888 Inner Circle IRL Recap #NFTNYC2023
From April 12th to 14th, NFT.NYC held their fifth annual conference which attracted thousands of attendees from across the globe. The 888 Inner Circle decided that this year we would also host our inaugural IRL token holders meetup at the same time, an event that we have planned for months. A great amount of time, energy and resources went into the event to ensure that it would be a success and we couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.
As an OG Web3, global, tokenized membership club, we are defined by the members of our community. Our community is filled with amazing individuals from talented artists, to successful entrepreneurs, to brilliant innovators. While there is a certain level of connection that can be made online there is simply no substitute for in-person interaction. The human element can sometimes get lost in Web 3.0 so we wanted to take care of our members on that all-important human level.
This IRL event was a unique opportunity for us to send a strong message that the 888 Inner Circle continues to build a lifetime membership club that supports art and artists, one that is backed by a community that grows stronger each and every day.
The Main Event at The Raines Law Room
The main event was at the Raines Law Room at the William (RLR) at 24 E 39th St. New York, NY 10016, one the coolest speakeasies in New York City. The event was held on the night of Thursday April 13. It was open and fully included within 888 InnerCircle membership to all of our token holding members who RSVP’d. This included both Realms and Genesis token holders. The venue was absolutely incredible and the evening included hors d’oeuvres, a 3-hour open bar (craft spirits, cocktails, wine, beer + specialty cocktails), a live mixology tutorial station, and a full 3-course sit down dinner.
Special Guest & Announcement
After dinner, we had a very special guest appearance. Our very own Vincent Boucher (aka Montreal.AI on Discord) who joined us through Zoom, streamed on a big screen TV. Vincent is the President of Montreal.AI, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) research company. He is not only one of the world’s foremost AI experts, he is also an 888 Inner Circle “OG” and a major token holder. When we talk about the strength of our community, Vincent is exhibit A.
Vincent really wanted to join us for our inaugural community IRL event, but he is currently very busy blazing a trail for decentralized artificial intelligence. He is a frequently requested guest on Mario Nawfal’s Twitter Spaces which regularly draws hundreds of thousands of listeners (his last spaces reached 420K listeners including the likes of Elon Musk among them). Despite his very busy schedule, Vincent took the time to not only make an appearance but to also share a special announcement with us.
Many more details will be shared in the coming weeks but here are some general takeaways.
- After a hiatus, the highly anticipated 888 Inner Circle Genesis Drops will be resuming! Montreal.AI will be creating and providing Genesis Drop #4 for the 888 Inner Circle community. As with previous Genesis Drops, the plan is for every Genesis token holder to receive a free mint of an NFT (not including gas) for every Genesis token held.
- The NFTs in this Genesis Drop are intended to have utility and long-term benefits in the Montreal.AI ecosystem, most notably in something called “The AGI Genesis NFT Game”. In Vincent’s words, the AGI Genesis NFT Game would ideally be “a groundbreaking, decentralized AI-driven game built upon the concept of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). It would feature a unique blend of AI-generated content, NFT collectibles, and AI Agents NFTs, which would be intrinsically motivated AI characters. The game would take place in a dynamic, ever-evolving environment where players can interact, trade, and influence the virtual environment through their choices and actions.” Please note that this concept of The AGI Genesis NFT Game, as well as the technologies that underlie it, are highly experimental and represent an advanced state of the art. As such, the specifics of the nature of the planned endeavors may change as things unfold.
- Montreal.AI also announced he will very kindly be gifting the 888.AGI.eth subdomain name to 888 and the 888 Inner Circle. Montreal.AI views ENS AGI subdomains as a “trust beacon.” The vision is to allow us to someday assign unique identities to various AI Agent NFTs, which will promote greater accountability and foster ethical innovation within the cosmos of decentralized AI.
Vincent finished his announcement with these words, “On Jul 20, 2022, 888 said ‘I’ll be back & will be stronger than ever’. In that same spirit, let’s harness the power of AI for a revolutionary relaunch of the 888 Inner Circle Genesis Drops.”
Merch!
Of course no IRL Event would be complete without a merch drop and our attendees all left with bags full of 888 Inner Circle gear. We chose to use the same high quality merch brand that Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) used to create their iconic hoodies and in the end we had four separate pieces of merch that we gave away during the event, depending on our attendees’ membership tier including hats, T-Shirts, and two different hoodies, with a special black one for out Inner8 members. The quality of the merch was so impressive that a few of our guests’ plus 1’s purchased tokens on the spot to be able to claim…and you bet we rocked that merch the entire time we were in NYC!
Private Inner 8 Lunch
Our Inner 8 (holders of 8 or more Genesis tokens) are among our most passionate and committed members. We wanted to do something extra special for them. As such, we hosted a private all expenses paid Inner 8 lunch at Osteria La Baia on Friday, April 14. Lunch was fantastic on every level, from ambience, to food, to service, to the company. We truly had an amazing time.
Museum of Modern Art Visit
After lunch, we visited the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), with complimentary tickets for our Inner 8 members. We’ve often said that we are about “art and artists,” so it was important for us to visit an art museum to not only support artists but to cultivate a sense of art appreciation within our community. We want to create the biggest and best community of artists and art appreciators in Web 3.0.
One standout piece that we saw was the “Unsupervised” exhibition by renowned artist Refik Anadol (and 888 has collected his genesis piece on SuperRare), which used artificial intelligence to interpret and transform more than 200 years of art at MoMA. It was a large-scale installation that showed digital artworks, which morphed and transformed in real time. Attendees were also able to claim a special NFT that illustrated the installation and its ever-changing nature.
Farewell Happy Hour/Dinner at the Hugh
After our visit to MoMA, we concluded our time at NFT.NYC with another all expenses paid perk of being part of the InnerCircle, this time a Happy Hour gathering at The Hugh food hall, which stretched way past Happy Hour, through dinner, and right up to closing time. In addition to drinks, we enjoyed a variety of delicacies, including lamb chops from BK Jani, dumplings from Mökbar, truffle fries from Pesce LuLu, and coco bread from Jumieka NYC. It was a night filled with laughter, story-telling, bonding and sharing and before we knew it, it was last call at the Hugh and time to say our farewells.
Looking Ahead
By all accounts, our inaugural IRL event was a huge success. We have received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback after the event from our community members that joined. On behalf of 888 and the entire Team & Moderators, we want to sincerely thank each and every one of you who made the effort to show up and spend time with us. Despite certain narratives and preconceived notions that may have existed in the past, this IRL event proved that we at the 888 Inner Circle never went anywhere, and we never stopped building. In terms of aligning with our values of supporting art and artists, our 888 Inner Circle community continues to mature and grow stronger by the day and we look forward to building a lifetime of memories together with you.
To conclude our amazing event, we made one final really exciting announcement: We’re already planning our next IRL event for this summer, and it’s going to be in Barcelona, Spain at the end of August!!
Many of our community members expressed their regrets for not being able to make NYC especially after all of the positive feedback, but rest assured that we are building a global, lifetime membership club, so there will be many future IRL events around the world where we hope to meet each and every one of our amazing community members. Our next stop is Barcelona and we can’t wait to see you all there!
For more information about the 888 Inner Circle, please join our Discord server, follow our Twitter, and view our Medium.
