How CyberBearz appeared or the story of failure
Hey! My name is Dornn and I am one of the founders of CyberBearz. Our team would like all members of our community to know the history of this project and how it developed. This is especially important before the launch of the new CyberBearz 2048 collection on ETH.
Genesis
I became interested in cryptocurrency projects very late, around the end of 2020. During this period, small news in the area of the NFT began to catch the eye. I think back then I saw CryptoPunks being sold for a few ETH. But, like many others, I passed by.
I became more and more interested in the growing trend. And so, at the beginning of 2021, I stumbled upon the CyberKongz pixel project. My God, back then it could be bought for .01 ETH, but I was more became interested in the possibility of creating something like that than the thought of investing.
I didn’t know much about the topic of blockchain, because Just started immersed in this wonderful world. But as a designer, I saw how CyberKongz was created. It was necessary to prepare a set of elements in the form of transparent PNGs, so that later they would be randomly assembled into one image. A programmer was supposed to be responsible for this part of the work, but I did not have such skills. I also understood that uploading such an amount to the marketplace and assigning attributes to each NFT would be very hard work.
In one of the chats on the topic of cryptocurrency, I wrote that if someone is interested in creating their own NFT collection together, then respond to this message and the very next day I got an offer.
It was a small team that, as it turned out, had experience in launching the NFT. I won’t reveal the names and titles of the projects because it would be wrong to do so here. I can only say that in the future they became successful specialists and were able to launch a large project.
We agreed that we create an equal team with the same share of ownership. I had an idea to involve the administrator of the same chat, who at first agreed to be in charge of marketing, but then refused. Therefore, this part of the work also fell on me. And our shares were divided 50/50, as well as the gas costs for deploying a smart contract. I was required to design, marketing on Twitter, and programmers were required to create a generation script and a smart contract.
At that time, I didn’t quite understand what a smart contract was. There were very few projects that had mint through their own website. In fact, the main boom came at OpenSea, where almost all craftsmen created hand-drawn collections on their own (For the most part these were hundreds of copies of CryptoPunks, which we can’t even remember now). Subsequently, the smart contract will play a cruel joke with us, but more on that later.
Concept
I began to look for a concept that would be original in artistic execution and would not infringe copyright. All my adult life I worked with advertising and I knew that if our collection was a copy, then it would simply be difficult to advertise it, because it would be a secondary product. And also a big minus can be the complaint of the authors about the violation of rights, and the inability to develop the project if successful.
Unfortunately, I cannot call myself a full-fledged artist, so I decided to still take the finished concept, but do it my own way. It should have saved time, because there was very little of it, and it was necessary to draw everything as soon as possible. The NFT trend began to develop like an avalanche and it was necessary to have time to get on the crest of the wave. I think it’s not embarrassing to say this, given that almost every project in the NFT is a copy and rethinking of CryptoPunks or BAYC.
So I came back to the idea with the CyberKongz concept. It was March, CryptoZilla and CyberCrocz had already appeared, they allowed me to make a decision. I began to draw a pixel project.
Development
Having suffered a little, I first drew a bear. I checked the accessibility of the future name of the project on Twitter and on OpenSea, this name was of course CyberBearz, in the manner of other projects. It was available for use.
I love Warhammer 40k, Battlefield 4, Helldivers and other military universes. Therefore, it somehow turned out that the bears received helmets, tactical goggles, night vision devices, body armor, and officer caps. Hell, they were furry soldiers who smoked too much, and that has become the hallmark of the project.
It’s funny that I had to deviate from the original sketch, because when I started making clothes, I realized that the bear was too flat and I needed to give it perspective. I had to redraw it, so the very first, pure bear appeared.
It took me about 14 days to complete the matrix and item map for the metadata. Then the programmers got down to business, the release date was set for April 2nd. The launch took place exactly one month after the first generation of CyberKongz appeared on OpenSea.
I dreamed that we would stand on a par with these projects, and that our adventures in the world of NFT would only begin. Given that then no one knew what would happen next and how this industry would develop.
At the same time, I slowly kept Twitter, followed and liked the subscribers of other projects, in the hope that they would find out about us. Then there was no such community and understanding of what to do and how to promote such projects. It seemed that the audience was easy to find, because there were very few NFT collections themselves. There were many individual artists. People subscribed to the project, liked the messages.
I also watched other new collections. At that time, most projects were gaining popularity like an avalanche, in just a couple of days. Audiences poured from one project to another. If you look at how copies of CryptoPunks were sold, you could say that everything was just beginning. It seemed to us that we would follow this scenario, we just need to wait for the release.
Launch and failure
And now everything was ready. We have a simple website (you can see it here), a smart contract (you can also see it here), a small audience on Twitter. The NFTs was only 2,222, the price started at .02 and was supposed to increase as sales, as was the custom before.
It is worth noting that I did not like a few things that I had to close my eyes to:
⚡ I did not choose a beautiful number (not 2,048, but 2,222).
⚡ There was no time to make the NFT generation meaningful, for example, the programmers were in a hurry and made all items the same in rarity, which greatly distorted the entire collection. The combinations of bears turned out to be absolutely crazy, also due to the fact that I laid too many color versions of the same items.
⚡ The site was not made by me (but my profession is a front-end developer, i.e. a website designer), and I didn’t like it, but I had to put up with it.
April 2 came and we announced that the mint was open. Go!
And here is the first result, someone immediately bought 2 bears! Hooray! And… and that’s it.
After 10 days, 3 more NFTs were bought from us … After 17 days, 3 more bears and that’s it. This is where the story of the first ETH CyberBearz ended.
Yes, we got under very high gas at that moment, and according to the analytics on the site, it was clear that about 8–10 purchases failed. But the effect was terrible and demoralizing if you imagine that virtually any project at that time was sold in full or at least 1/3. Until now, it does not fit in the mind. How could it have started off so badly that we didn’t even pay off deploying a smart contract for which we paid .59 ETH in gas?
Of course, there were many factors that led to such a terrible result. First of all, it could be a concept. My crooked pixel art art, as well as a military theme that many do not like. Insufficient marketing on Twitter.
But I believe that the smart contract itself was a big reason for the failure. At that time, it seemed that it was more convenient for people to choose their own NFTs in the marketplace. As if they wanted to see it before they minted it. At that time, the culture of smart contracts had not yet formed, everyone loved projects with OpenSea, perhaps this was the main mistake. If we just put 1,000 bears out in the public domain, it could be a success.
Therefore, we can rightfully consider ourselves among the very first losers who launched the most failed collection in the midst of the NFT boom.
After the failure
Time passed, and there were no new purchases, so it became clear that we completely failed the project. But I did not abandon Twitter and just waited for someone to pay attention to us, or we would have an idea how to promote the project.
After an unsuccessful start, the developers of the first contract took up their own project and we stopped communicating, and, in fact, they became the owners of the smart contract (until recently).
I watched the NFT market, it quickly began to grow. More and more successful projects began to appear on their own smart contracts, and some switched to them from marketplaces (including CyberKongz, which set the trend and brought a lot of new things to the development of the NFT).
Collections have begun to appear on other blockchains. So I came across BSC, and the new AIRNFT marketplace, which allowed NFT to be minted for a couple of cents. And so, the idea was born to try to release a small series called CyberBearz Legends, it gained a little popularity and prompted the main idea: restart the project on BSC with a smart contract, but do everything the way we would like ourselves. This allowed us to lay down the game potential, realize the ranks and think over the items in more detail. This is how the CyberBearz Army was born, but that’s another story.
Afterword
We have come a long way, which gives us new strength to try again to launch a collection on ETH, already with a well-formed community and a year of experience. Stay with us!
