HGraph Punks: A Year In Review
As we pass the year milestone of HGraph Punks beginning, we find ourselves reminiscing about all of the ups and downs that brought us to the current state of this flourishing Hedera NFT community.
In this article, I’ll go over some of the biggest highlights from the year and talk about our future plans. ❤
TL:DR;
Last year we achieved so many accomplishments together! Here’s a recap of some of the top moments.
Accomplishments:
- Executed the largest NFT airdrop on Hedera with Coin Eyes Punks (free for the first 1,000 supporters).
- Built an open-sourced mass minting tool that requires no coding for the HBAR NFT community (https://tools.turtlemoon.io/).
- Auctioned off our ‘Hiro Glitch GIF’ Punk and donated 100% to Save The Children ($22,377).
- Helped to coordinate and execute a Hedera-wide charity event with 65+ NFT artists, raising over $100,000 for hcwc.
- Created Turtle Moon Launchpad to facilitate future mints of HGraph Punks and scale with massive user adoption.
- Built the first Hedera NFT Farming platform. Glitch Punks are currently using this to farm for Coin Eyes Punks and have earned over 25 Coin Eyes Punks so far.
- Created the first Discord validator bots for Hedera NFTs that use wallet signing to guarantee ownership. The newest update just went live this week.
- HGraph Punks CEO Patches presented our NFT technology at an all-hands meeting for Swirlds Labs (Formally Hedera)
- Created hgraph.io to simplify communication with the Hedera mainnet for all developers in Hedera.
- HGraph Punks CEO Patches traveled to NFT NYC and networked with many projects to spread the word about Hedera NFTs.
- Gave away a Glitch GIF Punk (valued at 70,000 HBAR at the time) in a Hedera mainnet treasure hunt for our community.
- Created the first token-gated DAO platform using Hedera Consensus Service. Roll out to HGraph Punks is coming soon.
- Passed the milestone of over 5 million HBAR in secondary sales.
- Announced HGraph Punks ownership rights. When you purchase an HGraph Punks NFT, you own it completely.
- Partnered with Vceezy to bring streaming live music into our digital venue metaverse “The Liftoff”. The first live show is coming soon.
- Released in-depth Hedera mainnet data about HGraph Punks sales and projects.
- Created a Dutch auction platform and auctioned 6 Vceezy collab Punks. These funds are helping us build out “The Liftoff”.
Here We Are Today
It’s been a long journey! So much more has happened that it’s impossible to fit everything into one article. Long hours and late nights have been a constant as we continually build towards our goals.
Since the beginning, our mission has been to create a full-scale NFT collection that proves Hedera is the best platform and technology for NFTs.
To do that, we had to create tools and platforms that didn’t exist to enable the Hedera NFT ecosystem and HGraph Punks to grow.
We’re enthralled with the possibilities for the future and continue to deliver on what we set out to do. Our tools and services make innovation and creativity much easier to execute.
HBAR NFTs are the future. The HGraph Punks team is committed to proving that every chance we get.
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤
Thank you all for your support through thick and thin. It hasn’t always been easy, but we wouldn’t want to be building with any other community on the planet.
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤
Where do HGraph Punks go from here?
We have been building for over a year. All of it was necessary to create the fundamental building blocks for HGraph Punks to achieve the mission we set out on over a year ago. Our team has accomplished so much, laying the groundwork for what’s coming this year.
We Now Have
- A Launchpad built to scale with us
- A Farming platform already working in Beta for Glitch Punks
- Access to the fastest and most efficient API to talk to the Hedera mainnet
- A DAO platform ready to go
- An Auction platform where we can auction off big ticket items
- Efficient minting tools
- Initial Metaverse builds and a fantastic partnership with Vceezy
- Staking and Airdrop tooling that’s ready to deploy in an alpha state
These platforms and tools will exponentially help us achieve the goals set out in our latest white paper update.
We will continue building our ecosystem of staking, farming, airdrops, digital music venue metaverse, DAO voting, and more.
We are proven builders in this space and can now focus on using all these tools and platforms to accelerate HGraph Punks into the stratosphere.
We believe it’s going to be a terrific year! ❤
Below is a timeline of significant events showing how HGP has grown since our beginning in September 2021.
Fall 2021
- Our first Whitepaper dropped in late September and had a massive buzz around the Hedera ecosystem. We started gaining followers who resonated with our ambitions of building the Hedera NFT infrastructure.
- We partnered with PluralNFT for HGraph Punks to exclusively launch our project on what we expected to become the first NFT marketplace using HIP-17/HIP-18 standards.
- We collaborated with Lazy Superheroes to create Lazy Superhero Punks and auctioned them off in the Lazy Superheros Palace.
Coin Eyes Punks
- Our first act as a project was to commit to the largest airdrop ever on Hedera with our Coin Eyes Punks.
- The first 1,000 supporters that signed up got a free Coin Eyes Punk and a chance to win a Glitch Punk.
- We knew we’d have to develop the software for the airdrop, and that was the challenge we were excited to meet.
- We had several failed attempts to airdrop as we worked with the XACT wallet team to figure out the best method on Hedera.
- We successfully created a platform where users could claim their Coin Eyes Punks, completing the largest NFT airdrop on Hedera.
Developing The Ecosystem
We created Turtle Moon as a concept during the Autumn of 2021. As we continued to develop tools and platforms, we realized the entire ecosystem of NFTs was held back by not having easy tools to mint. We. Turtle Moon would become the entity that creates development tools and platforms for the community to use.
In late 2021, after hundreds of hours of development work, we released our open-sourced Desktop Application. This application allows any non-technical user to mint on the Hedera network. The community fully embraced the tools and our team, and it was amazing to see the support.
30+ creators donated NFTs for an auction. All proceeds helped push Turtle Moon’s development forward for the ecosystem.
HBAR Shady’z even created an amazing 1/1 collab NFT to help support Turtle Moon’s mission and development.
December 2021
Last December was a huge month for the Hedera community. We pulled together to help improve the quality of life for others and showed the power of what web3 and our community can do.
Our first charity event was a Glitch GIF auction. We raised over 70,000 HBAR (1 HBAR = $0.35). After transfer and exchange fees, we donated over $22,000 to Save The Children. This is still one of the proudest moments for our team.
Hedera Community Holiday Party
Only 14 days later, our community had the biggest Hedera community charity event to date. Our team stayed up nights to coordinate with every creator to move their NFTs into the donation wallet and ensure the event was as seamless as possible.
65+ NFT artists donated their time and artwork to help make a tremendous positive impact on many people’s lives.
Over $100,000 was donated to hcwc and used towards transitional housing for abused women and children.
These funds will help us complete our new transitional housing complex and could not have come at a better time. — Melissa Rodriguez, Executive Director
Drop 1: Google Forms
Two days after the charity event, our team attempted to launch HGraph Punks Drop 1 on our own NFT platform.
No one knew what to expect as the first mass mint of an NFT project. Unfortunately, the traffic overpowered the XACT wallet API, and users couldn’t execute transactions.
After multiple issues that day, we finally opted to drop the NFTs through Google Forms.
It was a mess, and it was stressful for everyone involved. In the end, that experience was needed and helped push the entire ecosystem forward. Finding pain points at scale is essential for building foundational pillars of technology.
The cherry on top of all the chaos was that our private keys were exposed on the Drop 1 platform. However, after a rollercoaster of emotions, a white hat hacker was able to return them to us, and we reset them and re-secured our minting wallet.
No Wallet; Just Build
After the XACT wallet API went down during Drop 1 minting, it never returned. This left the entire ecosystem with no method of selling or buying NFTs.
We spent this time focusing on what we knew was needed to have scale on Hedera and, most importantly, launch the rest of HGraph Punks.
We set out to build a solid launchpad that could handle large amounts of traffic and build smooth UX for incoming users to Hedera and Web3. This project became Turtle Moon Launchpad.
Turtle Moon Launchpad has continually grown since then and can withstand large amounts of traffic, staying true to our mission of creating technology to help the HBAR NFT ecosystem thrive and scale.
Glitch Punk Treasure Hunt
In March, r3n_ly (HGraph Punks CXO) created an in-depth, multi-step treasure hunt for the HGraph Punks community.
It all started with just a wallet ID and a picture of the prize. The community sprung into action, trying to decipher the treasure map created on the mainnet.
The treasure hunt required users to read mainnet data from multiple wallets, used NFTs as hints with visual codes, and required users to find a password for decrypting ciphers. After 18 hours, a community member got the prize, a Glitch GIF Punk, with a floor of around 70K HBAR.
NFT Farming
Glitch Punk holders have been beta testing our farming platform. We had a pool of 100 Coin Eyes NFTs reserved for them to farm. Details on the farming platform rollout for HGraph Punk holders will come in future dev blog updates.
hgraph.io
As we continued to build, we found that one of the most challenging parts was getting the data you wanted from the Hedera mainnet. After bringing on Splash and working for several months to build a mirror node API with graphQL built in, hgraph.io launched.
The mission: make Hedera mainnet data simple to understand and retrieve. This has exponentially helped all of our development. All tools and services we build for HGraph Punks are possible only through the innovation of hgraph.io.
hgraph.io is a separate legal entity and will help provide this unprecedented access to the Hedera mainnet as a service to all developers in the space.
Disclaimer
1. HGRAPH PUNKS PROVIDES THE CONTENT IN THIS WHITE PAPER ON AN “AS IS” BASIS. WE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND RELATING TO THE WHITE PAPER, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, TITLE, AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
2. This White Paper contains estimates and forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. In particular, the words “may,” “might,” “will,” “could,” “would,” “should,” “expect,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “seek,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict,” “potential,” “continue,” “contemplate,” “possible,” and similar words are intended to identify estimates and forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements, including the intended actions and performance objectives of HGraph Punks, are estimates based largely on current expectations and projections about future events and trends.
All forward-looking statements in this Whitepaper speak only as of the date of publication of this Whitepaper.
HGraph Punks expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to disseminate any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statement contained herein to reflect any change in its expectation with regard thereto
or any change in events, conditions, or circumstances on which any such statement is based.
