HBD DFZ: One Year Of Deadfellaz.
GM Horde fam. Betty here. As we arrive at August 13th 2022 - our one year anniversary — I wanted to write to you personally to share some reflections of mine and Psych’s, lets look back at some memories from the last year together and have a sneaky look into what is in our immediate future.
Friday 13th August, 2021. We launched Deadfellaz, the Horde was officially assembled, and the rest is history.
Early Horde members will remember the OG survival game where folks would try their luck at surviving against a zombie horde to win a Deadfellaz NFT. Some won multiple and passed theirs to others who were trying to win. The kind, inclusive nature of the community was apparent right away. Information was readily shared, people bought each other NFTs, connected irl, sat on voice chat with each other, and even sent each other pizza. Our crude but effective presale system meant that early supporters were able to send eth to mint between 1 and 5 Deadfellaz at 0.025 per token, and miss gas wars entirely (that were a real problem at the time and meant whales would ultimately win). We absorbed the cost of the gas and transferred them one by one to people following mint.
We were immediately embraced by the artist/creator community and saw massive organic support from existing communities such as Cool Cats and Ghxsts. The energy was electric and the future felt incredibly bright — we knew we were onto a very special thing. No paid influencer pumps, no sponsored ads, no comment tag bombs, no paid following. Just steady, sustainable growth to solidify a strong foundation to launch Deadfellaz as a pillar of pop culture, born of Web3, spanning all areas of media and entertainment.
Shortly after launch we were also embraced by many well-known people such as Elijah Wood, Reese Witherspoon, Pussy Riot, Lionel Richie, Alexis Ohanian, and OBJ. Notably, Odell Beckham Junior was responsible for creating an entire sub-culture within a culture when he and his immediate friends and family all purchased Deadfellaz with purple fur traits — a powerful display of the way in which NFTs can be used to express digital identity and belonging.
Over the following months we made ALOT of moves. We accumulated metaverse land in Decentraland, Sandbox, Webb3, NFTWorlds, Nifty Islands and Otherside. We developed our DCL land into a space for the Horde, and hosted a massive token-gated, multi-creator Halloween event with Steve Aoki.
We released wearables, poaps, featured our community on billboards around the world. We collaborated with Rolling Stone, Ozzy Osbourne’s CryptoBatz, Fvckrender, Mark the Habibi, Lirona, Pak, Ghxsts, Cool Cats, Robotos, Jadu, OnCyber, Steve Aoki, Chicago Bulls (to be released). We released merch collaborations with The Hundreds, Gilson Snowboards, and brought Giuseppe Zannoti to the metaverse with the Cobra sneakers at Metaverse Fashion Week in collaboration with Neuno, taking over 95% of all sales and activity from that event as the top performer against well established fashion houses.
We released Deadfrenz, our second collection intended to facilitate our upcoming Trading Card Game. A massive undertaking of essentially 13 collections within one that allowed a whole new wave of new Horde members to onboard and participate in the Deadfellaz ecosystem in preparation for a game that will reach an entire new audience and work to onboard many many more to Web3.
We announced Metawrapping — our expansion of creator tools and iterations of DFZ to allow holders to fully experience, explore and create within Web2 AND Web3, with Pixelfellaz already released on IPFS and 3D, Chibi, 2D reactive avatars and more already well into development and on the way.
We were signed by UTA, one of the world’s largest and most Web3-fluent talent agencies. Our relationship with UTA has meant an immediate cut-through to brand partnerships, activations and collaborations that will further cement Deadfellaz as the pop culture powerhouse it is. Many developments are currently underway and will be announced in the coming weeks and months.
We were invited to speak at a variety of incredible NFT, crypto and blockchain events around the world including VeeCon, NFT NYC, Ledger Op3n and Korea Blockchain Week, presented with an NFT100 award at NFT NYC, and announced as one part of the Ledger Pro Team, in what is a positive and ever-developing relationship.
Community activations such as Cosplay, meme contests, Survival games, Deadhunterz and more have brought the Horde together into a tight-knit and supportive community. Universally-loved mods of all genders, ages and backgrounds support our community in discord, and the relationships within the Horde are strong and meaningful.
Following the great doxxing, IRL activations such as the incredible NFT NYC celebration ‘DFZ NYC’ saw over 2,500 of you join us to bask in the world we have created together — a tangible, immersive evening that brought all aspects of DFZ to a culturally meaningful celebration of Web3 creators in Brooklyn, NY.
We have made incredible hires and formed a strong, effective and diverse central operations team, including but not limited to Holly Longoria as our COO, Shekinah Apedo as our legal lead and Steff Chapman joining from Netflix as Director of Project Management — combining years of corporate experience with Web3 immersion.
Ok, so alot has happened in a year. What is next?
Some questions include:
Update on unminted Deadfrenz passes? A new mechanic is in development for this and will be live as soon as that is ready. This is not a new utility, just a process of minting out the unminted frenz.
Update on Hologram avatars? Hologram and the 3D fellaz are both slated to release prior to Halloween.
Update on Lore? Multiple partnerships that utilise the Deadfellaz lore are currently in development, thus the lore blog has been set aside for now.
Wen Merch? Halloween.
Halloween Party? Information coming THIS WEEK.
Deadfellaz Infected S2? Guest artists and mechanics will be released in September.
Draw the Undead 2022? Our yearly community art contest is live TODAY, and will run until midnight September 3rd. Open to holders and non-holders alike and open to all modalities — please see information here.
Brand Collaborations? Many in the works and many ready to go — expect announcements peppered through the year.
Anything else? Yes. We are working to evolve Web3 with multiple tech developments that Deadfellaz and the space at large will benefit from. This is a big one, and will be pivotal for the onboarding and experience of many in Web3.
To wrap this up because i have been typing for a long time — the TLDR is: We launched a year ago, we’ve created something extremely special together with our incredibly strong community, we will continue to develop and innovate this space for all, to ensure a positive and equitable industry.
So how are we celebrating?
Please join us on our birthday Twitter spaces at 4pm PST, and here to party:
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for being on this journey with us,
