The latest Solana NFT collection gives Ethereum NFTs a run for their money
- Dust Labs — DeGods and y00ts creators — raised a $7 million seed round
- Y00ts generated over $7 million worth of secondary sales since Monday despite minting delays
The company behind the Solana-based DeGods project, the most valuable Solana NFT collection, is at it again.
Dust Labs is in the middle of a whirlwind week – complete with a few hiccups – between a $7 million seed raise and the release of its newest NFTs, y00ts.
The “y00ts mint t00b” collection has topped OpenSea volume charts for the past 48 hours, collecting 227,000 solana (SOL), or over $7.1 million in secondary sales at the time of publication, per CryptoSlam data. The floor price peaked at 167 SOL on Wednesday.
The hype behind y00ts, short for y00topia, is partly due to its scholarship whitelisting program and its custom version of copyright, which promises to reform the traditional system of monetization for NFT collections.
Only collectors accepted on the y00t list are eligible to mint a t00b NFT. Essentially two different collections, t00bs are vials that can be burned to mint y00ts NFTs.
DUST, the DeGods ecosystem tool on Solana, is required to mint y00ts.
The full NFT reveal has yet to take place, and a derivative collection called y00ts Yacht Club has already been developed and sold out.
Originally scheduled to release on September 4, y00t’s mint was delayed due to a “blocking error” five minutes before the start time, according to the team.
Since it was published on September 5, the project’s volume is greater than that of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection over the past seven days.
But even the waiting list, scheduled for September 6, ran into and has had unknown problems rescheduled.
Despite the delays and complications, Twitter user alexjm.eth the tribute the project for having “single-handedly triggered bullish sentiment in the midst of a painful bear”.
Another collector, NFT influencer Franklin, decided to sell y00ts mint spot and earn 90 SOL. He is the 6th largest Bored Ape collector with 60 BAYC NFTs in his portfolio.
Y00ts and DeGods’ founder Frank responded to Franklin via Twitter, states that it “will be funny when the gods turn on monkeys this year”.
Backers of the startup’s venture include Foundation Capital, Solana Ventures, FTX Ventures, Solana NFT protocol maker Metaplex and top Solana NFT marketplace Magic Eden.
The company tweeted that it intends to build a “B2B SaaS startup to help NFT projects return the most value to their holders.”
A new approach to intellectual property
Dust Labs is experimenting with a new copyright and ownership system for y00ts NFTs they call ⓨ, as a replacement for the more common copyright symbol ⓒ.
The power behind ⓨ, according to the y00ts team, is that any active community member can start their own “club” or sub-community – based on shared interests, memes or goods – and register the derivative project with ⓨ.
Each sub-collection is a governing body that can benefit from royalties on each year that sells with any of their custom properties. This system can also make it easier to approve or reject requests to use an NFT’s intellectual property rights (IP).
This comes at a time when many blue chip NFT collections are changing their own terms of use regarding copyright and IP rights.
Get today’s best crypto news and insights delivered to your inbox every night. Subscribe to Blockworks’ free newsletter now.
-
Ornella Hernandez
Blockwork
Journalist
