CHAPTER 4: The Yung Pixels Manifesto
Something is rotten in the NFTs state:
What drives an NFT project? What reasons lead a group of people to come together and produce an NFT project? And why are so many people buying NFTs? Obviously, there are multiple possible answers to each of these questions.
From a romantic, idealistic point of view, we could speak of a sense of community, of actively participating in the creation of a new type of market, of new types of products, of being an active part of a possible artistic and technological revolution. But if we are going to have this conversation absolutely frankly, there is no other answer that is common to these questions and that is also definitive when it comes to the aim and purpose of most NFT projects and their buyers these days: to make money.
No wonder there are so many scams in the NFT scene. Buyers eager to make money from quickly flipping new NFTs, often following calls and tips from often sponsored influencers, pay little attention to important aspects of analysis and end up buying NFTs of dubious provenance. The method is simple: jump into a project early on, get a spot on the whitelist, mint the NFT, and sell, usually before the reveal process, for a hefty profit margin, often over 2x the initial value. If we were to ask, off the record, some well-known influencers in the NFT scene, or even anonymous buyers, many would say that the above scenario is the goal in every purchase. It is even easy to imagine that big influencers manage, in a period of a month, from 5 to 10 projects in which the 2x flipping happens quickly (and we are being conservative in this estimate). With so many people following this quick buy guide without even analyzing what they are actually buying, scammers have a plethora of possibilities to hit the community. We can even call them professional scammers, given the large number of scams they apply following a very characteristic method, raising suspicions that it’s even the same teams behind different scam projects.
Sometimes, even serious projects, with serious people making up the team, can deliver an indirect blow, which we will call in this text “false advertising”: collections of similar NFTs sell the idea that they have decentralization, very well made smart contracts, that do not allow metadata change, ensure secure metadata storage and randomness for mint/reveal of buyers’ NFTs, when in reality they are offering a incomplete product, a shell of an actual NFT. And we are not here in the role of judges regarding the suitability of the members of the project development teams in a situation similar to the one exposed. We are just exposing a common situation in the NFT scenario. We believe that there are good intentions in projects that end up deceiving the consumer, but the lack of knowledge about technologies and technological possibilities in blockchain generates more and more projects that are not what they promise. Let’s face it, added to this, there’s a certain laziness and unwillingness to search for solutions to simple problems common to several projects, in addition to the ease of simply copying and pasting project contracts, which are often misleading and fraudulent, and which have yielded millions of dollars to the respective creators. Also, even assuming good intentions on the part of NFT teams, the pure amateurism that governs the relationships within teams of developers is remarkable. Therefore, the chance that entire communities are being deceived or mislead is immense.
Another aspect that we bring light to, and one that’s very visible when looking at various NFT projects, is the aesthetics, both in the art and in the style of each NFT and project as a whole. While this aspect is indeed subjective, it is evident that there is very little creativity on the creators’ side, and that is a product of an attempt to emulate the success of others. How many digital monkey projects have been created? Or even random animals, ranging from mice to fish? If we would access OpenSea right now and run a search for any species of animal, there is a great chance that we would find a specific project for that species. As a matter of fact, we invite everyone to do this experiment: most projects you’ll find haved an adjective in the front of the or a club at the end of it, obvious and direct references to the Bored Ape Yatch Club. The scenario lacks originality in general. Sometimes this tendency to copy animal designs ends up preventing a greater degree of connection to NFT’s art and style, and connecting and identifying with art is one of the possible ways to appreciate it. In fact, the relationship between NFTs and art is still a troubled and controversial one, and many detractors try to delegitimize NFTs as a medium for art due to this lack of creativity and high reproducibility of NFTs, in addition, of course, to many embarrassing situations for so many NFT enthusiasts and artists: shameless copies and reproduction of arts, items and styles without the authorization of the creator artists, who are often not in the scene, are common. That’s why there is so much criticism from artists in other art mediums, and it takes maturity on the part of NFT community members to understand that criticism and improve on it.
We are Yung Pixels:
Our values as creators of a project are simple: we are honest, we love new blockchain technologies, we respect the NFT community (after all we are part of it), we want to work permanently with this project (so we have a long-term vision for what we are doing) and we believe in a decentralized future in which decision-making power is completely in the hands of many and equals.
With these values in mind, we looked at all this context exposed above and a few questions arose: what if we made an original, truly random, decentralized and professional project? Thus, Yung Pixels was born. We developed this project for months, spent hours upon hours developing our smart contract, exploring available and affordable technologies from Chainlink to generate true randomness, in countless design meetings, in aesthetic discussions, researching genuine criticism of the NFT scene, and in various details for us to do of our project something really revolutionary in the NFT scene. We want to be a model for future projects, and because of that we partnered up with Chainlink to use VRFs (Verifiable Random Functions) to provide true randomness in each of the Yung Pixels in their revelation process. Due to that we do not control any aspect of this process, and any user can verify this on the blockchain.
In fact, our reveal process is something unique and inspired by nostalgia: we remember our childhood, opening Magic the Gathering and Pokémon cards booster packs, hoping a cool, rare monster would come out of them. This act of opening a package, a booster, without knowing what would come inside, is forever etched in the memory of past generations, including ours; and we want to mark this special sensation in the memory of the new generations who will have the internet as an integral part of themselves.
We directly use IPFS to store each metadata of all NFTs revealed. As a guarantee, we also use storage in the Piñata, which also uses the IPFS network. It is a completely decentralized storage of a project that is built on the most decentralized smart contract blockchain, Ethereum. We take the decentralization aspect very seriously, like all the other pillars of the project. Our developer is a proven professional. Because of this, in addition to our professionalism and our desire to revolutionize the scene, you will never see in our contract any function that allows us to change the metadata of your NFTs. The revelation process is completely decentralized, truly random and fair.
We spent hours and hours working on a design that was absolutely stylish, beautiful, fashionable and that would allow any buyer to identify with any Yung Pixel, no matter the genre. It’s entirely possible that you’re walking the streets of your city and you see someone wearing an outfit that bears a clear resemblance to some Yung Pixel, and that was our goal when starting this project. We believe that design speaks for itself. We are simply stylish and in a completely original way: there is nothing in the NFT scene quite like our style, we are unique. Of course, we have inspirations, but the originality of our design is remarkable, in addition to coming out of the common sense of an animal or any monster as art.
We are a group of people who really want to change the current NFT landscape, with so many scams, frauds and amateurism. We want to show the true potential of the NFT community. We want to show what can be done with a serious and professional team. We want to be the shadow that extinguishes the light of fraudulent projects, and the light that will serve as models for serious new projects. And we fully believe that there are more people in the community who want to see a paradigm shift. That’s why we say: we are Yung Pixels. We are the shape of NFTs to come. Join us in this revolution!
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Follow our social media:
Twitter: @YungPixels
Instagram: @yungpixels.nft
Website: coming soon
Discord: coming soon
