Making The Explorer Collection
Last week, we launched The Explorer Collection, Galaxy’s first-ever NFT project and a token of our commitment to the web3 community. To bring the project to life, we collaborated with TIMEPieces, TIME magazine’s web3 arm, and three talented NFT artists, to produce 3,210 digital collectibles.
The Process
Leveraging our expertise with blockchain technology and NFTs and our relationships within the crypto community, Galaxy set out to create a collection that decentralized our identity. At the center of the collection are generative iterations of our recently redesigned logo resembling a space helmet, or “Explorer.” To develop the collection, we worked with TIMEPieces to survey trait desirability, artists, design rules, and technical parameters. The project was a continuation of a 6-month-long partnership with TIME to educate the public on the rapidly expanding metaverse. Framed within each Explorer is a generative artwork created by three artists, Jake-Andrew, Parin Heidari, and William Kwaku Amo, who added their own distinct styles and creative perspectives.
Learn more about Galaxy’s project by listening to the Twitter Spaces from September 28, 2022, The Explorer Collection x TIMEPieces’s.
As the crypto economy has grown, so has Galaxy. Rather than just being a bridge for traditional institutions into the digital asset space, Galaxy has expanded to become a multi-faceted player that has established deep roots throughout the nascent crypto economy. To date, Galaxy has been involved in over 200 NFT, gaming, web3 infrastructure, and metaverse-related projects; our advisory team collaborates with cutting-edge companies on their metaverse strategy; and Galaxy’s research represents an industry resource for domain expertise. Together we are pursuing our mission to engineer a new economic paradigm.
The Outcome
3,210 Explorers — The total number of NFTs represents the countdown of a rocket launch into space, symbolizing Galaxy’s own launch into the NFT space. The unique NFT attributes and traits embody the range of personalities and perspectives needed to drive innovation and celebrates the uniqueness of each individual NFT holder, including our employees, clients, partners, and shareholders.
In creating the unique art at the center of the Explorer Collection, the three talented artists who helped bring this project to life were inspired by the concept of space, their own experiences exploring web3 technologies, and other forms of art, including music. We were fortunate to partner with three great creators: Parin Heidari, an Iranian-born artist with an eye for single-line drawings; William Kwaku Amo, Ghana’s master of texture; and Jake-Andrew, a sensory explorer. Each brought their own diverse yet equally beautiful artistic style to the collection and, in so doing, embarked on their own journey of self-discovery by combining traditional art with web3 techniques for the first time.
“We had never experimented with coding and now all of us are creating way cooler art, thanks to what we experienced because of this collection.”
Parin Heidari, TIMEPieces’s Artist
Galaxy and TIMEPieces made the decision that 100% of the proceeds from secondary sales would go directly to the artists, rather than back to Galaxy and TIMEPieces — further enforcing Galaxy and TIMEPieces’ commitment to supporting artists in web3.
View Galaxy’s NFT and Metaverse Research Hub here.
Technology, Attributes, and Rarity
The Explorer Collection is comprised of ERC-721 tokens that were generated via a brute force algorithm. Every trait in the collection had pre-defined rule sets to prevent generating Explorers with visual imperfections. Each trait was also given a weight to influence the algorithm to generate a full collection that maintained tiers of rarity for each trait type. Each artist then contributed 1,070 unique pieces of art. Every piece of generated art was only used once, ultimately resulting in a collection of 3,210 pieces, where each NFT is one of one. The collection was minted and airdropped on October 14, 2022.
Galaxy’s logo, the space helmet, stays consistent throughout the collection. Building off our customizable helmet, we identified four attributes–hat, hat sides, helmet left, and helmet right–and classified each of their corresponding sub-traits into three rarity tiers: SuperRare, Rare, and Omni. See the below charts for a complete trait and rarity breakdown.
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