When Loot launched, many people within the community were excited about its potential and the way it was introduced. A new metaverse with very few restrictions for builders of the LootVerse.
At Node Capital we like to participate in the networks we invest in, and support the ecosystem as much as we can, both in terms of an investment POV as well as because it’s fun and interesting.
So now that some of the hype and noise has calmed down, what is really happening with Loot? Are there real builders constructing the LootVerse? Is it heading in the right direction? What is the right direction?
When I first took a look at Loot I didn’t understand it.
For those of you who don’t know what Loot is, here are the basics of the Loot NFT collection:
- 8,000 Bags
- Each Bag has 8 items in it
- Each item is assigned to a slot like a typical adventure game character sheet with one of each type
- Each item is “random” (we will get to this later)
- No design or art
- No additional metadata
- No “game” or other project associated with the NFT collection
So why is this collection so interesting?
The creator of Loot noted that the Bags are there to be “interpreted”, meaning the utility and purpose of these Loot Bags can be viewed and approached differently by every member of the LootVerse - which is a compelling idea, sparking imagination and creativity from an entire community.
It didn’t take long for others to pick up the gauntlet and start creating projects around this idea surrounding the adventurer genre.
Adventurers need gold to spend so Gold for Adventurers (AGLD) was created; they need to be able to gear up and trade so Lootmart was built; and now they can break their bag of items down to its basic constituents and trade or sell them. And of course Adventures need a world to be a part of and settle in, so Realms was founded.
All these projects sprung up from different teams, each interpreting Loot Bags in their own way, but there was something still missing: a story, something to bring life to these adventurers. So just as some looked at what you can do with these Loot Bags, others looked at the Loot Bags themselves and tried to decipher them.
Remember the “random” items? Well it seems they are not completely random after all. The Genesis Project decided to look at the data of the Loot Bags themselves and discovered some order - or to be more exact 16 orders!
The 16 orders were found by looking at the item names. Those with a suffix containing the “of [order]” can be distilled into Genesis Mana - a new NFT collection which, if combined correctly (one of each slot in the Bag), would resurrect an “Original” adventurer (which is yet another NFT collection).
This caused a frenzy of trading. Groups were formed to recreate these Original Adventures, learning along the way how to use the many tools of WEB3 to solve simple problems like ownership of a group on a single NFT.
One of the leaders of the Genesis Project told me that if all of the owners of Loot took all their Genesis Mana together and simply traded with each other, they would all be able to complete their Original Adventurers like a game of GO FISH!
Community events started to form, like naming of Adventurers and forever immortalizing them with a dedicated domain name.
Now the community can build the lore around these Original Adventurers and decipher the origins of the Loot Bags.
Lore is being written and the pieces are starting to come together. Some structure is required - a way to bring these projects together, an Alliance of builders containing the projects already mentioned (as well as future ones), and a DAO where the future and the past will be written.
As I mentioned above, when I first took a look at Loot I did not understand it, I did not see the spark that it represents, I did not see that it is, in fact, already a game. A game behind the scenes to build something new, where the community is both the creator and the consumer, where anyone can be a player and contribute, regardless of skill or vocation.
Loot has a tantalizing potential. There is room for leaders to come in and shape its progress and, if done correctly, it can spark a new universe of lore and adventure which will, in turn, be a fertile ground for books, games, movies or other forms of entertainment we are all so hungry for.
If you are building the LootVerse, or thinking of building on top of it, and want to bounce ideas on what and how, reach out and I will do my best to help.
After all, this is part of the game!
See you in the LootVerse.