Substrapunk Community Idea ‘Raypunks’
Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion, I do not represent Unique or any official role with the Subtrapunk community! It is purely an idea at this stage. But one that has been discussed among the community multiple times, and did exclusively received positive feedback, leading to the writing of this concept as a basis to perhaps move it further if possible and desired.
It has been brought up that Substrapunks lack variety, compared to their paragon, the cryptopunks. While the more subtle color palette also has upsides (e.g. Sub’punks blending in great when inserted in existing art and photography), this is a valid criticism. While we do have and love our Blondies, there are Alien, Apes and Zombie Cryptopunks, very rare and sought after, adding flavour for collectors, and drawing a lot of attention through market prices they are fetching.
While Substrapunks are an intended homage to Cryptopunks, they are not a 1:1 clone, with their own twists and styles. Straight up introducing Aliens, Apes and Zombies feels wrong for that reason. A possible alternative theme suggested by a community member was ‘ray/energy’. For example, a very limited amount of Substrapunks could be turned into the following:
- 10x Dark Matter Punks
- 50x X-ray Punks
- 140x radioactive Punks
There could be a huge initial draw, where randomly selected Punks get the chance (if their owner consents) to become one of the above categories. Through this, every Substrapunk, from the rarest 1-Trait to the most common ‘floor punk’, would have the chance to become an extremely rare Dark Matter punk. Maybe a big initial draw for about half of the above, and then smaller rounds on a regular basis, until all are chosen could be a way for introduction — or it could just be a one-time event to celebrate Unique launching.
Can this be added retroactively? I think yes! The blockchain and NFT-space is all about exploring new things, and this would be a first, and draw attention to the Subpunks and Unique and the whole NFT Strategy on Kusama, which is something that is desperately needed — a popular youtuber claiming that no such thing as NFT’s on Substrate exist is testament to that.
Thankfully it is not Unique’s goal to drive up baseless hype, but rather focus on building for now, some more recognition within the Blockchain and NFT space could help in many ways. There are artists and projects looking at alternative platforms RIGHT NOW due to gas prices, and I believe it would be beneficial to start raising awareness to get creators and builders on board.
Some points that seem important to me to retain character and integrity of the Subpunks:
- Don’t change the original ‘character’ or traits of the punks chosen for this. Rather use something like overlays, filters, backgrounds and cool additional effects besides them. So more adding to the original Punk, rather than actually altering him.
- Limit of 10.000 Substrapunks needs to remain.
- Always requires explicit consent by the holder of a punk drawn to be eligible for this. Could be shown by a transaction to a specific address or something similar.
- Draws should be done in a transparent and provably fair fashion, so that every punk has the same odds of getting the chance to become a ‘ray-punk’.
- While Substrapunks are open-source and this could be done as additional community project, I feel it would only really gain traction and make sense if the devs support the idea, and embed it within their marketplace, and within the existing set of 10.000 Substrapunks.
No idea on how this could best be realized technically, but only the images would need to be changed/receive their special overlays/filters, if need be by burning the old punk and then creating the energy version. Cryptopunks exchange Male/Female for Ape/Alien/Zombie, perhaps that’s also a possibility. Or does transitioning to Unique Main-net present a great opportunity for this? I don’t know, but I am sure where there is a will there is a way…
In general, I view this as a classic Win-Win-Win idea. Of course, haters are gonna hate, how dare you change NFT’s etc. — but they’re hating anyway, so it should not concern or hold us back exploring and doing things that have not been done before (such as retroactive additions to NFT’s).
Looking forward to discussions within the community, and hopefully at some point the developers too!
