shepherd DAO projects towards completion.
Because good idea and good intentions go a long way, but not always enough.
Also, we want Moonbirds and PROOF to always be known as a team that push the boundaries of what is possible, coming up with new and innovative ways to leverage blockchain technology.
And lastly, we are planning for a slow thoughtful expansion of the Moonbirds brand, hatching new members daily.
This will be done with an eye towards giving back to the original collectors.
DAO
A lot of details being worked through, so you’ll see more updates from us before year end.
First, the DAO will you to decide which projects can use the Moonbirds name.
This is different to the art copyright rights which are already open to all via CC0.
And secondly, the DAO is going to control a soon to be formed treasury.
This treasury will allow the DAO to deploy capital toward Moonbirds related projects or investments that further the Moonbirds mission.
That treasury will be bootstrapped with funding from PROOF and will receive ongoing support through Moonbirds secondary royalties.
We believe that the DAO will serve as our vehicle to empower the most creative among the community.
To build a big brand, to make a dent, you have to either have a massive marketing team and budget, or you remove creative friction (as we did with cc0) and then empower a grassroots community movement.
We believe that PROOF combined with an empowered community is a team that can’t be matched by any centralized organization.
And I want to emphasize really, really, strongly that the DAO isn’t us handing over responsibility for creating cool new things to the community.
We’re still here building really cool things for you, including things which are experimental and fun and attractive to those of you who want to participate.
We’re just empowering the community to build alongside us.
Moonbirds Mythics
Today, we’re excited to announce the first official expansion to the Moonbirds collection: Moonbirds Mythics.
A couple weeks ago you may seen a graphic from the Oddities.
This is their subterranean tunnels where they burrow in search of food, treasure, or really anything odd.
Recently, they have been persuaded by the Moonbirds to search for the lost eggs buried underground.
20,000 eggs buried and lost for centuries.
Today, we’re excited to announce that all 20,000 eggs have been discovered and recovered by the Oddities.
As we all know, an egg requires heat to be hatched.
There are two ways this can happen.
One is through the collective warmth of the Moonbirds nests.
Each day, on the reveal website at exactly the same time, 25 new Mythics will hatch.
We don’t know which eggs will hatch at any time, or which Moonbird will be hatching the egg.
All we know is that you only need to nest the Moonbird. Unnested Moonbirds won’t be eligible.
So each day recipients will be randomly selected from nested Moonbirds, and hatching will continue until all 20,000 eggs are hatched.
This will allow for a slow thoughtful expansion.
But what about the Oddities who are doing all the work?
Oddities don't nest but they too have discovered a way to hatch a new Moonbird Mythic.
Deep in the depths, you'll find a fire.
We call it Moonfire.
It only burns in one special place and that is the hearth of the Odd God.
When an egg enters that hearth, it will hatch.
There are two drawbacks, though.
The first is that the eggs can’t get into the hearth on their own. They need to be carried in by an Oddity.
Sadly, it’s not something an Oddity can survive, so it will be burned.
Do you carry an egg to the Odd God or do you remain an Oddity?
The hearth isn't very big and you can only fit 25 eggs and Oddities at a time.
And each takes a full 24 hours to hatch.
So that’s a total of 25 Oddities that can be burned each day.
Because nested Moonbirds are selected at random, and we don’t know how many Oddities will be burned, we can’t perfectly predict how many Mythics each nested Moonbird will receive.
What we can say is that everyone has an equal shot.
And importantly, because these aren’t the Moonbirds’ or Oddities’ own eggs, the chance of hatching a special or rare Mythic is equal for everyone.
No inherited traits.
In one extreme scenario, where no Oddities are brave enough to enter the fire and every Moonbird is nested, there are just 25 hatching a day.
That’s two years and two and a half months for the whole collection to hatch, and an average of 2 Mythics per Moonbird.
At the other extreme, if every single Oddity was prepared to sacrifice itself for the Mythics and every Moonbird is nested, it would take 400 days - a little over a year - and Moonbirds would hatch an average of 1 Mythic each.
Because this is fully random, I do want to stress that that means that if your MB has already hatched, they still have a chance to hatch another one as long as they’re nested.
Because they’ll all be generated in advance, we’ll be able to let you know the rarity banding of your Mythic as it mints so you don’t have to wait for the full collection to hatch to understand how it all fits together.
The art is a collaboration of the art team.
Want to make more of a diverse, wild, mystical imagery.
This isn't the final but just sketches and the ideas. Things may change.
Love the idea of thinking of the Mythics as being collectors of art, culture and creativity.
These aren't final. But we did colorize a few different directions to show you what they'd look like in high fidelity.
They're full body now but may not be.
In the original Moonbirds collection, there were masks. But it didn't feel like it fit at the time. But masks is something Justin has wanted to bring back for a collection.
@Auldrobot did the illustration and @ColinHesterly brought it to full color.
Moonbirds Mythics are very high fidelity and require more illustration work, so it’s going to take a bit longer to create this collection of 20,000.
Because of that, you can expect us to launch this collection early next year.
Codename Highrise
We mentioned at the Future PROOF preview our philosophy for building products:
- Transparently
- Iteratively
- With community providing input through beta testing.
Rather than build this platform in secret, we’ll build it out in the open with you along for the ride.
As long as you have a Moonbird, Oddities, or PROOF Collective pass, we'll let you in and start playing with this early.
For example, you can expect to see our product and design team bouncing ideas off you in the Discord, hosting user feedback sessions, or collecting input via surveys.
Collectively you have some incredible ideas and great insight, so we want to make the most of that.
@divergenceharri with an early preview
Project Highrise is a platform digital collectors can call home.
A unified, token-gated place for all things PROOF and web3.
Here, depending on what you hold, you’ll find everything built by or for PROOF:
research reports
podcasts
DAO proposals
Nest where the Mythics will hatch
The Odd Gods hearth
Merch from us or from DAO-funded projects.
This infrastructure will be the very heart of PROOF, the city center of our digital world.
For this to be usable it requires really simple authentication and a single Proof identity. You want easy phone access, but in a way that doesn’t mean making security compromises.
That means not digging out your hardware wallet multiple times a day.
And if you’re someone who spreads your collection across multiple wallets, or even multiple chains, you should be able to link them together and get all your benefits without hopping between logins.
That may not be the sexiest part of what we’re building, but it’ll be so powerful and it’s just one example of the core tech we’re developing.
In time, we hope to make a lot of this available for others. It's our goal to lift up and support the creators around us.
That’s your home, where you can explore and express your on-chain identity.
Here's a design mock up we’re working on although I want to stress that we’re still really early in this process, with a lot of work to go to make sure this is as valuable and as fun as it can be.
As a PROOF NFT holder - starting with Collective, Moonbirds, and Oddities - you'll be eligible to create your own curated galleries, viewable to everyone in or out of the community.
This is a mock up we've put together from Kevin's collection.
Right now this is all ETH mainnet stuff because that's how we'll launch, but the goal is to support multiple chains so you can really mix and match in a single gallery.
Looking at the gallery itself, something that's really important to us is that we don't just want to display art - we want to help you really tell a story.
In this example, he's recorded some audio commentary, so you can hear what it is he loves about these pieces.
If you’ve enjoyed the gallery, you can sign the guestbook.
How cool would it be to check in one day and discover an artist has appreciated your curation.
We'll have a bunch of discovery mechanisms to help explore, like suggestions for galleries containing similar artists.
This is a pretend artist name Convergence.
We want this to be the best place you could go to learn about a piece of art.
Commentary from artist and curator.
Where the work was featured not only in our content but great content from all over.
Collection insights as well.
So that's a bit on the collection, what about the artist?
Create the ultimate artist profiles from the perspective of the artists themselves.
Announcements feed which interested collectors can subscribe to.
Collectors can stay updated so you don't miss important updates.
We can link through to all kinds of interesting content, and their collections.
Anything is possible based on what artists tell us they want.
If we can get all the best artists using our platform, the collectors will follow and we can create something really special.
We’re continuing to explore design concepts which stay true to this idea of a digital city, but really the focus is on the content we’ll be playing with.
We’ve had some fantastic investors w/ @trueventures and @alexisohanian 's fund @sevensevensix
But we’re aiming to turn PROOF into a globally recognized brand w/ a suite of great products, and that needs additional capital to build and support from a deep bench of experts.
Today, we’re thrilled to announce we’ve closed a new $50M round of financing.
Led by Andressen Horowitz @a16z , with participation from @derekedws from @Collab_Currency, @FLAMINGODAO, @svangel, @trueventures, and @sevensevensix .
This brings a ton of experience to the table. They provide help with marketing, engineering and security teams, recruitment services, legal and regulatory teams, and so much more.
I hope you realize as we do, this is a great vote of confidence from some of the most respected investors in web3, as well as capital to keep delivering great products and services as we mature this business over the long term.
For Kevin, this is a dream list of investors.
One more thing to announce...
It's a big thing but we're not allowed to say too much about it.
Today can confirm that we are working towards a PROOF Token (name TBD).
As you can imagine, designing and launching a token is both a technological lift and a legal one.
We can’t give you a lot of details at this time, but here is what we can say.
The world doesn’t need another token for speculation.
When we do something it should be uniquely our own, w/ real utility, something that will push what’s possible in new and exciting directions.
We’ll have more to share in the coming months, but expect a larger unveiling Q1 2023.
Kevin hopes today’s roadmap and funding announcement gives you a glimpse into this future version of PROOF.
One that is about thoughtful expansion, doubling down on our existing collections, empowering the creative community, building with art and artists in mind,
Creating tooling for all of web3, and of course, doing this for many many years to come. We’re excited you’re on this journey with us and we’re forever grateful. LG.