The DeGods NFT community has shaken up the NFT space in a big way. With a current minimum price of 1,200 SOL, or more than $26,000 (at the time of writing), the degods collection has rocketed into the top five most valuable NFT collections on all chains, after Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and Moonbirds. The collection has over 4,100 unique owners and is one of the highest rated Solana projects on both OpenSea and Magic Eden.
Your sister project, y00tswhich was released in September 2022, met with similar popularity and attracted the interest of various celebrities, including Allen Iverson, Wayne Rooneyand howie mandel.
Two of the most well-known and respected Solana-based projects, DeGods and y00ts, made headlines when their teams announced they would be leaving the blockchain in 2023. The projects will join Ethereum and Polygon, respectively. Given the impending bridge, the hype, and the return of the DeGods Cinderella story in late 2021, now is a great time to refresh your knowledge on what the DeGods project is and how it’s changing the face of Solana NFT.
What are DeGods NFTs?
DeGods is a deflationary collection of 10k PFPs of gods dressed in a creative aesthetic mix of modern streetwear and ancient deity vibes, with an emphasis on creating utility for their community.
How many DeGods are there?
There are currently 9,465 DeGods NFTs in existence, as the team has burned the remaining 535 (more on that later). they count various traits ranging from Common to Uncommon, Rare, Super Rare, and Mythic. Some of the Super Rare and Mythic traits in the collection include the Divine Robe, Sky background, Night Vision Goggles, Mythic Helmet, Smoke Ring, and more. The rarest feature in the collection is the Medusa head, of which only 25 exist.
Where can you buy DeGods?
Collectors can purchase DeGods NFTs at the magical eden, Alpha Art, Open seaand solanarte markets
What further affects the value of the entire collection is the fact that DeGods NFTs can be burned.
When the Degods team first announced the project on Twitter in September 2021, it did so by detailing its plans to institute what it called a “Paperhands Bitch Tax,” a 33.3 percent tax that applies to anyone who List your DeGods NFT below the mint price. . For a while, the project developers sent the funds from that tax to a treasury wallet which they used to buy back the cheapest DeGods NFTs on the market.
And this is where things get interesting: DeGods’ team burned the 535 NFTs he bought with this treasure wallet. This resulted in the lower ranked pieces in the collection, those in the Common category, becoming increasingly rare and increasing the overall value of the collection.
What are the dead gods?
DeadGods was DeGods’ NFT upgrade that allowed collectors to purchase a “fine art” version of their existing NFT. Starting March 31, 2022, DeGods holders could pay 1000 DUST (the community utility token) to get the new version of their NFTs (which featured the same rarity but had their attributes re-illustrated).
Since the team added the DeadGods NFTs to the metadata of the original collectors NFTs, they are considered the same and cannot be sold separately. In this way, the introduction of DeadGods did not inflate the collection’s supply and increased its value. It was a much-needed boost to headlines and caught the attention of many people outside of the community. The new NFTs look like decrepit, undead versions of their original counterparts, and the community celebrated artistic update.
When did DeGods coin?
DeGods minted on the Solana blockchain on October 8, 2021, for 3 SOL each. While the team did a great job building anticipation for the collection, both the lead up to the coin’s minting and its immediate aftermath generated a great deal of controversy.
DeGods’ team had offered whitelist spots to community members through “bounties,” essentially having people film themselves doing push-ups or chatting about the project with friends and family. Unfortunately, the bots screwed up the mint, causing the project to run out in less than ten seconds. Thousands were unable to mint, and the community quickly labeled the project a rug pull. The floor price plummeted and the team set out to rebuild the project.
In the next few months, they launched a handful of products, such as de.xyz, a web page dedicated to providing people with Solana NFT resources, and DePalace, the “private forum” for the project. Regardless, the project floor continued to plummet. Things were so bad in November 2021 that at least one team member claimed the developers felt like abandoning the project total.
In January 2022, DeGods removed the Paperhand bitch tax once and for all and introduced the DUST token. Shortly after the token launch, the team relaunched the DeGods Collection with the DeadGods Update and things started to change for the project.
What is DeDAO?
DeDao is the decentralized autonomous community organization. It gets its financing from DeGods’ 9.99 percent market rate, which is split into two parts. 6.66% goes to DeDAO to help fund project development, while the remaining 3.33% goes directly to the core team.
DeDAO’s leadership, consisting of DAO Leads, The Divine Council, and DeAlpha Team, also conduct community giveaways and work together to decide on DAO acquisitions.
For example, one of these acquisitions saw DeDAO buy a basketball team in Ice Cube’s Big3 Basketball League.
What is POWDER?
DUST is the DeGods community token created to further boost the utility of the project. It is an SPL token on the Solana blockchain with zero initial supply. The team aims to cap the supply of DUST at 33,300,000. The only way to mine DUST is to stake a DeGods or DeadGods NFT. Gambled DeGods earn 2.5 DUST per day, while Gambled DeadGods earn 7.5 DUST per day.
However, DUST appears in the Raydio DEX and is available for purchase with SOL. The token’s primary utility is to transform their DeGod into a DeadGod, but collectors can also use it to enter raffles, auctions, and future mint collections. The DeGods team also states that DeDAO will actively seek opportunities to integrate the DUST utility into other major projects in the Solana ecosystem.
Bridge to Ethereum
On December 25, the DeGods team issued a statement that the project would officially join Ethereum in the first quarter of 2023. In a video posted on his Twitter accountcreator Rohun Vora, known on Web3 as frank IIIHe addressed the Solana NFT community, thanking devoted SOL collectors for their support, stating that he and his team realized that in order to grow, they would have to explore new opportunities.
“We believe now is the time to take a calculated risk and embark on a new journey,” Vora said. After his video, Vora also participated in a twitter space where he answered questions and provided more context to the ad.
In the space, he drew parallels between streaming services (like Netflix and HBO Max) competing for intellectual property and blockchain to create the strongest NFT platforms. He also noted that it could be argued that DeGods had limited Solana, saying, “It’s hard to take, but it’s been hard to grow at the rate we want to grow. If Ethereum is where we need to go to continue to grow, it’s what we need to do.”
Overall, the project and its leadership have proven incredibly resilient. And this latest move continues to prove it. If you scroll down to the bottom of the DeGods website, you’ll find three short sentences summarizing the developers’ approach to their NFT community: “We tried a few things. We learned some shit. Now we are trying something new.”
It’s the perfect encapsulation of the attitude Web3 entities need to adopt if they want to create anything substantial, whether in a crypto winter or not.
