The Complete Guide to Goblin Town
Goblin Town is an NFT collection that NFT fanatics are losing their minds over right now. In recent weeks, this collection managed to outsell BAYC in trading volume and sales, which is quite an achievement on its own.
But let’s take everything one step at a time. We have to figure out where the success Goblin Town has experienced stems from, and what this collection is all about. You might be used to “Aping in”, but now it’s time to get “Goblin’d in”!
What is Goblin Town?
Goblin Town is an NFT collection consisting of 9,999 unique pieces depicting weird and unsettling goblin characters built on the Ethereum blockchain. Sounds pretty standard so far, right? You’d be quite wrong!
The drop of Goblin Town didn’t involve collaborations, campaigns, whitelisting, anything at all. Nothing was done on their part to stir the waters, and yet a flood in the NFT community was created.
This is likely because the mint for a Goblin Town NFT was free, which in today’s NFT market is quite a rare thing. And for this reason, the project doesn’t have a roadmap, a discord, or any utility at all. Basically, the NFT is useless in itself.
However, you do get all the commercial rights for the particular Goblin Town NFT you own. This means you can use it however you want. You can put it on merch, make cartoons of it, create a story about it etc. and charge money for it with no issues at all.
It is hard to go into much detail about what this project is all about and what it is trying to do. After all, most NFT projects go into extensive detail about what they want to achieve in the metaverse, and what they want to give to their holders.
Goblin Town? Nothing at all. No statements, no mission, no core philosophy. Nothing is stated clearly and intentionally. Even the team behind the project is anonymous and hard to say anything about. But there have been rumors that Yuga Labs (the creators of BYAC) are involved somehow. But we can’t know for sure.
Why did Goblin Town get so popular?
Normally, it is easy to explain why an NFT project gets popular. Often, it is because they have a grand vision and lots of utility that makes them attractive to own.
Goblin Town was not inherently very attractive to own when it came out. After all, you couldn’t use it for anything, so where did the success come from?
Firstly, we can talk about the project’s success with brand-affirming marketing. Notice how they communicate with the community on Twitter. It’s pure gutterspeak with weird fonts that only a select group of people are privy to.
Essentially, it is an organic way to generate attention and build hype that is different from essentially any other NFT project.
Secondly, we can talk about what they represent: counterculture. They are built in abstracted shapes, and this style of art has always been about nonconformity. This is truly what WEB3 is about as well – breaking the norms and doing things differently.
This makes Goblin Town into the embodiment of exactly what NFTs are and should be all about, even though it is not apparent from a first glance.
Lastly, we can talk about their launch execution. Goblin Town was launched in a bear market, which is usually a poor idea. But thanks to the mint being free, they created a community that valued vision and not money. This translates to strong loyalty.
This provided Goblin Town with an alternate way into the blue-chip space of NFTs. But let’s see, whether the popularity will reach those heights.
How are Goblin Town NFTs made?
Goblin Town is a generative NFT collection. This means we are dealing with digital art pieces that consist of a number of different traits, 193 to be exact, that are then randomized to create a total of 9,999 uniquely weird goblin characters well-suited for PFP use.
You’ll quickly notice that these characters aren’t… the most appealing to look at. They’re sickly frail, have twisted body proportions, and they have these most surreal expressions on their faces.
They are truly pieces of art that try to break our comfort zone, and expose us to something much further away than what we are used to. That is partly where their success lies as well.
How do I mint Goblin Town?
To mint a Goblin Town NFT, you had to go to their website and navigate to the minting section. Then you had to connect your wallet. This could be done easily by scanning a QR code.
Once that was done, you could mint a free Goblin Town NFT per wallet. That was the limit, and it was put in place to avoid someone buying up a ludicrous amount at once.
While the mint is now officially over, 1000 goblins have been reserved, and may be awarded later on.
How to buy Goblin Town
Since the mint for Goblin Town is now over, you will have to use secondary listings if you want to get in on them while they’re still hot.
You can find Goblin Town NFTs on the big marketplaces such as OpenSea, LooksRare, and X2Y2. If you want to buy from these sites, you typically have to create an account and connect your crypto wallet to the site.
Once that is done, you need to make sure your crypto wallet has enough Eth to cover the price of the Goblin Town NFT and the day’s gas fee.
While the mint for Goblin Town NFTs was free, the price for them on secondary listings aren’t at all. The floor price on OpenSea is, at the time of writing this article, 4.98 Eth which is a significant sum.
Conclusion
Goblin Town is truly an oddity in the NFT community right now. With a massive trade volume sold, and the hype building up to the boiling point, we truly are standing at the threshold of a unique time in NFT history.
Goblin Town succeeded against all odds, and so they have made a blueprint for other projects to break into the scene in the future. Where Goblin Town is headed, we don’t know, but the journey has been exciting so far. It probably will continue to be so.