Doodles founder Poopie made a big mistake yesterday: he became the main character on NFT Twitter. The Web3 leader lashed out at community members after proclaiming that Doodles are no longer an NFT project. The NFT community immediately condemned his actions, and the project’s floor price plummeted soon after. What happened to Doodles to create this problem?
Image Credit: Doodles
What went wrong with the doodles?
Doodles spent most of 2022 “quietly building.” The official Doodles Twitter account rarely posted anything original, instead only retweeting random fan posts mentioning the project. As Ethereum prices fell from $4,600 to just over $800, incumbents saw their unrealized gains fade and began to question the team’s ability (or willingness) to deliver value for the community.
The Doodles team’s first attempt to create value for collectors was space doodles. Many predicted Space Doodles would be the Doodles version of Yuga’s Mutant Ape Yacht Club, an add-on set that allows holders to sell a new NFT and make a profit without exiting the ecosystem entirely. However, the Doodles team took a different approach.
Rather than release a separate NFT collection, they decided to connect Doodles with Space Doodles so that selling a Space Doodle would also sell its associated Doodle. Unfortunately, many longtime holders were unaware of this connection and sold their expensive NFT Doodles for pennies on the dollar. Overall, Space Doodles was a flop. New people didn’t enter the ecosystem and it didn’t move the needle on pricing for existing Doodle owners.
What happened to the Dooplicators?
The next milestone for Doodles was Dooplicators. In May 2022, the Doodles team unveiled a mysterious NFT with a cartoon storage bin in Burnt Toast’s signature pastel style. Speculation ran wild when people tried to figure out what kind of utility would come with the Dooplicators. The collection floor was around a third floor in the first half of 2022.
At NFT NYC on June 22, 2022, the Doodles team announced that Dooplicators would allow holders to create a new collection, Doodles 2, on the Flow blockchain. Initial reactions were mixed. Many native Ethereum collectors did not want to move to a new blockchain. Others saw no value in Doodles 2, a collection that would allow users to create new wearables for their original NFT Doodles.
Dooplicators has since fallen to a 0.13 floor as demand for Doodles 2 fell short of expectations.
Image credit: OpenSea.io
Why did Doodles founder Poopie lash out?
Over the past year or so, the Doodles community has been asking the project leaders to communicate more. They were disappointed with Space Doodles, Dooplicators, and Doodles 2, and collectively felt their feedback was being ignored. After another long period between updates, the Doodles Twitter account wrote: “We’ve been listening and know you want more communication from us. that starts NOW.”
Two weeks later, on March 15, they tweeted their long-awaited update. Dooplicator owners could mint 12 different NFTs, each with digital socks, to mint another golden socks NFT. The community was not happy.
Poopie responded to the backlash by posting on the discord that Doodles is no longer “an NFT project” and that “we’re not going to spend any resources appeasing those with financial motivations.” After a community member told Poopie to buy the Doodles from him, Poopie responded by saying “floor and gtfo”, a phrase that is sure to become a meme in NFT culture.
As expected, Poopie’s messages were copied and pasted all over the Twitter timeline. Many people criticized his ability as a project leader and accused him of “selling out” after receiving venture capital funding. The exchange sparked much debate this week.
Some people felt that the episode demonstrates the naivety of NFT buyers who think they have more than just a digital collectible. They argued that demanding project founders constantly creating value to sustain an NFT was unrealistic and a recipe for disappointment.
Others believed that Doodles made a fortune off of NFT buyers. This group argued that the Doodles team has a responsibility to communicate regularly, make decisions to help keep prices down, and generally do everything Yuga Labs has done for Bored Ape Yacht Club owners. In other words, come up with clever ways to grow the ecosystem while preserving the value of the original Doodles collection.
Poopie has since apologized for GTFO’s comment, stating that Doodles will continue to “use NFT technology as the connective tissue between everything we do.”
Will Doodles be able to meet its goal of becoming a successful media brand emerging from Web3? To have any chance of success, they will need to repair the damage done to the relationship between the team and their community. That mission starts now, let’s see what happens.
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