Thread by @LeonidasNFT

1/ The Legend of SaruTobi

A tale of the first blockchain games and the humble birth of the metaverse.

2/ Humanity is embarking on an adventure into the metaverse but in order for us to build a brighter future we must first understand our past. This is the story of how it all began…

3/ In June of 1992, Neal Stephenson published the science fiction novel Snow Crash which presented a profound vision for a future iteration of the internet made up of shared, 3D virtual spaces linked into a perceived virtual universe. He called it the "metaverse".

4/ Snow Crash went on to capture the imagination of millions of readers worldwide and has come to be renowned as one of the most forward-thinking pieces of science fiction literature.

5/ Fast forward 22 years to December 19th, 2014 when a young iOS developer in Japan by the name of Christian Moss released a game on the App Store called SaruTobi where you tapped the screen to spin a monkey to see how far you could get him to fly.

6/ Christian wanted to let SaruTobi players purchase in-game items with bitcoin but Apple didn't allow it so instead he let players collect small amounts of bitcoin as they played. And just like that one of the first play-to-earn games was born.

7/ Meanwhile across the world in Switzerland, an indie game studio called EverdreamSoft began work on their upcoming game Spells of Genesis. In a stroke of genius their founder, Shaban Shaame had the idea to store the game's cards on a blockchain rather than a centralized server.

8/ On March 11th, 2015 EverdreamSoft released the first Spells of Genesis card, FDCARD, on Counterparty, a financial platform built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. For the first time ever the scarcity of an in-game item was guaranteed and players were given true ownership.

9/ By tokenizing FDCARD, it became the first-ever gaming NFT. This marked the beginning of a rising tide that will eventually lead to gamers and social media users reclaiming power from their centralized overlords to which they are beholden.

10/ Shaban didn’t realize it at the time but he had just ushered in a new era of gaming that would eventually lead to millions of people working full-time inside of games and earning billions of dollars a year.

11/ Several months later on June 24th, 2015 EverdreamSoft released the Spells of Genesis SATOSHICARD, the most powerful and second most scarce card in the game. It was the first ever NFT depicting Satoshi.

12/ EverdreamSoft would go on to release a total of 156 cards over the course of several years. Spells of Genesis would not be released until 2017, but while it was under development EverdreamSoft decided to make FDCARD playable in their previous game Moonga in April of 2015.

13/ This marked the first instance of interoperability where an NFT was integrated into two games made by the same developer.

Here is a post about it on bitcointalk: bitcointalk.org/index.php?topi…

14/ All of the Spells of Genesis cards were inspired by events and other projects in blockchain history. For example GOXCARD, pays homage to the infamous Mt. Gox hack.

15/ The team at EverdreamSoft had caught wind of a fun mobile play-to-earn game that was quickly rising in popularity amongst the early bitcoin community called SaruTobi. And on December 19th, 2015 exactly one year after Sarutobi had launched, the SoG SARUTOBICARD was minted.

16/ Little did Shaban know, but he had just set in motion the events that would intertwine the fate of these two games forever.

17/ Back on the other side of the world in Tokyo, Christian heard about SARUTOBICARD and what Spells of Genesis were doing by tokenizing in-game assets as NFTs and thought it was cool. So on May 6th, 2016 he created the first native NFT to SaruTobi called NINJASUIT.

18/ NINJASUIT became the first NFT skin, the first NFT power-up, and it marked the first instance of an NFT being used in a play-to-earn game.

19/ The only other NFT native to SaruTobi would be minted 1 year later and it was called STBNIMBUS.

20/ Christian also had the ingenious revelation that he could “attract [the Spells of Genesis] user base over to my game by offering use of their game items”.

21/ He realized that he could “link their Counterparty mobile wallet to SaruTobi and SaruTobi would be able to read what tokens they had in their wallet. Based on their token inventory I could grant access to various features in the game”.

22/ In June of 2016, Christian implemented this functionality by making the Spells of Genesis SATOSHICARD, SARUTOBICARD, and CNPCARD playable in Sarutobi. This marked the first instance of a tokenized asset becoming interoperable between two independent games.

23/ In this humble moment of serendipity when the 3 SoG cards were used interoperably in SaruTobi the first crack in the walled gardens of the multi-trillion dollar gaming and social media industries appeared and from the ashes of its Web 1.0 predecessor, the metaverse was born.

24/ The significance of this moment will not be fully understood until those walls of the multi-trillion dollar gaming and social media industries come crumbling down.

25/ It is also worth mentioning that later on both ZAIFCARD and ETHEREUMCARD from Spells of Genesis were integrated into SaruTobi but each for a very short amount of time as part of promotions.

26/ Several months later Rare Pepes started to take off and Christian noticed that they only had utility as collectibles. So he decided to submit a card to the project for review and on October 17th, 2016 the Rare Pepe SARUTOBIPEPE card was minted.

27/ In another instance of interoperability Christian allowed SaruTobi users who held SARUTOBIPEPE in their wallets to unlock a special skin in the game. Upon doing so SARUTOBIPEPE became the first playable RARE Pepe.

28/ I can’t help but feel like this was foreshadowing for what is to come for collectible projects like CryptoPunks. Once you understand the power of interoperability and composability, and it clicks that these images are the same NFT you'll understand why people are long pfps.

29/ One day Christian was having a chat with his friend Koji Higashi, another active developer in the Bitcoin NFT space when they had the epiphany that it would be possible to let players combine two different NFTs to spawn something random.

30/ From this conversation, the idea for the game, SaruTobi Island, was born and on August 26th, 2017 it was released on the App Store to the world.

31/ SaruTobi Island players were able to combine two of the Counterparty NFTs in their wallet to generate a random monster in the game. Of course, this idea would later be popularized by projects like CryptoKitties with breeding and Bored Ape Yacht Club with Mutant Apes.

32/ Even more importantly SaruTobi Island was the first instance of an NFT character coming to life and being released into a 3D world. Given the direction gaming and social experiences are heading in I believe this moment is also very historically significant.

33/ In the future, I expect many pfp projects will come to life as 3D avatars in the metaverse and that they will probably grant members access to exclusive spaces. When people trace back the history on it, all roads will lead back to this story and the SoG/SaruTobi NFTs.

34/ Christian made all of the NFTs from SaruTobi also playable in SaruTobi Island in addition to issuing four more cards: KOSMOCD, MACHANCD, MANDELDUCKCD, and SARUTOBIISL.

35/ It is worth noting that SARUTOBIISL is not native to SaruTobi Island because Christian actually minted it for a project called MemoryChain and then used it interoperably in SaruTobi Island.

36/ Now you might be asking yourself what exactly is interoperability and composability and why does this Leo dude seem to think they are so darn important?

37/ Well, all you really need to understand about interoperability in this context is that it means that the ownership of digital-asset can transfer across multiple different apps and games permissionlessly. This means users aren’t locked into a single app or game.

38/ So for example, if Lovesac shuts down, the giant bean bag chair in my living room doesn’t vanish. And neither should our in-game assets or followers. We are literally at Jack’s mercy borrowing our relationships with one another.

39/ The power of interoperability is that we could just pick up our NFT in-game assets or followers and go elsewhere if we weren’t happy.

40/ Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Centralized services will do everything in their power to keep their take rates high and continue printing money. And tbh I don’t blame them. That’s exactly what the incentive alignment in our current system encourages them to do.

41/ Through true ownership and interoperability, we won’t get screwed by corporations because they say they won’t but because they can’t.

42/ Right now users are held hostage by all of these closed networks. The cost to leave is just too high. But with interoperability organizations are forced to act in their users’ best interest otherwise users will just walk away and take everything with them.

43/ Interoperability is about shifting power away from centralized platforms and back to users.

44/ VB gets it: “I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007-2010, but one day Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock's Siphon Life spell. I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring.”

45/ Another important piece of the metaverse is composability. All this means is that developers should be able to build anything they want onto an existing NFT. A token should be a permissionless, blank canvas for all future developers to work off of.

46/ So for example the character SaruTobi is just an idea that is imbued onto the SARUTOBICARD. EverdreamSoft first gave it utility in Spells of Genesis and then without permission Christian took the character and gave it a whole new set of functionality in his game.

47/ And in the future when studios like Blizzard inevitably build games like WoW on a blockchain I believe that they will use the composable property of NFTs to make existing characters like SaruTobi unlock all kinds of fun stuff in their games.

48/ It will be an expectation of users that their punks, apes, and toads travel with them throughout every game and social experience and unlock cool new features.

49/ Given that, my thesis is that the developers of all these future games might just give the characters used in the first blockchain games and the first instances of interoperability a little something special.

50/ Because of this I think our cute little SaruTobi character which means “flying monkey” in Japanese might just become the next Pickachu or Mario. Who knows 🤷‍♂️

51/ The value of an NFT is not just its current utility but because of interoperability and composability, you also have to include the value of all future utility that an infinite number of people can build on top of it.

52/ This is an incredibly powerful concept and I believe that it justifies the need for a new framework when valuing this emerging NFT asset class which is:

NFTs are the new IP.

53/ All of the future value of the SaruTobi character won’t be captured by someone who holds the IRL intellectual copyrights to it. It will be captured by the people and DAOs who are fortunate enough to hold a SARUTOBICARD NFT or any of the other assets related to it.

54/ So in this new model where NFTs are the new IP, how do we know what to invest in? Well, it’s the same as it’s always been for IP.

We invest in stories.

55/ Investing in stories will probably mint a new wave of billionaires.

56/ Ask yourself how compelling is the story behind an NFT? Does it capture your imagination? Does it create an emotional bond between holders? These are the right questions to be asking.

57/ I don’t care that the NFTs from this story only have a community of a hundred people. I don’t care that there aren’t huge influencers on board yet. I bought all of these NFTs because of the story that they tell when you put them together. All I care about is the story.

58/ And the story and historical significance are sort of the same thing. People seem to really love the stories about the first projects that do something innovative and push the boundaries. The first pfp projects are worth a lot more than the thousandth.

59/ Being early/historically significant also provides additional value. The underlying utility of all NFTs is their ability to store value and scarcity plays a critical role in this. Because of their creation timestamp, early NFTs create very strong scarcity.

60/ As my friend @WRabbit1111 likes to say:

“There is no limit to the supply of tokenized assets that will emerge in the future,
but there is an iron-clad hard cap on the scarcity of those in the past.”

61/ We see this same phenomenon play out in the IRL NFTs (think retro video games, antique cars, wine, watches, baseball cards, etc). So why would it be any different in the digital age?

62/ There is a pretty obvious long-term bull case for the NFTs mentioned in this story. Just hold for a decade or two until billions of people are living, working, and gaming in the metaverse. It’s probably inevitable that they will eventually become tremendously valuable.

63/ But there is also an intriguing short-term bull case cropping up. The drumbeat on the metaverse has slowly been getting louder and louder but it reached a new level last week when Facebook changed their name to “meta” and released that viral 77-minute video.

64/ In response to it, seemingly overnight the market’s demand for metaverse investments quadrupled. Just look at this graph of Decentraland’s $MANA token.

65/ The bottom line is that there is massive pent-up demand for metaverse investments and many billions of dollars are flowing to whichever projects seem like the best play.

66/ I would imagine that if this story about the birth of the metaverse gets out there and if the market is savvy enough to understand that NFTs are the new IP because of interoperability/composability that things could potentially get crazy pretty fast.

67/ But like I always say. I have no clue if the market is going to go up, down, sideways, or do a backflip in the short run, but I do know that historically significant NFTs like these will almost certainly be valuable in the long run so those who are patient will be rewarded.

68/ My message to anybody looking to get metaverse exposure is simple. In the last speculative frenzy about a protocol (the dot-com bubble), people tried to pick websites. Now they are trying to pick tokens.

69/ But just like how in 1999 a grand total of 0 people envisioned Uber or Snapchat, nobody knows which game or project will be relevant in 10 years. So why pick when you can just invest in the interoperable tokens with a kickass story that will be relevant no matter what?

70/ In time, when billions of people are living, working, and gaming in the metaverse, that The Legend of SaruTobi will be known by every gamer and metaverse citizen alike and the NFTs that are part of this story will be some of the most coveted.

71/ We have the opportunity to usher in a future brighter than any of us could ever imagine and by just sharing this story with one another we are bringing ourselves one step closer to that future. I was told it recently and few have heard it but in time it will be known by all.

72/ Every major societal change has an origin story. A legend. A battle cry that spreads like a rampant wildfire from one person to the next and The Legend of SaruTobi is ours.

73/ A bridge has recently been built between Counterparty and Ethereum so now all of the NFTs in this story can be moved back and forth freely and can now be traded on OpenSea. I listed info/links for each NFT at the end of this thread but first here are a few important callouts.

74/ Go follow the early NFT pioneers from this story:

Christian Moss (@MandelDuck): Creator of SaruTobi & SaruTobi Island

Shaban Shaame (@shaban_shaame): Founder of @EverdreamSoft & @SpellsofGenesis

Koji Higashi (@Coin_and_Peace): Developer of Book of Orbs mobile NFT wallet

75/ Also @adamamcbride and I will be hosting a twitter space with @shaban_shaame and @MandelDuck tomorrow evening at 5pm ET so be sure to drop by if you are interested in learning more about Spells of Genesis and SaruTobi! 🎉

twitter.com/i/spaces/1jMJg…

76/ Also, @nishseq made an awesome 2 min video about this story and is doing a ridiculously generous giveaway alongside it for the next 48 hours. Go check it out 👇

https://twitter.com/nishseq/status/1457725703336574977?s=20

77/ Also, come drop by the discords and say hi!

SaruTobi Community: discord.gg/nyK2Dw8UjD
SoG Community: discord.gg/3SFF6s4aU6
SoG Trading Community: discord.gg/UDpzkG2vtj
Rare Pepe Community: discord.gg/FqsteJRdXf
NFT Archaeology Community: discord.gg/fa55fhaYaw

78/ The discords are a great place to come ask questions! Buying bridged assets can initially be a little intimidating but it’s actually pretty simple and there are plenty of people in these communities who are more than willing to help you get started :)

79/ I want to give a huge shoutout to all of the people who helped me gather all of the facts to piece this story together. TY @nishseq, @WRabbit1111, @equ1l1br1um_, @killakoins, and the dozen or so others who contributed. Couldn’t have written this without your help!

80/ If you’re looking to learn more about the metaverse and why I believe it’s inevitable go check out my previous thread:

https://twitter.com/LeonidasNFT/status/1454072258616565763?s=20

81/ Now for those interested in the 13 historically significant SoG, SaruTobi, and Rare Pepe NFTs mentioned in this story. All of them combined have a mkt cap of roughly $70M. To put that into perspective, they are worth less than a random new 10k pfp project with a 1.5Ξ floor.

82/ If you believe in the same metaverse/play-to-earn/cross-chain/multi-chain future that I do then you will probably see why I believe that these SaruTobi/SoG NFTs are criminally undervalued.

83/ Additionally, the Emblem Vault team is working on some major UX improvements that will make these assets easily discoverable on OS very soon just like any other NFT project.

84/ If you’re looking to see some of the recent bridged NFT sales on OS greater than 2Ξ @EmblemVaultBot is a great resource.

85/ Everybody who got to the end of this thread is one of the first several hundred people to have heard The Legend of SaruTobi. I hope y’all found it as interesting as I did! Now the only question is what will all of you do with it?

86/ I’ve listed below (ordered by mint date) all of the Spells of Genesis and SaruTobi NFTs that were part of this story and the humble beginnings of blockchain gaming and the birth of the metaverse👇

87/ FDCARD
March 11th, 2015

-Ushered in a new era of gaming
-First in-game asset to be tokenized as an NFT

Project: SoG

Supply: 300 (<110 in active wallets - rest are thought to be lost)

Floor: 65.68Ξ

OS: opensea.io/assets/emblem-…

Counterparty: xchain.io/asset/FDCARD

88/ SATOSHICARD
June 24th, 2015

-Gave birth to the metaverse
-Earliest of 3 NFTs used in first interoperability between two independent games

Project: SoG

Supply: 200 (<100 in active wallets)

Floor: 65.68Ξ

OS: opensea.io/assets/emblem-…

Counterparty: xchain.io/asset/SATOSHIC…

89/ ETHEREUMCARD
June 24th, 2015

-Briefly used interoperably in SaruTobi as part of a promotion
-Released before Ethereum went live

Project: SoG

Supply: 239

Floor: 11.26Ξ

OS: opensea.io/assets/emblem-…

Counterparty: xchain.io/asset/ethereum…

90/ CNPCARD
July 17th, 2015

-Gave birth to the metaverse
-One of the 3 NFTs used in the first instance of interoperability between two independent games

Project: SoG

Supply: 1,000

Floor: 0.72Ξ

OS: opensea.io/assets/emblem-…

Counterparty: xchain.io/asset/CNPCARD

91/ ZAIFCARD
October 13th, 2015

-Briefly used interoperably in SaruTobi as part of a promotion

Project: SoG

Supply: 1,000

Floor: .35Ξ

OS: opensea.io/assets/emblem-…

Counterparty: xchain.io/asset/zaifcard

92/ SARUTOBICARD
December 19th, 2015

-Main character in SaruTobi
-One 3 NFTs used in the first interoperability between 2 independent games
-First collectible ape NFT

Project: SoG

Supply: 1,600

Floor: 0.54Ξ

OS: opensea.io/assets/emblem-…

Counterparty: xchain.io/asset/SARUTOBI…

93/ NINJASUIT
May 6th, 2016

-First NFT in SaruTobi
-First instance of an NFT being used in a play-to-earn game
-First gaming skin NFT

Project: SaruTobi

Supply: 200 (<90 in active wallets)

Floor: 10.36Ξ

OS: opensea.io/assets/emblem-…

Counterparty: xchain.io/asset/NINJASUIT

94/ MANDELDUCKCD
September 16th, 2016

-First NFT in SaruTobi Island, the 3D virtual world game follow up to SaruTobi

Project: SaruTobi Island

Supply: 500

Floor: 0.9Ξ

OS: opensea.io/assets/emblem-…

Counterparty: xchain.io/asset/MANDELDU…

95/ SARUTOBIPEPE
October 17th, 2016

-First playable Rare Pepe
-Used in one of the first instances of interoperability via the game SaruTobi

Project: Rare Pepe

Supply: 500

Floor: 1.49Ξ

OS: opensea.io/assets/emblem-…

Counterparty: xchain.io/asset/SARUTOBI…

96/ SARUTOBIISL
June 27th, 2017

-Only SaruTobi Island NFT native to Memorychain

Project: Memorychain

Supply: 10,000

Floor: 0.19Ξ

OS: opensea.io/assets/emblem-…

Counterparty: xchain.io/asset/SARUTOBI…

97/ STBNIMBUS
July 12th, 2017

-The second and only other native NFT to SaruTobi (NINJASUIT being the first)

Project: SaruTobi

Supply: 500

Floor: 0.62Ξ

OS: opensea.io/assets/emblem-…

Counterparty: xchain.io/asset/STBNIMBUS

98/ KOSMOCD
August 6th, 2017

-One of 3 NFTs native to SaruTobi Island, the 3D virtual world game follow up to SaruTobi

Project: SaruTobi Island

Supply: 500

Floor: None for sale

OS: opensea.io/assets/emblem-…

Counterparty: xchain.io/asset/KOSMOCD

99/ MACHANCD
August 6th, 2017

-One of 3 NFTs native to SaruTobi Island, the 3D virtual world game follow up to SaruTobi

Project: SaruTobi Island

Supply: 500

Floor: None for sale

OS: opensea.io/assets/emblem-…

Counterparty: xchain.io/asset/MACHANCD

100/ Oh and one more thing…

I just heard that a big NFT gaming influencer has recently acquired some SaruTobi and SoG 🤫