In its theatrical launch, Goblintown has tweeted its way to # 2 on OpenSea. Cloaked in mystery and rumors wrongly suggesting everything from who drew the NFTs to who was responsible for its launch. Goblintown had a total volume in sales of $18 in its first week.
The Click that Makes You Wonder
Clicking the website, you hear Goblinese, low shrieking to a backdrop of eerie music. The graphics are colorful, intricate, and, well…garish. Halloweenish in design, these Goblintown NFTs are reminiscent of spooky preteen book covers.
Goblintown NFTs launched on May 22 of this year. Their creators were anonymous. The NFTs are free mint and have no utility. To use the website’s own words, wtf? They had to be kidding? They weren’t. You could buy the creative commons zero (CCO) NFT and do whatever you want. Exploit away! They were upfront about having no roadmap or Discord, and people bought them all.
Their marketing was either insane or genius. In the end, it was genius. In the first three weeks, their floor price jumped by 500% to 2.5 Ethereum. Only a transaction fee was paid if they were purchased during the public sale. Of these free mint NFTs, only a handful may ever be worth much. All 10,000 (only 9,000 were in the launch) free mint NFTs were sold. OpenSea saw the price go from zero to 6 ETH (S11,500,) with rare NFTs going for triple the price.
More Hype, Oopsies, and Utilipee
At midnight on May 26, four days after the Goblintown launch, a Twitter space presentation offered eerie Goblinese and speakers for hours that drew 86,000 NFT curious fans. The following speculation was that Beeple, a known crypto artist was responsible for the drawings. He would later refute this and state the collection was a “shockingly low effort pump and dump project.”
Two weeks before the McGoblin Burger launch, it was tweeted that this NFT would have a possible six toppings (meat, slop, and fries plus others) contractually attached to the token. They were only claimable if you owned a Goblintown token. It was explained that Oopsies and Utilipee were tied to each NFT. By enabling Utilipee, you lose your Oppsie but gain distinct metadata for the token, so your toppings no longer matter. Burning or eating your token places you in Nomz, whose function has yet to be revealed.
Of Hobbits and Goblins
If this feels like a J.R.R. Tolkien movie, it was done on purpose. Goblintown is a reference to a song from the Hobbit, “Down, Down to Goblin Town,” representing a downward market. The launch date was no mistake either. It was right after Crypto dived. Every bit of hype for this NFT was a calculated marketing move with no credit being taken.
Goblins of Goblintown NFT
Truth Labs Makes Goblintown Confession
So far, all announcements about Goblin Town have been made in tweet form. Ultimately Goblintown has tweeted its way to #2 on OpenSea. The website offers minimal information besides some crudely worded signs telling you what to do and creepy music. Three-word instructions lead you to create a wallet. Then a few more words tell you to buy without being greedy. If you are minimalist, this website was designed for you!
The mid-June tweet reveals that the token is the brainchild of Truth Labs, whose other creations include 187 and Illuminati. The Web3 enterprise is powered by blockchain, and co-founders Cesar Kuriyama and Alexander Taub threw more fuel on their fire. They are raffling off 900/1000 goblins they held from the original launch to those with Truth Projects tokens with 50 goblins placed in Illuminati. They will auction five goblins daily over the next six months, and the team will keep the remaining 50. Following the Truth Labs reveal, Goblintown dropped by 23%, as did McGoblin. So much for the hype!
Goblintown Merchandising Meets Live Event
In the same mid-June tweet, they unveil the McGoblinburger Truck and the drop of their merchandise, everything from expensive cars to t-shirts. But the Goblin Sauce produced by Lee Kum Kee (a Hong Kong-based company) is the protected draw. Access to the sauce is through a password-protected website. By early July, Goblintown reports that 9,999 tokens had been taken.
NFT NYC 2022 was swarmed by Goblintown’s cult-like following, many dressed as goblins. The McGoblinburger truck and its goblin staff make an appearance. Their show as a community was said to be “Goblinpressive!”
M.Goblin Burger
Truth Labs Laughs All the Way to the Bank
Despite the price drop in GoblinTown after the co-founders were revealed, they continued to gain momentum throughout the summer. Floor prices jumped to $4800 (4ETH), with #8995 selling for $136,4400. July saw Goblintown had tweeted its way to # 2 OpenSea. In late summer, Goblintown’s total sales volume was $227.78k, and the average price was up to $1.4k.
Goblintown’s McFuture
Late last month, Truth Labs announced its efforts to help reduce the exorbitant fees (OpenSea’s final take is 2.5% of a final sale) on NFT marketplaces and create a better system of reporting stolen digital collections. Their solution is Truth Labs Marketplace’s beta version, a secondary platform for NFTs that offers lower royalty fees(5%), and a partnership with Snag Solution, currently a white-label marketplace.
Despite the falling crypto prices, Truth Labs has turned tweets, hype, and Goblins into a multi-million dollar enterprise. But are these NFTs forever crypto or just the initial phase of The Goblintown empire?
