Introducing CryptoVikings!
Three friends and a lot of hard work; the origin of CryptoVikings and the reason we feel we’re now able to share with you a project that we’re proud of.
23rd of March 2021 at around 15:30, that’s the moment the idea of CryptoVikings was first shared. I know this as I was sitting with Thor, aside a lake on a sunny afternoon. A photo of the view sitting in my phones camera roll, what was just a random photo, now a timestamp for when this project was born.
After an excited discussion with Thor, I knew there was one other person I needed to call. The key ingredient to a great NFT project is a fantastic artist, and I had the luck of being close friends with one. A phone call was made to Ragnar, the question of whether he’d be open to working on a project with Thor and I, a generative NFT project with the aim of “being one better” than the current crop. The excitement from Ragnar matched that of Thor’s. Ragnar was instantly flowing ideas and couldn’t wait to put pen to paper, doodling ideas of what would become the main visual aspect of this project.
We had an idea, two developers and an artist. It was time to start.
The Spark
The initial idea came from browsing the ever growing list of NFT projects. It became a hobby for a while to poke around these projects. Opening Etherscan, reading the contracts and seeing how each one was developed, checking token URIs and seeing what the APIs held.
I was starting to see a pattern. These generative and random projects weren’t as random as they seemed. Contracts were able to be reverse-engineered, five minutes scrambling some code together and you were able to find out where all the rarest items were going to fall, what conditions needed to be met and when that mint button needed clicking. APIs were completely open, all the metadata for items yet to be minted sitting there in clear view. Time and time again, projects left openings and openings are always going to be taken advantage of.
Minting would be underway and certain wallets would be collecting the rarest items. Discord servers would become strained, and you’d see cracks form from the community early. And rightfully so, with the majority in the same position, feeling they were entering a random chance pool to get that rare item, only to find out people who were able to were using intel to help boost their chances.
Seeing this again and again, made me start to think “how can this be avoided?”, “how can it be done better?”. And that’s where the idea of CryptoVikings really started to roll, that’s where the thoughts of creating a project with the aim of being one better were sparked.
Being One Better
What do we mean by “being one better”?
It means we wanted to try and look at what the market was doing at the time and iterate. We wanted to put together a contract that couldn’t be cracked by a simple piece of reverse engineering, we wanted a website that felt professional and behaved as you’d expect. We wanted to make random a true claim, we didn’t want to pre-generate all our assets and host them with a simple distribution contract.
So this is exactly what we did. We made an NFT project where nothing exists until you click mint. Where our metadata is only constructed during the minting process and your CryptoViking image is made from that data.
Using Chainlink’s VRF to achieve true randomness, statistics generated and stored on-chain and a robust API to help facilitate all the pieces of this minting journey.
We had many late nights of discussion pondering the best routes to take, the most secure avenues to ensure a fair minting process. And we feel we’ve delivered a project that meets the requirements we set out to achieve.
If you want a visual overview of the journey a CryptoViking takes after the minting button has been clicked, view here.
What’s Happening Now?
We’ve deployed the contract, the sites live, the API is ready and so are we!
At this stage we’re building the CryptoVikings community, and working on a little exposure before minting starts. Exciting things are happening on that front and we can’t wait to see how this unfolds. Come and join us — check out the site, and come say hi on Discord; we’re always happy to welcome new faces!
When’s The Drop?
So, when does that minting button become available? Soon, and not soon™.
UTC: Saturday, 25th September — 00:00
EST: Friday, 24th September — 20:00
PDT: Friday, 24th September — 17:00
BST: Saturday, 25th September — 01:00
What’s Next?
CryptoVikings is a first step for the team into the practical world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Now that we’re past the first hurdle and ready with an NFT drop to be proud of, we’re excited to have the opportunity to think about the future — of both CryptoVikings, and of how we can bring our approach and work ethic to other potential developments in the Ethereum space. This is the start of something good!
CryptoVikings.io | Discord | Medium | Twitter
