A Guide to mfers: Created by Sartoshi, Community Owned
by corporate trash
6/9/2022
Mfers is a collection of 10,000 NFT stick-figure drawings by the meme master Sartoshi — @sartoshi_nft on Twitter. Mfers originated from a meme, but have taken on a life of their own. These unique NFTs are full of personality, showcasing degenerates slouched over at their computer desks.
Only half a year after it launched, the project has created a community on their own in the spirit of CC0 and public domain. These stick figures have been everywhere from a billboard in Times Square to starring in their own film. The community is even building the 3D mferverse. Sartoshi has started a movement, all in the spirit of Web3.
But as of June 9, 2022, Sartoshi is no more — and they’re handing the reins over to the mfer collectors themselves.
Who is sartoshi?
Sartoshi is a popular anonymous meme creator on NFT Twitter who has over 180,000 followers as of writing. The name is a play on Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous founder of Bitcoin. Sartoshi put “art” in the name to make it about digital art — or NFTs.
They have released some cartoon and 1-of-1 art on Foundation. Some of their most popular drawings on Twitter are repurposing the “Are Ya Winning, Son?” meme. Sartoshi drew hilarious and relatable memes for the NFT and crypto community. These would be the inspiration for their first PFP collection, mfers.
Sartoshi recently announced “the end of Sartoshi” as they passed along ownership of mfers to community leaders, including royalties.
What are mfers?
Mfers is a 10,000 item Ethereum NFT collection that minted on November 30, 2021 at 4:20 p.m. — to stay consistent with meme culture. Each mint cost 0.069 Ethereum each, and it minted out in about 10 minutes in a gas war, with no promos or allowlist. In addition to the 10,000, there were 21 1-of-1 NFTs.
In Sartoshi’s post “what are mfers?” he says: “The world of mfers I envisioned would epitomize the simple idea that ‘we all mfers.’ There is no king, ruler, or defined roadmap–and mfers can build whatever they can think of with these mfers.”
Mfers NFT Traits
These NFTs are based off the smoking stick figure in the “Are Ya Winning Son?” meme. Sartoshi made it their profile picture and got to thinking: what if they made 10,000 of these stick figures? Many of them have this same cigarette in their mouth as the original meme does.
There are five types of mfers, the rarest being Alien with only nine in existence. There are also 28 Apes and 89 Zombies, taking inspiration from the Cryptopunks collection. 15 categories of attributes can be mixed up to create an mfer.
These traits include headphones, watches, slight smiles, sunglasses, pipes, mohawks, and more. There are male- and female-presenting mfers, so everyone can find one that fits their Web3 personality.
The highest the floor ever reached was 5.77 Ethereum in February 2022. The floor was 2.4 Ethereum before the announcement of sartoshi handing the project to the community, but the floor dipped to 1.8 afterward. The highest selling to date was a rare Alien sold for 80 Ethereum, or about $226,000 at the time. It sold on March 3, 2022.
Creyzies NFT for mfers
Although no promises were made after the launch, one official companion airdrop happened on April 20, 2022 (4/20, appropriately). The airdrop is the Creyzies collection, a derivative by the artist Pablo Esteban Sánchez Rijlaarsdam — known to most as REY. The floor is currently 0.12 Ethereum.
Mfers CC0 Community
Mfers join many other NFT projects in offering a license of CC0, or public domain, on the artwork. This means that anyone can use the mfers art for commercial usage, whether they own it or not. Some other popular CC0 projects include Cryptoadz by Gremplin, Goblintown, Nouns, Blitmap, Forgotten Runes Wizards Cult, Chain Runners and more.
By implementing this, the community can be built organically with no limits on who is able to use the art. There is no permission needed to create derivatives, merch, songs, books, films, and more. More are being made by the nearly 5,600 unique collectors as this is written.
Animated mfers launched their own news channel series. Mfer Radio brings like-minded collectors together all over the world. Mfer studios is making a movie. There is even an mferverse offering a 3D version of holders’ characters.
The Mfers Next Era: End of Sartoshi
On June 9, Sartoshi announced news that everyone had been waiting on the edge of their seat for. Sartoshi had teased this “next era” on Twitter with many drawings leading up to the announcement. The floor price of mfers went up to around 2.5 Ethereum in anticipation of the announcement.
The big news? Sartoshi is ending their short-lived career, essentially “completing the meme,” as they call it. The mfers contract will be transferred to a community multi-sig wallet, consisting of 7 OG mfers that lead the current community and run the @unofficialmfers Twitter.
Those seven are known as: imp0ster, zhoug, masterchan, metabananas, lexito, mleejr, and kml. Four signatures will be required for transactions from the multi-sig.
The royalties have also been changed to give 50 percent to this community wallet. Sartoshi will remain 25 percent of royalties, and the other 25 percent will continue to flow to the rest of the mfers team.
Their final generative art work End of Sartoshi went on sale for a 12-hour open edition only on June 9, 2022. You can shop the collection on MomentRanks.
TL;DR — mfers NFT
The spirit and simplicity of these stick figures has struck a chord with thousands in the NFT community. The power of memes and CC0 collections should not go unnoticed, as we have seen time and time again that they bring people together.
The future of the project is now in the hands of the mfer holders. Will they be able to persist without the direct ties to Sartoshi? They already have a strong start with an organic community — only time will tell.