The Cool Cats NFT project is one of the most intriguing (and well-known) NFT brands. According to OpenSea’s rating statistics, the collection swiftly gained the No. 3 slot in terms of both popularity and sales volume after its July 2021 debut. In the end, the NFT collection placed third, barely behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and CryptoPunks. Despite the fact that the Cool Cats NFTs have recently fallen a bit in the rankings, the collection of generative avatar projects often remains in the top 20.
In actuality, the current overall transaction volume of Cool Cats is approaching $300 million.
Currently, the adorable blue cats have a thriving and active community. Moreover, the team behind the NFT collection has made it plain that their objective is to develop and advance the NFT sector. How? By means of games, live events, a novel voting mechanism, and a top-secret undertaking.
The details of this secret initiative are, sadly, quite a few. However, we have collected all the accessible information. Here is what we know about the project’s trajectory.
Before We Begin, What Are Cool Cat NFTs?
Cool Cats is a collection of 9,999 NFTs created automatically and at random. Similar to predecessors such as CryptoPunks, each Cool Cat NFT consists of a number of distinct characteristics. There are nearly 300,000 potential combinations that include distinct bodies, faces, facial hair, headgear, spectacles, and clothing items, among others.
Obviously, not every Cool Cat is made equal. Some are significantly colder (i.e. rarer) than others.
Approximately fifty percent of the Cool Cat NFTs have a basic level of “coolness,” meaning they are worth three or four points. Some Cats are “wild,” “classy,” and even “exotic,” as seen in the table below. Cool Cat NFTs bearing this designation is much more valuable. While this grading system is a reference to CryptoPunks and even CryptoSkulls, any member of the Cool Cats community will tell you that every cat is a Cool Cat.
And Who Created Cool Cats?
The Cool Cats consist of four individuals. Tom Williamson (xtremetom) is a specialist in blockchain and smart contracts. Rob Mehew (Lynqoid) is the manager and web developer. Evan Luza (ELU) is the director of creativity. The artist is finally Colin Egan (clone), also known as The Cartoonist.
In an interview with catster, Egan described the origin of the project’s concept. “I’ve drawn cartoon characters my whole childhood, but I didn’t start drawing cats until high school. […] “Eventually, I became known as the man who drew cats, and that’s when I began turning it into my cartoon drawings, which were before just doodles,” he explained.
All Cool Cats are developed from “Blue Cat,” a high school figure that Egan drew. According to the Cool Cats page on Medium, Colin “spent years refining the line weight, ear height, and whisker length of Blue Cat in order to get his indisputably cool and adorable final shape.”
Awesome Cats PFPs were introduced on July 1, 2021, by a group of self-described “nerds who are enthusiastic about crypto, art, and making cool stuff.”
Why Is Cool Cat NFTs So Expensive And Popular?
Cool Cats followed the Bored Ape Yacht Club in close proximity. While BAYC was clearly the spark for the profile-picture (PFP) NFT boom that occurred in the summer of 2021, Cool Cats played a significant role in leading the avatar stampede.
Priced at 0.06 ETH per unit, or around $150 at the time, Cool Cats PFPs were initially offered to 300 NFTs. The company then reduced the price to 0.02 ETH per mint (about $50). It sold out in around eight hours. In the days that followed, the project would erupt across the NFT ecosystem. The price of the NFTs surged rapidly to 0.66 ETH (about $1,000).
Why did it become so successful? Celebrities, mostly.
Mike Tyson endorsed Cool Cats shortly after its release, only eight days after its debut. By converting his Twitter PFP to a Cool Cat, the boxing icon helped both himself and Cool Cats become more prominent members of the NFT community. Reese Witherspoon, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, and DJ Steve Aoki are noteworthy Cool Cats owners today.
Cool Cats Utility: What does Cool Cats offer its community?
Early on, “we like the Cats” became Cool Cats’ official tagline. As trading picked up and NFT aficionados became optimistic (confident owing to variables such as rising prices and increased celebrity backing), the Cool Cats’ collective attitude of positivity and excitement was rapidly developed. Ultimately, a community built on optimism is one of the project’s key offers.
As with most other PFP NFT initiatives, Cool Cats became a community-focused endeavor.
Cooltopia was established to provide a warm welcome to anybody who enters the Cool Cats realm. Cooltopia is the entirety of the Cool Cats ecosystem, including the official Twitter, Discord server, Cool Shop, marketplace, etc. The designers have endeavored to make their whole ecosystem into a type of gamified NFT experience that unites all Cool Cat NFT holders. In a blog post, the creators noted that they aimed to create “a location where possessing a Cool Cats NFT provides you evolving access to games, tokens, community events, and more.”
The ownership of one of the tens of thousands of Cool Cats PFPs comes with a variety of benefits. In addition to a unique position in the Discord, holders also have access to airdrops, priority minting for any future Cool Cats ventures, online and live Cool Cats events, and a non-exclusive license to the NFT they possess.
The Cool Cats website also claims that 20% of all ETH earned is returned to the community via raffles, contests, and other means. Cool Cats aims to provide purchasers with a voice and a genuine presence in their community.
As licensing has been a recurring source of discussion within the NFT industry, Cool Cats’ non-exclusive license helps bypass the typical issues by providing its users the freedom to do anything they like with their personal Cool Cat NFTs. Likewise, the Cool Cats producers maintain the right to utilize any of their 10,000 NFT collection of Cool Cats for merchandise, marketing, etc.
Cool Cats formed its first big cooperation in August of 2021, exercising the latitude granted to project creators and NFT holders under the non-exclusive license. The partnership, which included 100 TIME-branded editions of Xtremetom, Lynoid, ELU, and clon’s distinctive cats, was released alongside a meme competition and sparked an increased trend in the secondary market for Cool Cats.
What Are Cool Pets?
In September 2021, the launch of Cool Pets and the $MILK token caused the Cool Cats ecosystem (a.k.a. Cooltopia) to boom. These two announcements further boosted secondary sales, propelling the Cool Cats floor into the double digits for the first time.
Cool Pets is an NFT series that corresponds with the Cool Cats PFPs. As companion collections such as the Bored Ape Kennel Club, KingFrogs, and Thingies have helped popular projects capitalize on demand and extend their collector base, it appears that Cool Cats is taking the same approach with its Pets.
Cool Pets has 19,999 NFTs, of which half are reserved for Cool Cats owners and the other half are available to the general public. All Pets begin life as Egg before evolving into their ultimate form, which represents one of four elements: Grass, Fire, Water, or Air. The food and things supplied to an Egg define the appearance and elements of the hatchling.
Items are obtained via treasure boxes that may be purchased for $MILK from the Cool Cats Market. By completing daily missions with your Cool Pet, you may win $MILK. There are more than 100 different tasks, including fan favorites such as Save the Forest, Go Greet the Frogs, Sniff for Danger, and Get to Know the Townspeople. You may make $MILK per day as a Cool Cat holder simply by claiming it.
What Is The $MILK Token?
The $MILK coin is the social token of the Cool Cats ecosystem. $MILK is required for a variety of activities, such as purchasing Pet chests, Battle chests, Housing chests, completing Quests, and future gamification.
The unveiling of $MILK also spawned a new craze among Cool Cats members: the milk chug. Community members and Cool Cats’ creators began posting videos of themselves drinking everything from a tiny glass to a gallon of milk in celebration of the rising floor and token announcement.
Cool Cats Statistics
Cool Cats is the eleventh greatest NFT project in terms of sales as of March 2022. They have documented total sales of $290.44 million over 11,353 merchants and 35,939 transactions. Currently, the NFT floor price for Cool Cats is 8.5 ether, or $25,900. Metrics indicate that Cool Cats has a market valuation of around $261 million.
This section will be updated periodically so interested parties may view a record of the pricing changes.
How To Buy Cool Cats NFTs
Currently, Cool Cats are only available on secondary marketplaces such as OpenSea. The minimum price for a Cool Cat as of March 2022 is 7.88 ETH (about $27,000 USD).
The Prospects For Cool Cats
The developers of Cool Cats signed with CAA, a prominent talent agency in Los Angeles, California, in March 2021. According to a news release, “the agency will find and create possibilities for Cool Cats characters in a variety of sectors, such as licencing and merchandise, animation content, brand collaborations, live events, and publishing.”
Cool Cats and Cool Pets are only the beginning of the vast ecosystem the founders of Cooltopia have envisaged. Joining together with CAA will only increase the potential for expansion.
The Hollywood Reporter quoted co-founder Luza as saying, “People’s view of Cool Cats just existing in the NFT capacity at the moment, but that’s really just our launching platform for the brand as a whole, so we aim to take it in every possible direction.”
And what is the status of the top-secret project? Aside from a remark on the official roadmap, no more information has been provided.
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