Mfers: An Atypical Success Story in the NFT Space

Author: Yanyan, The SeeDAO

Although it's difficult to grasp the intricacies behind NFTs, I know that most successful projects always have a traceable path. For example, the reason why "crypto aristocrats" are willing to spend six figures on CryptoPunks is that it is a pioneering project in the NFT space, holding historical collectible value.

Similarly, they are willing to pay more for BAYC because it has expanded into a mature brand and has collaborated with Adidas and Rolling Stone. But even if you think you have seen it all in various NFT projects, you probably still can't understand the logic behind the explosive popularity of "mfers."

Like the popular NFT projects mentioned earlier, mfers also consists of about 10,000 pieces (specifically, 10,021 pieces) of NFT art. Each piece features a stick figure wearing headphones and typing on an off-screen keyboard. Since its release on November 30, the trading volume of mfers has exceeded 90 million USD, surpassing the box office of most Hollywood films.

If you want to acquire an mfer, the cheapest one currently on OpenSea is 2.69 eth, roughly equivalent to 9,000 USD.

Most NFT buyers are "crypto aristocrats" who bought Ethereum at an exchange rate of 40 instead of 4,000, so spending 3 Ethereum on a meme might not be a big deal for them. But even considering this factor, the success of mfers is still unusual.

It's important to note that the number of NFTs issued daily is enormous, filled with fraudulent and money-grabbing projects that try to disguise themselves as legitimate, but most quickly fall and disappear. Only a very few can match the heights that mfers have reached in the past four months. Currently, mfers ranks 44th in the historical trading volume leaderboard on OpenSea.

This is indeed a bit absurd. mfers embodies everything people hate about NFTs: a ridiculously simple artwork sold for an outrageous price that doesn't match its value. It's almost like a success story in the crypto space, though this story might be more complex than we think.
Interestingly, the meme attributes hidden behind mfers focus on intellectual property issues.

mfers is one of the NFT projects that adopted the CC0 declaration, meaning the project is entirely in the public domain, and the creators do not hold a series of rights to the images, allowing the public to use mfers freely. However, even without copyright, creators can still profit as the brand influence expands. Fundamentally, this can be seen as an experiment to verify whether thorough crowdsourcing of brand building is feasible.

There are a total of 10,021 mfers, each with slight variations in characteristics. The image shows 10 mfers on the NFT trading platform OpenSea. (Image source: OpenSea)
The project was created by a Twitter influencer named Sartoshi. His name combines "art" and the name of Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. The project was inspired by a meme called "are ya winning son?"

are ya winning son?
According to information from Know Your Meme, it depicts a father walking into his son's room and catching him playing a VR porn game. Inspired by this, Sartoshi drew a stick figure lazily leaning back in a chair, typing on a keyboard while smoking. Before the mfer NFT project was launched, Sartoshi had already changed his Twitter avatar to a mfer.

Currently, his Twitter account has over 160,000 followers.
Sartoshi told me via Twitter DM, "I also draw and do some 'real' art, but I'm not trying to create a Mona Lisa here." Like most people in the Web3 world, he prefers to remain anonymous. "I want to create a cool, sketch-style NFT that resonates with everyone and open up the copyright of the work, and then everything else will depend on the community."

From the beginning, mfers has embodied the meme culture of the internet. At 4:20 PM on November 30, mfer NFTs went on sale for 0.069 eth ($230) each, and the 10,000 mfers quickly sold out, thanks to Sartoshi's large fan base.

However, as is typical in the NFT market, mfers began to fade after shining brightly for a day or two, with the spotlight shifting to the next hot project. By the end of December, trading volume for mfers slowed, and the floor price (the lowest price listed on the trading market) dropped to 0.05 eth, below the release price.

Then in January, mfers began to recover and exploded in February. NFT projects largely rely on hype, so once momentum starts to build, it can be very strong—buyers flock in, pushing the floor price up to 6 eth ($18,000). Like other projects, mfers also categorized different attributes, making certain NFTs more rare. One buyer even splurged 80 eth on a mfer with rare attributes, equivalent to as much as 270,000 USD.

To this day, the floor price of mfers still fluctuates between 2.5-3 eth. This means mfers has not yet entered the blue-chip NFT category. Blue-chip NFTs refer to the few projects that can maintain a floor price greater than 10 eth. But this is enough to show that mfers is already far ahead of over 99% of NFT projects on the market.
Most NFT projects are launched with hype, and Sartoshi believes mfers has the ability to continue down the anti-hype route. Many NFT creators strive to claim how revolutionary their art is, while these stick figure drawings expose that layer of deception.

"Most NFT projects' artistic elements are actually very basic," Sartoshi says, "but these works are bought and instantly elevated, wrapped in praise like 'OMG, what an amazing piece of art!' I always joke that many works are no different from cartoon characters on cereal boxes."

Like Dogecoin, the inherent silliness of mfers is precisely its appeal, allowing it to achieve viral rapid spread in the NFT space, much like a meme that goes viral on Twitter. However, the success of mfers is also attributed to its path choice regarding IP—this statement is somewhat ironic. Sartoshi has placed mfers in the public domain, which sets it apart.

Some project teams, like the CryptoPunks team Larva Labs, retain all IP and related rights; others, like the BAYC team Yuga Labs, only grant NFT holders rights to their respective NFTs (Yuga Labs acquired CryptoPunks from Larva Labs last month and stated that it would expand the rights of CryptoPunks holders to match those of BAYC holders).

This is akin to a company spending money to acquire the IP of another NFT project, which is why some people prefer CC0 projects like mfers, as such things will never happen in CC0 projects.

"Rather than saying NFTs operate on a decentralized track, it's more accurate to say that the trend of decentralization has extended into the NFT space," explains former stock analyst Giancarlo Chaux, who now runs a YouTube channel analyzing NFTs. "Compared to BAYC controlling the brand with centralized mechanisms, CC0 (public domain) projects advocate for users to decide the direction and future of the brand, which some believe aligns better with the essence of the internet."

In an industry that genuinely focuses on "decentralization," mfers has also adhered to the principle of "decentralization." However, in a Twitter Space I participated in, they also admitted that this might ultimately end in chaos.

Sartoshi has taken a completely hands-off approach, observing from a distance and giving recognition rather than actively intervening or leading.

mfer holders are busy building the brand, fully utilizing their skills, with some even completing product design and development. One community manager named MasterChanX runs an online radio station called MferRadio.

Amidst other shows like "The Creator's Winner," he evaluates derivative projects like 3D mfers in his own program. A mfer holder named Richard Chiu, who has experience in Hollywood acting and production, is working on a mfer movie. Some have even spent their own money to showcase mfers in Times Square.

A trailer for a mfer movie
(Image source: Twitter @mfers studios)
As Chaux said, although the image of mfers is irreverent, it has profoundly influenced people's views on IP.

"Some ideas are emerging organically and thriving even without any traditional copyright incentives, which will be a revolutionary achievement," Chaux says. "We have already seen some quite good examples, like Cryptoadz, Nouns, and mfers, but they are still too young. So far, this revolutionary experiment has only been underway for a few months."

Sartoshi himself speculates that the combination of NFT technology and public domain IP constitutes a significant advantage, but he believes this is not the core highlight of mfers.

"If you ask what the utility of an mfer is, the utility is that you can use it to build anything you want. Then I would ask, what is the utility of a rookie card of Mickey Mantle?" He refers to a baseball card that recently sold for 5.2 million dollars.

"The answer is, they are just so, so, so, so cute and likable. I guess some people have also praised mfers for being explosively cute."