Howdy fellows! Today we are sitting down with Cédric Roux, entrepreneur now fully dedicated to web3. Co-founder of Mutantzuki.
Professional Background: 10 years in product leadership and executive committee roles (Criteo, Voodoo.io), PhD in quantum physics.
Chris: Mutantzuki NFTs are digital artwork collectibles inspired by the Azuki. How are these NFTs different from the Azuki's?
Cédric: Azukis are based on incredible human-generated artwork. Mutantzuksi are different, as any piece of the collection is made by the community, starting from an original Azuki image, and crafted with the help our AI-art algorithm, the Mutantzuki-gen machine.
Mutantzuki is at the intersection between human-generated and computer-generated artwork, paving the way for a whole new class of NFTs in which AI plays a much bigger role and investors and not just playing the lottery - rather they all contribute to a collaborative collection, with their own piece of art, the one they imagined themselves.
Our belief is that everyone can become a creator, with a little bit of help from the machines and the AI algorithms.
Chris: The tokens are a blend of human figurines and an artwork. This makes each NFT look pretty unique. What are the different traits and characteristics of the NFTs? Moreover, is it possible to have rare NFTs? If yes, do you have a rarity reference chart for the investors?
Cédric: Each of the 10,000 Mutantzukis will inherit from the metadata and rarity traits from the original Azuki collection, so the rarity chart is really mapped 1:1 to the one of the original Azukis collection. Don’t get us wrong, each image is a very different piece of artwork vs. the original Azuki!
In the on-chain metadata, we’ll also store the unique “prompt” that was entered by the investors during mint, i.e. the few words that feed the AI algorithm and initiate the creation of a new, unique piece.
Chris: Again, what other benefits are entitled to the investors when they receive their Mutantzuki NFT?
Cédric: Mutanzukis benefits will be decided with the community - but we envision several things ranging from epic NFT drops, unique and privileged access to future products based on the minted prompts (investors own the NFT, so they also own their unique prompt - we can design super fun and engaging games and value creation mechanisms from that fact).
Mutantzukis are an entry point to what we call the “AI Galaxy”, a galaxy of projects leveraging AI to empower collectors and investors into creators and influencers of the metaverse.
Chris: So, when does the public minting begin? What will be the cost of one Mutantzuki NFT including gas?
Cédric: We are opening a 200 piece pre-sale on Monday April 11th at 3pm CET. We’re still very early in the community building, but because our product is unique, we will rely a lot on these first OG investors to help us grow the community, and explain with their words how amazing the tech and community are and the value we can all extract from this in the near future.
The public sale will take place somewhere in May - exact date to be communicated in our Discord server and Twitter feed.
Each Mutantzuki will cost 0.069 ETH + gas, with many raffles to win free mints.
Also, each Azuki hodler gets one free mint!
Chris: Your team comprises seasoned experts. Who are the core members? How do they contribute to Mutantzuki NFTs?
Cédric: We are four in the team, three of which are doxxed.
@djcedr (Cédric Roux), I’m the CEO and project leader of the team. For me, NFT minting shouldn’t be a lottery. As a gamer since my youngest age, I am convinced that a key part of the fun in games comes from the fact that you own your future…
@infinitemonkeye (undoxxed at this point) is the data scientist of the team, who developed and industrialized the AI algorithm used to create each Mutantzuki from the investor’s craziest bits of imagination. He worked 6 years as an AI researcher in finance & gaming and is a part-time AI artist and NFT collector.
@machilassab (Massil Achab) has worked 8 years in tech as a data engineer/scientist and backend engineer, in particular at Consensys. He’s our backend and smart contract Mutant.
@georgesbiaux (Georges Biaux) has worked 8 years as a web developer. He designed and developed in a record time our landing page and all the user-facing part of the “Mutantzuki-gen” machine.
All four of us are and will be very active in the community building and animation, pre, during and post-mint.
Chris: Mutantzukis is the first 100% decentralized NFTs. What does this imply for the investors?
Cédric: Mutantzuki is really a unique project, and you’re right - it’s the first time 100% of an NFT collection is 1) imagined by investors, 2) using a nocode state-of-the-art AI-based image generation algorithm.
We have really big ambitions for this community, and see this project as an entry point for a new generation of NFT-based collections. The way we see it, investors will be a highly curated group of people who are art-lovers, crypto-savvy and intrigued in what algorithms and AI can bring to these fields. The possibilities are endless and we can’t wait to begin to imagine the future of AI-based NFTs with you!
Chris: 10000 Mutantzukis will soon be released in the metaverse. Please describe the minting process for these NFTs
Cédric: - First, you mint during our presale (April 11th, 3pm CET) or public sale (TBA) events
- Then you get access to the “Mutanzuki-tgen machine”. While you can already access a free preview at mutantzuki.art right now, the real machine is much more powerful/
- You choose any Azuki as an initial image to feed the algorithm.
- You enter a unique prompt, because yeah, the algo is hungry of that too.
- You wait a bit - it can take several minutes in several people are running the machine at the same time.
- You get 12 candidate images - out of which you can choose your unique Mutantzuki. If you’re not sure, you can try up to 3 prompts per mint.
- Investors can already show their creation to the world at this stage… or they can decide to wait a few days after mint. We’ll then organize a big “reveal event” in which Mutantzukis will all be revealed to the world.
- Of course, Mutanzukis will be present on secondary marketplaces such as Opensea or Looksrare!
