Goblintown WTF? Meet the world’s strangest NFT project
The NFT market crash of 2022 gave birth to one of the strangest NFT collections the world has ever seen. It is known as Goblintown. Its meaning? To make weird goblin noises. No seriously.
Here’s how the creators describe the project on OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, “AAAAAAAUUUUUGGGHHHHH gobblins goblins GOBLINNNNNNNNNs wekm ta goblintown yoo sniksnakr DEJEN RATS oooooh rats er yummmz dis a NEFBLINNCHIN on da O”
Enlightening, isn’t it? And for better or for worse, the project took the NFT world by storm.
The Goblintown collection was published the week of May 20, 2022. In just a few short days, all 10,000 freely minted pieces were claimed for this unashamedly irreverent project. Shortly after selling out, the floor price went to more than 2 ETH ($2,500). Producers all over the place immediately jumped on the hype, with Goblintown derivatives flooding OpenSea’s volume charts just weeks after Goblintown first opened its doors.
Eventually, the floor price crept up to 4 ETH ($4,800) and individual NFTs started selling for tens of thousands of dollars. One of the most expensive sales was Goblintown #8995, which sold for $136,440.
If you are confused, please know that you are not alone. Here, we did our best to find out what’s going on with Goblintown and explain why the NFT project achieved such popularity.
What the hell is Goblintown?
Goblintown’s name and URL, ending in .wtf, both reflect what any NFT collector feels during a major market crash: anger, chaos, utter confusion, and pandemonium. In that sense, the name is a colloquial term for bear markets, and the project can easily be seen as an elaborate commentary on the state of NFTs – and NFT collectors – during the 2022 downturn.
The purpose of the project is also quite surprising. Recently, several prominent NFT collectors have noted that to be taken seriously, an NFT project must have meaningful utility. Goblintown’s creators…don’t care.
Right from the start, the founders were upfront about the content of this project. On the official website, the team outlined its plans in bold: “No road map. No discord. No use. CC0.” That last bit is especially worth noting, as each Goblintown NFT is registered under a Creative Commons license, meaning buyers have free reign to do whatever they want with the Goblin NFTs.
With its rapidly rising floor prices, CC0 license agreements, and the amount of support it currently enjoys from the community, some observers believe this crude project has enormous potential.
Who runs Goblintown?
When Goblintown launched, the creators were anonymous. Despite the remarkably silly way the founders described the collection, it didn’t seem like an amateur project. Indeed, what jumped out at more experienced members of the NFT community was the high overall quality of the project.
To begin with, there is the art. It’s a far cry from stick drawings made in MS Paint, and anyone looking at the pictures can tell they’re made by real artists. The same can be said about the website. The UX is complex and fun, with a number of fun surprises baked into it. It’s clear that it was made by someone with a background in user experience design and engineering.
Then there are surprising on-brand events, which were one of the earliest measures of the project’s overall quality. In a bizarre Twitter space held just past midnight EDT on May 26, guests were treated to nearly three full hours of various speakers taking the stage to create — for lack of a better term — elf sounds. More than 86,000 people tuned in, and media publications around the world picked up the story.
Rumors circulated about who was behind the collection. Many users thought it had ties to prominent crypto artist Beeple. However, he denied any association in a tweetcalling the collection “a shockingly low-effort pump and dump project.”
Eventually, however, Goblintown’s creators came clean and revealed who they are. In a tweet on June 15the Goblintown team uncharacteristically issued a formal message to their community.
In the post, Goblintown’s creators identified themselves as Truth Labs. It’s a collective of creators whose mission is “dedicated to sharing delightful blockchain accidents, exploring creatively, developing rich, fun worlds and experiences (both IRL and in the digital realm), and providing a platform for new voices and visions in this the room.”
The Truth Labs team previously created The 187 and Illuminate Collective. Finally, with Goblintown, it seems they were able to achieve their goal of facilitating discussions and bringing some levity to the wider NFT space.
The power of community
Taking everything we’ve seen over the life of this project at face value shows us one important thing: the continued power of virality. Despite lacking a comprehensive marketing plan, partnerships with established brands or affiliation with prominent members of the NFT sphere, it has made a huge mark in the community.
In short, the idea of Goblintown – its irreverent “nothing really matters” tone — struck a chord with collectors who had experienced weeks of stressful financial losses. In addition, it was simply absurd and simply made no sense. This made individuals curious and also gave them a sense of FOMO. What is this project? What if it’s a cunning trick by a huge person? What if I miss something?
These all came together to make Goblintown go viral, and the project quickly transformed into a thriving community.
In fact, at NFT.NYC 2022, the Goblintown horde was able to meet up and connect in person en masse for the very first time. Numerous attendees at one of the largest conferences in space came dressed in elf attire, proudly representing their community.
If that wasn’t enough, members of the Goblintown team could even dress up a food truck into a fully functional one traveling branch of McGoblinBurger — complete with Santa wand, of course. A participant even allegedly got “pee” to go with their McGoblinBurger.
Where can you buy GoblinTown NFTs?
Until recently, you could only buy GoblinTownNFTs on secondary marketplaces such as OpenSea, Rarible, and LooksRare. However, in September, Truth Labs announced the launch of Truth Labs Marketplace, a dedicated secondary sales platform for its own NFT collections, including GoblinTown.
In a press release shared with nft now ahead of the launch, Truth Labs explained that the platform’s goal is to enable the sale of its NFTs with reduced fees for sellers. The platform will charge a single five percent royalty marketplace fee for transactions on the site.
This significant move showed how Web3 companies are rethinking the role of marketplace fees and royalties in the NFT ecosystem. By creating the platform, Truth Labs looks to address what it sees as unacceptably high fees on marketplaces such as OpenSea, which charges a marketplace fee of 2.5 percent of the final price of each NFT transaction and allows creators to set royalties from 2, 5 to 10 percent. .
Security is another tenet underlying the Truth Labs Marketplace. In another apparent shot across the bow at industry giant OpenSea, whose policies on stolen items have recently come under scrutiny, Truth Labs claimed in the press release that it would be “stricter” in its processes for reporting stolen NFTs.
GoblinTown having its own marketplace at home could be a sign of things to come. Web3 heavy hitters like Magic Eden and others have also recently released tools that specifically address the royalty debate. The possibility of a proliferation of NFT pool-specific platforms could result in a fragmentation of the secondary market platform ecosystem, for better or for worse.
Regardless, it’s undeniable that Truth Labs injected the bear market-laden NFT scene of 2022 with much-needed levity and cash flow. What’s next for GoblinTown is anyone’s guess, but it’s likely to be as irreverent as the project’s reputation suggests.
