DeGods: Cultural Icons, New and Improved (The Mafia Report)

Intro

DeGods is a collection of 10,000 NFT’s on the Solana blockchain. DeGods minted over 6 months ago. In NFT time, this project is ancient, but they have managed to maintain a very strong and passionate community.

By running campaigns such as DeGods Week, community competitions, token burns, among many other things, DeGods has built one of the most die-hard, “IDGAF” communities in the entire Solana ecosystem.

Utility

DeGods look much different today from when they started. Degods were originally minted for 3 $SOL and sold out immediately. Initially, there was a 33.33% PHBT (paper-hand b*tch tax) on every DeGod sold below 3 $SOL (mint price), or below its highest sale price. They intended to create a marketplace of their own to implement this type of tax but ended up partnering with Alpha.Art to implement the specifications on their marketplace. The idea was that the money collected from the PHBT would be used to buy and burn DeGods from the floor. This would make DeGods deflationary because when a DeGod was bought, it was burned, and thus the supply would constantly decrease and value would increase.

DeGods was originally going to be a social experiment. It was a question of whether people would hold and refuse to sell for a loss. Many predicted the framework for this would cause it to snowball and send the price to the moon. Initially, it was going great. DeGods rose to a floor price of 15 $SOL from a mint price of 3 $SOL. But, after volume slowed, DeGods floor price began to trickle down.

DeGods then started a sort of blog site, De.xyz. This site has several different articles including articles over reading the Solana blockchain, how to buy Solana NFT’s, and how to use CandyMachine. These articles were made to serve everyone in the Solana NFT community and are free to read(here).

As of the writing of the article (1/25/22), DeGods floor price is 4.5 and they have changed the direction they are headed. They recently released on MagicEden after having a long-time exclusive partnership with Alpha.Art. They have gotten rid of the PHBT for a flat-rate tax of 10% that goes to burning DeGods. 5.35% or 535 DeGods have been burned thus far. The community wallet currently has 625 $SOL left to buy and burn more DeGods.

DeGods main use cases are now staking for $DUST and membership in the DeDAO. The DeDAO allows holders to make decisions about DeGods $DUST started with a supply of 0 and can only be created by doing 1 of 3 actions: burning rugged NFTs, staking DeGods NFTs, burning DeGods NFTs. When you stake your DeGods, you receive 10 $DUST per day per DeGod staked. When you burn a rugged NFT you receive 1 $DUST and when you burn a DeGod you get 1000 $DUST + the burnt DeGods rarity score. You can also burn an exiled DeGod for 333 $DUST.

$DUST will have a wide variety of uses including minting exclusive NFT’s from collections released by the DeGods team and bidding on NFT’s owned by the DeDAO, it will also be the token of choice in the DeGods universe.

Team:

When DeGods minted, Frank was the main lead on the project. He did a great job and took it as far as he could but eventually brought on a few more team members. Frank has been a strong leader to the DeGods holders and has created a die-hard community that has weathered a storm. He makes it known flying f*** what anyone thinks and has always run DeGods as he sees fit.

The core team now includes DeZeus, Finn, and Frank. DeZeus, Finn, and Frank handle a lot of the big stuff behind the scenes and let the community managers handle the day-to-day announcements. The community managers include AKAY(33.3%) and aussienftguy. These guys have done a great job of getting involved and doing collaborations with other projects such as brthwrk and Retro-Wolves, getting DeGods holders WL for other projects, and many more things to benefit the community. aussienftguy is one example of how die-hard the DeGods community is, going as far as tattooing a DeGod on himself.

Chill is the lead developer now for DeGods and is in charge of maintaining the $DUST Protocol. There are also a couple of community managers that help communicate with the DeGods community more directly. The community leads are Gee2Kay and Nemesis.

Significance: What other projects can take away from DeGod’s example

DeGods has managed to stay around and relevant for over 6 months, and in the NFT world that is ages. DeGods are not where they originally planned to be, but they have adapted and continued to build. They are currently sitting at a 4.5 $SOL floor, or up 50% since mint.

DeGods has remained one of the strongest forces on NFT twitter since day one. Few projects have matched their presence on social media. How can a project that hasn’t been based around ground-breaking utility be consistently considered in the blue-chip conversation?

The answer is culture. DeGods themselves have artistic references to pop culture that is not seen in many projects. However they have created their own culture through the tone of their project and their unique style of marketing. Their whole image is based upon not being a traditional project. With vulgar language and a nonchalant attitude towards everything, paired with art that matches this sentiment with its eye-catching swagger, the holders feel they can identify with something special that stands out from the crowd.

Closing Comments:

DeGods have created a rock-solid community and have managed to stay relevant for a long time. Although they have seen some bumps along the way, the DeGods collection is still one of the most recognized and flexed collections in all of the Solana Ecosystem, with a huge number of accounts still rocking them as their profile picture.

Now led by a bigger team, they have many plans in store. Just today (1/25/22), Frank tweeted that there will be more uses for $DUST that do not require as much $DUST as the auctions. This will benefit holders who only have 1–3 DeGods and have not had the opportunity to earn as much $DUST as people with more.

Time Sensitive Opinion:

As Solana NFTs and NFTs as a whole gain popularity, we expect established 10k supply NFT collections to do well. With a 10k supply, they have more than enough individual pieces to build a rock-solid community. People coming into the Solana ecosystem will be looking for well-known communities to join, and if you have spent any time on Solana NFT Twitter, you have seen someone with a DeGods profile picture. DeGods have hit a peak of 15 or so and are now sitting at 4.5. We believe as they get $DUST Protocol up and running fully, they could start to gain some momentum, especially considering the floor has never held below the current floor. This week is DeGods week, and last DeGods week was madness that brought a lot of eyes to the DeGods community.

DeGods Twitter: https://twitter.com/DeGodsNFT?s=20

DeGods Discord: https://discord.gg/degods

Mask Mafia Twitter: https://twitter.com/MaskMafiaNFT?s=20

Mask Mafia Discord: https://discord.gg/x3U9WEF6