Project Overview

Smashed Spiders is the first stealth-launch artwork project on the Kadena blockchain. They are working on a unique holder experience so that the community can enjoy fun games, surprises, collaborations, access to follow-up collections (female, next-gen & mutants) and breeding. Smashed Spiders aim to be one of the OG collections in the Kadena Ecosystem.

From stealth to mint

Many projects make you grind for months to score WL spots in their genesis mint and will then sell you their artwork for $100+. That’s one way to do it but Smashed Spiders wanted to deliver first, so everyone who discovers them early has the chance to be a holder, regardless of their budget and how much time they have for Discord challenges, etc.

As they have not shared much information before this, they wanted to take the reader through a few bits of their thinking process and help join the train while it’s still early.

Smashed Spiders knew from the beginning what they wanted to do. But didn’t want to bet on a launchpad to open up to new projects and on finding Pact developers for them. On top of that, they believed they could pull it off on their own — and boy, did they!

The simple truth is that there aren’t that many developers on Kadena who want to spend time creating a contract for an NFT project they don’t own. And if they do, they will probably have a few requests on the line already, just like on other chains. The goal wasn’t to just put out a collection but to learn something along the journey. They wanted to create on their own from start to finish and were confident that the Kadena community would eventually approve — time will tell.

The contract and collection was developed over the last two months with the risk of it not working. Since then, the Smashed Spiders team succeeded in the development challenge, buyers will not have to wait for ages to drop follow-up collections.They have every single aspect dialed in that is needed to launch an improved version of the entire tech stack very quickly, and who knows? Maybe this is what’s in the making already ;-)

If it is growing social channels, collaborations, and prominent supporters you judge a project by, rest assured that all these will follow. However, keep in mind that the price usually reflects much of that already by the time a project looks “solid” from all angles.

Pricing curve

Smashed Spiders start at 5 KDA and increases by 2 KDA for every 1,000 NFTs minted. Naturally, this caused some confusion, but the team explains further below with a few crucial points.

The initial rebate reflects that Smashed Spiders came out of nowhere, with nobody ever having heard of them. But if you think about it, this is precisely what happens with whitelist-based projects: Early backers are getting their discount but are often still asked to pay $100+ for simple PFP projects. Their goal was to make it affordable for everyone in the ecosystem, no matter their financial or time budget, and reward the early backers. Early backers take the highest risk and, therefore, shall reap handsome rewards.

On top of that, they believe that the overall NFT space on Kadena will uplift significantly in the coming months. Right now, there is only a handful of projects on-chain, and the things holders can do with their tokens (staking, access to experiences, etc.) is still very limited. But that will soon change.

Building the future

The founders at Smashed Spiders, want to make clear right from the beginning that they are focused on delivering their roadmap. This is not where they are stopping, it’s just where they stop making promises. Full delivery of the current roadmap will already be far more than most NFT projects deliver in their lifetime — certainly those that promise you the moon on the metaverse.

The team is as bullish on Kadena as anyone could be and chose this ecosystem over other blockchains, even though the community is way smaller (but stronger). By the time Smashed Spiders have ticked all the boxes, the project will be surrounded by a vibrant community that is autonomous, visible, and creative. If you want to open and run a Smashed Spiders Discord today, they will not hold you back because that’s how web3 should work.

After launching this project, the team has become quite savvy at building applications on Kadena. Shortly after launch, they have already been contacted by several other projects asking for help on getting their contract and website ready.

Underpromise and overdeliver

As a project creator, you are facing the task of letting everyone have a fair chance to benefit from it — whether it is gains or joy or future opportunities with other projects they seek. Doing none of this leads to projects going under eventually, and that’s missed potential. Because the real fun starts when the denominating currency makes a significant move, royalties are funnelled to holders, and 10x the number of people are looking to get into a collection. This is unlikely to happen on Polygon or Solana given their maturity, but it is very likely on Kadena where DeFi, marketplaces and other applications haven’t even started.

Creating this collection from the ground up has been a fun and painful experience at the same time and we bow down to everyone who pushes through the challenge. What clearly adds to our joy is knowing that there aren’t that many people who have done this so far. Or, to use the proper jargon: The skill looks rare 👀