Nautilus aka @gratuitous_arp / Wade is the Founder of The Kraken Collective. Wade got professional background in network and software development for an industry leading cloud computing provider.
Chris: When does the Kraken collective NFTs go on sale? What is the NFT price for your first sale?
Nautilus: Whitelist Mint; Dec/17 4pm PST | midnight UTC | 11am AEDT
Public Mint; Dec/18 4pm PST | midnight UTC | 11am AEDT
Mint Price: 0.08ETH
Chris: What are the key features of the Kraken? How is each NFT unique?
Nautilus: A key focus for us was to make sure every Kraken was a unique and striking pfp — whilst also maintaining a cohesive collection. Our core team include industry leading animators and artists, who’ve designed over 190 individual traits for our Krakens. We’ve got NFT fan favorites like laser eyes, 3D glasses, and acid skins. We’ve got traits that reflect the deep sea nautical theme. Most importantly, we’ve really focussed on including traits that owners can see themselves in, and give the Krakens a distinct depth and character. Our generation process ensures there’s 10,000 unique Krakens — and we’ve also got ten awesome 1/1’s for those lucky enough to land them. We’re excited for the reveal!
Chris: When does the Kraken collective NFTs go on sale? What is the NFT price for your first sale?
Nautilus: Whitelist Mint; Dec/17 4pm PST | midnight UTC | 11am AEDT
Public Mint; Dec/18 4pm PST | midnight UTC | 11am AEDT
Mint Price: 0.08ETH
Chris: What are the key features of the Kraken? How is each NFT unique?
Nautilus: A key focus for us was to make sure every Kraken was a unique and striking pfp — whilst also maintaining a cohesive collection. Our core team include industry leading animators and artists, who’ve designed over 190 individual traits for our Krakens. We’ve got NFT fan favorites like laser eyes, 3D glasses, and acid skins. We’ve got traits that reflect the deep sea nautical theme. Most importantly, we’ve really focussed on including traits that owners can see themselves in, and give the Krakens a distinct depth and character. Our generation process ensures there’s 10,000 unique Krakens — and we’ve also got ten awesome 1/1’s for those lucky enough to land them. We’re excited for the reveal!
Chris: What is a DenDAO? Why is it unique?
Nautilus: The DenDAO is what makes the Kraken Collective so exciting!
pfp/NFT projects often leave the community as an after-thought, with the focus around just getting to minting. The Kraken Collective and the DenDAO is unique in this regard. We are building our community into the project through the DenDAO. The DenDAO aims to operate to grow its fund, after receiving 20% of primary sales and 80% of secondary sales. These funds will be utilized with a growth mindset, aiming to increase its war-chest. As the DenDAO funds increase, we will give these rewards back to Kraken owners — this could be airdropped payments, merch, other tokens etc. In short we aim to leverage our funds for the community benefit.
Chris: We would like for you to introduce us to your team of experts. Do all of you share a common thought process or does each one have a different take on things?
Nautilus: From the outset, we’ve welcomed collaboration from the whole team across every aspect of this project. Good collaboration requires an open floor to discuss alternative viewpoints — but we all shared a common goal. We all wanted to develop a striking NFT with great art, a gold standard contract, that provides real value and utility to create a powerful future for the Kraken community. I think we’ve achieved that!
Let me introduce you to the team:
Tim / Mercurial Kraken
Co-Founder & Lead Developer
Tim started programming as a kid in the late 90s. Currently, he works as a full-time developer on large-scale systems and is fluent in multiple languages. Beside his passion for programming, crypto, NFTs, he has a penchant for what lurks in our oceans, especially Krakens!
Callum Noonan / Crawdaddy
Lead Designer
Callum has been drawing cartoon characters since the 90’s. He’s an Australian artist with a wealth of experience working in animation, graphic design and as a commercial mural painter. His distinct brand of offbeat compositions have been a feature of successful exhibitions, and he has acted as the artistic director on multiple award winning shorts. His unique art style, and ability to create high quality work is a perfect fit as a lead designer in the Kraken Collective.
Lachlan Wilson / MrSpeaker
Lead Designer
Lachlan was raised on Ren & Stimpy and The Simpsons, and has extensive experience working as a character designer in the animation industry. He has a love for cartoons, the more warped and bizarre the better. His flair for conceiving and executing original ideas makes him an ideal fit with The Kraken Collective.
Sebastian Peart / Dagon
Co-Creative Director
Seb is an animation director with a passion for the deep. He runs a team of animators and artists at Stepmates, alongside his creative partner in crime shanty_pantz. He hopes to usher in more animation to the NFT space and bring the Kraken Collective to life.
Mark Nicholson / Shanty_pantz
Co-Creative Director
Mark is a reformed lawyer with over 10 years experience as creative director for film, television, advertising, and online content. Alongside Dagon, he is a Founder and Director of Australia’s most prolific animation studio, Stepmates. Together they have established a reputation for creating iconic animated content for folks around the world. He walks around with a top knot, but don’t let that fool you - he is definitely balding.
Nautilus: The DenDAO is what makes the Kraken Collective so exciting!
pfp/NFT projects often leave the community as an after-thought, with the focus around just getting to minting. The Kraken Collective and the DenDAO is unique in this regard. We are building our community into the project through the DenDAO. The DenDAO aims to operate to grow its fund, after receiving 20% of primary sales and 80% of secondary sales. These funds will be utilized with a growth mindset, aiming to increase its war-chest. As the DenDAO funds increase, we will give these rewards back to Kraken owners — this could be airdropped payments, merch, other tokens etc. In short we aim to leverage our funds for the community benefit.
Chris: We would like for you to introduce us to your team of experts. Do all of you share a common thought process or does each one have a different take on things?
Nautilus: From the outset, we’ve welcomed collaboration from the whole team across every aspect of this project. Good collaboration requires an open floor to discuss alternative viewpoints — but we all shared a common goal. We all wanted to develop a striking NFT with great art, a gold standard contract, that provides real value and utility to create a powerful future for the Kraken community. I think we’ve achieved that!
Let me introduce you to the team:
Tim / Mercurial Kraken
Co-Founder & Lead Developer
Tim started programming as a kid in the late 90s. Currently, he works as a full-time developer on large-scale systems and is fluent in multiple languages. Beside his passion for programming, crypto, NFTs, he has a penchant for what lurks in our oceans, especially Krakens!
Callum Noonan / Crawdaddy
Lead Designer
Callum has been drawing cartoon characters since the 90’s. He’s an Australian artist with a wealth of experience working in animation, graphic design and as a commercial mural painter. His distinct brand of offbeat compositions have been a feature of successful exhibitions, and he has acted as the artistic director on multiple award winning shorts. His unique art style, and ability to create high quality work is a perfect fit as a lead designer in the Kraken Collective.
Lachlan Wilson / MrSpeaker
Lead Designer
Lachlan was raised on Ren & Stimpy and The Simpsons, and has extensive experience working as a character designer in the animation industry. He has a love for cartoons, the more warped and bizarre the better. His flair for conceiving and executing original ideas makes him an ideal fit with The Kraken Collective.
Sebastian Peart / Dagon
Co-Creative Director
Seb is an animation director with a passion for the deep. He runs a team of animators and artists at Stepmates, alongside his creative partner in crime shanty_pantz. He hopes to usher in more animation to the NFT space and bring the Kraken Collective to life.
Mark Nicholson / Shanty_pantz
Co-Creative Director
Mark is a reformed lawyer with over 10 years experience as creative director for film, television, advertising, and online content. Alongside Dagon, he is a Founder and Director of Australia’s most prolific animation studio, Stepmates. Together they have established a reputation for creating iconic animated content for folks around the world. He walks around with a top knot, but don’t let that fool you - he is definitely balding.
Chris: What are the other NFT projects developed by your team? How is Kraken Collective different from them?
Nautilus: I (Nautilus), am actively involved with 2 other projects as a technical consultant/advisor and have been involved with the launch of one other project. The project I was involved with that launched, like many projects got stuck on what to do after the launch, their roadmap finished at minting. We don't believe this is doing the right thing for the community. The Kraken Collective is focused 3-4-5 months down the line, instead of just looking at the mint date.
Key milestones in our roadmap are; setting up the DenDAO, onboarding community members to the multi-sig wallet. Publishing our proposal/governance model for execution, and making our first investments. In parallel with this we will complete development of the staking website and begin issuing $FISH for staked Krakens. We will also execute a few airdrops in our first few months.
Chris: What is a $FISH? What is meant by a breeding program using the $FISH?
Nautilus: $FISH is our token that is used to rewards Krakens that are staked with us. This token is what we will use when allocating community rewards. It's the staked $FISH meaning those still invested in the project that we look to for signal. Those who invest in us will get the highest returns. Beyond this, $FISH will be used in our future projects, whether it's generating baby Krakens/Mega Krakens, or perhaps a different sea creature in our ecosystem. We will leverage $FISH to minimize costs for staked Kraken, another benefit for staking one's Kraken.
Chris: In the end, how did you manage to reduce gas costs to such low levels? What is the secret?
Nautilus: Magic.
No… it’s required thorough analysis, trial, and error. Our developer has closely studied Solidity and other projects, not just using templates/defaults. By asking deep questions into the how/why are certain functions doing what they do, he was then able to determine what/where to optimize. This was not an easy process and took a deep understanding of the language. We see this as important to ensure Kraken owners pay the minimum possible so funds are spent on Krakens, not gas fees. We haven't got a final gas/operations figure yet. It's looking to be in around 50,000 operations. We have not seen a contract below 60,000 operations to date, with many projects above 147,000 operations. Our estimate is it will be around $30USD to mint a Kraken.
