Hey Flunk Fam! It’s time for a project update. How does that sound?
This update is well overdue. Many of you have voiced your concerns and confusion about where we are at and where we are headed.
In this update, we will cover everything to eliminate any confusion, and by everything we mean EVERYTHING.
The Team
Starting from the ground up in this debrief, let’s cover the team and our decisions. We have gone through various changes over the year in terms of staffing, partners, decisions, and plans.
At this time our team consists of 8 regularly working individuals. Within this group of 8 individuals includes names you may already recognize, as well as two new names:
- Ervin (Pixel Picasso)
- Alfred
- Buddsy
- Catttelll
- Handy
- (Agent) Victor
- Gerald
- Marwane
This team of 8 covers everything from community and business to development, design, and art. We have a few more hands on deck that assist from time to time with various tasks.
Before we cover the details and progress of the products surrounding the Flunks ecosystem it’s important that we share insight as to why we have been silent with our updates.
The first and most important factor is our ambition. It sounds great on paper that we have been ambitious with our goals, but in practice, it has only been negative to us and to you. As a team, we have stretched out our wings too far this past year, and we tried to work on more than we can handle.
We attempted to… create a game, create a new website, launch staking for Flunks, launch a merchandise brand, plan a series of in-person events for holders, create a Discord bot for Flunks, create a second collection within the Flunks ecosystem, update our marketplace to compete with others and operate CafeDAO; and a lot more.
As we near the end of 2023 we have not met our own expectations with any of these tasks mentioned. Ultimately this was too much for a group of 6 (at the time) individuals to even accomplish in one year, let alone exceed expectations. However, as a team of 8 members, each with different strengths, we recognize that we can work on one thing at a time quite well. With this recognition, we have brought change to our decision-making and planning. Rather than working on everything at once with minimal progress, we have switched our focus to completing one task, or small groupings of tasks at a time. This is the way it always should have been.
Lately, we have prioritized the completion of the Flunks website update, along with staking and $GUM rewards. We just said we would work on one thing at a time, but these three tasks are intertwined and less daunting than working on everything at once. We intend to work in this manner, only biting off as much as we can chew at once. This may push a few goals, such as JNRs and Detention, down the priority order but it will ultimately speed up our production and allow us to provide you with more.
With this realization and action in mind, we want to share with you the progress, decisions, and plans we have made with our various Flunks products and activations.
Communication
Our communication has been lacking over the past few months, and we’re not afraid to admit that. Over the past few months HAVE been afraid to communicate because we didn’t know what to communicate. With some progress made on just about everything, and no large amounts of progress made on one thing, we opted to share… nothing, which is wrong! We have recognized that even small updates are far more appreciated by you than waiting for big ticket updates every few months.
Going forward we will provide Flunks updates bi-weekly. Some of these updates will be more info-packed than others (such as this one), but we have to inform you of where we’re at regularly.
Along with these blog-style updates, AMAs in the form of monthly “School Assemblies” will make their return. Once a month we will host a Discord stage to verbally communicate our progress and to field your questions.
Social Media
Our social media (X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram) presence has come and gone in waves. This is not the best-tasting recipe for success, and we want to change that by posting and engaging more regularly and frequently. Who doesn’t want to see Flunks on social media?
The Website
The Flunks.io webpage currently allows you to check out your Flunks, graduate your Flunks, and claim backpacks for your Flunks. It is styled in a “Flunks 95” theme for nostalgia and storytelling, but it does not provide much substance for Flunk holders currently. As shown below, the forthcoming updates to Flunks.io will provide us with a more lively, purposeful hub for our Flunks. An updated collection page will make navigating through your rebellious high schoolers easier. The new collection page will also contain a section to stake your Flunks and Backpacks for a reward. As you may know, this reward is $GUM.
Staking Flunks and Backpacks
We have released some info sporadically on staking and $GUM. However, some bits of info have changed and it hasn’t been put together in one place.
Staking will be “more legit” this time around. You will have the option to stake your Flunks and Backpacks as opposed to pseudo-staking. Previously we stated the reward for staking, $GUM, would be NFTs on Dapper. However, with recent updates to Flow and the wallets used within the ecosystem, we have opted to make $GUM a fungible token. This will create a much better experience surrounding staking and $GUM. Accumulating tens, hundreds, or thousands of $GUM NFTs would be quite the annoyance, right? The rate at which $GUM is produced per Flunks and Backpacks will not be disclosed in this document. As we have made changes to the method $GUM is acquired we are also tweaking the production rate of $GUM.
Raffles
Raffles are set to be the first use case for that sticky $GUM we’re chewing on. Raffles may not be the name of this initiative upon launch, but this way you get the idea of where we’re going with this. We plan to utilize $GUM and raffles to take away the importance of having a Discord account. We currently operate with high importance on Discord for communication and Flunks holder perks. We would rather bring some of that importance into our own hands and host our own perks on Flunks.io. Want to take home some Flunks stickers? Raffles might just be your key to that door!
CafeteriaDAO and Flunks Art Gallery
CafeteriaDAO has gone through a few changes since our inception. It began as the clubs of Flunks High that were set to provide each clique with different utilities. Ultimately we made the decision to unify the clubs into one, and we formed CafeteriaDAO. This initiative provided $ 100,000 USD to the Flunks community, and a few proposals have passed through prior to the addition of CafeDAO Semesters.
With the addition of these semesters we, the Flunks team, have proposed two ideas for utilizing this fund each semester. We have now gone through three “semesters” of CafeteriaDAO proposals, but it doesn’t seem like we’ve hit the nail on the head yet with the CafeteriaDAO. After the most recent vote to pass on semester three’s proposals, we have decided to pause the operation of CafeteriaDAO. Additionally, we will be pausing the operation of the Flunks Art Gallery. This proposal has seen many great artworks come forth, but we’ve found that it isn’t working the way we intended it to.
Look for future updates on the restructuring of these two initiatives!
Storytelling
We’re working on expanding the foundation laid by the NFTs for our Brand IP, and it’s crucial to us that both you and newcomers get fully immersed into the Flunks world. That’s why we’re making sure to drop fresh content regularly within the Flunksverse. Right now, we’re just pictures without a story to dive into. So, to fix that, we’re launching monthly journals on our updated website. It’s something you can casually read through to really immerse yourself in the Flunks universe! These stories will help you grasp the meaning behind JNRs and Detention. With influences from pop culture, throwbacks to the good ol’ days, and could even be inspired by your own unique flunk adventures, we’re excited to add that extra layer to the Brand and Collection. Enjoy the journey!
Detention
Detention is the name of the game. That is about the extent of what we have shared, and unfortunately, we are going to have to keep it that way a little longer as we work through the first goals we mentioned in this update. We have game style, gameplay, and lore ideas at the ready for a dungeon-crawler-style game, but we haven’t been able to focus enough of our attention on finding the best way to go about Detention. We mean this in more than one way. We want Detention to be a blast for you, adding some real value to your Flunks ownership, and giving you an awesome NFT experience. Plus, we’re on the lookout for the dream team to join forces with us on this project, and we’re not looking to break the bank doing it.
JNRs
The infamous second/sub/side/next collectibles in the world of Flunks. We know, it’s a little confusing to know where these amazing creatures lie in the world of Flunks. However, contrary to popular belief, the artwork for the JNR avatars themselves is complete!
We have more work upcoming to integrate JNRs into the Flunks world. We have worked on naming their traits, and we want to provide you with a little backstory before you come across them in your wallets.
Lastly, we plan to release JNRs to you via $GUM, so this is another prerequisite to the launch of JNRs.
Zeero
When we launched Zeero it seemed like the perfect opportunity to hone in on our developer skills and fill a small gap in the Flow marketplace ecosystem. We created a marketplace with no marketplace fees because we’re merely a middleman for your transactions. We had ambitions to expand on Zeero to include more Flow projects and analytical tools.
We were very pleased with the launch of Zeero, and it was no skin off our nose due to previous developer experience. However, we quickly realized that the issues with Zeero would come in the form of upkeep and maintenance. This was especially the case if we were going to continuously add more projects and features to Zeero. It would only become more and more of a distraction for Flunks. As we have stated before, and for the reasons mentioned above, we will not be expanding on Zeero. In the future, we plan to close the Zeero.art website, but continue to use our functional marketplace via flunks.io for Flunks collectibles.
Merchandise
Flunks merchandise is an interesting topic for us. We had closed the merchandise storefront due to a lack of interest. This doesn’t mean nobody was interested in our merchandise, but we didn’t see enough sales to justify keeping the storefront open 24/7. Catttelll and Buddsy have worked to create physical items for a few Flunks swag bags. We’re thrilled with how some of these products have turned out and we do wish to share some of these items with you. The Flunks merch shop may not return to the same capacity we previously operated, but we’re not opposed to launching a few merchandise items here and there.
If more Flunks merchandise is of interest to you, please let us know!
Thank You!
Thanks a bunch for hanging in there and reading through this update! We’re super grateful for your time and interest in what we’ve got going on.
As we navigate the twists and turns of the Flunks journey, we want to express our sincere appreciation for your support. It’s been a wild ride, and your patience means the world to us.
We’re committed to keeping you in the loop, so stay tuned for bi-weekly updates and monthly “School Assemblies” where we’ll spill the beans on our progress and answer your burning questions. Let’s make this journey together as awesome as possible!
