Thread by @sainteclectic

At the @solanaconf @redacted_j went through the history, present and future of @metaplex, the decentralized protocol that allows artists, brands and creators launch a self-hosted NFT storefront.

It’s basically what powers Solana NFTs today. Some history, and then the future.🧵👇

Before we begin, this thread is part of a collab with @sinoglobalcap's @sallywang666 & @cryptoflowpost's summary of @solanaconf.

Summary thread here:

https://twitter.com/sallywang666/status/1458481584315584517?s=20

A large part of this thread summarizes @redacted_j's presentation @SolanaConf with some of my thoughts

Back to Metaplex.

This picture was the first NFT minted on Metaplex. A picture of industry OGs @redacted_j and @baalazamon (“B+J”) at their former employer.

In May 2021 they built the original metaplex contract in 2 weeks, with other OGs @stphnhss, @Austin_Federa and @nkumar23

Solana initially focused on defi, but it was becoming clear that NFTs were the most engaging way to onboard the next 100 million crypto / platform users and so @aeyakovenko and @rajgokal asked the team to put together an NFT platform in 6 weeks.

Up until the Metaplex storefront there were limited ways to launch NFTs on @solana.

No mega drop had happened yet.

@SolanaMBS used a wallet where they accepted your SOL and you had to pray that you’d get your NFT back the next day. (Boy were you rewarded if you did though!)

The first serious 10k drop post @metaplex was the @degenapeacademy.

But it almost didn’t happen.

On a Friday 11pm after a 16 hour day B+J got a call from Raj. DAA had minted ~800 tokens but half them were blank. The minting solution deployed produced duplicates & did not work.

What happened next - for all your ape & Sol NFT lovers - was the stuff of legend.

B+J rewrote the DAA NFT mint code almost line by line, building what would be the first iteration of Candy Machine.

12 hours to save a drop without having done this before. No problem.

The solution?
- Fully off chain minting: where you’d pay in SOL and the receipt would be stored in the Redis with an assigned #
- The Redis increase function meant that whenever the next person called the contract, you’d get the next # sequentially

Degen Apes sold out in minutes and at one point they had 1,000 Google Cloud instances running to handle the stress load.

This illustrated how well Solana scales because the network was able to handle the load - though it required 1,000 cloud instances to handle the demand.

The moral of the story? Well @redacted_j stated that “even decentralized networks need heroes. people that deeply care and deploy resources”.

He humbly declared @rajgokal the hero.

Raj did not have to step in but he did.

You see, what was at stake was whether Solana could prove itself to be a viable NFT chain. With B+J’s help they rescued the @DegenApeAcademy drop.

After that day, Solana's status as a viable NFT chain would not be in doubt. DAA's launch was a marker in Solana history.

B+J advised the team to kill the initial ~800 tokens, but the team didn’t. This caused issues that would eventually lead to further innovation - more later.

But that wasn't the end of B+J's sleep deprivation. 24 hours after B+J saved the apes they were called in to save @SollamasNFT. No rest for the wicked.

The project dropped 10,000 llamas but only to 25% of buyers. Some did not receive any and some received more than they paid for

With the failed drop they had suddenly created a two-tier society - the “Lla-mores” and the “Llama-less".

The rich clutched their 4x llamas to their chest and declared the mint fair: “just go and buy what you want on secondary!”

The have-nots lost their minds in discord.

So sleep deprived B+J came up with a crafty plan to right the ship.

It would take all minters through a rollercoaster of emotions over the next 5 hours and could arguably carry out the first “performance art” NFT drop in history. They would teach the hoarding have-nots a lesson

Unlike Degen Apes 800 ‘exiled’ tokens, Sollamas had an exiled problem 10,000 strong.

So they had to be killed. Enter "Tuco" the Ugly, the eponymous bad guy from the Western "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly".

Tuco was out for some blood. 💥🔫

B+J still had update authority on the tokens. So they built a timed loop to convert the NFTs into graves

The llamas were gradually murdered over 5 hours. B+J then instructed the Sollama devs to go dark. Trolls.

Thanks guys, I was there in the discord and I thought I was rugged

At first 1 or 2 people noticed their llamas were graves, but they were screamed down by others for fudding - “NFTs are immutable!”. Not quite.

At 10% of Tuco's murder spree, minters started using NFTeyez to track their llamas and they got scared.

By 30%, as @redacted_j put it, there was a "flowering of religion" as people tried to figure out why some llamas were dying and some weren’t.

Some tried to move their NFT to a ledger hard wallet.

None were spared.

Every 25th killed llama was dropped a “Tuco” token. Suddenly death cults emerged, encouraging Tuco to kill faster & speed up a re-mint for all.

By 80% everyone realized death was inevitable and accepted its warm embrace.

Code as art, imitating a religious pantomime. Beautiful.

@AuroryProject was next and they did not know what was coming for them.

After the boom of DAA (which saw apes list 8x their initial mint) everyone was on the minting gravy train and there was 300,000 simultaneous requests to mint.

Candymachine was rolled out for Aurory and after that it became the norm & standard for other NFT projects.

Yet there was still a problem with the Candy machine rollout... As with most things, people always find a way to game the system, and that problem was...

Bots. Bots which spam minted and bought up large supply of mints.

Metaplex's solution was the Fair Launch Protocol: each bid would come with a non-refundable fee and be gated in stages & make it unprofitable for bots trying to spam.

The fees so far have gone to charities.

So what other innovations are on the horizon? Auction house:
- No more NFT escrows, you keep your token in your wallet at all times & maintain eligibility for airdrops
- Allows for NFT bids
- Might even be able to place your NFT at multiple sites to see which lands the best sale

The future:
Fanout wallets: where one wallet can have many tokens that can be shared permissionlessly with various holders.

Think of it like a treasury distributing tokens.

Token entangler: where you can pair any NFT with another permanently

Only one can exist outside escrow at one time, so this is useful for fixing broken collections without burning

This could be, for instance, used to “repair” the exiled Degen Ape tokens that still exist today.

While the old token doesn’t have update authority so can’t be fixed, it could be entangled with a new one that represents a “cleaned up” token. You only get the “cleaned up” one if you escrow your original broken token

NFT packs: where you can exchange n NFTs for m NFTs and enables randomized card packs, enabling collectors

Collections: will be added so you’ll be able to subscribe to a given collection and secondaries can use this point to call your NFT (similar to Opensea)

Whew that was a lot to go through.

Can you believe all this happened in four months? Imagine what's coming next.

anon.nft are you ready?

@LadyBossApe @c0inmatrix @realcryptotem @munkionpluto @blocmatesdotcom @mcmanager @mdudas @sallywang666 @thugbirdz @pablocorrea @blokculture @gmoneyNFT @BoardApes @jmt_nft @kidfromcruces @solboyz @NewDumbMoney @0x1dad @vladtoni @timsamoylov @rawrXBT @r0b0sapiens

@DigitalxMisfits @jakeudell @TheDeadstockOG @boredgentleman @CapetainTrippy @degen_inc @jemmmyjemm @MilstGuga @CryptoMagellan @0xCelon @0x_thug @CamTuff_ @SollyTheSolApe
@whyteuk @allaboutdatass @DegenArmstrong @SolanaLegend