This $1.6 Million NFT Could Self-Replicate Into Hundreds More

With the barrage of artists, athletes, celebrities, and brands flooding into the non-fungible token (NFT) space lately, you might have thought you’d seen it all by now. But here’s a project attempting to do something very different.

“REPLICATOR” is a piece of digital artwork from Micah “Mad Dog Jones” Bowbak tokenized as an Ethereum-based NFT. It is a single-piece composition that went on sale today via art dealer Phillips, but there is a twist to the artwork: it will self-replicate and create potentially hundreds of variant NFTs that can then be sold by the owner.

The uniqueness of this twist has evidently not been lost on potential buyers: the top bid for the NFT now stands at $1.6 million. And today marks only the first day of the 10-day auction.

An NFT is like a deed of ownership to nearly any kind of digital item, be it still artwork, a tweet, a video, or an item from a video game. Thanks to automated, blockchain-driven smart contracts, NFTs can be programmed with unique modifiers or twists, such as the one seen here. Another recent example is Ether Cards, a series of Ethereum-based collectible cards that have unique “superpower” modifiers and can yield potential future benefits to buyers (including additional NFT artwork).

Here’s how the “REPLICATOR” NFT will work: The individual Genesis artwork will “self-generate” seven generations of distinct “prints” as separate NFTs, with each generation’s artwork distinct from the one before. Each new generation occurs 28 days after the previous one, and simulations of the Ethereum smart contract-based process suggest an average of 220 total NFTs created by the original artwork, although the end tally could be more or significantly less.

Welcome to REPLICATOR: an NFT experience comprising 7 generations of unique artworks. (a thread) pic.twitter.com/DBQalDHhe5

— Mad Dog Jones (@Mad_Dog_Jones) April 2, 2021

“REPLICATOR,” which comes as both a still image and a 50-second video with animation and effects, shows an office space with a photocopier set amidst the backdrop of Los Angeles at night. According to Phillips, it’s a “nostalgic nod to a once-cutting-edge technology, now on its way toward obsolescence.” And like a real copy machine, there can be hitches along the way.

See, the self-generation process can “jam” along the way, with certain generations cutting out before living up to their full potential. The owner of the piece will get a special “jam artwork” variant in that case, which can still be resold, but that particular branch of the generational tree will no longer produce new children NFTs.

Mad Dog Jones’ website has an interactive simulator that lets you see how the process works. In one simulation that Decrypt tried, the end result was 258 total NFTs: 95 “REPLICATOR” variants and 163 jams. Any NFTs in the series sold via NFT marketplace OpenSea will automatically result in 10% of the sale price sent to the artist.

Chainbinders, the world’s first liquid NFT collection backed by a reserve pool of Ethereum, raised over $5 million in the first two hours after the start of sale of their native BND utility token earlier this week, the firm said in a release to CryptoSlate.

$3.8 million of that was raised in just 15 minutes as part of the liquidity generation event (LGE).

The total amount of funds raised on the first day of LGE exceeded $6.2 million due in large part to the project’s high production quality, innovative game-theory mechanics, and a hyper-deflationary tokenomics model.

Inspired by Japan
Chainbinders is the latest NFT product by Doki Doki DeGacha, a gamified NFT platform inspired by the popular Japanese Gachapon, where players receive random collectibles from vending machines.

“Chainbinders is part game theory, part art collecting, part gacha, and part anime. It’s got elements of things ranging from Final Fantasy to Nier:Automata,” Roy Blackstone, Creative Director at Doki Doki, in a statement.

He added, “We’re creating original IP and characters (a massive cast of 15 of them!), giving them each their own backgrounds, lore, stories, motivations, and then gamifying them on the marketplace with some clever token mechanics to make sure these NFT’s have instant liquidity and actual value.”

The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world with 15 unique characters called Chainbinders, who acquire mystical powers that have allowed them to survive after chaos gripped their homeworld.