.100Ξ No More — Why Art101.io lowered the mint price for BASΞD VITALIK
Seven months is a lifetime in NFT-land. And now, August seems like a dream. A time before invite-only discords, when mints weren’t allow-list only. Today, royalties are topping 10%, minting prices are skyrocketing, and rugs are charging 1 Ξ. What started with Mekaverse has climaxed with HAPE heartache and the Squiggles rug. It’s time to reverse course, and Art101 is here to help with BASΞD VITALIK. It’s a generative collection of 4962, reflecting Ethereums ATH, unique PFP NFT portraits of Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, an unabashed spin on the old-fashion generative PFP.
We started Art101 in August 2021, dropping free mints and making NFTs more accessible. Offering to onboard people with an easy high-effort free-to-mint NFT, while the hype was just beginning. And now we’re doing our first paid drop. After completing our initial roadmap of three generative collections with an additional two more just for fun. We’re dropping the current meta, for an old-school approach.
All in an attempt to finance a legal Art101 DAO, distribute tokens, and give our community members a stake in our brand. Investing in the NFT community at large, and making helpful NFT utilities like NFTchecker.io. In addition to the completion of our Round 2 Roadmap.
BASΞD VITALIK will also act stepping as a stone to a larger series of crypto-icons, including ‘fake satoshi,’ for holders.
Like me, NFT Twitter is longing for the good old days of .06 Ξ and .08 Ξ price tags. When you paid for NFT drops developed with know-how, not hashlips. We’re now jumping through hoops for the chance at paying .5Ξ to mint an NFT with a 10% royalty that goes to anonymous developers for copy and pasting.
So let’s do a callback, no more .100Ξ.
BASΞD VITALIK will mint publicly for .06 Ξ on February 22nd, holders of Art101’s genesis drop, Non-Fungible Soup, will receive half-off, minting at .03 Ξ. Allow-list spots will be handed out at random to Art101 community members and supporters, they’ll also receive 50% off. On the secondary markets, BASΞD VITALIK will have a 5% royalty, just like those bygone days of yore.
No hashlips, BASΞD VITALIK uses home-grown python scripts, an in-house contract, and FOSS Software like Inkscape and svg_stack. BASΞD VITALIK is an NFT for purists. An NFT for those who remember a time when documentation mattered and low effort wasn’t par for the course. In keeping with Art101’s philosophy art history education, it’s rooted in historical technique namely facial color-zones.
Each BASΞD VITALIK will be hosted on IPFS in both vector and raster formats. Every NFT’s Provenance will be documented on our website basedvitalik.io, after reveal, and then mirrored on IPFS. Your NFT and its associated documentation will be immutable and live forever. In keeping with the precedent set by BAYC.
So far 2022 has lowered the proverbial bar. And Squiggles was the capper. Confidence at mint is at an all-time low, and so is effort. Projects keep popping up faster, while experience is sparse, and rugs abound.
Unlike most, Art101 is a fully doxxed team and incorporated as an llc in Wyoming. I myself have a decade of original content created under my real name, Carty Sewill.
Not to mention, we’ve earned ourselves four OpenSea, and countless other, verifications along the way. Our first two drops, Non-Fungible Soup and MondrianNFT, are both verified collections on OpenSea, as are our accounts, Art101 and Cartyisme.
