Newsletter #2
That time again, another Megapont newsletter. What an exciting couple of weeks we have had behind the scenes, and there are many goodies in this one.
In a week, where I managed to make it onto some traditional media to talk about Bitcoin NFTs, we also celebrated several milestones.
I’m going to shout out to everyone in the community once again for being so awesome and making Megapont one of the best NFT communities to exist!
Partnerships
First things first, there are a couple of partnerships we want to announce and what you need to do to take part.
Crash Punks! Yes, that is right. Crash Punks and Megapont are teaming up. For the upcoming highly anticipated Crash Punks mint, every holder of an Ape will automatically be placed on the Crash Punks whitelist.
We will have more details on how this will work in the coming weeks, but rest assured, there’s nothing you need to do right now. So head on over to their Discord and say hello, Apes!
Another one…
Moonray… We can’t believe it either, and this one still has some details to work out, but every Megapont Ape holder will be placed on the Moonray whitelist.
I suggest you all head into their Discord or visit their website and check out one of the Megapont teams favourite upcoming projects.
This will work similarly to The Explorer Guild whitelist process, where the team here at Megapont will take a wallet snapshot to provide the address to the incredible Moonray team.
There’s nothing you need to do right now, and the Megapont team will give at least three days notice for any snapshot so you can remove your Apes from any custodial marketplaces.
Robot Factory (December 2021)
As you will be aware by now, the Megapont Robot Factory is open for Apes in December. This will be an interactive mint where Apes can claim one mainframe and one component crate for each Ape they own.
There will be a process to purchase additional component crates for a small STX fee; we are playing with pricing, but it will be priced appropriately given the nature of the NFT you are minting.
So what happens when you open your component crate and have a mainframe? Well, you build the robot… Let’s dig a bit deeper into some of the UX work for the Robot Factory and go over how it works.
Step 1
Your mainframes will be presented to you; your mainframes will be empty with no components on release. Perhaps some of you will keep it that way. Who knows. An interesting design decision is once you put a component in a slot, you can’t remove it. You can override it. But it can’t be removed.
There will also be traits on the mainframe that you can not change.
Step 2
Once you have selected your mainframe, you will then be able to build your robot using your components. Interestingly, you will be able to ‘view’ components you do not have yet, and we will think about how this can take you to a marketplace listing to buy those from this page.
Step 3
Time to name and build your robot! We will have some frontend validation here and a method in the contract to override any names. We will not tolerate any racist or otherwise offensive naming of Robots.
My Components
There will be a page to view all your components and list/unlist those directly from your inventory.
My Robots
A nice home for you to view all of your Robots. You’ll be able to modify robots for a period to be determined. The factory can’t stay open forever. But this will be months and go well into the backend of 2022.
MegaKongs
Ahhh, the famous Banana Bridge. This is no longer a secret so let’s jump right into it. We are working on a bridge from Ethereum to Stacks and vice versa, and we are not the only people working on this. The incredible team at Satoshibles are also throwing development efforts into this.
Megakongs will mint on Ethereum and be transferable back forth to Stacks, and this is an essential step for Megapont. This opens Megapont to Ethereum liquidity and, perhaps more importantly. It gives us a gateway to access some of the exciting Metaverse projects.
Given the small size, we are working out the mint logistics for Megakongs and will release details in due course. This will be a very small, completely handmade mint of 100 Megakongs on Ethereum that will bridge STX.
Our amazing Megapont artist Weasly will be taking care of the pixel art Kongs. We have partnered with Steve Abbananto for the Ethereum alternative art. Steve is the lead artist on the Monkosaurs project coming in 2022! Please give him a follow and let him know how awesome you think his take on the Megakongs is.
Few words from Steve:
“Hi! I’m Steve. I’m an artist from New York who originally started in Art Education before changing careers to pursue Visual Development. I’m greatly inspired by the work of major animation studios like Pixar and Dreamworks. I really enjoy using vibrant colors whenever possible. Creating key frame illustrations and playing with mood lighting is one of my favorite things to do! For Megakongs my goal is to create high-quality, fun designs that will make the community proud to rep them through and through. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did creating them for you.”
What does this mean moving forward for Apes? Well, our aim in 2022 is to ensure that when your Apes move across the Banana Bridge, they have something just as impressive waiting for them on the other side.
The full-sized art referenced can be found in the art channel within our Discord.
IP and Copyright
Sadly, this is a bit less exciting than the preceding news. We are aware that the Robot Factory has malfunctioned, and the Robots seem to come from alternative IP universes. At Megapont, the last thing we would want to happen is an Ape holder uses a robot from an IP that takes an aggressive approach to NFTs.
To avoid this we will be modifying some of the instantly recognizable robots in the mint to be more in the ‘likeness of’ and less of a clone.
So it’s going to be a goodbye to the likes of Ultron and Laputa, but they will be back in a modified way that only Megapont can do in the Robot Factory. Think of it as… one of the Apes changed the machine parameters and now our clones are not really clones.
We hope you enjoyed reading Newsletter #2. We couldn’t be more excited about the Megapont future as we expand and move across chains and innovate with every mint.
For now, have a great weekend.
Mark + Megapont Team
