Y00ts NFT Collection Review

y00ts is a generative art project of 15,000 NFTs from the makers of the iconic DeGods, the Dust Labs. Although the collection had a bumpy start, it made huge waves in the Solana NFT landscape. Let’s take a look at y00ts.

What are y00ts NFTs?

Dust Labs originally coined y00ts as duppies. However, the team’s Twitter account got maliciously hacked in July. It prompted the team to change their strategies. They renamed duppies to y00ts, but the project was distinct from DeGods. Everything was different, from the art to the website to the social media accounts. It was not a successor or an extension of DeGods.

In essence, the y00ts NFT project is a PFP collection that seeks to challenge how the NFT industry manages the intellectual property.

The team has devised ⓨ as its rational interpretation of NFT ownership and copyright. Members can create fan art, sub-communities, and even businesses within the y00ts ecosystem, ultimately raising the value of the y00ts NFT collection.

For the project, the team aimed for an “aspirational” avatar. The artists eventually decided on the Yeti persona after testing a younger DeGods character, “Duppy,” a small hairy bear. Each character has a wide range of traits, including:

  • Clothing: bear coat, cashmere turtleneck, hoodie, etc
  • Hair/hats: pyrite crown, windswept hair, bandana, etc
  • Glasses: Warhols, Matisse frames, pollocks, etc
  • There are other traits like fur color, facial features, etc.

The y00ts’ fur ranges in hue from a deep chestnut to a lavender gray to a bright green and pink. There are a few exceptional 1/1 NFTs. A Renaissance y00t, a feminine Queen y00t, and an Ice Cream King y00t, to name a few.

The Team behind y00ts

Recently, Kevin DeGods, CEO of Dust Labs, and Frank DeGods doxxed themselves. As someone from the media was already attempting to doxx Frank, he had to divulge his own identity. Some DeDAO members likewise exposed their true identities. Frank, aka Rohun Vora, is a UCLA dropout. He briefly studied engineering at General Assembly before leaving to pursue a fellowship at Y-Combinator and starting working at MainStreet.

Dust Labs CEO Kevin DeGods also doxxed, revealing himself as Kevin Henrikson, a serial tech entrepreneur. Kevin Henrikson is a Web2 space legend who is currently thriving in Web3. Henrikson worked on projects that Yahoo and Outlook paid nine figures for, in addition to helping to create Instacart.

Their doxxing only added more authenticity to the project. And given the innovative approaches the team had developed to engage its audience and offer new incentives to invest in their ventures, it’s no unexpected that their projects are highly recognized.

It is one of the few NFT projects to have seen organic social growth.

Although there have been some noticeable decreases along the way, its Twitter and Discord growth patterns indicate a consistent uptrend. Moreover, it has 21.4k Discord members and 104.2k Twitter followers.

y00ts NFT Mint Price

To mint a y00t NFT, you needed to have a DeGod or join the y00tlist. Even after getting on the list or possessing a DeadGod, you needed 375 DUST, the token for the DeadGod verse, to purchase the NFT. That’s a little bit more than $1300 in value. Staking your DeGods or DeadGods NFT was the sole method of earning DUST. But you can buy it from an exchange like Gate or Orca. DeadGod NFT holders and accepted applicants can mint t00bs. You can burn t00bs to obtain y00ts.

Y00ts mint was not without hiccups. The team found a blocker defect, typically known to break the software or create security-related critical errors. They, however, tackled the issue and successfully launched y00ts. y00ts. And shortly, Dust Labs, the Web3 startup tied to y00ts and DeGods NFTs, raised $7 million.

Wayne Rooney, Lil Baby, and former NBA star Allen Iverson, better known as “The Answer,” are just a few of the well-known NFT influencers and celebrities on the list.

y00ts NFT Scholarship

Y00ts has done an excellent job of making its community as exclusive as possible. To get a y00t, you needed to hold a DeGod or getting on the y00tlist.

The creators scrapped the usual allow-list and replaced it with an innovative scholarship program. However, there were standards that you had to meet to be on the wait-list, so it was not simple. Those that made the queue had to offer something, like talents or a sizable social media following.

All new members who met those requirements were immediately made public on Twitter using y00tlist’s official account. The initiative attracted some profiles with considerable social media influence in the crypto community. It fueled the project’s hype to a new horizon.

y00ts ⓨ Intellectual Property

The value of owning a y00t lies not in the fact that it is the same team behind DeGods.  In fact, it is how its intellectual property will be structured. Before delving deeper into the ecosystem, we must understand the Y00t store and how copyright functions. Most NFT projects make the IP property of the NFT holder. What y00ts is attempting to achieve is something called Creative Commons, or CCO. It is an alternate method of IP licensing that permits the public to possess the holder’s assets.

The y00ts NFT will use a unique logo with the letter “y” (ⓨ) instead of the conventional copyright logo. Since this system is still novel and experimental, the team is open to community feedback and proposals. It entails that a y00ts holder can develop sub-communities or businesses based on the NFT they own and even monetize that specific NFT through fan art and sub-DAOs. Such sub-communities can boost public interest in the NFT and raise the project’s value.

Another core part of the project is the y00ts store. The store is similar to a marketplace where anyone may customize the y00ts traits and list them after getting them authorized by the team. For approval, its space and metadata must match the original. Once the devs approve these traits, the owner(s) will get the copyright ⓨ, giving them the right to set a price, fix the total supply, receive 5% royalties on each sale, or sell the entire ⓨ.

Personalizing Traits 

Moreover, members can formally register sub-communities for a plethora of reasons. These sub-communities can even charge $SOL for entry or take a cut of all sales made by their sub-communities in the form of royalties.

It’s crucial to remember that each month, holders can apply only one personalized trait. You cannot alter the size, shape, name, etc., or modify the metadata. To get one ⓨ token encoded in the metadata of their y00ts, holders must first stake their NFT for a month. Alternatively, holders can choose to stake their y00ts and earn one ⓨ token every thirty days. You can use these tokens to purchase any custom ⓨ trait from the y00ts store.

y00ts ecosystem 

The store seems to be closed currently. All new traits will come from collaborations with big apparel/lifestyle brands.

Both holders and non-holders can profit from these features in different ways. The process is straightforward for non-artists and y00ts holders. They can pick an artist through the Y00TS store, get a set of customized traits and build a sub-community around their NFT. They can list these traits to be brought by other holders and receive royalties if the NFT with these customized qualities sells.

Holders can stake their y00ts to earn y00t points and can use them to purchase rewards like airdrops, physicals, and sponsored brand activation. One y00t point will be accrued for every minute staked, and the y00t points remain attached to the NFT (even when traded). Each y00t NFT costs 1 $DUST to stake, and each y00t costs 3 $DUST to unstake. Additionally, the staking is non-custodial, meaning the NFT stays in the owner’s wallet.

y00ts has a trait leaderboard that will update in real-time and present the current floor of all traits in the 15,000-NFT collection. A gallery of every native NFT is also available.

Conclusions

The FTX debacle has profoundly impacted the Solana ecosystem, pushing many projects to the brink of collapse. Understandably, DeGods and y00ts decided to migrate to other ecosystems. The team made an official announcement on December 25th on the Twitter accounts of DeGods and y00ts. DeGods and y00ts will officially bridge onto Ethereum and Polygon in the first quarter of 2023.

According to DeGods and y00ts founder Rohun Vora, the decision was made to “explore new opportunities” and to support the collections’ ongoing expansion. The DUST token used to buy, sell, and mint NFTs on the DeGods network will also bridge onto Ethereum and Polygon.

Considering Disney, Adidas, Nike, and Reddit chose Polygon as their NFT platform, y00ts’ move to Polygon will most likely be a success. The only thing to fear is bridge vulnerabilities or hacks. Only time can tell. On a side note and with Solana struggling, is Polygon setting itself up to be the next best ecosystem for NFTs behind Ethereum?

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