OnChainMonkey (OCM) has become a historic staple of the NFT community proving time and time again that it is way ahead of the curve. The project is known for uploading its entire collection of 10,000 NFTs to Ethereum in a single transaction. And with the new Ordinals protocol, OCM became one of the first 10,000 PFP projects on Bitcoin.
While OnChainMonkey has made its mark on Web3, its parent company Metagood is perhaps less well known. With a mission to empower communities and be a catalyst for positive collective action, Metagood has spearheaded a number of impactful initiatives and is one of the many reasons OCM is so successful.
We caught up with the Metagood team to discuss these initiatives, the move to Blockchain, and more about the OnChainMonkey universe.
What is OnChainMonkey?
He OnChainMonkey The Genesis Collection consists of 10,000 colorful Ethereum NFT PFPs representing, you guessed it, monkeys. Each monkey is made up of a combination of seven features: fur, mouth, eyes, clothing, hat, earring, and bottom. Released via a free mint on September 11, 2021, the project was quickly claimed in just four hours.
Part of what made OCM successful is its seminal status as the first collection of on-chain PFPs, which means that all of the metadata for each NFT is stored directly on the Ethereum blockchain. By contrast, other NFT collections require a third party to store that data, which carries a level of risk if the storage solution fails.
Another benefit of being on-chain is the cost. According to the OCM team, a typical collection of PFPs would occupy approximately 100 megabytes of storage space, costing over 5,000 ETH if stored on-chain. By comparison, OCM only used 0.798 ETH to implement everything on-chain.
Who created OnChainMonkey?
OnChainMonkey was created by metagood. The founding team includes President Bill Tai, an early investor in Zoom and an early investor in Canva and Dapper Labs; CEO Danny Yang, the creator of Maicoin, Taiwan’s largest cryptocurrency exchange; and COO Amanda Terry, a former Twitter and NBC executive.
The Karma and Dessert collections
In 2022, the OnChainMonkey universe expanded with the launch of the Karma and Dessert collections, both 100% on-chain of course. Each Genesis NFT holder (as of February 1, 2022) received a Dessert NFT, which their original OnChainMonkey could “eat” to produce a Karma NFT. There are 10,000 Dessert Tokens and three types of desserts of varying rarity: Amazing Popsicle, Divine Donut, and Heavenly Cake.
The Karma NFTs were created in part in response to criticism of the simplistic design of the Genesis collection. They consist of a 3D monkey with more details than the original 2D NFTs from OnChainMonkey. In particular, the Karma NFTs were designed by OCM Academy Award Nominated Art Team and lead animators for movies like “IceAge,” “Rio,” and more.
The Karma Collection did more than look good; also provided that membership holders to the Monkeyverse, votes in DAO, access to Quests (experiments and tasks that grant rewards to holders), and Banana tokens (off-chain tokens that live on Discord and Twitter).
The change to ordinals
In 2023, OCM made the switch to Bitcoin Ordinal signups. However, before uploading their OCM collection to Bitcoin, the Metagood team needed to reconcile their commitment to sustainability with the oft-criticized environmental impact of Bitcoin and other proof-of-work blockchains.
They addressed this problem by uploading their OCM collection to Bitcoin in a single transaction, just like they did with their original Ethereum collection. As such, they used only 20,000 bytes of data. By doing so, Yang says Metagood and its community get “the benefits of a very secure store of value in Bitcoin without contributing to chain expansion.”
So why ordinal? Metagood didn’t switch to Ordinals to cash in on a passing fad; they felt a different kind of opportunity. “People still don’t understand the value of putting data into Bitcoin,” says Yang. She explains that as a protocol, Ordinals is incomplete. But when the protocol comes to fruition, Yang and the rest of the Metagood team believe that Ordinals may be better suited for NFT-type signups than Ethereum.
“Ethereum smart contracts are great for NFTs, but Bitcoin is more secure,” says Yang. “If you think something is valuable, it should be on the most valuable and secure chain.”
OnChainMonkey’s focus on impact
At the heart of OnChainMonkey’s operations is their belief in the power of communities to bring about positive change. That’s why Metagood took root in Web3; the team considers NFTs to be the most effective tools to mobilize and incentivize these communities. “We created Metagood to solve big problems in the world,” Yang explains. “And we needed large communities to do that.”
To work on solving these problems, Metagood created a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) made up of OCM holders. Fifty percent of the business revenue generated by OCM is funneled back to the DAO, where members have the power to vote on how the funds are used.
The DAO has given rise to a long list of solidarity projects. In March 2022, the company launched the OCM Earth Collection, which grossed almost $200,000 for Save the Children’s Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund. He also partnered with Axie Infinity to host a charity tournament that raised over $450,000 to help rebuild typhoon-damaged homes in the Philippines. In December 2022, the community used part of the DAO funds to organize a christmas party at a small Brazilian orphanage where the children received coloring books from OnChainMonkey.
“The global reach we have had is incredible. But it has also brought changes on a local scale.”
Amanda Terry, Director of Operations at Metagood
Additionally, the OCM community has also chosen to donate some of their valuable NFTs to support the projects the DAO selects. Shortly after the Genesis minting in 2021, a member donated his OCM NFT to Giga, an organization that brings the Internet to schools around the world. In early 2022, another member donated a Genesis NFT to raise funds to support the United Nations’ Life Under Water initiative to promote coral reef restoration, a cause chosen by the CMO community DAO.
“It’s amazing the global reach we’ve had,” says Terry. “But it also brought changes on a local scale.” Community members have been able to take advantage of DAO resources to carry out projects in their own communities, such as beach cleanups in Belize, rehabbing a skate park in Brazil, and creating custom items to auction for charitable purposes. beneficial.
On the surface, OnChainMonkey may seem like just another collection of high-value NFTs with expensive floor prices and a duplicate collection in Bitcoin. However, from Metagood’s perspective, everything they do is rooted in their core values: Respect, Integrity, Sustainability, and Experimentation.
“Those values resonate with people,” says Terry, “because they realize that Web3 can be used to create significant wealth for communities, but it can also be used to do good in the real world.”
