We are FOR3V3R D34D, but we haven’t always been.

Prior to May 2023, we were just a group of enthusiasts of a NFT project called XXD34D that was created and promoted by an undoxxed founder known on Twitter as EEBandlee. That project launched on April 6, 2023 as a free mint, fully embracing the meme of “NFTs are D34D.” Bear market vibes, you know.

It minted out fast and quickly reached 1000 ETH in secondary sales. XXD34D members were absolutely everywhere on Twitter. The meme potential of the collection was high and the community that gathered was more than willing to exploit that to the highest degree. For a time, every raid target was completely filled with brightly colored skulls & XXD34D related hashtags. At the high point there were 7 full Twitter raid chats as well as a community organized Discord — just furious levels of activity.

EEBandlee was very quiet as far as founders go. He made it clear from the outset that it was an art-based project with no promised utility. He Tweeted infrequently. A few days after the project minted out he began dropping hints that something else was coming — often accompanied by images of cyborg themed derivatives of the original art. Speculation ran rampant, fueling secondary sales and more intense Twitter activity.

The vague hints of future action kept coming, intensifying about 2 weeks after the initial mint. On the 21st of April, the fanatic XXD34D community found out what was coming…a terrible derivative cash grab project XX4M1G05. This was a mashup of Nakamigos and the XXD34D, poorly executed, and without any real benefit for XXD34D holders. This was the moment that everything began to go downhill. And it went downhill fast.

While that derivative collection did mint out, it was fully botted, and sentiment in the chats really started to turn against EEBandlee. Just a few days later, as the memecoin meta began to surge, he created, promoted and rugged a memecoin called $NFT within 10 hours. He then scrubbed his Twitter account and disappeared, never to be heard from again.

Those of us who had invested heavily in XXD34D were left holding the bag, stunned that the founder couldn’t see what a high value community his art had built. Not only were we expert raiders and real appreciators of the skulls, but we’d formed strong community bonds that could have been used by a smart founder to do almost anything! But, Bandlee was not a smart founder. He was a serial rugger, a scammer and a clown.

The community wasn’t ready to give up so easily, however.

The core XXD34D enthusiasts began to talk about what a life without Bandlee would look like. Despite many attempts, he never spoke to us directly, and so getting control of the contract seemed a lost cause. Ideas were passed back and forth and discussed, potential XXD34D inspired collections sketched out, and eventually, a direction emerged.

A small group of consistent community members began to self-assemble on the community Discord into what is now the team! Over the last three months, we’ve been hard at work building lines of communication, generating ideas and getting organized around our central vision and values. None of us ever intended to be founders of a project — but that’s what has ended up happening.

The first Clown Card, created by XXD34D community member MarkC__

We started out with an Open Edition series called the Clown Cards. These OE are artworks from the community that parody EEBandlee and his scammy rugging ways. We created this collection in part as a type of community catharsis to get our feelings off our chest, and to wash the scammer out of our hair. We also hoped it would keep the diehard XXD34D community members connected and engaged as we plotted out our next steps.

And now, we’re ready to drop our first collection : FOR3V3R D34D. This collection makes good on the team’s ultimate desire to make the original community whole by giving them pfps that have a similar art style and vibe, but improve on it. The new collection is much improved artistically, with some new traits we know the community will love. But, it’s also improved from the perspective of having a devoted team behind it who won’t just rug and disappear with the cash.

A sneak peek of the new collection

Our next article will dive a bit more into the FOR3V3R D34D collection itself. In the meantime — stay D34D.



From medium article: https://medium.com/@FOR3V3RD34D/the-story-of-how-we-were-born-d34d-b604e879bf89