Algorithmically Awesome NFTs
What are Unsigs you ask, and how did I get involved with them? Well…
It was a few weeks back I was on the prowl for an NFT marketplace for the Cardano blockchain, and while I knew Smart Contracts were a few months away, I had heard and saw some blips on telegram about some ways to mint without having to know your way around repros, and coding.
So my quest was on and through trials and many GIT repos later, I came across NFT-Maker.io it was a simple but very useful web app that allowed you to mint your graphics, GIFs, etc as an NFT on the Cardano blockchain — I was thrilled. So I dug further to see who was behind the curtain of this magic machine. Patrick Tobler is his name, a student and programmer. “Computer Science student from Stutgart, Germany; part of the Cardano community since 2017; developer of nft-maker.io — the first NFT platform on Cardano; Stake Pool Operator of [BABEL].”
He is behind this wonderful tool, but little did I know he was cooking something up just as amazing as a Cardano NFT minting application.
Basically I live on Twitter, Discord and Slack these days ( I loath telegram ) anyway, I’m reading about some of the new developments slated for NFT-Maker.io and I see that Patrick is now part of a new project called, unsigned algorithms created by Alex Watanabe. “Picked up programming and a love of geometry & parametric design while studying architecture; working in applying AI/ML to industry problems; Stake Pool Operator of [MONAD].”
Oooo and then the teasers started… ;) ( https://www.unsigs.com/ )
Since there was no website at the time, I found them on Telegram and that is really where I got to talk directly to the creators. As I learned more, I found out that these were being added directly to the Cardano Blockchain and NOT only as an image stored via IPFS on a centralized server, AND — there are ONLY 31119 of them… This was the first time I had heard of this type of minting process, and it added more validity to the nature of an NFT being owed by the purchaser since the asset is on the blockchain itself.
So there are YouTube videos you can watch that describe in detail how these cool NFTs are created and you can see that here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjI1iyBCk-4 a quick animation that shows the assembly of a simple Unsig is below, yet up to 6 layers of different varieties of colors and rotations can be applied.
Launch day was coming up fast and I was actually early to the party in telegram, and couldn’t take advantage of the second it launched due to prior commitments. Time difference killed me… I was patient.
So it was until about 10pm the day of the launch that I was able to get involved. It was a small price to pay to collect some one of a kind pieces on the Cardano blockchain. But right from the jump I was hooked on the experience of not knowing what Unsig I might get, I knew nothing about rarity, or value, I just had a feeling that these simple yet amazingly complex abstract NFTs were going to be popular and cause a ripple in the Cardano community.
BOOM… after about an hour of buying my unsigs I was the 3rd largest holder, well for a few hours…it wasn’t long till some some whales stomped in and started buying up hundreds of Unsigs, it was nuts. I continued to slowly add to my collection but kept thinking what could really drive these home and around the same time Alex created the Discord Server, and that's when things blew up community wise. Here is the Discord Invite, come join and learn about what we are doing! https://discord.gg/wF6fp2ut
Learn how to buy, and evaluate what you have. The community is buzzing with new ideas on how to add more functionality and utility to these beautiful pieces. I’m building an online shop, find the link at the end of the article.
Some of the OG owners pools can be found here — check out their collections:
Kelumax — https://pool.pm/stake1uyzsa532pqnldqpneqpg63gymgp9f3aahjadrke9muw33rsc3jaa8/0e14267a
So what’s Next — well I am in the process of creating UnsigShop.com that can be found here [ https://unsigshop.com/ ]so the rest of the world that would like to own a piece of this creative art form can, without needing to buy the actual NFT and instead get T-Shirts, Pillows, Bikinis, Mobile Phone Cases, etc!
Thanks for taking the time to read my little story about Unsigs, You should check out the website now, before ALL the Unsigs are gone.
MAIN UNSITE WEBSITE — https://www.unsigs.com/
UNSIGSHOP of Wonder — https://unsigshop.com/
