Ohnahji U Syllabus for January 21st, 2023 (One Year Ohnahji University Celebration)
🎼 "Today is a special day, not just any day / Because you can have everything you want your way / Tell your supervisor you're leaving early today / And I'm willing to pay for the rest of your day / Do you know what today is? / It's our anniversary" 🎵
Hey! What's goin' on? Glad to see you made it! Huh, what? The Study Hall is closed? Well, of course it is —you see these balloons and hear Tony! Toni! Toné! playing, we celebrating this week, boo! It's the first anniversary of Ohnahji U! How you miss the memo cause we be talking about it for days! Ok, alright, I'll get you caught up! Go grab a drink downstairs (hush! not that kind!) and meet me on the rooftop of the League Bldg, ok? Hurry up, 'cause you not gon make me miss the spades game!
This space took place live on 1/21/22 at 10 am PST and was hosted by Ohnahji University Chancellor Ohnahji B and co-hosted by your trusty Dean of Communications 😘. We started this one a bit early at 10 am today because B was excited to spend the space celebrating the first anniversary of the bestest, most blackest (and brownest and allied-ish) collection on the blockchain, Ohnahji University!
It's a celebration!!! The first anniversary of Ohnahji University! We began minting on January 21st, 2022, and you know we like to turn up as it is; this space would be no different!
Before the space, Alphite of the Month Jataro kicked off the day with a customized version of Toni! Tony! Tone! 's "Happy Anniversary." Check it out!
ONJU SHOUTOUTS & UPCOMING EVENTS
Throughout the space, we recognized Alphites doing great things in the space and upcoming events to keep in mind. Ohnahji B Oprah was also in the building, generously gifting tokens to the Alphites in attendance! We take care of our fam!
ONJU Book Club: Ohnahji fam SickSentz has started the Ohnahji U Book Club, which will be reading Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin. The club session will pop off every Sunday at 3 pm PST/5 pm CST. Question-based discussions and conversations will be broad enough to speak on without reading the book, so please join whether you have read the chapter or not!
Hola Metaverso Foundations of Crypto Use: Hola Metaverso is an organization that offers workshops, meetings and live events to educate and create a community for marginalized groups. They aim to collaborate with communities with that vision to start the conversation. Ohnahji B will be a guest speaker at their Foundations of Crypto Use workshop this weekend January 28th. Tap in on the Discord campus for more information!
Alphites Helping Alphites: Technoking is attending ETH Denver through an opportunity from Cy4er at the Developer DAO community and even experienced a bidding war for job offers as a Rust developer. Big congratulations to both him and Cy4er!
A Word from EyeSeeThru: In a quick aside on the news that ChatGPT finally reinstated past chatbot conversations on user accounts, EyeSeeThru shared ListGPT.com, a Google Chrome browser extension, that will save all sessions a user has with the GPT3 chatbot as text that can be exported via PDF. Conversations are also kept on the ListGPT website for users to access after they log in.
A TIMELINE OF OHNAHJI U
Starting a retrospective of the year as an NFT project Founder, Ohnahji B shared that he has learned many lessons in the first year of minting Ohnahji U. A musician and graphic artist, he calls himself a "dev that's not a dev" but, if I may add, and I speak from experience, B has a wealth of developer knowledge without the wealth of developer attitude (…yeah I said it. 🤷🏿♂️)
When he first came into the NFT art and tech space, he was excited to use all the skills he's acquired from his experience to create something great. In that period, he's become the founder, contract controller, CTO, and so much more!
From an Idea to the Blockchain
Ohnahji came about to fulfill a lack of representation for black and brown communities in the space. B's first step was reaching out to artists in the space about their interest in creating an NFT project, and of the many he reached out to, one of them expressed some interest. He then began explaining the reasons behind establishing a project and the 10k meta that was big at the time. The artist soon got on board, and thus Ohnahji was born!
Working with the artist, B helped create traits and vectorized the individual images. When creating a flat color image like an Ohnahji, high quality .SVG files are needed to display them at any scale, so taking the time to process all those traits took months. He often felt like he went overboard with so many separate images to work with, but the job got done. Long after releasing the collection, the team decided to grant IP rights to Ohnahji holders to allow them to use the token in any way they see fit with no commercial cap on usage.
Did You Know?: There are three septillion combinations of Ohnahji, so you will NEVER see the same one twice!
After mint began, things were going well, but many people who wanted to join the community didn't know about crypto and NFTs. So, in a move that would soon shift the entire mission of the project, Ohnahji B began educating people new to minting NFTs on blockchain tech and all that came with it. The mission of educating newcomers continued through the summer of 2023 as we entered the bear market and has now become a valued tenet of the project to provide information to anyone looking to learn about NFTs and blockchain technology.
A Space For Us
B enjoys the Metaverse scene and believes that virtual gathering spaces and gaming will largely bring web3 to the masses. So, as minting progressed, He turned his attention toward creating a Metaverse campus. At the same time, the community began to refer to the project as the "HBCU of Web3," and we leaned heavily into that moniker; it quickly became an easy way for people to understand the mission behind the project and has become one of our most endearing nicknames.
As the Metaverse space was being created, B tackled learning Blender, thinking it wouldn't be too bad to use the platform to create the virtual U. Well…he was wrong. His experience in creating 2D visuals didn't quite translate to 3D, but with some trial and error, it was completed, and we are happy to announce the debut of our metaverse campus! Of course, just like our Discord campus, there will be changes, revisions, and adaptations. Still, we're excited to give our community a place to congregate with others in the Metaverse!
Experience our Metaverse campus live through Spatial.io!
Challenges and Successes
In being a Founder and working on the development of a project, B quickly learned that there would be significant bumps along the way; minting through a decentralized app is very different than zipping over to OpenSea and snagging a token. Even Ohnahji hit a few snags on the way to mint and had to push the mint date back one week! However, finishing the contract, minting it on the Ethereum mainnet, and the price fluctuations of ETH affecting minting all helped him learn that things will work out eventually!
If that wasn't enough, establishing the Discord server was a learning experience. Despite not wanting one initially, it has become a hub for education and social gatherings, from classes to game nights and movie nights. We're looking forward to returning to hosting more events, so if you have suggestions or ideas, pass them our way!
Meeting Our Amazing Alphite Family
Something new but fulfilling for Ohnahji B in the journey as a newly minted Founder has been the real-life meetups around NFT and W3B conferences he's attended. First was NFTLA, where he met the Web3PullUp and Wakanomy fam and was a speaker on a panel where he could impart some blockchain education and introduce Ohnahji. Not long after, he represented ONJU at NFT Expoverse, met some of our younger Ohnahjifam GisforGreat and Christopher L, and met the founders of NFTKids Mag. Finally, last November, he even traveled to Austin, Texas, to rep ONJU at AfroTech 2023, where he was able to meet Deans Kay and Boss (hey… that's me), as well as Ohnahji super holder Jasmine of RektifyAI.
Going into Year Two
Looking back on year one, it's been amazing teaching other people about blockchain and helping artists and other creatives get their work out and take back their ownership. Still, for B, it pales in comparison to the human connection being in the space can provide.
“Web3, to me, is just an extension of the Internet. And the Internet is just an extension of human communication, right? It just gives us the ability to communicate quicker, easier, faster, over longer distances to other humans…the IRL and the human connection in this space are what’s super important to me. I think that’s what makes this space incredible. We’re on the precipice of a brand new tech that’s going to continue to go crazy in the space.”
We are all so excited to see what is coming in the year ahead and are confident that year two will blow year one out of the water with the abundance ahead!
QUESTIONS
Speaker Afrideva asked: Looking back on the contract after a year, are there any particular changes you'd make if you had to do it again? How were rarities in the traits calculated?
Rarities were put in through the .json files and the token metadata, one of the first things completed after the art was finished. True randomness in the collection would have each trait generated randomly, but for Ohnahji, rarity percentages were chosen by the team.
When Ohnahji B was first completing it, he chose to strip the contract down to only its essentials to make it as green as possible. If he wanted to add token functions like staking, a contract extension would need to be made in the future. Apart from adding changes to the contract, if he chose to do so, he'd keep it the same as it exists now.
BIG LOVE FROM THE FAM!
So many of the fam took a moment to pull up and show BIG love!
We wrapped up the space with a moment that could only happen in an Ohnahji space! Speaker Ric tha Rula pulled up in the barber's chair to show love on our 1st anniversary! Self-care Saturday is in full effect!
“I mean, you guys have made this space so inviting and a safe space where we can ask questions, and we can educate ourselves on this Web3 revolution that’s quietly happening. I mean, from ChatGPT to so many things I’ve learned just being a part of these Twitter spaces. So again, I don’t have much to add, but just show some love to every member of this project. Another year, another milestone, and ya’ll keep it going.”
Only at ONJU! We authentic out here!
One year down, many more ahead! If reading through this doesn't have you bullish on The U, check your pulse! ONJU is here for you every day, in every way! Find us everywhere you see Ohnahji! On the timeline, in Spaces, on Reddit, on our Discord campus, and on our brand new Metaverse campus, wherever you see an Ohnahji pfp, you can rest assured we got you!
Now let’s get back to the party! Wanna go get some sweet grits in the cafe?
