Plans for District 1

Today, I worked with Gioluan to figure out exactly how to make use of Hat Swap City District 1. This brought us back to an important question: what are the principles upon which Hat Swap City is founded? While we have been actively developing our technology and art for 3 months across both Hatman and Hat Swap City, the pace of a crypto startup is so fast that it’s easy to lose sight of where you wanted to go when you got started.

The first principle is that NFTs should be more than just an image you own. Our solution is to make NFTs something you can wear in a virtual world and grant you special privileges inside that world.

The second principle is to provide a utility space to other NFT projects, no matter how big or small. This is our most aspirational principle because it is not an easy task from an artistic or engineering perspective to create a world of blended aesthetics and make things look good. It’s expensive and time consuming, but also adds immense value to the City.

Hat Swap City is also founded on the idea that digital spaces empowered by the blockchain — metaverses — should have a proper feeling to them and be something more than an open sandbox upon which other brands put their own style on. We want integrations, but we want the City to still feel like itself. This is a clear differentiator when I consider plans for digital land and imagine ways to utilize district specific buildings with different core functionalities that a land owner may choose to utilize on that land tract.

In short, we want a fun world that integrates other NFT projects and allows you to flex your sick NFTs in world that is gradually expanding… a world that YOU have a say in developing.

Here’s how we’re executing on these principles as we go into April.

1. Release Hat Swap City District 1: Market Plaza. This is an environmental launch with multiplayer hosting and animated character models wearing your hat NFT in game. It is FAR from complete, it’s a prototype, unpolished, and lacking many core features we have designed but need more development time on. But it is a huge step in the right direction and we believe it is ready for people to come visit.
2. We have begun establishing partnership connections with other projects and will begin hosting regular events with giveaways to our users. These events will occur inside Hat Swap City and are free of charge to quality projects.
3. A big focus on overall worldbuilding going on behind-the-scenes.

This is a soft-launch, a founders-only type of event where we can sit down and look at what’s been built together as the community who made this possible. It is FAR from where it needs to be, but it is a big step and we need to decide, as an organism the direction to continue forward.