Throwing Bones To Get The Skullies
Project Showcase: ProbCause’s Skullies
Generative 10K projects permeate the NFT space with different levels of creativity and value. The market is rather oversaturated at this point with this type of product. Regarding the art aspect: meh. Regarding the same tired premise: meh. Everyone’s trying to be the next Bored Apes, but a certain aesthetic and paradigm doesn’t have a lot of play when people are just trying to figure out what the next commodity is to flip.
And then you have Skullies. Multifaceted artist and musician ProbCause created his own generative, yet handmade project. He combines utility with art — the telltale value denominator of a good NFT project — while literally rolling a pair of dice against a key of properties with varied rarity to decide how to draw each Skully.
The dice give more value to the personalization of each Skully. It adds humanity to the generative mix. A Skully is an actual piece of art vs. a randomly generated vector drawing that only exists to be flipped. When talking to ProbCause, his main drive and outlook when creating all of his art in whatever discipline he’s dealing with at the moment are basically broken down into three main parts:
- authenticity
- a multidisciplinary use case approach
- and the desire to build a meaningful and lasting community
BACKGROUND
ProbCause is a musician whose career was sidelined by Covid to a certain degree. During the downtime from his incessant touring over the past 10 years, he discovered crypto and NFTs. He came from music, he always made art and through the NFT space he found what he calls “an amazing home.”
His NFT journey started through Loosies, a fun exercise for ProbCause that got embraced by the community and took on its own life. He initiated this vibrant portrait style in order to loosen himself up a bit. He’s right-handed, but he pushed himself to work with his left hand. Starting with portraits of his friends, he got so much positive feedback that he started doing them for Twitter followers, fans, and other people who made requests. Loosies are still on their trajectory upwards to the moon. It currently costs 10 ETH to commission one for yourself here.
Meanwhile, ProbCause added the Metaverse to his list of places played when he bought his own Cryptovoxels parcel and played DJ sets there for the Metaverse masses. And when Cryptovoxels started letting everyone mint wearables he kind of went nuts. “It’s easy to get addicted,” he explains.
INCEPTION
The idea of Skullies was simmering in his brain but initially, he wanted to mint them as a low-key release on Hic Et Nunc. His friend talked him out of it, saying that he really needed to do a proper launch on the Ethereum blockchain.
So when ProbCause was making decisions about how he wanted to mint Skullies, he thought it was important to appreciate the tech and the concerns of the OG people who built the space before his arrival. He didn’t want to lazy mint. He understood collectors would not find that valuable. And he wanted to make sure the smart contract would impart the finest quality for the people who wanted to collect. He contacted Richerd at manifold.xyz.
Manifold.xyz, a smart contract builder for “the top 1% of crypto-media creators,” developed a custom smart contract for ProbCause, taking a piece of art as payment.
THE GAME
Rolling dice, or “throwing bones” as he and his friends used to call it while playing back in the day, was actually a friend’s suggestion.
ProbCause rolls the dice.
🎲 The first roll decides what the species of the skull will be.
🎲 The second roll decides the amounts of colors and traits.
Then, he draws the Skully according to the bones he threw.
And there’s even some talk of him breaking out the Dungeons and Dragons’ 20 sided dice to get rolling with a gargantuan amount of properties for customization (no pun intended)!
But in regards to rarity and value, at this point, the traits don’t really have much significance except for the alien skull.
“People are gonna buy the Skully that they like the most and not worry about the traits at this point.” — ProbCause
ProbCause also encourages other people to play the game and record themselves rolling the dice so he can create Skullies for them according to the bones THEY threw.
When it comes to pricing, ProbCause points out that “it’s this weird dynamic. I really want them to be accessible to everyone but I gotta make every single one by hand. So I can only keep up with a certain level of demand (and have to charge accordingly).”
I’m stoked that there is a demand for them, because I think we are building something pretty cool.” — ProbCause
THE DROPS
The current plan is to only mint 666 Skullies, which are being released in waves of 33. ProbCause draws them when he has time to, basically. “I don’t want to force them out, (but) they will be as scarce as my creative juices allow them to be. I’m allowing myself to explore all of my artistic needs. The next batch is gonna evolve.”
Loosie holders are the first people to hear about the drops — an hour before anywhere else, like Twitter or the general Discord channel.
For the first wave, there were enough Loosie holders that bought them out in 20 minutes.
“They flew!” -ProbCause.
People hit him up on Twitter asking how they got sold out already but that was the mechanism he developed to reward his initial investors. He wanted to do something a bit more exclusive than the usual 10K “Let’s get everyone into the Discord and make as much money as possible.”
He was cryptic about the drops and people had to stay on their toes in order to nab those Skullies in time. He created scarcity and build-up just by the way he dropped his pieces. But the new password-protected site he’s working on will allow Loosie holders to only mint three Skullies so everyone can have a shot at owning one.
It’s not set up yet, but ProbCause is working on a new mechanism for Skully holders as well: If you burn three Skullies you’ll get a burn token that will enable you to purchase a Loosie.
And of course, holders will be able to vote on certain aspects of the game and paths the projects will take in the future.
THE DIFFERENCE
It would have gone against ProbCause’s grain to generate one of these 10K NFT projects people just pump money into to see if they can get something they can flip for a much larger profit.
“When it becomes about playing the lottery in hopes of getting the rare ones to just flip — that’s part of the game but it becomes about something else at that point. (And) I think it’s kind of weird when we have influencers who are being paid who aren’t saying that they’re being paid to pump these projects. I think some of that stuff is pretty toxic.”
For example, “rug pulls like what happened with the Fame Lady Squad made me sick to my stomach.”
“Ultimately, people forget that these are real people who are spending their real money.” -ProbCause
“Some of these projects are good for the space because they bring a lot of new people into the space. But I don’t want everything to become a trashy 10K project where nothing is doing really well. I don’t like the lazy stuff. My approach is a little bit different.” he says.
THE COMMUNITY
ProbCause’s first question to himself was, “How can I authentically build a community and stand out in a space where everyone is using the word community as a selling point for their projects? I’m just going to make it small. I’m not going to do something like give away an ape so that 1000 people join my Discord immediately. I would rather have 100 people who care about what I’m doing than 10,000 people there who are just looking for the next hit.”
He describes his community as organic and wanting to help him and each other through collaborations and brainstorming.https://tenor.com/embed/10320174
ProbCause has a lot of ideas from the long-term standpoint of what he wants to do in the future but is figuring a lot of things out as he goes along. After a community brainstorming session, he starts thinking and making decisions about what’s going to be.
“I have the resources to bring a lot of these things into fruition,” he states.
Owning a Skully is like being a Patreon supporter. A holder gets early access to drops, music releases, and various other forthcoming benefits that are still in the works. Exclusive events for Discord members and Cryptovoxels participants are also on the horizon, including IRL Skully meetups. “I’m trying to find ways to bring this into the real world and into real-life situations where we can give back to people who are involved in this stuff.”
Wave 3 of the Skullies released at 0.333 each to another quick sellout, this time in less than 2 minutes. This was to be the last Skullies drop for a little while. Over the next couple of weeks, the first 99 Skully holders will take some important votes to shape and move this project forward.
💀 Skullies GMI!
You can learn more about ProbCause’s SKULLIES Project via the links below:
🔗 Skullies: https://opensea.io/collection/skulliesgmi
🔗 Twitter: https://twitter.com/skulliesgmi
🔗 Discord: https://discord.com/invite/yR2NECspNs
🔗 Loosies: https://www.loosiesportraits.com/
🔗 ProbCause: https://www.probcause.com/
🔗 Music: https://tinyurl.com/ProbCause-Spotify
🐳 WHALE COMMUNITY RESOURCES
⚫ ️Website: https://whale.me/
⚫ ️Discord: https://discord.gg/whale
⚫️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/whale_community
⚫️ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/Channel
⚫️ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whale__community/
⚫️ Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/whalecommunity
⚫️ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/WHALE_Community
⚫️ Medium: https://medium.com/whale-community
⚫️ Telegram: https://t.me/WHALE_Community
By The Cryptory on .
Exported from Medium on February 21, 2024.