PROOF Collective Updates: The Future of Moonbirds and PROOF

PROOF Collective recently announced new utility and collections for their Moonbirds NFT ecosystem, though some won’t arrive until 2023. In their Future PROOF event in August, many of the team showed up on livestream to discuss future plans for Moonbirds and beyond.

These included updates for the PROOF pass, Grails, Moonbirds, Oddities, IRL events, their upcoming token, their impressive Series A funding round, and more.

What is PROOF Collective?

PROOF Collective is a private, limited NFT membership collection targeted at NFT collectors and investors. On the website, it says “Membership includes access to our private Discord, early access to the PROOF podcast, in-person events, and other collaborations created exclusively for PROOF Collective members.”

There are 1,000 PROOF Collective NFTs, and they sold out on December 11, 2021, at a Dutch auction price around 1 Ethereum. It was the original access NFT for all things PROOF. The floor is now 48 Ethereum.

The founding team includes:

• Justin Mezzell, artist who has worked with Google, Disney, Facebook, and more
• Kevin Rose, founder of Digg and former angel investor
• Ryan Carson, founder of Treehouse and Dropsend (left the Moonbirds team to create his own NFT fund, 121g)
• Ryan LeFevre, storied engineer

The team recently added Punk9059 as the Director of Research for PROOF.

Grails

Grails is an NFT collection of unique pieces of art, only available to mint by PROOF pass holders (and nested Grail trait Moonbird holders). The trick is, the artists’ names are not revealed until after the minting window has closed. This brings in mysterious and fun elements, as people try to guess which artist has created their favorite work.

Moonbirds

The PROOF team launched Moonbirds on April 16, 2022. Moonbirds NFTs are a collection of 10,000 owl-themed pixel PFPs with additional utility and its own sub-communities. Moonbirds can be nested (a form of staking) to receive rewards, both digital and IRL.

As the community grew larger and stronger, they got a surprise: Holders used to have commercial rights to their Moonbirds, but PROOF switched this to CC0 (public domain). While this was a controversial decision, the team has moved forward in building for the future of Moonbirds under the free-to-use license.

Oddities by Gremplin — Nouns and Cryptoadz artist —were airdropped to nested Moonbird holders as a secondary PFP in June 2022. They will be used in the gamification for Moonbirds Mythics.

Future PROOF Event

On August 30, 2022, Rose and Mezzell led a livestream that detailed the future of the PROOF ecosystem. This was a much-anticipated event, and many different updates were given, from Moonbirds utility to the future of PROOF.

PROOF Collective Art: Grails

During the event, the team discussed plans for future art collections and art collaborations. These will likely be limited to holders of the PROOF pass only. Alongside Grails — which will happen three times per year, there will be more collabs with other artists in the space to unlock their creativity in the space.

Genesis aims to bring traditional artists into Web3, by having them create their first NFT collection with PROOF. Curated will have current PROOF artists curate other top artists, continuing PROOF’s mission to be a place for upcoming and diverse artists.

Moonbirds DAO

The Moonbirds DAO will be established with a treasury, initially funded from PROOF. A portion of future royalties will then be added to the treasury. Since Moonbirds art is CC0, the main purpose of the DAO is to choose which derivative projects can use the “Moonbirds” name (which is not CC0), and grow the community.

Moonbirds Mythics

The Moonbirds community will be expanding with Mythics, a 20,000 PFP collection. The PROOF team went deep into the story of what Mythics are all about. Basically, the Oddities found eggs deep underground which were hidden for many years. The Mythics will be in these eggs.

In order to get a Mythic, you can burn an Oddity, but only 25 total can be burned per day. Nested Moonbirds also have a chance of getting a Mythic, again only 25 will be chosen per day. Both collections have an equal shot at scoring a Rare Mythic.

More details will be revealed as the team gets closer to the launch. Moonbirds Mythics aren’t expect to release until Q1 2023, at the earliest.

An additional note from this event: original Moonbirds art is moving on-chain, rather than being stored on IPFS.

PROOF Collective Funding Round

PROOF received $50 million in funding, led by a16z, for its Series A round — a massive investment to move the project forward. The funding will be used to scale the Moonbirds team and build a social platform for PROOF collectors and artists.

The quote from a16z’s press release states: “We believe that the next generation of massive mainstream media franchises will be community-owned and governed, and PROOF is one of those companies demonstrating just that. “

Wen PROOF Token?

There wasn’t too much information released about this during the event, but the team did say they are planning to release a fungible token. This is the first confirmation that a PROOF token is coming. ETA is 2023.

Proof of Conference

A future web3 conference led by PROOF was announced during the event.

PROOF pass holders will get priority access, and other PROOF PFP holders (Moonbirds and Oddities) will be able to get discounted passes. The team says the conference is set for “mid-2023.”

With VeeCon being a massive success in 2022, web3 conferences are continuing to grow, especially ones that are curated to bring together the best of the best in the space.

They also announced smaller casual meet-ups that will take PROOF on a European tour, including Lisbon, Paris, Berlin, and London. They are also considering Asia and Australia for more international meet-ups.

TL;DR — PROOF Collective Updates

Since its start in December 2021, PROOF Collective has accomplished a lot. They aim to bring new artists in the Web3 world, and strengthen their own community — PROOF, Moonbirds, and Oddities collectors — at the same time.

There have been a few challenges along the way, with Ryan Carson abruptly departing, as well as the surprising CC0 news. However, the sentiment remains positive around the different facets of their ecosystem that PROOF is building, and their status in the NFT space.

You can see the full breakdown of the event in this Twitter thread by Proof moderator bennyhsu.

If all goes to plan, 2023 will be a banner year for PROOF. Expanding with Mythics, holding an IRL conference (a la VeeCon), and dropping a (useful) fungible token are all on the radar for the first half of the year.

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The image for this blog was created by Dall-E 2 by OpenAI.