Squad Alpha no. 1
Good morning, SQUAD!
What a week. I can’t believe it was just last Friday that we deployed Adam Bomb Squad. It’s been life-changing, connecting with friends, old and new. Hopefully you’ve met some awesome people in the process as well. There are now over 7,200 unique owners in just one week. This shows rapid growth and has got to be one of the biggest communities for any NFT collectibles project. We’re excited to begin this journey together.
Every so often, I’ll chime in here with official ABS news. For more frequent updates, please join our Discord and follow our socials at @adambombsquad.
Wen metadata?
Not quite yet. GROAN.
For newcomers to the space, your ABS NFT is bundled with information regarding its character and attributes. I’ve also personally written a story about every type of bomb and background, drawn from our history. Most NFT projects reveal this metadata at launch, primarily to define rarity scores. As you can imagine, this also guides the resale market around the NFTs.
We tried something different and withheld your metadata for a couple reasons. The first being that we wanted to emphasize the art, history, and emotion around your NFTs before we let the rarity determine how you felt about them. As we’d hoped, the Community has been collecting and trading bombs according to what they like, not by how much money they can get. The larger goal is that certain bombs and backgrounds become rare not solely by statistics, but by the culture around them. A great example of this is what’s happening in the Zombie channel, where Zombie holders are allying and making their bombs a thing.
Speaking of which, another reason we are waiting to publish metadata is that we are watching and listening… You. If you’re familiar with the first NFT collectibles project, CryptoPunks, they didn’t announce their rarity structure for years and continued to update their attributes as the Community diagnosed them. We were inspired by this approach from the time we met with Larva Labs back in February and are taking the time to hear what is important to you about your bombs and backgrounds. We want to build this thing with you.
What should I be looking for in the meantime?
It’s been so cool to see you already discerning certain qualities around your NFTs. Some of you are even catching features of bombs that we didn’t intend as a storyline (the phantom hair on Woodgrain Adam, pixelated bottom edge of the square, the registered TMs. Our Community already knew the history behind the Black Adam (888 holds the rarest bomb of all). But, did you know there are Black Madams and Black Badams as well?
Errors and Doubles
Having said that, the morning before launch, I did hint that there are 1) Errors and 2) Doubles. An example of an Error is Reverse Adam, in which he is facing left (our brand guidelines stipulate he always face to the right). I grew up in the 1980s, collecting baseball cards and Garbage Pail Kids. Sometimes, the rarest cards weren’t the rookies. They were the mistakes and duplicates. All year long, I’ve been collaborating with Topps on my #ErrorTerror baseball cards, intentionally disrupting the design to make them special. We’ve incorporated some of that direction on ABS as well.
I wrote an essay recently (The Robots) about how the distinction between people and computers is that we mess up, and that’s something to be celebrated. Wabi-Sabi is the Japanese philosophy that imperfections make art human and real. Less than 1% of ABS NFTs carry an official error or are an exact double and we will be revealing which ones these are when the metadata goes live (The Broken Background Club already know they’ve achieved ErrorTerror status). The affected bombs were relatively common at mint, but will soon tick off ErrorTerror or Double checkboxes on their profiles, making them members of a rarer class (All doubles’ art will be updated at that time with a badge to differentiate from its partner). In the meantime, get out there and try to find your twin.
Official Collaborations
If you’re an art fan, you will be excited to know that there are official collaborations with some of the world’s biggest artists in Adam Bomb Squad. I come from a skate background and am proud to showcase Adam Bombs by legends like Don Pendleton, Todd Bratrud, and Eric Dressen in our library. There were two artists we specifically tapped just for this project because of the noise they’re drumming up in both the physical and digital art scenes: Sean Williams and Sophie Sturdevant. Sophie’s Adam has already become a cult favorite. Sean’s are incredibly hard to find (only 10 available). Some other big names to watch out for include Blue the Great, Ron English (there are only 17 of these!) and D*Face. Yes, there are authorized D*Face Adam Bombs in ABS.
We will highlight more of these artists as time goes on and yes, they will all be identified with the metadata.
Anything else?
Not all fedoras are the same. The ABS team and I are fans of Toast Adam, except for Ben. Ben hates him. We love Adam In Love. And somehow a ghost snuck in here that the entire team is perplexed about. More on that later…
How are you feeling?
Honestly, overwhelmed. We are so humbled by the reaction to this project and never imagined the opportunities it would open up, let alone the pathways to connect with our Community. We’ve never worked as hard as we have this past year. I haven’t slept in weeks and now that ABS is alive and active, we believe the job is just beginning.
Thankfully, we love the project, we love this space, and we love you. You’ve all been so gracious, appreciative, and most of all, understanding as we figure this experiment out. Thank you so much for hopping onboard. I hope you’re having a blast.
So… Wen metadata?
It’s a long holiday weekend here in the U.S. and for the first time in months, I’d like to give the ABS team some space to catch up on life. As you’ve noticed, we’re terrible at adhering to deadlines (don’t ever wait for us to start dinner), so I’m not going to declare when the hard date is. It could be a week, even a bit longer to dial this correctly, especially if the community finds new narratives that strike us. The metadata will post as a surprise and I’ll be the first to announce when it goes live. We apologize if that inconveniences anyone but just know that there was a time when we thought of withholding metadata permanently (Can you imagine?!). And as frothy and frantic as NFTs are, we aren’t rushing this. This is a community membership card with long term plans. Here’s one. If you jump to the Verified channel, I’ll be issuing ABS holders a special discount code for our Online Shop this weekend. Just a taste of what’s to come.
In the meantime, we’ll be popping up in the Discord all weekend. Ask me anything. We can’t wait to meet you and make memories of the early days.
Bobby Hundreds
p.s. Sandy from the ABS team wrote something important here that addresses the scarcity of women in crypto. Please read!
