Thread by @_babytrader_

Y'all may have heard of @Solanapes because of the false controversy about it being a "BAYC clone".

I balked at first too, but have since realized it is the true community-generated project that @lootproject wishes it could be, and a potential model for all pfps.

A thread🧵👇

Disclaimer: Tbh, the Solanape devs have not instilled a lot of confidence in their project. No Discord, no roadmap, and a 1 SOL mint feels a lot like a naked cash grab. It could be. Or maybe they'll surprise us. I don't know, but I think they made a great project either way.

If you're unfamiliar, Solanapes was to be Solana's version of BAYC. The creators promised no identical combos to the ETH apes, so it would be unique. This caused a lot of rage online about "copycats" and "art theft", despite Solmees, Avaxpunks, and many others going unscathed.

In a last minute change, the devs avoided some controversy and allowed you to mint not an ape image, but an ape TEXT, a la @lootproject. That's right, you get a text file of your ape's traits, likeso. The move was probably a CYA, but it actually created the best pfp format, IMO

This little loophole means that now all members of Solanapes, or "the outcast apes", as they see themselves, are free to imagine and remix the art for their apes however they see fit. Yes, you could "ripoff" the BAYC style:

Or, like user @skryptiq did, you could envision your own psychidelic-realist version of your ape

The possibilities for imagining apes are endless! And if you were excited about that expansive vision of infinite creativity for Loot, here's why you should be MORE excited about the vision for Solanapes: Building a video game is HARD. Or at a minimum, complex.

For Loot to be anything more meaningful than a cash grab, ppl have to generate gameplay, gear, quests, level systems and somehow make those individual parts *coherent*. It's very cool in theory, but almost impossible to imagine how you'd operationalize it in a decentralized way

But a pfp is simple! It's just the art. All you need to do to reimagine Solanapes is to draw the individual components in a new style and, voila - you've got a new breed of apes (again, with totally non-overlapping combos with the ETH BAYC, by design).

Imagine if the community used marketplace fees to hire artists to reimagine the apes? You could remix apes with different styles within the same collection. Give them pets. Vehicles. Whatever you can imagine.

When you contemplate the infinite remixability, you realize this project would embody the spirit of NFTs and crypto more than any other.

Far from a BAYC clone, it is a _template for pfps_.

I grew up in the punk scene, and my favorite element was an attitude of DIY and remix. Couldn't afford a Crass shirt but wanted one? Spray paint a Crass logo on a tee and boom, you've got a Crass shirt. Screenprint your own shit, take all logos, mash it up, do what you want.

That spirit of creativity is what I love about crypto and honestly what I love about @Solanapes, whether originally intended or not. This community can be a place for the outcast apes, the antithesis of 10K status, the remix, mash it up, form your ape however TF you want clan.

No matter what, this project should create a major conversation about IP and NFT art. The people hailing the freedom of NFTs but calling this project art theft are like the people celebrating how BTC can't be regulated then asking the SEC to take action against Elon Musk's tweets

Pick a side, or get into the nuance. What do you own if you copy an NFT project? The art you see? The concept or code that created it? The community that forms around it? If the copy becomes more popular or more expensive, is it the "real" project?

As an aside, I do believe Solana NFTs *overall* need to show originality to be taken seriously. The chain is starting to get tainted as the place to copy ETH NFTs. That's fine and expected, (BSC's first projects were all clones) the solution isn't to ban copies, it's to ...

... counterbalance them with really great and innovative projects, like @AuroryProject and @staratlas. We'll get there and, for better or for worse, people will come along for the ride because there's money here and the fees are cheaper. That alone will keep things developing.

So love them or hate them, I believe the @Solanapes are pushing the boundaries of the conversation about what NFT art can and should be. They're exposing a lot of hypocrites, or at least inconsistencies, and that alone is interesting.

If you too are an outcast ape, someone who got into this space to push boundaries and play with the freedom of infinite, anonymous, decentralized creation, then you can keep the conversation going in the unofficial Discord (how on-brand 🙂) discord.gg/Ksv33are

No matter what, please keep the conversation going and LMK what you think! This won't be the last time someone yells about a 'copy' of a project, best get into the muck with it now and help us figure out what that really means in this wild west we're all navigating.

Cheers! 🍻🐵