Spotlight: Gnogenverse

By PippiWestwood | MultiversX Madness | 25 Apr 2022

For this article it makes sense to me to do things in reverse. I will put the disclosure and links for further reading up top so that you can see where my bias is going in and then explore this on your own as a guide to do your own deep dive into what exactly Gnogen is creating. Skim through and get the gist or grab some coffee and get cozy under the blankets because I won't sugar coat it, this is a long one.

Disclosure:

I am heavily invested in Gnogenverse. To date, I am holding 11 Gnogons, 8 Drifters, 7 Maiar Punks, 1 Bolt, 1 Validator, and 1 Aermes, and I would be holding more if I could afford it.

I'm not trying to sell you on any of the projects I write about. Everything I write is my own opinion and not financial advice or shilling. I don't do paid advertisements nor do I do up front agreement for compensation of any kind. Any nfts or tokens I happen to receive are unsolicited tips for writing (which I do for free) and I hold them for at least 6 months to avoid conflicts of interest.

Links

The Sheer number of links here should provide some context to you as to the magnitude of this project. Developing network effect is one of Gnogen's strong points and they have so far leveraged that to tremendous effect and help to accelerate the growth of a fledgling staking agency, which has not been able to keep enough space available for everyone looking to stake despite not yet providing a competitive APR.

Medium | Twitter | Discord | Website

Gnogons
Deadrare | Trust

Emidas
Deadrare | Trust

Aermes
Deadrare | Trust

Partners and Affiliates

Aerovek Foundation
Twitter | Discord | Spotlight: Aerovek | Deadrare | Trust

Drifters
Twitter | Discord | Website | Deadrare | Trust

Art Coiner
Twitter | Deadrare | Discord

Gnogenverse TEAM

Joshua Kim
Gnogen Founder
Entrepreneur
Creative Artist
(T) @EGLDIsTheWay
(D) thecyple#0312

Mystique
Discord Community Manager
Executive Assistant
@iLoveMystique

Andrew
Moderator
Community Engagement
@THUMPER_ELROND

Rob
Project Manager
Gnogencon Community Admin
@intoGverse

Overview

Gnogen emerged as one of the earliest NFT projects on the Elrond Network and sought from the beginning to develop a premium brand of comics content, exclusively built on Elrond with "art, utility, and long-term goals;" and then beyond that to "a full metaverse opportunity with the top names in the industry backing us."

Gnogen at this time dominates the Elrond NFT space with 4 collections from the DAO now in the top ten on Deadrare and the others not far behind. They have a dedicated and enthusiastic fanbase that looks to be growing faster and faster.

The name Gnogen is a combination of 2 words: gnosis & generation. Inspired by the rise of a new generation of humanity, "A generation tired of oppression. A generation smarter than the ones that came before them can ever seem to admit. A generation that grew beyond the limitations of the mind; utilizing smart phones and blazing fast internet connection to increase neural computational capacity by manifolds — A generation, of knowledge. Welcome to the stories, the heroes, the villains, and the beauty within this great struggle, as told in the medium of art."

Gnogen then seeks to embody this Generation of Knowledge.

Lore

The Gnogen brand is first and foremost a creator of comic books, weaving art and story together to create exciting and inspiring narratives that capture the imagination. All of them are heavy with lore that binds them all together and will become increasingly relevant as this monster is built. Long-term goals include a production company that will rival Marvel Studios. Whether they end up achieving their full vision or not, you can't fault them on ambition and drive to succeed. It is certainly very rare in the NFT space to aim at having your own in house animators and full line up of capable artists.

Emidas

The first of their Heroes, called Emidas was the central figure for their genesis collection, a series of animated comic book covers. Each volume was initially sold through Discord before any markets were yet available to trade on a first come first served basis, while supplies last. They did not last very long. The demand for these initial pieces was such that it became a lottery system as everyone threw in a comment at once in the chat, hoping to make the cut. I was not one of the lucky ones and from that early price of around .33 it now floats up there in the mid double digits and a complete collection of all 7 volumes is now well above 200 EGLD. Each volume represents another frame in a developing story of the young hero. Emidas is emblematic of the entire Gnogen brand and will be their Supreme Hero. The lore for Emidas can be read on their Medium page.

Aermes

The next hero will be distributed as a reward for staking with Aerovek Staking Agency depending on the size of your stake. This has been a strong element of the community's interest in building up that agency, helping them move from a fledgling provider and aiming towards becoming a top ten powerhouse in record time. Stakers are divided into tiers based on amount staked and time involved where the top tier will recieve all 7 chapters, entirely as a reward. This is the only way to get one of these in the initial distribution and the first volume was sitting at more than 2 EGLD only a few weeks later. The rest will drop throughout 2022. The story of the titular character for this series can be read as it develops on Medium. So far, you can read the first act.

Gnogons

Near the end of 2021 Gnogen released their second collection called Gnogons. Rather than a series of comic book covers, this one was a 10k piece generative collection that promises lots of benefits. Each one a unique dragon crafted out of hundreds of traits and some of them in my opinion are stunning to look at. This collection will always be special to me as they were the first NFTs I ever bought. I went from not understanding the NFT market at all and deciding I wouldn't buy any to minting 11 Gnogons over a single weekend. Personally I was inspired by the art and the ambition of the team behind the project and probably bit off more than I could chew. Then after a period of freaking out a bit over what the hell I just bought, I learned more and more about NFTs and more and more about what Gnogen was seeking to build and between that and the projected benefits for holders, at this time I have no plans to ever sell one. It's possible that I won't have to. According to Joshua; in the metaverse, Gnogons will be the thing that everyone wants.

Gnogons are to be a primary source of mining $GNG tokens in the metaverse and for now they are first class tickets to DAO Partner whitelists. The various traits by themselves inspire the imagination, Priest Helmets, Impenetrable Armor, Royale Armor, Flaming Spines, Stealth Mode horns, Elementals like Ice, Fire, Decay, Time... make me daydream about what this society of dragons might be like fully brought to life. When they populate the metaverse, perhaps we will see. In addition to these aesthetic traits there are also stats; Power, Speed, Defense. Each Gnogon has a unique set of stats that make it more or less competative in different areas. Some may be great for racing while others are better at home defense... which will apparently also be a thing. The differences between all of them are meaningful and will drive how they interact and the metaverse will be the place where all of their stories come to life.

There will be more collections, bigger badder Gnogons (some will be gained from fuzing V1s together), more heroes, ...villains. Gnogen is just getting started and 2022 looks to be packed with content. Even as this article is being published, a new hero called Doga has been announced with teasert of the art for this Shiba Inu inspired collection.

Gnogen DAO

According to their statement on Discord: "The GnogenDAO is to be an oasis of projects on Elrond that have been vetted for doxxed teams, long term vision, and a brand that can execute at the highest standards."

So far they have built an association of 8 NFT brands to be DAO Partners where each one will play heavily in the metaverse ecosystem they are developing. These being Maiar Punks, Lightning Bolts, Validators, Drifters, High Street Wolf Society, Meta-Bricks, Art Coiner and Nifty Rex with more partners coming gradually as projects are developed that meet the rigorous standards set up by the founder, Joshua Kim.

These brands also work together to push awareness of each of the others and even provide cross-brand benefits creating network effects that drive both brand awareness and sales. For example the collection called Gnogons is the first generated pfp project from Gnogen consisting of 10k unique dragon NFTs that promise huge benefits in the metaverse. So far these have served as a first class ticket to the whitelist for all partner sales. The Maiar Punks will have a full 3D pixel city in the Gnogen metaverse, and it seems apparent that collaboration will continue amongst these brands as the project develops further. While Joshua serves as an advisor role in the partners, they are all seperate brands in their own right and owned and operated by their own teams. The DAO is eventually to be composed of 100 NFT seats (where one project may take up two seats) and 1400 members chosen from these various communities.

Art Coiner, a producer of highly (highly) detailed 3D coins will be the exclusive producer of the art for all of the tokens created to fuel Gnogenverse. They currently have a 'secret collection' in the works.

Gnogencon

In August 2022 Gnogen will be creating a massive international event for Elrond NFTs hosted in Los Angeles, California. In fact, they have invited artists to come and join at no extra expense for providing "free, rare, exclusive NFTs" to everyone who attends. This event is not simply ambitious for the Elrond Network, it is ambitious for NFTs.

So far information about what will be at Gnogencon is sparse, except that people will be rewarded heavily for attending. Some of what we do know so far is that Aerovek Aviation who is partnered with Gnogen for their EGLD staking agengy will have a booth there and WWWine, an NFT brand that is not affiliated with Gnogen has already stated it will host a villa that will be freely accessible for those who hold one of their wine NFTs. They have made a special point of mentioning you should be sure you bring your highest rated wine...

Dying to attend but just can't swing a trip to Los Angeles this summer? Perhaps you will be excited to learn there is another one planned for 2023, in Europe.

Metaverse

do you want houses? cars? dragons? jets? your own lake? island? this is the metaverse we are trying to build.
an inter dimensional nexus to teleport into other teams' worlds
kingdom hearts on steroids
-Joshua Kim

As we are early days in Elrond NFTs and the concept of a metaverse in general, it is still uncertain what a metaverse will actually look like. How a space like this will function and how it will develop are open questions even and especially on a conceptual level. We are right now at the cutting edge of a strange new world where more and more of the important aspects of our lives will be done online. Corporations are also getting in on the act, car companies, social media... Facebook even recently rebranded their entire company as Meta with an aim to monopolize this space as it develops. How this new Web3 horizon will shape up as it comes into focus and who will be the leaders of such a space is a major focus for Gnogen.

A fundamental concept that seperates Web2 from Web3 is ownership. Corporations and venture capitalists will be looking to have a field day in the markets that develop out of this emerging technological landscape. This is a major transitional period we are living through where the owners of the old model will see their place in the hierarchy shifting and they will be fighting with everything they have to remain and even become the new dominant force in the economy. This is Google before Google, Apple before Apple, Amazon before Amazon. Crypto allows for the possibility, not the certainty but the possibility, that the owners of the platforms that populate this new Web3 environment will not be the corporations but the users themselves. As Joshua says, "whoever holds the nfts owns it. that’s why it’s very important to not paper hand to corporations. "Holders of Gnogen NFTs will see certain benefits in the metaverse created by Gnogen. Whether or not ownership of this metaverse stays that way will be up to the current stakeholders, that is to say owners of Gnogen NFTs."

Most of the tech that will make these worlds a reality itself is very young so we can't do much more than wild speculaton at this point and, while we don't know everything about how it will shape up, we do know that two elements are likely to play a role. Ownership (in the form of NFTs), and tokens on a blockchain will likely run the economy for many of these spaces. Elrond makes development of these two aspects incredibly easy which makes it a good choice to use for the underlying infrastructure. To that end, Gnogen is already issuing land parcels and tokens to the holders of their NFTs.

Virtual Property

When Gnogen released their first pfp collection, they were giving out more than PNGs of dragon illustrations. Each person who minted a Gnogon will also recieve a parcel of metaverse land. That's 10k parcels given out as a bonus for being an early adopter, and that is all that will ever exist. This means that those who minted the Gnogon collection will now begin as the first owners of land in the Gnogenverse, before it is even constructed. It may take a few years before the value of this NFT becomes obvious to everyone so then the question is, how many will sell and how many will hold on to the bitter end just to see how all of this plays out.

The idea of these land parcels is that they will be gigantic and allow the owner to build on them in the metaverse, potentially allowing them to lease portions of them out to developers. If Gnogen is able to create what they are setting out to create, then the real question becomes who will lease their land to corporations and who will pay corporations to use the land they used to hold. As in traditional real estate, the value of land lies in it's qualities as a store of value and it's ability to generate yield if managed properly.

Some may see it as unfair that those who minted get all of the initial benefits for this land drop while those who came in later and bought on secondary miss out. There is something to be said about that but Gnogen as always gamefied their collections to such a degree that even when buying on secondary holders will still see massive benefits. Additionally, Joshua has decided to grant access to some of those who missed that opportunity with his own parcels that he recieved from his own mint. The Gnogen team themselves recieved the exact same minting opportunity as everyone else, doing their best to make the mint as fair and widely distributed as possible.

Tokens

The currency that powers the Gnogenvers will be the $GNG token. They are also aiming at a fair launch with this one, having already airdropped some tokens to holders of the Gnogons after the mint and 80% of the supply to be distributed via smart contract to all citizens of the metaverse through various mechanisms related to their NFTs. We have already been told about some of the features of Gnogons; battles, races, defending land, beauty contests... various games and other activities that will reward early adopters heavily for playing on and exploring the platform. And that is just a peek inside of this world that is still in the early stages of development.

The total supply for $GNG will be 777 million and while there isn't yet much information available on the tokenomics, we are told that we will be getting much more insight in the coming months. For now we will have to accept the very little we've been told up to now and that includes 7 different revenue streams (so far), DeFi x NFTs, and that the long-term goal is to have this token listed on American exchanges but for the beginning it will not be connected directly to monetary value so as to develop organically and avoid running into issues with the SEC (a smart move in my opinion).

Trading Card Game

While not much has been released up to now, there is a trading card game in the works for Gnogen that will be their "biggest project going forward." This is due to be released this year (2022) in Q3/Q4 so there should be some big updates on that in the near future.

DAO Partners

Each one of these partners is an independent project with their own owners, roadmap, and long term vision and are seperate from the Gnogen brand but are partnered with them through the Gnogen DAO. These all deserve their own dedicated article so here I will give a brief summary and encourage you to explore them more if they interest you.

Maiar Punks

Maiar Punks have the distinction of being the very first DAO Partner. They are a series of 10k pixel art wizards and will have their own 3D pixel city in the Gnogen metaverse. The genesis collection will soon be a source of farming their tokens ($TOLKEN, get it?) and these will be the exclusive currency for minting future collections. Currently you can see teasers of their upcoming 3D pixel art.

Lightning Bolts

Lightning Bolts are modeled after the iconic lightning bolt of Elrond and were one of the very first NFT projects to launch on the network. They have recently been dropping special Origin comics to the holders of their top ranked nfts. Some highlights from their roadmap include:

ARTS LAUNCHPAD 🎨 We'll bring real art in the metaverse.
LIGHTNING BOLTS TREASURES 💎 The long-awaited 3D v2 collection. v1 holders get 1 v2 for FREE!
LIGHTNING BOLTS APPAREL
v1 NFT STAKING AND COMMUNITY TOKEN FARMING 🚜🌾Unleash the power of your v1s!

Validators

Validators are a small collection of only 1000 for their V1 genesis. They come in ranks, with each rank inspired by a layer of blockchain technology:

Rank I - 48% - Warriors
Rank II - 28% - Pools
Rank III - 16% - Observers
Rank IV - 7% - Metas
Rank V - 1% - Masters

The ranks are all represented on the images with a roman numeral in the background and each of the 1000 V1s will recieve one of the 10k V2s of the same rank when they launch. Only these will have the Rank emblem displayed. V2s will be upgradeable and both V1 and V2 validators will be playable characters inside of the metaverse.

Drifters

Twitter | Discord | Website | Deadrare | Trust

Drifters is one of my favorite Elrond projects if only just from an art perspective. They are a series of 10k highly detailed avatars where each one will serve as citizenship to the Drifter Nation. The original 1000 (called Innovators, the rest are referred to as Settlers) were first created on Ethereum before the founder decided to bridge the entire collection over to Elrond. To represent this traveling across dimensions, all 1000 Innovators will have upgraded artwork and glowing hair to mark them in the collection.

Aevitas is the name of their futuristic metropolis which will be a play-to-earn platform that uses their AEV token to power the economic activity which holders can earn by staking their NFTs. "The primary goal of Aevitas is to allow digital creators a platform to display and monetize their work." This will then lead to the founding of a physical eco-village called Driftopia where holders get priority access.

This is an ambitious project which deserves it's own deep dive. You can learn more with this AMA on Youtube and their Whitepaper is worth a read.

High Street Wolf Society

High Street is primarily about street wear and a celebration of fashion. They are developing a brand of digital fashion and accessories that represent streetwear culture and their own original designs. Their Avatars will be upgradeable with new looks as the project progresses. They will sell physical products along with an accompanying digital twin

Other elements grant special benefits such as exclusive drops and transformations for your wolf avatars. The website is a wealth of information on how all of this project will come together.

Meta-Bricks

Meta-Bricks landed on the scene with their first collection of baked-in-the-kiln figurines called Brick Boys in late 2001. Despite being popular they ran into some difficulties and decided they would have to shut down their project, but not before refunding every single person who had purchased. The gesture caught the attention of Gnogen and they decided to revive the troubled launch with this new collection as a Gnogen DAO Partner.

Some highlights from their roadmap:

Release of a Girl collection
And we all know what happens if you own a boy and a girl
Free drops to holders
Animated 360s to original holders (daily holder snapshots)
Hold to earn. 50% of secondary royalties distributed to holders

Nifty Rex

The Nifty Rex are cuteness personified. These 15k dino characters travel through time and pick up elements from all of the various eras they visit. Gnogen forsees "intense gamification, multiple avenues for mainstream entertainment, and a character that can appeal to people of every race, gender, age, and identity!"

Roadmap highlights:

Updates on project 1: Gamification of The Nifty Rex
Updates on project 2: Physical products & Charity Involvement of The Nifty Rex
Community Activities and contests
Roadmap 2023 reveal
Holidays specials

Art Coiner

Twitter | Deadrare | Discord

Art Coiner made a huge splash in the Elrond space with their very first collection of highly detailed 3D coin art based on EGLD and MEX. More recently they have released their mythology inspired Act II coin collection which was met with equal enthusiasm. Their roadmap promises to deliver special tokens to purchase future art, phisical pieces and recently it was announced that Gnogen will have them create the token art for every single token in the Gnogenverse plus collaborations with even more projects.

Other Partnerships

The collaborations keep coming as another partnership has been announced with yet another staking provider, this the second largest on Elrond, Ishtari Vision. The the announcement was made on Medium with the teaser "Web3 token mining, blockchain-based gaming DAPPs, a new twist on an NFT marketplace, and so much more — Gnogen and Istari Vision are teaming up to bring massive DAPPs to the Elrond Network Blockchain."

How this partnership will work and what will come out of it is yet to be seen but the gist seems to be that Gnogen is following through with their promises of working towards the development of innovative new dapps for web3.

Summary

This ever growing project might be the biggest endeavor going on in the Elrond space right now, save Elrond itself, if only because as it grows it is incorporating more and more independent projects with their own plans and designs and organizes them to work seamlessly together towards the singlular end of developing the Gnogenverse. This will be multiple collections for each DAO partner project, many different tokens, metaverse spaces, ambitions, etc. all supporting each other creating exponential network effects as they grow. They are aiming not just at onboarding the current population of the Elrond Network but bringing people in from other networks, even and especially people who have not yet dabbled in NFTs as well to grow the Elrond community itself. Whether or not they are ultimately successful in all of the various goals they have set for themselves, following along with this intrepid group of builders and entrepreneurs seems sure to be a fun ride.

Thanks for stopping by my Elrond blog! Please share with others and let me know if there are topics you would like me to dive into for future articles

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