How the DNA of PUNKAYC was formed

PUNKAYC was originally intended as a stealth mint to counter the hype that a lot of scam projects build before minting, and rugging. The plan was to come out of nowhere, promise nothing, but actually DO EVERYTHING and try to build something from the alchemy that happens when people come together through NFTs.

It was launched with little fanfare and tiny Twitter following. A small allowlist gave a few communities we valued a chance to mint for free. It was hoped that word would spread when people saw the art and it would fuel enough attention to launch for a public mint at 0.02. The price was locked into the contract.

Things looked like they were all going to plan, we got to about 2,000 mints, were trending on Icy Tools and now had about 1,000 Twitter followers. As we switched to public, we had our Twitter account suspended permanently – the reasons for which remain unanswered, but it appears someone reported us maliciously.

This stalled the mint and eventually we were stuck just over 2,000 mints with not a buyer in sight. At this stage we didn’t even have a Discord – the intention was to set that up after minting. So the only way we had to communicate with any new buyers was through the Indelible Labs server, we made the price free again and tried to spread the word. If your project stalls at this moment, it’s usually game over.

We set up a Discord, still locked out of Twitter, and unable to log out of the locked account. From there word spread and people joined our brand new Discord, we started getting volume again but it was all through an allowlist at 0.005 – it was the only way we could change the price. People had to send us wallets, we had to upload them – it was super buggy with all the wallets – and then we had to give them the green light to mint. Even with these pretty impractical way of minting, we got volume again, and thinking we were in the clear switched to public. Things stalled. Again.

As we had been a free mint to keep volume going through, people were bricking the floor – listing them for below the mint price of 0.02. The community that had formed got together and out of nowhere collaborated to come up with a plan. This is a -1 day community. Already two community members were modding and everyone leant in.

We decided to cut supply from 10,000 to 5,000. The 10,000 was too much a risk at this stage when we could only mint by allowlist (having their wallets uploaded). We decided to drop the price and airdrop everyone who bought in at 0.02 another Punk Ape.

We were transparent, we were aligned, and we were not going to be stopped. And it worked.

People came, they dropped their wallets in the Discord – eventually we had to shut off the wallets and close the channel as it just got crushed with requests. We probably could have minted to 10,000, but we had all decided 5,000 was it.

We minted 4993 and crashed our website. We minted the final few off the backend when no one could access the minting page.

It was epic, It was fun and it solidified the community.