1-on-1 With Dogs Unchained: Tech, Community, Beanie, & How They Can Be The Next Punks/Apes
Mr. Fox gets his questions answered in a 1-on-1 interview with the Dogs Unchained founders in a leadup to their community AMA on August 9th.
Hello all and welcome back to another episode.
Today I had the privilege of doing a deeper dive into upcoming digital avatar project, Dogs Unchained, with their founders, Pumpkin and Rex.
They answered my questions on the tech, community, motivation, and vision for their innovative new project in a warmup to the public AMA they will be holding in their Discord tomorrow, August 9th, 2021.
If you’re not familiar with Dogs Unchained, I wrote an article explaining why you really should be last week that you can read here. (LINK).
Enjoy the interview!
Every time a new project launches, one of the first questions the NFT collectible community asks is whether or not it can reach the upper echelon. Whether or not it can go the distance and eventually sit amongst the Punks and Apes in both prestige and price. Why does the Dogs Unchained team think they can get to this level, if it is in fact their goal?
“The projects that stand the test of time are the ones who do something first and do it well. Punks were the first to tokenize a unique digital identity. Apes were the first to rally a community and give a membership. Dogs Unchained is focused on building the de facto standard for truly decentralized, dynamic NFTs. We want to showcase just how flexible ERC-721s can be in being dynamic by leveraging different layers of decentralized tech. Hopefully in a few years people will look back at the technologies we were first to implement that have become standard for modern NFTs.”
Over the last week, what can be seen as a competitor in the NFT combination space, GOATz, has done significant work on the development of their Forging technology and tokenomics. What do you say to investors who are deciding between you and GOATz?
“The first thing is: Buy and collect what you enjoy and see value in! People value community, artwork, technology, and other factors so differently, so do what you're interested in; there's no "right" answer. As for differences, it comes to implementation. On-chain vs. Off-chain. GOATz came forward with a really unique concept: Allow people to choose their traits from a pair of owned tokens. We ran with a similar idea and focused heavily on all users interactions and token data living on-chain. Our philosophy has been to fully lean into decentralization as a core principle of our project.”
Arguably the most important factor to any NFT project is the community behind it. What are you (or community members) doing to foster and build a community that will stand the test of time?
“We love dogs! We specifically chose a topic to tokenize that would let people connect with their own fur-babies. Adding on the charitable donations is our way of showcasing that this is a place to fully support the world of canines. Our channels for sharing pets have been really lively and have shown that people really do want to share their dogs in the crypto-verse!”
Something a lot of fellow Dogs and I have speculated about is the possibility of combining SuperDogs. Would you be able to comment on whether or not this is currently possible through The Boom Boom Room, and if not, if it’s something planned for the future?
“Absolutely. Every Dog in the Dogs Unchained universe can be Boomed. Dog + Dog, SuperDog + Dog, and SuperDog + SuperDog! Each Dog has a level associated with it (starting at 1) and when you Boom two dogs, it adds 1 to whichever has a higher level. If you Boom a Level 4 SuperDog and a Level 2 SuperDog, the resulting SuperDog is Level 5. We want to encourage compounding creativity. And this will be available at launch.”
What did your journey in NFTs look like before you started Dogs Unchained?
“I (Pumpkin) bought my first NFT on the day that CryptoKitties launched back in 2017! I've been around the space for a while and have been building smart contracts for some time too. Bridging that skillset to NFTs has been really fun.”
What was the biggest challenge you faced in the development of Dogs?
“Just the massive scale of the technology behind the project and making it user friendly. This is definitely one of the most complicated NFT technologies out there. We leverage:
- Smart Contracts
- The Graph Protocol
- 2 separate rendering layers
- IPFS + Arweave + DNSLink
... and that's before anything even gets to our custom website! Doing it right - which means testing, documentation, and more testing - is a time consuming and challenging thing. We're responsible for people's money and assets and keeping users safe and educated on all of the things they can do with Dogs Unchained is a really top priority.”
Your support, both encouraging and financial, from one of the most important investors in all of NFTs, Beanie, has been widely noted. It’s given your project a lot of credibility. In what way has Beanie been of the biggest help?
“Beanie has been a great supporter of the work we've been pursuing. I think one of the most valuable things we get from Beanie is his advice and time. He's incredibly willing to sit down and talk through strategy and challenges and come up with unique solutions. Proof of Steak came out of a collaborative session with him to figure out how we could mitigate gas wars!”
Is there anything you want the NFT world to know about your project that you’ve yet been given the platform to say?
“I think what we really want to say to the community is: Keep pushing the boundaries. Every person who is investing in, collecting, or building NFTs is a pioneer. And as pioneers we need to move forward. We hope that people will really start to value and focus on innovation and delivery. Every project should try to do something that's never been done before. And every investor should ask the honest question of how they're supporting projects that are taking risks and bringing NFTs to new frontiers.”
What drives you?
“We're technologists and NFT maxis. We want to see these assets reach new levels of usability, accessibility, and value. By building Dogs Unchained (and open sourcing so much of it), we hope that we're a contributing factor to the next generation of NFTs. Marking ourselves down in that history is really important to us.
In addition, and not to be forgotten: We truly do love dogs. Both Rex and I are dog owners and have spent time giving back to dogs through volunteering and fostering. Putting together a platform that is providing much needed funding for groups to support our canine pals is a really rewarding way to spend our time.”
I’d like to thank Pumpkin and Rex for agreeing to and completing this insightful and illuminating interview. I implore you to spend some time researching Dogs Unchained and joining them for their community AMA tomorrow, August 9th, 2021.
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And down the Rabbit Hole we continue.
Mr. Fox.