Greetings once again frens. As you may have noticed we’re officially switching over from the “Punks Comic Monthly Round Up” to the “Pixel Vault Monthly Round Up”. Since I started writing these Pixel Vault has grown from a small shop that put out a sweet comic to a full blown company working on multiple cool projects. OK, so with that house keeping out of the way lets dig into the month that was. You ready anon?
MintPass
We kicked off the month of August with MintPass. For those who are just joining us, MintPass is a novel approach to minting developed by the Pixel Vault team designed to reward the early community of Punks Comic hodlers. In early August addresses that held Punks Comics at the time of the snapshop (July 15th) were able to purchase a MintPass for each Comic in their wallet for 0.08ETH. Each MintPass is redeemable, in perpetuity, for one MetaHero. This approach not only rewarded the early community but avoids the gas wars that NFT drops are known for these days.
While the original plan was to do a public sale of MetaHeroes for unclaimed MintPasses the demand for MintPasses on the secondary market caused a rethink. Pixel Vault canceled the public sale and will instead distribute the unclaimed MintPasses to the community. Some who missed out on cheap mint passes might feel aggrieved by this, but I believe this was undoubtedly a smart move by Pixel Vault as the demand for a few hundred Heroes would cause absolutely insane gas war.
While you can redeem a MintPass 1:1 for a MetaHero that is not all they are good for. It wouldn’t be a Pixel Vault project if there wasn’t some complex game theory involved! Unredeemed MintPasses will make their owners eligible to win one of the Core Identity MetaHeroes (more on that later). The first snapshot and raffle took place last week for the first 12 core identities. Congrats to the winners! The remaining Core Identities will be distributed to MintPass holders over the next six months, with snapshot number two happening s00n.
MetaHero Universe
Ok…so there is a lot going on here and much of it will be subject to change as time goes on. Lets just try to recap what we know so far. Just to expectation set I will not be doing a full breakdown of the MetaHero economics in this article — I will go over some general economics and strategies later but I will hold off on a full deep dive into the specific economics of MetaHero Universe until we have more details. So what is MetaHero Universe? As we learned last month this is a game being developed by Pixel Vault, with a former Halo game developer hired to lead the project.
The game will revolve around the MetaHeroes and the planets they come from. MetaHero Identities will be generated on-chain via a custom contract. This is uncommon for most PFP projects and incredibly important because it allows for verifiable randomness in traits. Players will be able to battle with their Heros to earn $POW, the currency the game will use. Additionally, MetaHeroes will be able to be staked for $POW as well. MetaHero Identities will be the core of the game and have plenty of utility. Each Hero will have a planet of origin and for a limited time each Hero will be able to claim a DAO token from their planet for free.
DAO token you say? Indeed. The game will be governed via a DAO and be 100 percent community owned. The 10 planets that comprise the MetaHero Universe each have their own DAO. These are the planet tokens that MetaHeroes will be able to claim for a limited time. Additionally, a large portion of the these planetary DAO tokens will go on public sale so those who missed the Punks Comic genesis issue or a cheap MintPass will be able to get exposure to Pixel Vault and MetaHero Universe. Each individual planet DAO will be able to govern and build unique environments and revenue streams specific to their planet. Furthermore, each planet DAO will ladder into the United Planets DAO (UPDAO). The UPDAO will control the overall MetaHero Universe game and platform, meaning that while the individual planets have a degree of autonomy in creating worlds and revenues specific for their own needs all the planets will still need to work together collectively to govern the overall game.
I mentioned a public sale above and 35% of the planetary DAO tokens will be made available for public sale while 45% will be retained by Pixel Vault and the final 20% will be given away over time to the Pixel Vault community. There is one special planetary DAO to call out here: the Moon DAO. The Moon DAO is special. None of the Moon DAO tokens will be for sale and the only way to get one will be to burn a Comic. While the full details about the Moon DAO are not yet known, the steep cost to acquire a Moon DAO token does imply strong rewards (not investment advise). This is by no means an exhaustive overview of the MetaHero Universe, but hopefully this provides readers with enough of an overview to feel like they have a grasp on the core concepts at play. For more details please check out the website here.
Updated Economics
While the addition of MintPasses and MetaHeroes has shaken up the economics of the Pixel Vault ecosystem so too did the news earlier this month that we’d be able to stake our Pixel Vault Founders Vault DAO tokens for rewards! In the past I have said the DAO token is a bet on Pixel Vault, but the exact utility is unclear relative to staking a Comic. With this announcement Pixel Vault are starting to answer some of the questions I’ve had regarding direct utility.
Beyond this news Pixel Vault also dropped the PixelPass. The PixelPass will be given to the holders of each MetaHero Core Identity before the minting of each Pixel Vault project. This, in turn, entitles the holder of a Core Identity MetaHero to free Pixel Vault mints for life. When you consider the only way to get a Core Identity is to win one via the MintPass raffle this adds yet another layer of game theory when considering whether or not to cash in a MintPass for a MetaHero.
Finally Pixel Vault introduced the concept of “The Set”, which is one each of the Comic, MintPass, MetaHero Identity, and Founders DAO token. Hodlers of “The Set” will exclusively be able to participate in the giveway of Earth DAO tokens. Those who are familiar with Pixel Vault can probably read between the lines here and see that this likely indicates “The Set” will have additional utility going forward, though I am admittedly engaging in some speculation there.
Roadmap Update
In mid-August the Pixel Vault Twitter account hit us with this roadmap update. While there aren’t strict dates attached to anything we can project a bit and intuit what might be coming up and when. The MetaHero Identity mint should be the next up followed by the MetaHero Identity planetary DAO token claims and public sale. We should also get more news, and potentially a release date, for Punks Comic Issue #2 which was previously expected to launch in September. Pixel Vault has already hinted that this comic will have a much lower cost than the Genesis issue and have it’s own set of tokenomics.
After that the staking pools for both the Founders DAO token and the Comic should be on the docket as should the claim for a physical copy of Punks Comic Issue #1. The roadmap also mentions Punks Comic Issue #3, which will feature the MetaHeroes, as well as staking of the MetaHero Identities for $POW. Finally, there is no update yet on the special gift being worked on for Apes who entered Ape Madness, though the team has been burning the midnight oil to prepare for the MetaHero Universe launch. Hopefully we’ll get more information on that in September as well. I think that just about covers it.
Before I wrap up I wanted to just take a beat and think about where we are. If you had minted just one Comic for 0.2ETH and held onto that Comic and claimed your MintPass for an additional 0.08E you’re holdings would be worth roughly 15E today. Pixel Vault’s team has continued to deliver value to the community time and time again. The number of members in our community whose lives have been changed by participating early in Pixel Vault is truly special. We’re still early on our journey here, and there is so much more to come. But for just a moment lets take some time to appreciate how far we’ve all come together. Until next time frens…
0x0x BEW
