Gopniks make their way to BSV: Generative NFT project launches on RelayX

I had the opportunity to interview Alex, the creator of Gopniks, and Claudia Vaduvescu, the artist behind the generative NFT project launching on October 13, on RelayX at 3 p.m. UTC.

What is the origin story behind the Gopniks?

Gopniks are a subculture of post-communist and even modern eastern European youths, yet the overall squat meme is now a global thing that people enjoy doing for some reason. Every country and culture have something like Gopnik, in England they are Chavs or Gabbers, in the U.S. and Canada they are trailer park boys, etc.

This project has some serious meme magic going on. How have you been so effective at marketing the Gopniks?

We’ve had a lot of fun with this meme for ages so we can represent it faithfully even in NFT form. Some of the BSV community members are also deep into memes so it was a good match from the start. It was definitely helpful in assisting the content creation process and community engagement since the familiarity was already there.

How were you able to quickly develop a community around the Gopniks so quickly on socials (Telegram, Discord and Twitter)?

We think the hunger for generative NFTs and big community projects in BSV had a lot to do with this. Twetch did it successfully with their collectibles around their user base, and until MetaBots and Gopniks there weren’t necessarily a lot of NFTs projects that everyone could participate in at this scale. Gopniks is also testing the limits of communities in BSV.

We are starting to see what the current roof is for such projects and how to expand it by creating competition, hype, and reliable markets. Since we started the Gopniks social channels up until today we were happy to see lots of new and promising NFTs on BSV. Our hope is to see this space grow on platforms like RelayX and TokenPow, and for this project to incentivize more artists to join.

Which parts and traits formed the basis of the generative art?

The Genesis Series forms the base for the generative profile pic collection, our artist Babushka created 35 Gopnik archetypes with 310 traits in total. These Genesis Gopniks represent different personalities accompanied by specific elements they would be interested in, making them very personalized.

We took our inspiration from our own personal experience as much as from enjoying the meme online. Each element added and features are modular enough so that all Gopniks work perfectly and tell a story.

35 Genesis images were initially created as the base art. How were the 3,000 Gopniks algorithmically created from the 35 Genesis images?

In the process of creating The Genesis Series, each trait was developed as a modular piece that could be used interchangeably. The Genesis images were split into 8 layers that could hold each of all elements in a category. Using JavaScript we layered each category in a specific order from the back to the front making sure that the visual surface is not conflicting when changing elements.

After researching other collections, we found that the average is around 150 elements for 10.000 editions with 6 to 7 layers. We wanted to push the limits and create a system that would give more character to each edition using more layers and more elements.

Per the RelayX blog post, some traits are rarer than others—how did you choose which particular traits are rare?

The rarity was chosen mostly at random with a few novel elements made more common to keep the esthetic similar. We will soon upload a rarity table on our website and token platforms will also help us display them. Almost every trait of the series is novel or relevant to the culture the collection represents.

How and why did you choose to leverage the block hash for randomizing the distribution?

We consulted with many people in the community on the best way to do a random distribution for this kind of NFT project that is fully on-chain. Since this project is using RelayX as a launchpad, we’ve debated ways to do it with their engineers, and leveraging this feature turned out to be the best option.

We think that as the BSV NFT community grows other projects will create minting contracts directly on their website, but we decided to focus on the art/lore and building expected functionality of the project instead (as minting on your website is not something culturally relevant in BSV NFTs unlike Ethereum projects nor do we have the same issues with fees).

Why did you choose RUN/RelayX as the token protocol and marketplace respectively to launch this project?

We decided to use Relay and RUN as they are the most popular token protocols in the Western community of BSV and most users are already onboarded one RUN-compatible token marketplace platform. Instead of trying to create our own infrastructure for the collection from the start.

Are there future plans for utility of the Gopniks? For example, equipping as avatars, changing out hats, jackets, etc.?

We have some plans in mind, but we are still considering all the legal implications with some things like dividends and airdrops. We are already exploring a number of ways around it and we will start delivering on these mechanics a few weeks after the launch.

Our advice would be to keep an eye on our social channels or even better to subscribe to our newsletter on our website to keep up to date with everything we have in store.

How do you think merging meme culture with BSV can help with adoption and onboarding new users?

The world has thousands of cultures and communities, some larger than others. We look at BSV as an efficient tool for us to leverage in the projects we would like to develop.

Using memes as a universal language people can easily understand and relate to whatever you want to communicate, so why not communicate this amazing technology that could potentially change their lives for the better.

Our efforts are here to help in eliminating any bias about BSV and to diminish as much as possible the politics involved, we want to create amazing art and have fun by offering value to our collectors. We hope others can see this too and do their ideas using this technology as well.

Thank you, Alex and Claudia for taking the time to answer my questions. I hope the readers learned more about the Gopniks, the mechanics of the NFTs, and the culture behind them.

Get yours at relayx.com today.

This article was lightly edited for grammatical purposes.

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