9 months ago, everyone declared DeGods dead.
This week we broke into the Top 5 NFT collections in the world.
I've been on the team since we first had the idea in
@frankdegods
apartment almost 1 year ago.
Here's my no-bullshit thread on the rise of
@DeGodsNFT
🧵
Hey my name is Taylor and I’m the COO of DeGods.
With the
@DuppiesNFT
announcement today...
I just wanted to share a little presentation on how we are thinking about the next steps to scale our community & team.
The future of DeGods will be decided by just one thing…
the y00ts engagement farming got out of hand.
the reality is a lot of y00tlist apps looked very similar...super passionate people looking for a community to add value to.
we wanted to make sure truly die-hard people who might get overlooked, didn't.
1/3
@frankdegods
Hey, appreciate it. This isn't an engagement farm... you can literally unfollow me as soon as the accounts come back.
(i write some cool threads sometimes though 🥹👉👈)
Bro tag someone who's been absolutely grinding for y00tlist.
I swear if you tag someone with like one tweet about y00ts I'll have
@SolSorcerer
ban you from the list.
I want to share our new approach on the future of DeGods merch.
This thread will explain our thought process behind the Summer/Spring 2022 collection & what the future holds.
today at the DeGods house was pretty great.
lots of productivity, several unlocks. Things are moving forward in the right direction.
excited for the 2nd and beyond.
I'm sorry to anyone who felt like they needed to tweet 100x per day or shill themselves constantly to be considered.
that completely goes against the ethos of the Scholarships product and y00ts.
we're working everyday to improve these experiences the best we can.
I see people over complicating their
@y00tsNFT
applications.
Watching the team accept hundreds of applicants, here’s a dumb simple strategy:
1. Apply for
@y00tlist
2. Share your unique value visually on Twitter
3. Refine your content until you get noticed by the community
In many ways, DeadGods was the perfect symbolism for the DeGods community.
War-tested, bloody, battered and bruised.
Unfazed by opinions or market conditions. Always moving forward in our own lane.
I know it sounds corny but nothing has changed since we minted last year.
everyday we show up and try to make the right decisions for our holders.
sometimes we make the right decision, other times we don’t.
things might feel different on Twitter but nothing has changed here.
@mtx_hero
@frankdegods
@cryptosanthoshK
@DeGodsNFT
@y00tsNFT
Literally not a single person on this team is driven by money.
We drive 10 year cars and work all day. Everyone here just wants to build something special.
But keep minting the next cheap project, and let us keep making money for our holders.
grateful for
@frankdegods
.
this dude is just as special as a friend and human as he is as leader.
You changed my life in more ways than you could imagine.
Love you brother ♥️
today is just like any other day...
artists crouched around a table grinding to make exceptional art.
devs in a dark room meticulously crafting an incredible minting experience.
everyone else firefighting tens of unseen problems...
battle tested team...battle ready.
But today is just like any other for
@DeGodsNFT
&
@y00tsNFT
.
Same team, still working to create magical experiences for a bunch of internet strangers.
A lot of new faces though.
As corny as it sounds, it's just the beginning.
piece of advice:
if you haven't made y00tlist yet, don't comment on every post saying "wen YL 😩" or "check my app".
it comes off as entitled & cringe.
those accepted proved themselves by posting great content, having a proven track record or being a great community member.
“Provide the most value to our holders”
That’s always been the mission.
And so far, it’s manifested itself in a token, an art upgrade, a basketball team and now...
@DuppiesNFT
.
We’re learning as we go & we believe we haven’t even scratched the surface for what is possible yet
May 19 - Reload
We were finally ready to announce our next collection.
@y00tsNFT
is the product of months of tireless work to create the most elite network the internet has ever known.
Next week, a new story begins. If you've read this far, you're apart of it.
Summer 2022 - DeShoeys
Videos of DeGods chugging beer from shoes started to flood internet.
This has sparked some controversy, with some critics saying "That's gross!"
To which DeGods typically respond, "Check floor price, bozo".
This tends to silence aforementioned critics.
the team started aggregating people in tweet replies to make them discoverable.
& this strategy got overused (then immediately turned into a way for cheap engagement for copycat influencers)
How do DeGods fit into this?
We look at ourselves as an early Disney or Marvel.
We plan to build the best Web3 powered brands/IP for as long as we can.
DeGods is our first popular brand. It will not be the last.
The key: These future projects will all mint in $DUST
As this team has grown, we have been searching for a single goal.
It’s important that our entire extended team has a North Star that both navigates & motivates us in the right direction.
Here’s what we came up with:
Sep. 2021: Instantly Viral
We launched with one Twitter thread.
It explained the "Paperhands Bitch Tax", a 33.3% tax on anyone that listed under the floor.
Within a week, we were the most hyped upcoming mint on Solana.
This video was made 2 days after we opened Discord, lol.
Back to NFTs….
The reality is the DeGods/DeadGods artwork can only reach and excite so many people.
That’s fine. We plan to make more art to appeal to a lot more people.
As we build new forms of IP & brands, DeGods & $DUST will always be at the center of the universe.
Good News: DeGods merch is finally being delivered.
Bad News: Some of the t-shirts are pretty fucking oversized.
But you know how we roll. We're fixing it.
Check Discord for the update.
Next, we are focusing our attention on new collection(s).
This is something we believe will create the most value to our holders over a long period of time.
But why?
august 9th, 2023 was the day we launched "degods season iii"
it was the day after - that it became clear to me the depth of the problems we had within our company.
it started when we created
@dust_labs
in 2022 - a venture backed business - to create SaaS tooling for Web3. the
Been quiet lately, but ready to shut the critics up.
It’s fucking DeGods season again.
When DeGods win, everyone does.
That’s how we plan to do it.
Let’s bring this Solana NFT bull market back.
April 28th - Fuck it, We Ball
DeGods became the first NFT community to buy a Big3 basketball team.
Killer 3s.
Shortly after us, GaryVee, MoonBirds, DogeCoin, & SnoopDogg also purchased a team.
This year we didn't win the championship, but we love a good comeback story.
Apr 1: DeadGods Reveal
In anticipation, the floor went from 10 SOL to 100 SOL. Many "sold the news" & exited at 80 SOL on reveal day.
They fucked up.
In the following weeks DeGods took the throne as
#1
NFT project on Solana, hitting a record-breaking floor price of 333 SOL.
Imagine 5 thousand internet homies all owning a basketball team together and absolutely obliterating a league for 8 weeks straight…oh wait that’s
@DeGodsNFT
“So DeGods wants to do a ton of mints?”
No & Yes
The problem with most Gen-2 collections is that they:
- Dilute the value of the original Gen-1s
- Usually don’t *actually* expand the holder base
If we created “Baby DeGods” or “DeGoddesses” we would not be growing.
We want to take a “Marvel” approach to our new collections.
In 2008, two superhero movies came out by two studios, Iron Man (Marvel) and the Dark Knight (DC)
Both are regarded as some of the best superhero movies of all time, what happened after 2008 changed everything.
Over the next 14 years, Marvel created dozens of unique and iconic storylines, appealed to new demographics and built the most successful movie franchise ever.
DC played it safe, they made a handful of good movie mainly “guaranteed” to please their base but not much more.
Oct - Dec: The Death Spiral
Every day, I'd wake up, go online and see 50+ complaints in my inbox. For months.
We tried to "quietly build" our way out. In 3 months, we launched 3 products.
Floor kept going down. We were burnt out.
At this point, we were close to quitting.
December: "Something Special"
Everything about DeGods felt doomed to fail. We were at our lowest FP in history. Team was burnt out.
But there was something special about the community.
Even in the darkest days, they never gave up on us.
Jan 24th: No Ugly DeGods
There was still a fundamental problem.
There were too many ugly DeGods. Nobody wanted to buy them, so they sat on the floor.
We had an idea.
What if we remade the entire collection? This time we make each NFT a piece of fine art.
DeadGods was born.
Oct. 2021: The "Smooth" Mint
The DeGods mint sold out in 7 seconds.
Before we could process what happened... shit hit the fan.
Thousands were pissed they didn't get to mint, hundreds of DeGods got locked in our custom marketplace, and people immediately began calling us a rug.