It's long so be warned, you'll find a summary at the end.
SweetValentines (SV)
When I entered the space there were a lot of promises, tons of blind trust and it usually ended with the funds gone and the Collection disappearing. Tired of getting rugged/scammed, I set out to make my own. The idea was for minters to give Hearts to their loved ones as Valentines' Day gifts on Feb. 14, 2022 (hence the name).
This taught me the importance of Marketing and, since every Influencer/Marketer/Promoter asked for an up-front payment, it's also why most NFTs fail silently. I even heard stories where creators also got scammed. Trust is punished in this space, with many saying "Do Your Own Research" and "Not Financial Advice" to deflect consequences and anyone that questions it is dismissed as a FUDer.
I planned a Collection of 10000 Hearts, with a handful of rare ones, and learned of an interesting feature of the Ethereum blockchain: You can edit some text for negligible GAS (this at a time when GAS was around 50). In fact, if the image was defined in text (like in SVGs) you could change it! I asked our Community if they would rather if it was in a blockchain like Polygon/Matic or BSC (Binance Smart Chain) but Marketplaces for them were hardly known so I followed the decision to stay on Ethereum, even if it was too expensive.
EarlyValentines (EV)
After reducing the complexity of the SVGs in attempts to make it cheaper, the cost didn't change (the contract was still quite complex) so one with a total of 361 Hearts with static messages was deployed instead. The idea was to deploy SweetValentines with the funds I got from this smaller one. I also made a Twitter account (@EarlyValentines) and a Discord server and even got a Community Manager but, despite getting occasional visitors, the second was a ghost-server so I just hid it, leaving it for future use.
Since Google (Play) kept changing their rules and wouldn't allow monetization, a game was adapted to the theme and made available on our website (as HeartBeats). At first it was exclusive to holders but it became available on our website a while after. The Play to Earn model would ruin its flow so it was changed to 1 EV = 1 Continue. Most NFT games that I had seen were just empty promises so at least ours was fun and playable before Mint!
EnamoredValentines (EV2)
Since I made SweetValentines dynamic, I wondered if it was possible to do the same off-chain (which would also result in free edits). Quickly learning that this was possible within certain limits (such as reducing the total supply). I then thought of making a second collection, named EnamoredValentines (EV2) with 2500 items and there was a point when our website (MyValentines.xyz) had both! Since the interest for EarlyValentines was low I decided to modify it instead (only a few had been revealed).
There were 2 free-mints, the first only having 1 participant and the second over 150. While the attention was good they were likely only interested in flipping them, so I picked an average mint price that could support the collection. If we had kept free mints we'd never be able to pay for anything else, resulting in the collection being stuck until some kind soul decided to buy. This wasn't beneficial for holders.
Edits
I worked on an offline editor that applied files produced by the website. This was rather bothersome (you had to DM them) but, despite most holders lack of interest, I loved learning how to make it capable of handling Unicode. It also proved to be capable of handling signing and verification of a message. Since I teased with images of Hearts with all sorts of Unicode characters, I was encouraged to make sure that it was possible to do.
Now it was time for the main challenge: Doing it directly online. After a few attempts to reproduce the offline editor, I learned that it couldn't be on the same page as the Collection, so I used the one I had initially (it doesn't support requests to itself by default). Funny how every step was necessary for things to click together in the end. With every day I took another step towards the goal, to have truly dynamic NFTs. This also opens a lot of possibilities for future ones! I understand that many only wanted quick money and none of the learning/work to deliver anything but EarlyValentines are proof that it is possible.
Summary
- Planned a collection (SV) of 10000 NFTs for Valentines Day (Feb. 14, 2022)
- Made it on-chain with dynamic NFTs (very expensive to deploy/edit)
- Made and Deployed a simple collection (EV) of 361 items
- Adapted a Game and made it capable of seeing what EVs a Wallet is holding
- Planned an off-chain collection (EV2) with dynamic NFTs
- Added the features of both Collections, resulting in 2500 dynamic NFTs
- Made an Offline Editor, Unicode worked as teased
- Made an Online Editor, a dream come true!