The Under Dooggie Story
How three highschoolers changed NFT culture forever
Hey! 👋 I’m Virtual Alaska. I’m part of a group of collectors who helped relaunch the Dooggies NFT project in early 2022.
Dooggies is the first 10k Doge NFT collection and one of the first 10k NFT collections on Ethereum before Bored Ape Yacht Club. The collection was rediscovered and resurrected by NFT archeologists in January 2022.
I’m here to tell you the Dooggies story.
MARCH 2021: The Idea
Bitcoin was soaring near $60k USD and the world was seized by crypto-mania, yet NFTs were just gaining traction due to the hype behind NBA TopShot.
Two French high schoolers, Nico and Tan Luc, were fascinated by cryptocurrency and NFTs. They came across CryptoPunks, the first profile picture project (PFP), and it caught their attention. The kids thought, “Wouldn’t it be fun to create our own 10k NFT PFP, similar to CryptoPunks?” After searching through OpenSea, they realized that nobody made a 10k Doge collection.
So the kids got to work. Nico and Tan Luc experimented with different traits and combinations, but they realized they needed help in the art department. They brought a third friend in from their high school, Augustin, to help them draw the various Dooggie traits.
Listen to Nico and Tan Luc describe it in their own words
APRIL 2021: The Mint
The kids worked quickly and came up with 10,000 Doge images. On April 6th, 2021, they minted the Dooggies on OpenSea!
We lovingly refer to this holiday as Dooggie Day!
The trio set 600 Dooggie NFTs for sale at 0.01 ETH and Nico promoted their work in the OpenSea Discord.
Unfortunately, they only made 6 sales. 😢 *sad Doge noises*
Nico and his friends didn’t have the resources or strategy needed to take Dooggies to the next level, but they didn’t want their dream to die. They found an investor, “Mr. Dooggies”, to buy the collection from them and make something great out of it.
Mr. Dooggies, his team, and the kids (“Dooggie developers”) decided to re-use the Dooggies art (since it’s so amazing) with plans to mint a new collection on Immutable X called DogeVille Pack: an open metaverse where the Dooggies are at war with the CryptoPunks. Together, the Dooggies developers worked on this project and grew a community. They even released a fun mini-game featuring the Dooggies!
JANUARY 2022: The Discovery
Historic NFTs were gaining popularity due to the resurgence of key projects with strong teams such as V1 CryptoPunks and CryptoSkulls.
An astute collector, known as Lambo, was watching this Historic NFT craze and thought to himself:
“Bored Ape Yacht Club changed the landscape of NFTs forever, inspiring many other 10k PFPs and derivative projects.
What 10k PFPs were there before BAYC?”
Lambo decided to do some digging on OpenSea. After meticulously searching through countless NFT collections, he logged his “Pre-BAYC 10k PFP” findings, which eventually led to this Tweet:
Lambo bought some Dooggies and told some friends about the collection, urging them to buy Dooggies too.
This is where I (Virtual Alaska) come into the story…I was brought in by my good friend BruceBanner because he knew that I had experience building Discords and communities. I built the Dooggies Discord as a starting point for our new Dooggies community.
As the NFT archaeologists were buying the 600 Dooggies that Nico listed at 0.01 ETH, the collection name on OpenSea suddenly changed from Dooggies to pleasenopurchase!
The archaeologists thought they were being rugged (scammed)…why would the developer not want them to be buying these NFTs?!
After a mini freak out, Lambo hatched a plan, minted a “Contact Me” NFT, and sent it to the developer’s wallet.
Nico saw this NFT and reached out to Lambo. Nico explained that there was this other project, DogeVille Pack, that was going to be minted on Immutable X and that was why he didn’t want people buying the Dooggies on Ethereum. Nico didn’t want people to “waste” their money on a project that wasn’t going to be developed…in fact, Nico says that they planned on burning the entire supply of original Dooggies on Ethereum!
That’s why there are only 9,993 Dooggies; Nico burnt 7 as a test.
Lambo pleaded with Nico to NOT burn the Dooggies collection and to save the valuable history of the Dooggies.
After many back-and-forth Twitter DMs between Lambo, myself, and Nico, we all came to an arrangement: Nico and the team agreed to work with us to revive the Dooggies on Ethereum and I would hand over the keys to our new Dooggies Discord.
The Dooggies developers pivoted to completely focus on restoring the Dooggies, much to the delight of the archaeologists!
I later learned that the Dooggies team decided to move forward with the Dooggies, instead of DogeVille Pack, after they saw how passionate the archaeologists were. It wasn’t an easy decision for the original team at first, but they quickly saw the potential.
FEBRUARY 2022: The Wave
Our new combined team (the Dooggies developers and the archaeologists) knew that the objective was to get the Dooggies into the hands of as many collectors as possible.
The only question was, “What is the best way to release the supply?”
At this point, the first 600 Dooggies listed at 0.01 ETH were all purchased. The team decided to do an initial “test” wave of 500 more Dooggies by manually listing each Dooggie at 0.05 ETH, and they all sold quickly.
At this point, 1,100 Dooggies were in the hands of collectors. The Dooggies developers came up with the following plan for the remaining 8,900 Dooggies (taken from dooggies.com):
- 7,000 to be sold during the final wave (the “tsunami”)
- 1,500 for the Community DAO
- 400 for the team, giveaways, and promotional use
The archaeologists continued to spread the word about Dooggies through the historic NFT community. We talked about Dooggies with Leonidas and Blue Origin (and 300+ other people) on a Twitter Space and the Tweets started flying.
Collectors were put on notice: the Dooggies were going to be let out!
Hype continued to build as people started to notice how similar the Dooggies traits are to the Bored Ape Yacht Club and the Bored Ape Kennel Club traits. Lambo initially pointed this out back in January, but people really started to take notice after I analyzed the traits and found that 46% of Dooggies traits appear in either BAYC or BAKC!
Questions still remain:
“Did Dooggies inspire BAYC and/or BAKC? Will Yuga Labs ever comment on this?”
The final wave of ~7000 Dooggies were released on Saturday, 2/19/22. The hype was unreal and it was legitimately one of the craziest days in my life. Dooggies were being purchased as quickly as Nico and team could list them, the floor price was pumping, and social media was blowing up!
The Dooggies developers listed Dooggies individually at 0.03 ETH for allow-listed members of DogeVille Pack and 0.05 ETH for the public (individually and in bundles of three). Everything sold and the next day they started the auctions for rare Dooggies.
During the auctions, the team noticed that some strange bids were being accepted for Dooggies…from the official Dooggies wallet. They quickly realized that the wallet was compromised and they locked the wallet in OpenSea. A big red❗(exclamation mark) was thrown onto the account, rare auctions stopped, and the hype simmered down.
MARCH 2021: The Rescue
Once the big red❗was put on the collection, it was hard to keep the momentum up…until DeMemeTree appeared! He was in the Discord helping people out for free, so I asked him if he wanted to be a Community Moderator.
DeMemeTree realized that we could save the Dooggies by creating a program that would transfer the Dooggies from the compromised wallet (bypassing the OpenSea UI) before the hacker could do anything to stop us.
His code for this program is in this public repository: github.com/dooggies/SaveDaDooggies
DeMemeTree and Nico worked together in stealth to rescue the Dooggies. The operation was a success; we worked with OpenSea to remove the lock on the wallet and the Dooggies were saved!
APRIL 2022: Today
The last three months of my life have been a whirlwind. I learned so much and met so many amazing people on this Dooggies journey…and I know we’re just getting started.
What do we have planned for the future? Well, here’s our current roadmap (posted in our Discord):
We’re doing some exciting things and we have an AMAZING community. Pop into our Discord, jump on our Twitter Spaces, say hi! The Dooggies will welcome you with open arms.
Why have I dedicated the last 3 months of my life to the Dooggies? Why am I so bullish on the future of this project? Where does my conviction come from? Well, it’s simple:
🐶 As you can see, we have an amazing story. The lore behind the collection is magical.
🐶 The art is cute and lovable, but also instantly recognizable. The Dooggies are not just an NFT collection…we’re becoming a brand.
🐶 Historic doesn’t have to mean “minted in 2019 or earlier.” To me, something is historic if it changes the culture.
🐶 Mr. Dooggies has the resources, team, and attitude to succeed with this project. He has gathered the right mix of people and skillsets, and he continues to strategically invest in the project’s future.
🐶 Our community is amazing and non-toxic…memes and dogs are just fun! It’s a blast to be a part of.
🐶 We are the most meme-able collection in NFTs. As a smart man once said:
“Who controls the memes, controls the universe.”
— Elon Musk
Written by Virtual Alaska with edits by BruceBanner
