Fractionless y00ts
Or: How I invited people to scam themselves
It was November 2022, and AVAX was $13 going on zero.
In a desperate attempt to distract themselves from ongoing eschatological crypto events like FTX collapsing and the Sam/Caroline sex tape, several members of Cynical Hate DAO looked abroad to other ecosystems for entertainment.
They settled on harassing each other into buying overpriced Solana NFTs, mainly t00bs, y00ts, and degods.
Although counter trading other CHD members is a legitimate strategy some employ, it turns out that the CHD t00b/y00t hype at peak bear was likely the most profitable trade of this year, returning nearly 100% in only 2-3 weeks.
I’m not bitter
As a fully functional and well-adjusted adult, I easily resisted the peer pressure and did not buy into the hype. I was also heavily feeling my COVID infection and not in the mood to ape into yet another redacted investment. My motto is ‘NFTs are for dumping’ and I stuck to it, to my detriment.
The meds kick in
I got some good meds. Like the really good kind. I started to feel kind of better, in a crazy and somewhat mentally addled way. I certainly wasn’t going to FOMO into buying one myself now that the price had doubled. But I had to admit, the needling on Discord was getting to me.
Suddenly an idea born of ingesting too many opioid anti-cough medicines burst into existence. I wanted a y00t to fit in, and I was sure other people on Twitter felt the same way. But none of us wanted to pay for it.
And really, why does one even own NFTs? It can’t be to look at them; you can just right click them if you want that. No, it’s because you want to tell other people you own it. You want to fit in with all the other weirdos posting their expensive NFTs on Twitter.
Thus came my idea; I would get people to buy me a y00t, and in exchange, I would fulfill their need to be able to tell people they owned a y00t.
Most people are familiar with Fractional NFTs, where you own a small portion of the NFT. But this was different; if you own this NFT, you can tell people you own the whole thing, but with the same cost advantage of owning a Fractional NFT.
Thus were Fractionless NFTs born.
An NFT is born
I’ve never actually launched an NFT, but I’ve read enough contracts to basically type one up in my sleep. So I hacked up a quick contract, and then generated some peerless art as a placeholder (using my finger on a touch screen in paint).
Somehow this is better than my actual handwriting.
Anyway, Huurrr disapproved of my slapdash attempt and hacked up a quick animated enhancement.
This is a scam
It goes without saying that this is a scam. I honestly do not understand how you could read my announcement thread and decide that this is a legitimate investment.
I intended this to be a meme and/or joke. I limited the collection size to 200 at a 1 AVAX price, since that’s the absolute upper limit of what I would need to buy the NFT, and I wasn’t planning on making money from this. I didn’t even bother creating a front end, you had to mint from contract.
I hacked everything together and posted the joke in the short period between my kid falling asleep, and passing out from the drugs I was on. My expected to refund anyone who had minted the next day, but surprisingly people minted it out before I woke up, so I decided to follow through with it.
WTF is a y00t: mint t00b
So y00ts are NFTs that are minted by burning another NFT, colloquially called a t00b. I don’t really understand the actual collection name, nor do I care to learn why it’s named that way.
Originally I was going to buy a y00t, but I’m terminally unable to make decisions about subjective things like ‘which of these NFTs is nicer’. Rather than stress out over it, I elected to purchase a t00b and burn it to mint a y00t, leaving it up to RNG to decide what we got.
A t00b is more expensive than a floor y00t, since there’s the chance that you’ll get a nicer looking one (according to some weird ranking of traits that has evolved) or a unique.
I decided that if we did happen to mint something particularly rare, or a unique, I would sell it, purchase a floor, and return the excess to holders, turning this adventure into a lottery-type situation.
Minting
Of course, my luck being what it is, we minted floor trash.
It looks OK to me, but the gods that decide what each trait is worth have deemed this one mediocre, instantly burning the equivalent of 80 SOL.
Regardless, I updated the metadata to reflect our new share-less ownership of this NFT. You can view (or buy) a fractionless y00t here.
Discontent amongst the non-holders
Several people indicated that they would prefer the y00t floating over the pedestal that the original ‘y00t goes here’ image had. Personally, I feel like this ruins the joke, because the fractionless y00t is intended to pretend to be a literal replacement for a y00t.
But let it not be said that I ignore the wishes of suckers holders of fractionless y00ts. I created a poll to see what people wanted.
Unsurprisingly people are willing to let the master memer/3d animator Huurrr do whatever he wants.
But my COVID came back with a vengeance and I completely lost track of this, among other things. Also Huurrr is busy creating 3d poop.
CHD has rugged you yet again.
What’s next
This was always basically just a joke that went too far. Surprisingly, y00ts continue to go up in value, and my floor y00t might soon overtake the price I originally paid for the t00b.
If that happens, I will probably sell the y00t and return the mint funds back to everyone currently holding a fractionless y00t, closing the chapter on this redacted story.
EDIT: 2023-02-24 - Project Rugged
As discussed above, I have rugged this project and am providing refunds. It turns out that I’m too lazy to create a burn site, so I just put a ton of collection bids in for Kalao.
Finally closing out this sordid tale of betrayal and redemption.