Meet one of the first 10,000 PFP projects on Bitcoin

OnChainMonkey (OCM) has emerged as a historic staple in the NFT community that has time and time again proven to be well ahead of the curve. The project is known for uploading the entire 10,000 NFT collection to Ethereum in a single transaction. And with the new Ordinals protocol, OCM became one of the first 10,000 PFP projects on Bitcoin.

While OnChainMonkey has made its mark in Web3, parent company Metagood is perhaps less well known. With a mission to empower communities and be catalysts for positive collective action, Metagood has spearheaded a number of impactful initiatives and is one of the many reasons why OCM is so successful.

We spoke with the Metagood team to discuss these initiatives, the transition to Blockchain, and more about the OnChainMonkey universe.

What is OnChainMonkey?

The OnChainMonkey Genesis collection consists of 10,000 colorful Ethereum NFT PFPs depicting – you guessed it – monkeys. Each monkey consists of a combination of seven features: fur, mouth, eyes, clothes, hat, earrings and background. The project launched via a free coin on September 11, 2021, and was quickly claimed in just four hours.

Part of what made OCM successful is its pioneering status as the first ever on-chain PFP collection, meaning all metadata for every NFT is stored directly on the Ethereum blockchain. In contrast, other NFT collections require a third party to store this data, which comes with a level of risk if the storage solution fails.

Another advantage of being in the chain is the costs. According to the OCM team, a typical PFP collection will take up an estimated 100 megabytes of storage, and cost over 5,000 ETH if stored on-chain. In comparison, OCM used only 0.798 ETH to distribute everything on-chain.

Who created OnChainMonkey?

OnChainMonkey was created by Metagood. The founding team includes Chairman Bill Tai, the first investor in Zoom and an early investor in Canva and Dapper labs; CEO Danny Yang, creator of Maicoin, Taiwan’s largest crypto exchange; and COO Amanda Terry, a former Twitter and NBC executive.

The Karma and Dessert collections

In 2022, the OnChainMonkey universe expanded with the launch of the Karma and Dessert collections – both 100 percent on-chain, of course. Every Genesis NFT holder (as of February 1, 2022) was given a Dessert NFT, which their original OnChainMonkey could “eat” to produce a Karma NFT. There are 10,000 dessert tokens and three types of desserts of varying rarity: Incredible Ice Pop, Divine Donut and Celestial Cake.

Karma NFTs were created in part in response to criticism of the simplistic design of the Genesis collection. They consist of a 3D monkey with more detail than the original 2D OnChainMonkey NFTs. Notably, the Karma NFTs are designed by OCM’s Oscar-nominated art team and lead animators of films including “IceAge,” “Rio” and more.

The Karma collection did more than just look pretty; it also gave holders membership to Monkeyverse, votes in the DAO, access to Missions (experiments and tasks that give holders rewards), and Banana tokens (off-chain tokens that live on Discord and Twitter).

The shift to Ordinals

In 2023, OCM transitioned to Bitcoin Ordinal inscriptions. Before uploading their OCM collection to Bitcoin, however, the Metagood team had to reconcile their commitment to sustainability with the often-criticized environmental impact of Bitcoin and other proof-of-work blockchains.

They solved this problem by uploading their OCM collection to Bitcoin in a single transaction, just like they did with their original Ethereum collection. As such, they only used 20,000 bytes of data. By doing so, Yang says Metagood and their community get “the benefits of a very secure store of value on Bitcoin without contributing to the bloat of the chains.”

So why Ordinals? Metagood didn’t switch to Ordinals to capitalize on a fad; they sensed a different kind of possibility. “People still don’t understand the value of putting data on Bitcoin,” Yang says. He explains that as a protocol, Ordinals are incomplete. But when the protocol comes to fruition, Yang and the rest of the Metagood team believe Ordinals may be better suited for NFT-type inscriptions than Ethereum.

“Ethereum’s smart contracts are good for NFTs, but Bitcoin is more secure,” Yang says. “If you think something is valuable, it should be in the most valuable and safest chain.”

OnChainMonkey’s focus on impact

At the heart of OnChainMonkey’s business is their belief in the power of communities to create positive change. That’s why Metagood put its roots in Web3; the team sees NFTs as the most effective tools for mobilizing and stimulating these communities. “We created Metagood to solve big problems in the world,” explains Yang. “And we needed large communities to do that.”

To work towards solving these problems, Metagood created a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) consisting of OCM holders. Fifty percent of trading revenue generated by OCM is channeled back to the DAO, where members have the power to vote on how the funds are spent.

The DAO has resulted in a long list of charitable projects. In March 2022, the company launched the OCM Earth fundraiser, which raised nearly $200,000 for Save the Children’s Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund. It also partnered with Axie Infinity to hold a charity tournament that raised over $450,000 to help rebuild typhoon-stricken homes in the Philippines. In December 2022, the society used part of DAO’s funds for arrange a Christmas party at a small Brazilian orphanage where the children received OnChainMonkey coloring books.

Furthermore, the OCM community has also chosen to donate some of their valuable NFTs to support projects that the DAO chooses. Shortly after the 2021 Genesis coin, a member donated his OCM NFT to Giga, an organization that brings internet to schools around the world. In early 2022, another member donated a Genesis NFT to raise funds to support the UN’s Life Below Water initiative to promote coral reef restoration, a cause chosen by the OCM community’s DAO.

“It’s amazing the global reach we’ve had,” says Terry. “But it has also brought changes on a local scale.” Community members have been able to leverage DAO’s resources to carry out projects in their own communities, such as beach cleanups in Belize, rehabilitating a skate park in Brazil, and creating custom items that are auctioned off for charity.

On the surface, OnChainMonkey may appear to be just another high-value NFT pool with expensive floor prices and a Bitcoin duplicate pool. But from Metagood’s perspective, everything they do is rooted in their core values: respect, integrity, sustainability and experimentation.

“These values ​​resonate with people,” says Terry, “because they realize that Web3 can be used to create significant wealth for communities, but it can also be used to do good in the real world.”