A guide to the ultimate comeback story
The DeGods NFT community is shaking up the NFT space in a big way. With a current floor price of 529.9 SOL, or more than $17,000 (at the time of writing), the DeGods collection has shot up into the top five most valuable NFT collections across all chainscoming in after Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks, Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Moonbirds.
The collection has more than 4,300 unique owners and is one of the highest ranked Solana projects on both OpenSea and Magic Eden. One of the most well-known and respected Solana-based projects, DeGod’s approach to y00ts mint, which launches on Friday 2 September, has only made DeGods rise even more in popularity. The project had more than 97,000 SOL ($3 million) in sales in the week prior to the release of the y00ts collection.
Y00ts attracted interest from several celebrities, including Allen Iverson, Wayne Rooney, Howie Mandel, and more. So, given the imminent drop, hype and DeGods’ Cinderella story comeback from late 2021, now is an excellent time to refresh your knowledge of what the DeGods project is and how it’s changing the face of Solana NFTs.
What are DeGod’s NFTs?
DeGods is a deflationary 10k PFP collection of gods dressed in a creative aesthetic combination of modern streetwear-meets-ancient-deity vibes, with an emphasis on building utility for society.
How many DeGods are there?
There are currently 9,465 DeGods NFTs in existence, as the team has burned the remaining 535 (more on that later). They have different properties ranging from common to uncommon, rare, super rare and mythic. Some of the super rare and mythic properties in the collection include the Divine Robe, Heaven background, Night Vision Goggles, Mythic Helmet, Smoke Ring and more. The rarest feature in the collection is the Medusa head, of which only 25 exist.
Where can you buy DeGods?
Collectors can purchase DeGod’s NFTs on the Magic Eden, Alpha Art, OpenSea, and Solanart marketplaces.
Further affecting the value of the entire collection is the fact that DeGod’s NFTs can be burned.
When the Degods team first announced the project on Twitter in September 2021, they did so by detailing their plans to introduce what it called a “Paperhands Bitch Tax;” a 33.3 percent tax imposed on anyone who listed their DeGods NFT below the mint price. For a time, project developers sent the funds from that tax to a treasury which they used to buy back the cheapest DeGods NFTs on the market.
And here’s where things get interesting: the DeGods team burned all 535 NFTs they bought back with this treasury. This resulted in the lowest ranked pieces in the collection, those in the Common category, becoming increasingly rare and increasing the value of the collection overall.
What are DeadGods?
DeadGods was the DeGods NFT upgrade that allowed collectors to purchase a “fine art” version of their existing NFT. As of March 31, 2022, DeGods holders could pay 1000 DUST (community utility token) to obtain the new version of their NFTs (which had the same rarity but had the attributes re-illustrated). As the team added the DeadGods NFTs to the metadata of the collector’s original NFTs, they are considered the same and cannot be sold separately. In this way, the introduction of DeadGods did not inflate the collection’s offerings while increasing its value. It was a much-needed shot in the arm for proprietors and caught the attention of many people outside the community. The new NFTs look like undead and decrepit versions of their original counterparts, and the community celebrated the artistic upgrade.
When was DeGods minted?
DeGods minted on the Solana blockchain on October 8, 2021, for a price of 3 SOL each. And while the team did a good job of building anticipation for the collection, both the run-up to the mint and its immediate aftermath saw plenty of controversy.
The DeGods team had offered permission list spots to community members through “prizes,” essentially getting people to film themselves doing pushups or chat about the project with friends and family members. Unfortunately, robots have destroyed the coin, prompting the project sold out in less than ten seconds. Thousands were unable to make the mark, and the community quickly called the project a cover-up. The floor price crashed, and the team set about rebuilding the project.
Over the coming months, they launched a handful of products, such as de.xyz, a website dedicated to providing people with Solana NFT resources, and DePalace, the project’s “private forum.” The project floor continued to plummet anyway. Things went so badly in November 2021 that at least one team member claimed developers felt like leaving the project in total.
In January 2022, DeGods abolished the Paperhand Bitch Tax once and for all and introduced the DUST token. Shortly after the token launch, the team relaunched the DeGods collection with the DeadGods upgrade, and things started to turn around for the project.
What is DeDAO?
DeDao is the community’s decentralized autonomous organization. It gets its funding from DeGods’ 9.99 percent marketplace fee, which is split into two parts. 6.66 percent goes to DeDAO to help fund project development, while the remaining 3.33 percent goes directly to the core team.
The DeDAO leadership, which consists of the DAO Leads, The Divine Council, and the DeAlpha Team, also hold community lotteries and work together to decide on DAO acquisitions.
For example, one of these acquisitions saw DeDAO buy a basketball team in Ice Cube’s Big3 Basketball League.
What is DUST?
DUST is DeGod’s community token that has been created to drive the utility of the project further. It is an SPL token on the Solana blockchain with zero initial supply. The team aims to limit the supply of DUST to 33,300,000. The only way to mine DUST is to stake a DeGods or DeadGods NFT. Staked DeGods earn 2.5 DUST per day, while staked DeadGods earn 7.5 DUST per day. However, Dust is listed on DEX Raydium and is available for purchase with SOL.
The primary use of the token is to transform your DeGod into a DeadGod, but collectors can also use it to participate in raffles, auctions, and create future collections. And while the community has only bet 3.6 percent of DeGods, it has also bet a whopping 95.8 percent of DeadGods.
The DeGods team also claims that DeDAO will actively seek opportunities to integrate the DUST tool into other important projects in the Solana ecosystem. Rumors have swirled that collectors will have to part with 375 DUST to make one of the 15,000 y00ts NFTs, but one of the DeGods founders, Frank, has played down this alleged condition.
Overall, the project and its management have proven to be incredibly resilient, bringing serious respect to the Solana name in the NFT community in the process. If you scroll down to the bottom of DeGods’ website, you’ll find three short sentences that encapsulate the developers’ approach to their NFT community: “We tried some shit. We learned some shit. Now we are trying something new.” It’s the perfect encapsulation of the attitude Web3 entities should take if they want to create something of substance, whether it’s in a crypto winter or not.
