Resurrection
CryptoFace: One of the first attempts of on-chain profile picture identity on the Ethereum blockchain, brought back by the IlluminatiNFT DAO.
Quick Brief
On March 14th, 2017, the first known attempt of on-chain identity on the Ethereum blockchain was created, almost 3 months before Cryptopunks. It was called CryptoFace. Developed originally as a hackathon project, it was quickly abandoned after receiving very little external traction.
Today, the Illuminati Association (“IlluminatiDAO”) has resurrected CryptoFace (known in development as OPP — Operation Pre-Punks). IlluminatiNFT holders will be able to mint one per IlluminatiNFT and The 187 NFT they own.
Minting for IlluminatiNFT and 187 holders is live (https://www.cryptoface.me) and will be open until November 3rd.
Simultaneously, we are launching a Premint for 685 spots available to the public. To enter the premint follow this link (https://www.premint.xyz/cryptoface). Premint entry will close on October 10th at 11:59pm ET.
After the Premint raffle is over, and the winners are notified, the final 1,000 mints will be raffled to goblintown holders. Each week, for a total of 4 weeks, 250 spots will be raffled to goblin holders. 1 goblin = 1 ticket, and no goblin token will be able to win twice (but a single holder can win for as many goblins as they have). There is no Premint for goblins. They do not need to do anything to enter.
Any unclaimed mints will be claimed by the DAO, who will vote on any next steps.
In addition to giving each holder something historically significant, we are also pairing it with a unique royalty and licensing structure.
But first, some backstory.
Quick CryptoFace History
CrytpoFace was developed by the “Crypto Camp” incubator. The contract, minted with the name “Avatars,” includes many comments such as “Stores an Avatar on the blockchain.” It allowed a user to select a body type, background, clothes, ears, eyebrows, eyes, iris, face shape, glasses, hair, mouth, nose, beard, and mustache for their avatar. These attributes could also be generated in different colors, sizes, and positions. Even with so many possible avatars, a feature built into the contract prevented the same avatar from being minted more than once. When viewing on etherscan, the transaction data clearly shows the encoding of the attributes and colors. The project’s original daap/website is no longer active (face.crypto.camp), but website snapshots show that this interface allowed a person to generate an avatar.
CryptoFace has historical significance in the NFT world as the first known attempt of on-chain identity on the Ethereum blockchain. CryptoFace’s development pre-dates any ETH NFT standards, so it has been sitting on the blockchain with only a handful of contract interactions in the past 5+ years. The CryptoFace project was broadly intended for identity-based use cases, such as using the profile pictures within social media apps. This is in contrast to CrytpoPunks, as early news articles focused on their description as collectible digital art. The stated intention by CryptoFace increases its historical significance within the pfp NFT space.
So why has nobody done anything with CryptoFace before?
CryptoFace isn’t an unknown project (it’s popped up a few times in crypto archaeologist posts), and there have been a handful of interactions with the smart contract since its inception. Combined with being far less known AND a historical artifact, this contract also produces a non-transferrable hash containing the encoded image attribute data. This has led most people to believe there isn’t anything that can actually be done with CryptoFace. It predates almost all NFT standards, which complicates things further.
While we don’t know the original creators intent, the likely reason why it was non-transferable was because the developer asked themselves “why would you ever transfer your identity.” It’s easy to see now why we would want this feature (new wallets, etc.), but back then, they were envisioning it more like the soul-bound token that Vitalik has mentioned before.
In order to turn CryptoFace into something more than just a historical artifact, we came up with a solution to address the non-transferable token with an innovative licensing and royalty approach.
How did the IlluminatiDAO come to learn about it?
One of our earliest IlluminatiNFT holders, Brother Nathan (@natmyhat), reached out to the team with his discovery of CryptoFace, sharing a great write up of what he thought was an interesting opportunity. Once the IlluminatiDAO token was distributed and we began to put proposals out, the community was briefed on the opportunity, and we quickly approved the necessary funding to resurrect the project.
The IlluminatiDAO’s Approach To Resurrecting CryptoFace
First, it was collectively decided to try our hardest to keep true to the original attempt back in 2017. Instead of updating the art, we used the same avatar collection that was originally used, generating a hash from the 2017 contract, making the avatars something you need to customize and create yourself, and more. The main difference is the IlluminatiDAO decided that OUR collection of CryptoFace would have a set supply of avatars. The IlluminatiDAO’s opinion was that leaving an unlimited supply wouldn’t maximize the historical significance of the project (being the first set collection on top of the OG contract).
So once you have a piece of history in your wallet, what about the issue of it being a non-transferrable hash? This, we believe, has led any previous developer who discovered CryptoFace to not pursue it.
As a collective, this is where we came up with a little innovation around the non-transferrable hash. Every initial minter will be able to use their own artistic vision to create an original CryptoFace NFT customized by them. In a single transaction, Cryptoface minters will register their unique hash to the original smart contract and produce an NFT using the metadata from that contract hash on our new smart contract. This way, your token has direct provenance from the historical contract while being usable and meaningful on modern token platforms and dApps.
What we did differently was implement a process where all initial minters exclusively license their artistic creation to the parallel ERC 721 compliant token, which can be (i) held forever by the initial minter (as an ERC 721), or alternatively (ii) be bought or sold, with the initial minter still receiving a cut of royalties.
So what does this mean? If you mint a CryptoFace NFT and decide to sell for .5 ETH — first, you get that amount (minus any transaction or market fees) like any other NFT sale. But let’s say the next person sells the one they bought from you for 1 ETH. You, as the initial minter, now get 3% of the sale by the next person to a new person (40% of the 7.5% transaction fee, which equals 3% of the total sale). In this example, that would leave the initial minter with 0.03 ETH. The new buyer receives the exclusive commercial license to the image and corresponding ERC 721 CryptoFace NFT, retaining its historical value and present-day use.
We consider this licensing and royalty innovation of general interest to the wider NFT community, since it provides a perpetual incentive to the original minter to support the project and engage in the community, regardless of whether they sold their NFT or not.
We’re excited about the historic nature of the NFT, and this fun new and innovative licensing and royalty model. On top of that, the avatars happen to be a lot of fun to make, and we hope they will bring out the creativity of each initial minter.
Minting and Next Steps
This project was brought to, voted on, and built by the IlluminatiDAO. The decision from the IlluminatiDAO was each IlluminatiNFT and 187 holder would receive 1 mint per NFT they hold. Another 1,000 mints would be raffled off over a few weeks to goblintown holders, and the remaining 685 would be raffled via Premint open to the public. Any mints that go unclaimed (there will be a 30 day claim period for IlluminatiNFT and 187 holders) will be claimed and added to the IlluminatiDAO treasury.
We’re really excited about this project and how the wider NFT Community will react to it.
