Winter Bears Roadmap

What an unbelievable week!

After selling 9,000 of our bears in just under an hour we have been going from strength to strength.

Here’s just a taste of what’s been achieved:

• 4,350 unique holders
• 15,000 Discord members
• 9,568 Twitter followers
• 5K total volume
• Over 50 submissions to the first creativity contest
• Top ten for OpenSea weekly volume.

Myself (Nushi), Ophidian, and GumptionBear would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you who made this possible. Over the past two weeks we have cemented not only some great stats, but also come together as one of the most positive and inspiring communities.

We’re doing this together, so Welcome to Winter Bears.

So the question you’re probably wondering is, what comes next?

It’s time to unveil our plans for the future.

The Winter Bears Roadmap

If you’ve been around in the Discord you might have heard me talking about our plans for Art Club, using DAO governance infrastructure to platform artists and share royalties.

We shared our detailed model with experts, and we’ve come to the realization that there’s a better way to more directly reward our community.

That’s right, the Winter Bears family is going to be growing.

Instead of paid drops that may not be relevant to our community, we’re going to provide free of charge drops to all bear owners.

Please don’t confuse this with “free to mint” where you have to pay gas. This is a free airdrop to bear holders, you will receive one free for every bear you own at the snapshot date in the future (not yet announced).

While the gas for this “Beardrop” will be very expensive for us, we are happy to pay the gas because we love the community that is developing here, and want to prove we will do everything we can to reward bear holders long term.

Not only that, we’re going to be expanding the Winter Bears world. Look forward to a deeper understanding of the magical land of Aurora, developed across the board!

With this new updated roadmap we’re doubling down on our strongest asset, Winter Bears. Providing value directly to Winter Bears holders and growing the Winter Bears brand is now our sole focus.

DAO lovers, worry not. Winter Bears will continue to be a powerful creative force and continue to be community-led, taking on input, feedback, and providing opportunities.

Let’s look at our roadmap in detail.

1. Winter Bears Short Animation

One of our roadmap commitments was an animated short and our creative lead GumptionBear has been in his element putting this into effect.

Our new focus is seeing a heightened priority on this project, and we have been in contact with a leading animator who wants to take the bears to the next level.

Animations will bring our beloved bears to life, shine some light on the world they inhabit, and spread awareness of Winter Bears beyond the NFT community.

Are Winter Bears coming to Hollywood? Watch this space.

Moving forward we will be heavily involving the community in the creative process. That goes from story ideas, to character development, music and everything that goes into the process! We can’t wait to work with you all!

2. Merch Store

We also committed to opening a merch store to get our community swagged out.

While it would be easy to stick a few graphics on your run of the mill Gildan sweater, this isn’t what Winter Bears is about.

We’re taking the merch store seriously. Not only will we be sourcing the highest quality kit, it’s also going to be aligned with our values. That means as much as possible will be organic, fair trade, and produced by people who are fairly compensated, from farm to factory. Winter Bears lovers will be able to pick up clothing and collectibles, and bits and bobs to bring the collection into your home.

While this means prices won’t be bargain cheap, we will be giving the community opportunities to get swag for free, with creativity contests and much more!

3. Charitable Work

We started Winter Bears with an ambition of raising awareness for the endangered polar bear, an animal so beautiful and majestic whose habitat is quite literally melting away. Winter Bears was always about creating a world where its inhabitants can live freely, being who they were meant to be without worrying about the environment.

Thanks to your support, we are able to go beyond that goal and make a full donation of $40,000 to protect these creatures.

As part of our renewed focus on Winter Bears we are upping our game on our charity commitments, and will be making even bigger contributions to this cause as we move forwards.

Thanks to several of our community members’ close proximity to polar bear research centers in Canada we’re now able to explore how Winter Bears can directly support, fund and draw attention to these vital efforts for the long term.

4. Art Club

While we are moving away from our initial vision for the DAO, we’re not cancelling our dreams of a community-led powerful creative force.

Art Club will continue to play a vital role in the Winter Bears community, now focusing internally on our talented community members.

We’re on the hunt for artists, designers, storytellers, musicians, animators and anyone with a creative urge to come and help us grow the Winter Bears world!

Look forward to future competitions, Twitter spaces and metaverse events celebrating our communities artistic talent.

5. Future Drops

Ok, you made it this far. You deserve a special surprise.

While our previous conception for our future relied on paid drops, with this new focus we are going to be able to give the community even more value.

That’s right, we are working on a future drop that will be free of charge for all Winter Bears holders.

That’s right. No Gas.

The drop will build upon the strengths of Winter Bears, have mass appeal for our existing community, and be of a high artistic standard. GumptionBear is already working around the clock to make this happen, and the early designs are incredibly exciting. More details will be shared as we move forwards.

Conclusion

Thanks for checking out our updated roadmap! This will be updated in the coming weeks with our concrete progress!

Look forward to our first charitable donation this week!

Join us for a Town Hall this Friday 17:00 UTC where the core team will answer each and every one of your questions!

From all of us, thank you for making Winter Bears such a special and positive place!

If you didn’t already, make sure to join our Discord community.

Love,

Nushi (community lead),
Ophidian (developer lead),
GumptionBear (creative lead)