Interview with NFT Brands: Q&A with 3D Franken Punks

Dan: I started out working in fintech and had been involved in the Chicago crypto space since 2017/2018. Ned and I met at a local spot in Chicago and he told me everything he was doing in the NFT space and I was intrigued. My first project I bought was Anonymice, which has been a wild ride to say the least, but it really showed me the peaks and valleys of the NFT space. Shortly after that, I quit my day job and decided to jump full time into the project and work to build FrankenPunks.

Nelson: I had a background in marketing and sales and started 3 companies prior to going full time into the NFT space. I started in Feb. 2021 as a flipper and built a large following through my “NFT Tracker” twitter profile. I quickly moved on from flipping to become a more focused NFT investor and I personally own multiple “Blue Chip” projects such as CryptoPunks. I had also worked with artists in the space and built a relationship with 3DPunks after his initial collection dropped. I decided we should do a 10K collection using 3DPunks art with a focus on community led initiatives centered around owning Larva Labs CryptoPunks.

Dan – Aug 2021

Nelson- Feb 2021

We had a great connection with 3DPunks and wanted to do a 10K collection with a mutation of the OG collection CryptoPunks. We thought that given the entry price to CryptoPunks being 70-80ETH, the art being 24×24 pixel art images, and the founders being reclusive from the project, there was an opportunity to do a lot of what CryptoPunks were not doing. Have a low entry price, create incredible art, and be very active and live inside our community. After deciding that, 3DPunks came up with the concept art for the “Doc” and we then decided to make him the main character of the collection. The title “Frankenpunks” actually came to Dan in a dream, oddly enough.

Our project is unique because we decided to take roughly ⅔ of the proceeds and set up a community wallet to fund project growth and initiatives, and initially purchase 4 CryptoPunks. We are one of the first projects to bootstrap our launch, sell out a 10K collection, then purchase Larva Labs CryptoPunks, and open source the direction of the NFT vault to community members. We have a strong belief that the community is the strongest aspect of this (and any) project and we wanted to put enough ETH in their hands to make a difference.

Our team is roughly 5 people right now 

Nelson – Co-founder and responsible for Brand, NFT Strategy, Marketing and Media

Dan (Cecilia) – Co-founder and responsible for Operations, Product Engineering

James – Core Team and Responsible for Front End Engineering

John – Advisor and Responsible for NFT Partnerships 

Dan (Nadem) – Core Team and Responsible for Streaming Content and Music 

3DPunks – NFT artist and main creative mind behind the FrankenPunks art

FrankenPunks is not just a PFP collection. Your FrankenPunk gets you into our community and gives you the ability to govern over the community wallet. We have also built a platform for community members to launch their NFT careers. This includes a creator budget for Music drops, exclusive merch, Alpha groups, NFT media and metaverse initiatives. 

Also, we own LarvaLabs PUNKS!!!

NFTs are a massive space and each collection has a different niche and purpose. Broadly speaking, we view NFTs as the future of content and social media. As more influencers move into the space along with major companies, we could see NFTs reaching mass adoption in the next 3-5 years.

I think, however, in the short term (3-6 months) quite a steep cliff is coming. While it is great to see tons of gains across the space and many projects succeeding, we haven’t witnessed the NFT bear market yet. As anyone who’s been in Crypto for a while knows, the one thing you can be sure about is the bear market coming haha. Unfortunately, it can’t be “Up Only” and I’m excited for it. It will clean out the space and allow for deep development, instead of just hype hype hype, we see projects with great teams and great value succeed.

I think they should try to get involved in projects as a community member first. I think you should invest your time first and then decide if you want to invest money. There are certain external indicators such as volume or floor price you could look at, but you will never really know the depths of a project until you hangout in the community for a period of time. 

Finding a great mentor in the space is incredibly helpful. A 1-hour conversation with a veteran NFT trader or collector could save you weeks of reading or researching online about NFTs.

Create a Twitter account and get involved with NFT Twitter. Join spaces, listen in, write down questions, ask your mentor these questions. Understanding the “memes” of the space is a great way to see if you do actually understand what is happening IN the NFT space.

We had a great relationship with a relatively small but unique project called Ikani.ai. One of the founders is a great friend and genius solidity engineer. They are doing unique things with poetry and AI that we have not seen in the NFT space so far.

We own CryptoPunks #7969, #5940, #3080, #6863.

Collection Twitter – https://twitter.com/3dFrankenPunks

Collection Twitch – https://www.twitch.tv/3dfrankenpunks