The Background
On August 7th FLUF World sold out all 10,000 of their programmatically generated, unique, animated NFTs priced at Ξ0.09 in just 40 minutes of opening the sale, with a secondary market now estimated at over $40m USD, with a Floor FLUF typically fetching more than $1,800.
Over the preceding months, I had the pleasure of interviewing the founding team over on the NFTs.WTF DAO podcast and was blown away by their roadmap, and to be quite frank, immediately began buying up FLUFs in the secondary market building a personal collection of 39 rabbits worth 140 ETH with some of the Outlier partners and network. Since then I’ve been talking with the founders daily and as we got more familiar with one another we decided we should bite the bullet and formally collaborate via our Outlier Ventures accelerator program dedicated to the Metaverse; Base Camp.
More than just another PFP.
FLUFs today are animated PFPs (picture for proof and profile pics) that can be used as an out-of-the-box avatar in three formats (MP4, GIF, and PNG formats, with 3D models coming soon) but also one of the first audio-visual PFPs where the role of music is integral to the characters, the worlds they inhabit and the long-term project roadmap.
This latter element is something we hope to directly contribute to through our growing portfolio and network of contacts in the music and entertainment industry to help them scale beyond the already amazing partnerships the team have planned. In this context, a FLUF doubles as a ticket to a world of exclusive content including both physical and virtual concerts, festivals, and experiences.
But there is just so much more to the project than meets the eye, some of which has been really well captured in this recent tweet storm by a fan.
Great founders + Community Owned IP… a la BAYC
We have been consistently impressed by the level of technology and content already developed (much of which hasn’t yet been publicly released) by Non-Fungible Labs the company, as well as the team’s commitment to an aggressive roadmap and their active community engagement. However, what thrills us was the team’s commitment to FLUF NFT holders fully owning all commercial rights to their purchased characters with the ability to freely exploit them, including creating derivative works.
BAYC (Bored Ape Yacht Club) has proven the power of bottom ecosystem franchises; birthing wines, coffee shops, trainers, skateboards, merchandise with rumours of various entertainment projects like films, that compound into network value, helping create a billion dollar market in less than 12 months. FLUFs, like BAYC, serve as access tokens to a club including an underground world of burrows (homes) that promise to bring alive FLUFs into the Metaverse. The team is already working with Beyond VR, a studio that helped develop assets for large productions such as LOTR building the custom burrow spaces for immersive VR experiences. These digital environments can be constructed to reflect the unique traits of the individual avatars and serve as the door to a larger world of virtual spaces for FLUFs and their friends to play and engage in.
Customisation, Intelligence & Breeding
One of the brilliant things about FLUFs is they are both dynamic and highly customizable including; backgrounds, accompanying music, burrows and backstory and names. By breeding male and female rabbits you can create Fluflets with the combined traits of parents which affect not just the avatars but their whole worlds, gameplay and forms of access across the Metaverse. Much to my daughter’s delight, we handpicked a number of FLUFs specifically for breeding purposes.
One of the criticisms of Open Metaverse virtual worlds like Decentraland is that they are relatively empty in their early stages, reducing stickiness. To address this the team has already partnered with Altered State Machine to super-charge FLUFs with intelligence so they can interact with you and other players on your behalf autonomously.
The Mycelium Token
Although the full details of the token are yet to be released the team have released some early lore for the community to start to understand how a token economy will evolve. Mycelium is the fabric that binds the FLUF World together and will be the fuel for adventures and experiences within the FLUF World universe. It will be an essential ingredient of the P2E game which begins with breeding but certainly does not stop there.
About Non-Fungible Labs
Non-Fungible Labs is a creative studio out of Auckland, New Zealand that created the FLUF World franchise. The team has been working in the blockchain space for more than 6 years and the founders are experienced in blockchain technology, community building, and content creation and distribution. They have a history of launching successful projects in Fintech and Decentralised finance while bringing a wealth of know-how and experience to the creative and economic mediums that NFTs represent.
Learn More about Fluf
The Project ▶ https://fluf.world/
The Team ▶ https://nonfungiblelabs.xyz/team
The Community ▶ http://discord.gg/fluf
About Outlier Ventures
Outlier Ventures has been backing Web 3 founders since 2014 and is the world’s leading Web 3 accelerator program. We are on track to accelerate up to 100 startups and protocols in 2021 through both Ascent and our earlier pre-seed/seed program Base Camp.
Both Base Camp and Ascent are constantly looking for founders accelerating the open metaverse thesis by launching token networks. We provide a proven framework for growth while weaving together a global network of over 1,000 of the world’s leading Web 3 founders, protocols, and VCs to form an ecosystem of mentorship and investment.
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