Chris: Hi there! Please introduce yourself.
0x7ffe: Hi, my name is 0x7ffe, developer and global person in lead of the community. I do this together with my companion, Printknot. He is an amazing artist with great experience in the field, having made art for BBC and even Ed Sheeran. Printknot has his own tattoo shop where he has been tattooing for years! He came up with the art idea himself. In fact, I don't even have to tell him to make anything. He literally comes up with everything himself, and all in a heartbeat. That gives me a lot of time to work on other things. I made the website, get us listed wherever we can, come up with community events and giveaways, keep people informed and created our initial website. I've recently graduated university and got my bachelor's degree for Computer Science. After completing it, I never felt the urge to get a job. I was fascinated by crypto. Before I even began to realize, I was dedicating all my time to it. It's also the reason why I stand here right now, building an awesome community. I truly do not regret it.
Chris: Evil Ape Empire NFT was developed by coincidence. What else inspired you to develop the NFT apart from the beautiful accidental artwork?
0x7ffe: It's ofcourse not just the art. But the truth is, it did somewhat start by accident. I got to know Printknot on accident via someone else who is no longer in picture. This person decided to rug pull an awesome project with great art made by Printknot called the World Wide Ape Club. I was contracted by Jay, the owner, to get them a new mint after failing for multiple times. I even had already been paid to make a website, but he just suddenly disappeared. Before this time I had already sat together with both Printknot and Jay, and we decided to start the Evil Ape Empire as a big community project. They were supposed to help us out, with them already having a thriving community with 8000 members of which many were very active. It is a much unfortunate situation, but I feel like it does drive us a little more to make this project a big succes. Almost like a big sucker punch in the scammer's face. Aside from all this, I feel like there are still great chances to be taken to build awesome NFT communities considering the youth of the NFT space.
Chris: Evil Ape Empire NFT launches on Cardano, Solana, and Ethereum. How and why are you distributing the launch in the stated manner?
Printknot: Our mission with the project is to create a thriving community (empire) that spans across different blockchains. We want to get experience on different blockchains to really make sure we are ready for one of our big amibitious goals: creating a curated NFT launch platform. The reason we want to release on many blockchains is double sided. We get experience from doing it, and also raise the necessary funds to be able to create such a platform. Alongside that, it makes sense to do it in this order. When you make the platform before you have an audience, who are you going to market it to? By building a thriving community first we can ensure the actual use of the platform. We want to incoorporate our own staking incentive program into the platform as well. Not only to facilitate the staking for our own collections, but also those that would launch on the platform. We'll also be looking for a way to integrate other projects into this ecosystem, so the rewards from the staking program can directly be used in other dapps. We also chose the order of blockchains by their growth potential. NFTs on Cardano are really new, and there are hardly a handful of collections you can name that most Cardanians will recognize. Outside of Cardano? Not many people know these projects. The fact that Cardano has yet to scale, unlike Solana and Ethereum, makes it have massive growth potential. And you can figure out by yourself what happens to the biggest projects on a network when it gains more users. Solana was chosen by Printknot from what I can remember. He has worked with another team that dropped an amazing project on Solana, called Parlay NFT. From what I know, that sold out in 20 seconds. They'll be helping us out on the Solana drop. Ethereum? Well, that's were the big money is at and where all the eyes are focused on. We're hoping to have built an awesome foundation of the community before then.
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Chris: Consequently, what will be the price per token at each launch? Do you have plans to price them differently?
0x7ffe: We've only decided yet on the prices of the drops on Cardano. Our regular collection will cost 40 Cardano each. We're siding heavily towards pricing our collections roughly where the floor price is of the previous, which will make it progressively more difficult to get in. There is ofcourse a limit to this, as we cannot ask thousands of dollars per mint in our opinion. What will eventually happen in terms of price is still being debated.
Chris: Similarly, how many tokens will be released for each launch? The first one is on Cardano, how many Evil Ape Empire NFTs will be released this February?
Printknot: In fact, we haven't even talked about our OG collections. Before each main collection, we will sell 100 OGs which have their own unique traits. They sold out at a price of 150 Cardano each. Having an OG gets you access to exclusive giveaways and events and they're simply way more rare than the regular evil apes. Our supply for each blockchain will be the same. There will be 100 OGs and 6666 regular Evil Apes that have randomized traits.
Chris: Also, what are the different traits and characteristics that make each token unique? Do you also have a rarity chart?
0x7ffe: OGs have specific traits tied to the blockchain that cannot be found in the regular collection, making them truly unique. We plan to have roughly 300 different traits in each new collection, providing a wide variety of options for Evil Apes. We plan to release a detailed rarity chart after minting.
Chris: In the same way, how does one go to mint the token? Can you provide some simple instructions for the first launch?
Printknot: Our Cardano collection will be mintable on Cardahub, who we have partnered with. Using their website, the user can connect with either Nami, CCVault, Gero or Flint wallet. Once connected, they can choose to mint either 1, 5, 10 or 20 Evil Apes at once. The community provides anyone that struggles with help. For Solana, it is very likely we will launch on Parlay's launchpad (not confirmed). For Ethereum, it is highly likely we will offer a mint on our own website.
Chris: Finally, notwithstanding the detailed launch, what are your plans for the future of Evil Ape Empire NFTs?
0x7ffe: Of course, as mentioned the NFT platform is a big deal for us. Aside from that, we plan to grow one of our events into an app called "Make Your Ape". It allows the user to make their own ape from all the attributes we designed. The ape can then be submitted and partake in Ape vs Ape contests. Winners of these contests can take home prizes and be added to a hall of fame. I know Printknot really wants to make a P2E game. Not some kind of triple A game that would be impossible to deliver ofcourse. Something decent, but simple. Something to keep people entertained and earn rewards. In fact, we're looking into if we can create 3D versioned colletions of the Evil Apes, and join the metaverse somehow. That's where the hype is really building up nowadays. We mostly focus on building the community right now, which is why we have so many contests and giveaways. Our Twitter & Discord is the best way to stay informed on news and announcements.
