Shrooms: The Experimental Project.

After spending 2 months reading and watching videos about NFTs, absorbing all the information I can find, it became clear to me that most of the information is more confusing.

I’ve already minted some of my artworks, but they DID NOT sell right away, a bit sad but true, and honestly, I didn’t know what I was doing so I wasn’t expecting anything, But I knew that anything on the blockchain will be permanent!

So I didn’t want to mess it up, and what’s a better way to learn than by having a hands-on learning experience?

I minted my first mushroom, which was an illustration I did in early 2020 when COVID started.

Minted HappyShroom and it was the best decision I've ever made throughout my NFT journey.

BUT !!!

Since I haven't yet figured out how to sell NFTs, I decided to give them all away for free. minted 100 editions on the polygon chain, and gave them all away for free.

One thing I understood, the market will decide the price and if it was valued by people they will start trading it. I would still get royalties on each sale so that wasn’t a problem for me pursuing the shroom's giveaways.

Gave away the first 100 and waited.

In four days people started listing and trading Shrooms!

I was getting royalties from all sales!

Royalties are good but that was not what I was aiming for, I wanted to figure out how to sell NFTs not just collect royalties.

I had to collect some data and analyze it to figure out how to add value to my NFT holders.

After collecting the data and analyzing it, I made more mushrooms and also gave them away for free to those who participated.

Good things come to end tho, and problems started to show up!

The bots were targeting giveaways on all platforms and the survey was a wall to collect the information I needed to understand the market better.

It was a mess, in the beginning, shrooms went to bot wallets and they listed it at floor price or even lower, which created another problem of how to increase demand and let the market decide the price.

Shrooms didn't have a community behind it or anything backing it up other than my efforts to add value.

Back then I thought value is tied to the real world and things that we can touch since the NFT ownership concept was new to me.

So I made shrooms merch!

Little did I know, that the more I create and do for the shrooms, the more I had to work and keep it going.

Now I'm analyzing the data I got back from the giveaways, making new shrooms and their merch while promoting the website to sell them.

Another problem!!!

How to get more eyes on the merch and have people connect with the shrooms just like I am at this point.

After creating the shrooms a was attached to the characteristics I gave them and the connection grew stronger with the more time I spent on them.

Giveaways had to end.

By ending the giveaways as I used to do them, I introduced the holders to the stories behind the shrooms and explained the connection I had with the shrooms.

To me, Shrooms are not just a PFP project that's generated and dumped on the blockchain, all the shrooms are connected and serve a particular purpose in helping me explore these new concepts and ideas.

The Hunt was the solution to all the problems and a way to be creative.

The game kept the project going and the holders entertained, people came back to the website and played the game to win the shrooms.