Welcome back to another Weekly(ish) Supdate. It’s been an exciting year (or ~6 months since SupDucks first popped up on the blockchain), and we’re going to take a stroll down memory lane and look back on all of the fun we’ve had so far.
July 17, 2021 — SupDucks arrive on the scene.
Called a sleeper sell-out by some, SupDucks launched quietly and cleanly. No gas wars. No FUD. No fake minting links in the Discord. Just a pure, casual, relaxing mint. Will we ever experience anything like this again? I hope so, but wouldn’t bet my $VOLT on it.
Once the eggs started to hatch, it was off to the races. Whether people had 1 egg, 100 eggs, or 0 eggs, it felt like everyone was anxiously and excitedly scrolling and refreshing every SupDuck they could find to discover new traits. While many celebrated getting their rare Purple Capes or Wizard Hats or Big Smiles, only a few found that their eggs contained Super Ducks.
I mean… come on… just look at these bad boys…
Shortly after all of the eggs hatched, Franky and the team shared an announcement that is still one of my favorite things about the project.
SupDucks owners not only received the rights to use art assets from their own Ducks freely (besides like literally ctrl-c ctrl-v and re-minting to sell the exact same Duck), but we received a Figma page loaded up with all of Franky’s art that he made for the project. Backgrounds, skins, text, hats, clothes, logos, and more. You could use it to throw together your own Twitter headers, or just kick back and make custom SupDucks for like 48 hours straight.
And then came the iOS app.
It felt like Franky announced he was going to make a SupDucks app on a Monday, and then released it on Friday. Maybe it was a little longer than that, but all I know is the entire community spent several nights fascinated watching Franky build an app on live stream. We got to joke around, ask questions, make suggestions, and witness something being created that we all got to play around with.
And play around with the SupDucks app we did. We even ran a #SupDucked contest for folks in the community to SupDuckify their favorite picture. The flock then voted on their favorite one, and the winner got himself a custom Frankynines rendition of their photo. The winning photo below and Franky’s drawing is below-er.
Congrats to ChugsnBugs and ChugsnBugs Jr on that sweet victory and owning an awesome piece by Franky.
In late August, Membership Cards made their way onto the SupDucks site.
Franky hung out with the flock on live stream while working on what the Membership Cards would look like. Taking input from the community, we ended up with 6 different levels of membership with different types of badges.
Then came Suptember.
Quite literally a month made for SupDucks. We saw a lot of things happen in Suptember. The first merch drop, bungalows, dank derivatives, $VOLT, tip bots, What’s Quackin, and KING FROG.
If the SupDucks team works fast, then BoogKnight works at the speed of light. Like seriously I don’t understand how it’s possible to cook up a dope clothing capsule and get it live on a site and shipped out to people that efficiently. But nonetheless, FedEx drivers around the world unknowingly delivered SupDucks merch to tons of stoked members of the flock.
$VOLT dropped on 9/9, which is funny to me because Frankynines (9's). So many nines. Anyways… $VOLT, the utility token or fuel for the SupDucks ecosystem launched and caused a lot of excitement. “What do we use it for,” people asked. “What is the utility,” others questioned. Little did they know what was in store for them over the coming months.
$VOLT has been used in numerous ways so far. In addition to people using it to wager on Chess or Rock-Paper-Scissors or Coin Flips in that Discord, we were also able to use $VOLT to buy Snacks for our KingFrogs and eventually mash together some frogs to make MegaToads. On top of that, there are community and official team $VOLT bounties where people have earned $VOLT for making Twitter banners, adding custom clothing like tuxedos to Ducks, or photoshopping 45 KingFrogs onto a SupDuck. It’s still in the early stages of $VOLT and what it can be used for, and we’re excited to see what happens next. Remember that you’re earning 10 $VOLT per duck, per day… forever!
Franky updated the SupDucks dot com website with Bungalows. Yes we’re still in Suptember. I told you, a lot happened. After connecting your wallet to the site and going to the Bungalow page, one of your SupDucks would be hanging out in his luxuriously decorated Bungalow. Notice anyone missing from the frog tank?
Arguably one of my favorite moments in Suptember was seeing these two derivative SupDucks by Killer Acid and Alex Pardee show up. No comment, just look at them.
How can we forget about What’s Quackin’? The weekly Twitter Spaces show where Bread, Limp, and Quackmaxi hang out and make fun of Big Smiles, let Bread ramble about embarrassing stories from his childhood, and hang out and vibe with people from the community to speculate, reflect, and laugh about everything going on in the NFT space. What’s Quackin’ will be back in action after the holidays.
On September 30th (as I’m writing this I literally cannot wrap my head around how so much happened in one month oh my go-) King Frogs were released upon the world. SupDuck owners were able to claim 1 King Frog for every duck in their wallet, and each frog matched one of their ducks. Creating a bunch of duck+frog combos that everyone thought would stay together forever. Too bad nobody told them what would happen with MegaToads (we’ll get to that later). In addition to the claim, there was a public mint (dutch auction style) that let thousands of newcomers become members in the pond.
While the utility of King Frogs was not yet known early on, there was certainly a lot of fun being had with sticking King Frogs on SupDucks to use as new profile pictures.
And with that, Suptember came to an end…
BUT THEN CAME FLOCKTOBER.
You thought Franky and the team were going to let off the gas? No chance. According to @supfrankyfacts on Twitter, Frankynines hasn’t slept since 1999 and currently has no plans to do so besides his annual 30 minute nap on June 21 since it’s the longest day of the year.
Boogknight hit us with some spooky sweaters and terrifying t-shirts in the theme of Halloween. Along with the Flocktober Merch capsule, SupDuck owners got another surprise that they could wear on their IRL bodies.
SupDucks x Rare Ghost Club did a joint collaboration with Pink+Dolphin. We got super dope hoodies, t-shirts, and hats (fun fact I’m wearing the black hat right now).
Anyone remember these early teasers? Pepperidge Farm remembers…
Ingredients — which were later rebranded as the more casual Snacks, were introduced as a way to animate your King Frog. Gummy Worms, Ice Cream Cones, Volt Colas, and Blue Chili Fireflies were all made available in Melvin’s Snack Shop and could only be purchased with $VOLT. Needless to say, the degenerates of the flock immediately bought all of the rarest snacks — Blue Chili Fireflies.
Each snack resulted in a different animation, and it was fun watching everyone discuss their strategies. Did they want to use their rarest snacks on their rarest frogs? Did they want to risk feeding a claimed frog that matches their duck? Or buy a non-matching frog to use it on? So many different possibilities, but as we now know, many of those fed frogs were mashed to turn into something bigger (literally) than themselves.
Franky’s early streams were from the OG Boardwalk (aka his crib). But in Flocktober, the team announced the acquisition of MegaVolt HQ in LA.
Not only does the LA-based team work out of here every day now, but we’ve built an entire set to film streams and produce content.
Also rumor has it that Limp is living in the air ducts there but it’s not confirmed.
You still with me? We just wrapped up another month. When they say a month in NFTs feels like a year, now you might start to see why.
“What comes after Flocktober?” Plato asked.
“Toadvember,” replied Aristotle.
And he was right.
Welcome to Toadvember.
What do you get when you stick a bunch of Web3 fanatics, developers, artists, influencers (boo!), and collectors in the largest city in the United States?
You get NFT.NYC. Simple math!
While some projects put together events that required standing in line for 7 hours just to get in the door, SupDucks kept it fresh and fun. I waited about 4 seconds to get inside the Barcade, only because it was so windy and I was too feeble to pull the door open.
We hung out, played games, drank dranks, and ate foods. I shared my love of tequila with many others who likely wish they didn’t happen to be next to me at the bar when I asked “who wants another shot?”
Jokes aside, it was a magical experience getting to hang out and spend time face to face with many of the people we’ve become friends with over the past year. I bought Limp, B-Love, Stronkwonk, Chip, and Luis hot dogs at 2am from the hot dog cart guy. You can’t beat those vibes.
SupDucks also arranged a comedy show at The Tiny Cupboard. While I wasn’t there personally and cannot attest to the performances, I heard pretty good things.
So NFT.NYC ended and we all returned home, feeling recharged and ready to see what happens next in the SupDucks pond. But if you remember what month it is, then you already know what happened next…
MegaToads baby, MegaToads.
Right towards the end of November, the team launched MegaToads and introduced an incredibly unique way to create them. Like actually unique, as in 0 other projects are doing this and they created something super dope and they deserve the equivalent of an Academy Award for Web3 innovation. Just putting that out there.
While many of you are probably familiar with how to make a MegaToad, some of you may not be. So here you go. You feed 3 KingFrogs one Snack each. You then go to the MegaToad minting page, choose the 3 fed KingFrogs, choose which specific trait from each frog you’d like to carry over to your MegaToad, pay the $VOLT minting fee (which increases slightly with every new mint), and then some crazy blockchain magic that I will literally never comprehend eats your KingFrogs and spits out a insane, animated MegaToad. The animations and sizes of MegaToads vary based on the types of snacks that were fed to the frogs you used to make the MegaToad. How very cool.
All I know is I can’t wait to see what we’ll be able to do with MegaToads next year.
But it’s not quite next year yet. And we’ve now moved on to Duckcember.
It’s absurd how many SupDuck-themed month puns we have. If you have any ideas for January please throw your ideas up in the Discord. December has been a bit less chaotic in the SupDuck realm, but nonetheless, the team is still working voraciously on upcoming project developments.
The Boardwalk has transitioned from Franky’s apartment, to the MegaVolt HQ, to a professionally built filming set. What other project does this? In the words of Russel Crowe from Gladiator, “Are you not entertained?” But yes, we are actually very entertained and for many of us, Thursday night streams are part of the weekly schedule.
Duckcember also brought the next merch capsule. This is personally my favorite batch of merch released so far and you better believe I went holiday shopping for my friends and family.
And then we had the Cookie Contest. While I’m not much of a baker, there are clearly some talented culinary pros amongst us.
I’m trying to write this part of the Supdate quickly because I’m staring at these cookies and haven’t eaten anything today yet (2:15pm CST at the time of writing). But seriously, congratulations to the winners and runner ups. You ducks got skills and we love to see y’all having fun with this.
So that’s everything that happened in 2021.
It’s been an adventure and we’ve had a ton of fun together. When I minted my SupDucks back in July, I had no idea where this would lead. But the adventure is still just beginning, and we’re in for a wild ride next year and beyond.
What’s next for SupDucks? That’s a good question. I don’t have all the answers for you, but below are some teasers to get you excited for 2022.
So… was that enough alpha to hold you over?
I sure hope so... But in case it wasn’t here’s some more for ya.
And now to wrap things up: THANK YOU.
Thank you to the Franky, Stronk, Luis, Notanumber, Xig, and Billy for creating something incredible for thousands of us around the world to appreciate and become friends through.
Thank you to the community team & mods for keeping the lights on at the Sup Jail and helping out members of the flock.
And the biggest thank you to the entire community of SupDuck, KingFrog, and MegaToads who have brought great energy and ideas to the pond and made a positive impact.
Enjoy the last day or so of 2021, and we’ll make 2022 even better.
