Reasons for two hundred hand-drawn corn chips—Blue Chips—dipping on the Ethereum blockchain
Tell me about yourselves and your relationship?
Cybertooth Kat: Mango and I met as he was Creative Director at Charged Particles, and I was a budding game guild ambassador for the same. He and I are kindred spirits in many ways, having a firm love for NFTs with utility and imagining a Web3 world where games and gamification are the centerpiece of crypto life. We developed a rapport, worked on several initiatives together, and soon launched out on the Blue Chips adventure.
Mango: Cybertooth is really one of the most prolific and professional artists I’ve met in the space to date, and so when the idea came to me that there was a lot of Blue Chip talk but not a lot of Blue Chip walk, he was the only choice that made sense for a creative collaboration. Meeting our two rockstar devs who also found themselves inspired by guacamole and innovation was just the cherry tomatoes on top.
How did the NFT project Blue Chips come about?
Mango: Sometimes a meme just calls out to you in the same way I imagine renaissance artists found themselves a channel for some muse or another. And like a tree with sprawling roots, the more time you give it, the deeper the meme can become. These stories seem to do very well in the moon-bound doge-plex of it all.
Cybertooth Kat: Back in the spring of this year, Mango reached out to me and said, “Do you wanna do a drop with me?” Without any thought or hesitation, I said, “DUH. Yeah.” Because working with Mango is like slowly eating a succulent vine-ripened exotic fruit. He described the drop as 200 NFTs comprised of blue corn chips where everyone is “really happy”. I made an initial prototype and Mango said, “ditch the shoulders and torso, add some kazoos and make them like really happy.” So, I made a second prototype, and we had our baseline.
From there, I created the other 200 chips, and we worked with a fantastic developer named 0xApeToshi to get the website and contract in order. It was a meme NFT drop, in the heart of bear country, and it sold out in 48 hours. Success. (Of course, at that point, we were like those dentist aquarium fishes in their little bags, floating in the ocean at the end of Finding Nemo. They look around and go, “Now what?”)
Describe Blue Chips in three sentences:
Cybertooth Kat: These are 200 (soon 400) blue corn chip meme NFTs which have evolved into mystic triangle tokens able to grant holders the power to acquire “the dip”. You choose; guac, queso or salsa. For those who are hip to dip, fantastic adventures will unfold.
Mango: Serious innovation. Absurdly delicious. Buy the dip.
What does Blue Chips mean to you?
Cybertooth Kat: Like everyone on our core team, I’ve poured a lot of passion and energy into this project. It has that “certain something” about it. The vision is for this emerging “dip DAO” to become a leading example of how an NFT community can take a simple idea and turn it into a valuable community with solid utility and tokenomics that lead the way in Web3. So, obviously it means a lot to me and I’m proud of how it started and where it’s going.
Mango: For me, it represents the power of art, memes, and ideas to gather a community of thoughtful and engaged people. The lightheartedness of our project seemed to attract a very deeply integrated community of Web 3.0 professionals building some of the most impactful technologies in the space during one of the largest market dips (heh) in recent memory. It reinforced that the crypto space isn’t going anywhere, and that art is really a uniting factor in where this is all going.
What inspired you both to create/work on this project?
Cybertooth Kat: Mango and I had already worked on several small pilot projects together and felt a brotherhood of sorts. Because this project sounded fun and lighthearted, I really gravitated towards it.
Creating the art was fun and the visual experimentation left me feeling energized rather than burnt out (as some projects do). Mango gave just enough visual input to set me on my way without confining me too much. It was a good mix.
I was so invested that I composited and rendered each blue chip NFT with my own hands, first illustrating the base chips, then the various “fun” facial features and accessories. Using the design software—without the aid of scripts or algorithms—I composited and assembled them, personally. I wanted my eye to find the “just right” layout for each chip. I think this ultimately made for a very strong Blue Chips meme aesthetic. Each chip is truly a 1/1 created by a human designer.
Our upcoming drop was also done in the same way, using some of the elements from the first drop, and adding a bunch of new illustrated elements so the overall “Blue Chips” aesthetic is the same, but there is a distinct shift between the two collections, as well.
Who is your main target audience?
Cybertooth Kat: Literally all humans. It would be great for Blue Chips to become an onboarding mechanism for crypto as well. These NFTs are free use, too. Anyone can grab the image and put it on a short, coffee mug, etc. without copyright concerns. (But there’s only one blue chips NFT of any given chip.) This art should be loved by 4 year olds as much as 90 year olds, and it transcends culture too. It’s for all peoples.
Mango: I’d love to add to this the idea that while CC0 (Creative Commons License Zero) may be counterintuitive for some folks when thinking about NFTs, it really helps us to highlight the utility of the token itself. It’s one more step in helping people to realize that the NFT is much more than just the jpeg. The art is free to use—no one owns the IP—but only the token holder can use it to scoop dip tokens, buy unique art, and vote in the DAO among other upcoming functionality. We get to see here that the proof of ownership is really the key to accessing the rest of it.
What’s in the pipeline for Blue Chips?
Cybertooth Kat: So, so many things. We have already developed and tested the “dipping” mechanism and that is going out to the community imminently. We are also developing a whole marketplace where you can use your dipping ERC20 tokens to buy various things, including exclusive NFT comic series, various “power ups” for your Blue Chips NFT, and more. Powered by Charged Particles, each Blue Chip already has smart wallet features built in as well. For example, I hold Blue Chip #3 from the first drop. It already holds thousands of ERC20 tokens “nested” within it, and those tokens are time locked for next year (these things are all optional).
We’re also having broader conversations about other ground-breaking utility for blue chips holders. Who knows? Maybe someday soon you’ll buy your tacos with $GUAC…
Mango: Shhh!
Please tell me about your thoughts on the future of NFTs:
Cybertooth Kat: I look at NFTs as a new-ish technology set. The beauty of NFTs is the blockchain. The immutability aspect. People are locked in this debate of whether NFTs are “dead” or whatever. But, NFTs haven’t even gone mainstream yet. We’re still in the “oh, that’s a rich man’s toy” phase, ala the first automobiles.
We’re also arguing about whether a given collector is in it for the art or whatever. But, collecting and prospecting on NFTs (whether for art or money or whatever) is just the first thing we’re doing with NFTs. It’s not like it’s the full use case. Maybe not even one of the best use cases, really.
I envision Blue Chips as playing to the best aspects of what is currently happening with NFTs, while also keeping our eye on all the emergent aspects of what blockchain technology really affords us as it evolves and goes more mainstream.
I also think NFTs will grow and evolve and become something more salient in culture and in prevalent technology. To coin a phrase, “We’re early”.
Mango: I’ve said a lot on this over the last year or so, but in short, NFTs are so much more versatile a tool than simple jpegs, gifs, etc. They are a really powerful tool for redefining the ownership of the internet, a building block in the tool set of decentralization, and a major part of Web 3.0’s mission of global financial sovereignty.
I see the next phase of NFTs being centered primarily on their applications within a variety of industries beyond fine art such as music, gaming, fashion, regenerative sustainability models, science, medicine, space, and beyond.
How can readers keep in the loop with Blue Chips?
Cybertooth Kat: We have a Discord, a Twitter, and a Telegram. Also, there’s the website. Start there to find the others. http://weloveguac.org
Mango: What he said!
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