Funky Frens: The Official Avatars taking over the Metaverse — Founder's Interview

Greetings, NFT enthusiasts! My guest today is Zilla, Co-Founder and Strategy Manager of Funky Frens.

Professional background: Director of Business Development & Operations for a Tech company in LA.

Chris: Three best friends have come together to develop Funky Frens NFT. This is a plausible story however, what is your story behind working on this token? Please share.

Zilla: The three co-founders are best frens for 10+ years and have been in the crypto space since 2017. After not being able to find any NFTs that represented playful versions of human beings, we set out to create our own original collection. Our goal is for everyone to own an avatar that looks like them, and be able to acquire it at a very accessible price.

Chris: We would love to get introduced to the best friends behind Funky Frens. What segment does each one of you handle at Funky Frens NFT?

Zilla: Funky Panda (Artist)

Funky Frens is the brainchild of our artist, Panda. He is a longtime creative and has been designing flash games since he was 8 years old. His artistic skills span the gamut, from illustration & design, to music production, to professional video editing. This is all done while juggling his professional life as a resident doctor!

Funky Rascal (Developer)

Rascal is the developer that makes it all possible. Whether it’s asset-generation, constructing our smart-contract, or building the algorithm to give unique names to all of our frens, he puts his heart and soul into the project. In the daytime, he is a high-ranking software engineer for a Big Tech company (FAANG) and has always wanted to start his own company.

Funky Zilla (Strategy Manager)

I myself handle everything else that is not artwork or code. I come from an engineering background myself but now manage the high level strategy decisions, marketing, business development, and finances for the project. I am indeed doxxed and serve as the spokesperson for Funky Frens. In the day-time, I run business operations for a tech startup.

Chris: It is worth noticing that the Funky Frens NFT is not just artwork. They are animated artwork collectibles. What are the traits and characteristics that set each one of them apart?

Zilla: Each fren is made up of a random combination of 200+ faces, hairstyles, outfits, and accessories, each with their own rarity percentages.

We are also giving each fren a unique name (eg Tim Apple instead of FunkyFren#1126). We wanted to bring more personality to our frens and hadn't seen this done before.

Chris: You have a whitelist and a presale before the public minting on 27th March. How can one get on the whitelist and participate in the presale to reap price benefits?

Zilla: The easiest way to get whitelist is by re-tweeting 10 of our Twitter posts, then coming into our Discord, creating a ticket, and showing proof. Then the founders will verify and give you WL!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/funkyfrens 

Discord: https://discord.gg/funkyfrens 

Zilla: There are also many other ways to earn whitelist (reaching level 5 rank by chatting in Discord, inviting 5 others to Discord, or creating a Tik Tok video promoting Funky Frens).

Chris: Following the previous question, what would be the price of the NFT at presale and public sale? How much would be spent on gas at the public minting?

Zilla: Whitelist (pre-sale) mint price: 0.01 ETH

Public mint price: 0.03 ETH

Our smart contract utilizes Thirdweb's gas price optimization to deliver the most affordable gas price possible at the time of mint.

Chris: The Funky Fund is a community that aims at redistribution of royalties. How does it work? What percentage of royalties would be shared among holders of Funky Frens NFT?

Zilla: Any secondary sales on OpenSea will have a 7.5% royalty (2.5% to the Founders, 2.5% to the Funky Fund community wallet, and 2.5% to OpenSea).

The community will decide how we allocate funds from the Funky Fund (eg. hold games and contests for rewards in both ETH and 2nd gen NFTs, donate to charity, etc).

Chris: At last, please share your roadmap for the next 6 months in the interest of our readers and your potential investors.

Zilla: Our roadmap is:

1. Establish the Funky Fund, a community-driven collective focused on giving back to holders and donating to charity.

2. Acquire land in Decentraland, and inhabit with our 2nd generation NFTs: the ___ Frens (voted on by the community).

3. Announce Funky Frens University, a creative campus for educational and innovative collaboration within the Metaverse.

4. The space will be rented out to creators & educators. Each month, a portion of the collected rent will be distributed back to holders

5. More on this to come during our AMA on Tuesday March 22nd in our Discord!