Four minutes was all it took for Imaginary One’s public mint to sell out.
What started out as an NFT announcement on Twitter grew to a following of 14,000 overnight, and its current follower count is now over 523,000.
One thing IONs did differently was using a Dutch Auction system for its public mint.
A Dutch Auction is a reverse auction which starts at a predetermined price and drops at intervals until everything else sells out.
It was derived from notable NFT projects like Karafuru and Antonym, to shift the profits from miners back to the project.
As mentioned on their website, the team set a maximum cap of 1.5ETH in the Dutch Auction to allow early supporters to enter the project at a reasonable price.
However, the remaining NFTs for the public mint were all sold out in four minutes at the price of 0.6ETH.
We got in contact with one of the ION founders, Clement Chia, and here’s what he had to say in response to the incredible success minting out in four minutes:
“I feel extremely overwhelmed and happy currently, it shows how much demand there is for the project, and it is a good sign. We are in the beginning phase of IONs and we can’t thank our supporters enough for believing in the project”
Clement also mentioned that the team carried out continuous testing and audits of the smart contract, to prevent it from being compromised.
The inspiration behind Imaginary Ones
IONs was inspired by the genesis creation of which can be seen in Clement’s Instagram below.
He used to create ASMR spherical animation on his Instagram six years ago to help de-stress from work. Now, he hopes that his art can imbibe happiness in people.
The vibrant colors of the pieces that he created started to catch the attention of a wider target audience, and became something that people were able to relate to.
Clement then ventured into the Web3 world and created the first five IONs characters during his company’s year end break which instantly became viral on Twitter.
Attributing the success to the team
Clement told Chain Debrief that he would like to attribute the success of the project to the entire founding team (GentleWhale, Kbby, NineFootTable, Mighty Mousey).
“Everyone has done an amazing job in every aspect,” he said.
Addressing the FUD
According to Clement, there was “no evidence” in proving the FUD surrounding the project, and it was likely created by those who wanted to drive down the price of the NFT.
Although some skeptics started to believe that the IONs founding team was not doxxed, Clement said that the team had in fact shown their faces multiple times in multiple articles that featured the work they do.
Furthermore, Clement and his team are the founders of Offset – a successful media agency in Singapore.
“From our perspective, it seems to be a coordinated attack to bring the DA price down,” shared Clement.
There was also another rumor stating that the team bought a few hundred NFTs to pump up the floor price, but Clement clarified that the buyer was in fact one of his genesis NFT holders, and a huge supporter of his work.
“Our goal has always been to create the next blue-chip NFT. Our team has worked tirelessly to make sure that the art and community are amazing,” said Clement.
Challenges the team faced
Despite the popularity of the project, Clement did not expect IONs to grow to such scale in the beginning.
In fact, the team’s initial idea was to create a project with 500 characters. When the demand started to grow, they had to think of a scalable way to design the project.
3D animation collections were also relatively new, and Clement shared that being able to create something of such a feat in the Web 3 space was very satisfying for the team.
However, managing the community also posed a huge challenge – when the hype around the project grew, so did the amount of people on Discord and Twitter, and having a large number of moderators on the team was a key success factor for community building.
The whitelist system was also another challenge. The team tried to give whitelists out in the most creative way possible, so as not to encourage mindless grinding on servers. They also wanted to ensure that the activities were healthy and family-oriented.
What’s to come?
The team has already started planning for the next phase of drops which include building a strong utility for the project.
They will be expanding the team to ensure faster developments in collection drops, and in technology. One such reveal was the Imaginary Vehicles which will be part of their next phase.
The team is consistently building towards the Imaginary World through different phases. Stay tuned for any updates that may come in the future.
[Editor’s Note: This article does not represent financial advice. Please do your own research before investing.]
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