Interview: Meet the M.N.G.O Team
The M.N.G.O project is an NFT project exclusively on Algorand. They have fun with birds (read berds) and try to push the utility and ownership experience. They also try to do nice things and have donated ~30,000 ALGO to various causes, such as animal welfare charities, St. Jude Children’s Hospital, and support for the Ukraine crisis.
The team consists of six members. We’ve had the chance to interview Stitch, the project’s artist, and TimP, the brain behind the creation of $SHRIMP rewards and the Shrimp game.
Can you introduce yourself, and how did you get interested in blockchain or NFTs?
(Stitch) I first got into crypto/blockchain in the 2018 crash. I watched all the hype of the big bull run but always felt like I had missed the boat. Then it dipped. So I bought the dip. And then it kept on dipping! It was like getting my training wheels.
With NFTs, I first became aware of NBA Top Shots during a period when they got a lot of mainstream press. Then BAYC got my real attention (and everyone’s attention) as something I wanted. I liked the brand they had created and shared it with non-crypto artist friends. However, my first Algorand-based NFT was a Matthias Trinley which I bought for 0.3 ALGO. Trinley yacht party any day now.
(TimP) I first got into crypto in 2016. I started because I saw an opportunity to flip mining equipment by buying from China and selling in the US as my first dive into crypto. After the next market crash, I just held onto what I had until 2021, when I really started trying to learn about DeFi in earnest.
My first NFT was one of the Uniswap v3 LP tokens. I didn’t know much about art NFTs besides CryptoPunks until I got involved with the Yielding Swap Shop community last July (2021). My exposure to that led me to make a spin-off series ‘LingLings’ and drove my interest in creating generative art that turned into the RUGS series.
Can you explain the M.N.G.O project?
(Stitch) M.N.G.O. stands for Mostly Not Going Out. I called it that as it’s 1) a play on ‘Mingo’ (M.N.G.Os are flamingos) and 2) Felt like a good acronym after two years of lockdown and spending more social time on Discords/Zoom calls than I ever thought I would. In short, it’s my take on a profile picture series.
It’s also a nod to the big ETH NFT projects and leans into a lot of personal interests and pop culture, including 90s skateboarding and video games. It doesn’t take itself seriously — I started drawing them all in tighty whities from the waist down as we rarely get to see our NFTs from the shoulders down.
An essential part of M.N.G.O. was bringing a rarity-based collection to Algorand. It was one of the first (or the first) collections to drop all NFTs at once and promote secondary trading. Everyone had a chance to grab the rarest piece on the drop at a fixed mint price instead of a Dutch auction where the highest bid wins.
(TimP) It’s a project that is kept alive through the members. The M.N.G.O community is a space where people from all over the world gather and talk about obscure shared interests.
(Stitch) 100%, if you ever want to discuss coffee machines, favorite skate video parts, pick terrible ASA plays, or bet on lacrosse, we are the spot.
Which other NFT projects did you create, or are you working on?
(Stitch) Yieldlings are the genesis project that started it. It’s also how I first met Tim. M.N.G.O followed Yieldlings like a Gen 2.0 and everyone who owned a Yielding got one for free.
The Shrimp Game was a sub-project. Tim P and I collaborated on the concept and artwork. It was a free collection of 1000 Pixel Shrimp, based on the TV show Squid Game, with the idea that all the NFTs could be clawback and burned with only 1 survivor remaining. That winner would claim a 100,000 YLDY prize pool.
Mostly Frens is a ‘companion’ project for both Yieldling and M.N.G.O owners. I thought it’d be funny to do human pets and I’m interested in mutable art NFTs. The concept is that they’re from the dreams of M.N.G.O and all begin life in black and white. You can feed them $SHRIMP to turn them into color in different stages. I’m still illustrating it, so the release is soon.
Every Mostly Fren will be created from the metadata of MNGO and Yieldlings. It’s similar to how a mutant project would work, but I wanted to do something different with that format.
(TimP) I created the LingLing project as a spin-off/homage to the Yieldling project. I was heavily involved in the Yieldling Swap Shop Telegram group and taught myself how to animate simultaneously, so I started sharing some baby Yieldlings dancing animations that I had made and received a lot of encouragement to make a series.
The other series I created is called RUGS and is a generative art series of pixel art rugs that pokes fun at the nature of some investments and projects in crypto that seek to take advantage of people. RUGS was also the first instant shuffle project on Algorand! I was in conversation with Chris (Kraken) of RandGallery in October, and he was looking for someone to test out a tool he created to provide artists with a UI to create a generative mint.
At the same time, I was really excited about learning more about generative art and wanted to try my hand at creating a series using the technology. I think I had recently been rugged by a game project that had done some presales a few months earlier, and in joking conversations with Kraken, the idea for RUGS was formed. The humor of rugs is all in the mix of non-sequiturs and direct commentary on malicious actors, so you have rugs with designs you might find in a store alongside disguises that might trick people into buying a Rug, such as a White Paper, a Cool Dog mascot, or even smart contracts.
We love your tweets! (For instance, this one) It’s a fun way to show the project, and people heavily engage with it. Is this a secret tip for projects to grow?
(Stitch) Ha, thanks! People sometimes make a project and then just expect it to grow organically. But once you sell out, the hard work begins to maintain that interest. Dumb tweets that can make people smile are part of that. I believe the projects that do well worry more about this sort of engagement vs. sales metrics. All that stuff will follow.
Do you think NFT functionality matters? As part of this question, can you explain why you introduced Shrimps and how M.N.G.O owners can use them?
(Stitch) I think it matters as a way to keep the community engaged. I don’t think it matters if you want to sell artwork — I buy a lot of artwork with no other utility but just to enjoy it.
Shrimp is Tim’s creation. Owners can use them to buy NFT raffle tickets (often to get M.N.G.Os at 10% of whatever the current floor is), bet on sports, bet on crypto price movement, and soon, they’ll be used to visually upgrade Mostly Frens, which will create a dynamic rarity collection and bring extra utility to holding Yieldlings, M.N.G.O, and LingLings.
(TimP) I introduced Shrimp because I initially wanted to reward LingLing holders with Yieldly just for holding my project but became concerned about making my NFTs a security.
Shrimp was my answer to the problem I had. I wanted to reward holders who were supporting me and my project. Therefore, if I had the NFTs reward users, I decided I could create different reward options and potentially offer other utilities.
Once I sorted out the airdrop function for LingLings, Stitch asked if we could add M.N.G.O and Yieldlings to the mix. That was the first official mixing of the projects, even though we’d lived in the same Telegram and Discord channels.
Why do you think your project became so successful?
(Stitch) I think a strong community is the main one. I’ve always tried to help drive things external to the project itself. Nftexplorer came about as I was challenging a developer in the space if tracking sales were possible. Now it’s a tool every project can benefit from. That’s all down to Josh and Tomasso. I was just the noisy one in the corner asking, “what if?” Those early discussions were all very open in the community. Each day I was like, “ohh, I’m actually learning stuff here.”
I’ve always used my platform to try and promote other artists too. The Algorand NFT market has so much potential and I want to support people who choose to create on it.
Also, people like the berds.
(TimP) In short, timing and berds!
Can you tell us a bit more about the recent floor price increases? Why did it happen?
(Stitch) There was a bit of a boom in January when Tinyman went down, I think. Degens had to get their fix elsewhere.
I try not to create any mechanics that increase scarcity, like staking programs. People are free to buy and sell whenever they want. There’s a bit of a pullback since to 700 ALGO.
I also think things like the success of Al Goanna, G-raffe, Flemish Giants, Algoknitter, and Octorand helped — it’s not just M.N.G.O that had an increase in the floor price. It took longer to go from 70 to 100 ALGO in November than the recent price jump, as fewer active wallets were in the space.
The community has gone from 35,000 ALGO total sales per month back in July 2021 when I started to 100,000+ ALGO days in January/February. We’ve come a long way!
(TimP) The floor increase is exciting but definitely not coordinated. Well, not meaningfully coordinated. We don’t discourage M.N.G.O members from cheering each other on to HODL, but we would crack down on any chatter discouraging people from selling, and honestly, it doesn’t really happen much in the M.N.G.O space. More often, we’ll hear people talk about good deals on the secondary market.
Do you think the higher floor price and fixed supply pose a problem for further growing the project, making it harder to enter the M.N.G.O project?
(Stitch) I think naturally it may lock out some people, 700–1000 ALGO is a lot of money, but the number of unique holders keeps increasing, which is awesome. I believe M.N.G.O has one of the highest unique holder counts for Algorand NFT projects.
However, the collection still has plenty of room to find its way to more wallets. There are 2999 NFTs, which is a good-sized supply for Algorand. The holder ratio could be even better. Yet, the rise has been organic over the last 5 to 6 months. Everyone had a chance to buy an NFT at 50 ALGO, 70 ALGO, or 100 ALGO.
(TimP) I think the supply is in a perfect spot for the size of the Algorand NFT community. As Stitch mentioned, the price has risen slowly, and people had opportunities to get in cheaply over time. At this point, I think the amount of eyes on Algorand NFTs is the restrictive point.
Make sure to follow them on Twitter!
