Inspiration

Henlo approached me after the success of the Chimkens NFT project to brainstorm and collaborate on a new NFT project he envisioned called "Hoomans". It would be the human counterparts for the chimkens, or the chimkens human owners.

It was an easy decision for me to hop on board. We had already established a succesful partnership with Chimkens and I thought this was a great opportunity to experiment a little bit more. The art previews looked really great as well.

Again, I would act as the dev, responsible for the smart contract and website, as well an ensuring a smooth minting and trading experience. Henlo would be respoonsible for the art and marketing. Importantly, we wanted to find a way to integrate both Chimkens and Ohayo holders into the project. We believed in supporting the communities we had already built and wanted to include them on this journey.

Vision

As our second NFT project together, Henlo and I were on the same page for most things. I let him take the lead on the art and marketing, with me helping out on Twitter where I could. While I created the smart contract and updated the website with new art to promote Hoomans.

The process was much smoother and quicker compared to working on Chimkens. We already had the website domain chimkens.dog as well as an ERC721 smart contract. We were also already familiar with the successful marketing techniques we used for our previous projects as well as the process of creating art and its corresponsing metadata.

Base was only getting more and more popular as well due to its low gas fees and increasing activity. Jesse Pollak was also creating a lot of buzz around Base, being the core developer and marketer on Twitter. A lot of users appreciated his support as he shouted out Chimkens before and is even a holder himself! So we decided to stick with Base and continue developing in this ecosystem!

We decided that 2000 NFTs was a nice number to shoot for, selling at .0042 ETH per. We also decided to airdrop 1 Hooman for every 2 Chimken that each wallet address owned. So if you own 2 Chimkens, you received 1 free Hooman. If you own 9 Chimkens, you received 4 Hoomans.

We decided there would be 3 mint phases. First, would be the whitelist phase. This would consist of holders of Chimkens and Ohayo NFTs, representing both of our previous projects. We wanted to ensure our core collector base was able to participate in Hoomans before anyone else. Each holder was eligible to mint 5 NFTs.

Next would be the FCFS phase. This would also include each Chimken and Ohayo holder, as well as any new collectors that wanted to participate in the mint. Henlo managed the FCFS list, but it would be easy to get added to this list if you expressed interest in the project at any point before mint. Each wallet was eligible to mint 10 NFTs.

Last would be the public mint. We learned a bit from the Chimkens NFT mint and decided that overallocating the Whitelist and FCFS list was a better method. We didn't want bots to mint the majority of NFTs during the public sale, which is why we increased the total mint count to 5 for the Whitelist phase and 10 for the FCFS phase. The public mint would be open to anybody and had a limit of 10 NFTs.

We also released a whitelist checker so users could plan before mint and know exactly when and how many Hoomans they were eligible to mint.

Post Launch

One problem we were unsure about was when to actually launch the project. Something we learned is that timing is just as important and the actual product. You can have an amazing product, but if you launch at the wrong time then the world will not be ready for it. So even though we had nearly everything ready to go, including the art, website, and smart contract, we decided to simply hold off until the market conditions became more favorable.

The thing is, crypto and NFTs work in cycles. For a few months, DeFi is hot. Then it's memecoins. Then its NFTs. Then it's Layer 1's. You don't want to be too early or too late.

Luckily, we noticed NFTs finally starting to get more traction after the memecoin supercycle, and during the down period we had already prepared pretty much everything and were redy to go! In the end, it took us less than 12 hours to launch and sell out the Hoomans NFT collection, raising over 6.7 ETH ($15.5K)!

Overall, Hoomans is a huge success and a breath of fresh air in the NFT community! Many collectors were tired of the same low-effort derivatives and appreciated the new, original art of Hoomans. They were also pleased with the smooth minting process and custom website. The public launch itself was open for nearly 8 hours, so almost anybody had enough time to mint!

The reveal happened shortly after sell out and collectors were very happy with the reveal, rocketing the floor price from .005 ETH to .04 ETH! A lot of users changed their Twitter profile picture to a Hooman and the exclusive groupchat quickly gained over 200 members.

However, there were a few problems with the metadata. Because it was done manually by Henlo, there were some trait and grammatical errors. Like an NFT showing a Hoodie, but the art didn't actually have one. Or having traits spelled wrong. Luckily, I input a function that allowed us to update the metadata in case of any errors such as this, so it wasn't much of a problem!

So what's next for Hoomans? Well, Henlo and I are on the same page of not overpromising anything. Hoomans should be treated as strictly art, and anything that comes after that should be a pleasant surprise. I have no doubt we will continue to work together and experiment more in crypto and NFTs if the opportunity arises. But for now, we're really happy with how all of our projects have done so far and intend to keep creating for this amazing community!