Catch One Before They’re Gone
Wapuu is the lovable, open source, and (un)official mascot of WordPress. Wapuu swag has been created and collected at WordCamps around the world. We took the next step by building a generative art project of 2,222 unique Wapuus that can be minted as an NFT, collected, and traded by the WordPress community on the Ethereum blockchain.
We built a programmatic generator that creates completely unique Wapuu characters based on a random set of more than one hundred distinct traits like hair, hats, accessories, clothing, holding items, and colors. Traits are weighted to have various rarities, some are very common, and some may only be found on a lucky handful of Wapuus.
When you mint your Wapuu it is generated randomly, you may get one with a common or rare combination of traits. This makes the rarer Wapuus highly collectable and more valuable on the open market.
Collect your favorites for fun. Or show off your collection to your friends in the WordPress community. Make your favorite your profile avatar, you are the provable owner so you get the bragging rights!
What the heck is an NFT?
Imagine owning a one-of-a-kind Picasso. Reproductions or fakes could be made of it and sold, and the only way it can be proven real is if a trusted expert examines and certifies it. An NFT or “Non-Fungible Token” provides proof of ownership and originality. Its “provenance” is minted into the blockchain, un-alterable and verifiable by the public for all time.
NFT’s have made provenance for digital assets possible and available to everyone. This has sparked a massive new market for digital art and collectables. Billions of dollars are now passing between wallets buying, collecting, investing, selling, and trading NFTs. Time for you to join the future of digital assets!
Special Edition Wapuus
Some WordPress community businesses have sponsored special edition Wapuus that have been randomly included in this collection. Will you be lucky enough to mint one of these rare and valuable specimens? You could be the only owner of the Wapuu representing your favorite WP product.
These special edition Wapuus come with secret content like special discounts or free products that can only be unlocked with the owner’s wallet!
Special Perks for Owners
Buying and holding a Wapuu NFT is your vote of support for the Web3 WP mission, and entitles you to special benefits!
Got a question?
Frequently Asked Questions
It’s easier than ever to get started. You just need two things, an Ethereum wallet, and some Ethereum inside it. We recommend installing the MetaMask wallet:
Once you have a wallet setup, you will need to deposit some ETH cryptocurrency inside it. You can deposit from any exchange, or simply click the “Buy” button in MetaMask to buy some with a debit card. You will need somewhere around 0.025-0.035+ ETH depending on current gas prices. We are purposely dropping on a Saturday and highly optimized the smart contract in an effort to save you as much on gas as possible. Tip: Minting multiple Wapuus at a time will save you a bundle in gas fees as it is combined into one transaction!
You can visit OpenSea or any number of NFT marketplaces and sign in with your wallet. You will be able to see and sell your Wapuu NFTs, as well as browse the whole collection minted so far. You can even see how rare the different traits of your Wapuu are.
- To explore and prompt thought and discussion about the intersection of open source licenses and NFTs. This follows the vision of Web3 WP, to introduce the WordPress community to the decentralized future of the Internet by building and launching novel use cases.
- To allow those with interest in Web3 technology to partner with and provide initial funding for us to explore, share, and launch more Web3 projects to the WordPress community.
- We saw this as an opportunity to bolster a community that has greatly impacted our lives and careers by raising awareness about WordPress. And half of any trading royalties will be donated to the WordPress Foundation in perpetuity!
NFTs are a new and distinct concept from Intellectual Property (copyright, trademark, and licenses). When you buy, sell, or trade an NFT you are not necessarily buying the intellectual property or a license to use it. What is being actually traded is the “provenance” of the minted item. This provenance is stored on the blockchain for all to see for all time.
Wapuu’s original copyright is held by Kazuko Kaneuchi, and was licensed under the GPL for all to use. Therefore all generated and minted Wapuu NFTs inherit this GPL license, which we have embedded in the Smart Contract on the blockchain so that it always follows them around.
Because these generated Wapuus are GPL licensed you can use them for any purpose personal or commercial, modify and adapt them for your own uses, or sell and trade them, as long as they and their derivatives maintain the GPL license. You should also credit the original copyright holder Kazuko Kaneuchi, as only they have legal standing to enforce the license.
But remember, only one wallet address can truly “own” one of these Wapuu NFTs!
Nope! While technically allowed by their GPL license, all our Wapuus features are custom designed by a team we commissioned for this project, then generated using a custom script crafted to ensure uniqueness and create Wapuus of various rarities.
The special edition Wapuus were generously provided by our sponsors with their permission to be included in the collection.
We believe that this project adds value to the WordPress community and ecosystem by breeding excitement and incentivizing its growth. However WordPress has strict rules on the use of its trademarks to protect its reputation. Due to a lack of clarity on whether this project would be considered “commercial use” we have decided to play it safe and not include the WordPress trademarked logo on our generated Wapuus, as much as that saddens us.
We have built in a relatively small fee of 0.02 ETH to the smart contract to mint a Wapuu NFT. This helps cover the costs we’ve invested into design & development, as well as the ongoing maintenance and marketing of this community project. It will also provide the initial funding we need to kick off the Web3 WP project and start building interesting tools and content to the WordPress community.
The low fee balances our costs while still allowing easy entry for those just getting started with NFTs. Our mint price is set well below similar generative art projects launching in the NFT community today.
We have set a royalty percentage of 6% on secondary sales of these NFTs on popular marketplaces. Half of all royalties in perpetuity will be donated to the WordPress Foundation! So every time you buy or trade a Wapuu on OpenSea, a part of that trade will be donated to WordPress. The remaining portion will help us cover ongoing development and maintenance costs, as well as fund new experiments by Web3 WP. And Wapuu NFT owners get exclusive early access to future releases and projects!
Ethereum was the first blockchain to support smart contracts, which are the foundation of Web3. Currently the Ethereum mainnet runs on a classic “Proof of Work” (PoW) architecture like Bitcoin, which is very energy intensive. Much has been said maligning cryptocurrencies like Ethereum due to their large energy usage. Though most of that is based on a few false assumptions like:
- Crypto and blockchains have no practical value and are therefore wasteful.
- That Web3 tech does/will not replace current technologies. Example how much energy is used to run the global banking system, or the massive data centers that power the Internet?
- That there is not a built-in financial incentive for blockchain miners to use the cheapest and in most cases cleanest sources of electricity. Most mining is already concentrated in geographic areas with abundant cheaper renewable energy.
- It is very difficult to quantify what share of energy usage is used by NFTs.
Still, almost all newer blockchain projects have long recognized the need for greater energy efficiency and scalability. Most have transitioned to or been built on a new trust architecture called “Proof of Stake”, which is exponentially more efficient. Ethereum is highly committed to transitioning its network to this new model in the very near future with Eth2. In fact the chain has already been launched this year with billions of dollars worth of Ether staked to back it. The latest estimates are for the final merge to happen in a matter of months, and when it does energy usage is projected to drop 99.5%!
Wapuu NFTs are minted on the Ethereum network as it’s the original and gold standard blockchain, and when Eth2 launches soon they will also have minimal environmental impact!
Wapuu NFTs are minted on the Ethereum blockchain and compatible with the ERC-1155 NFT standard and metadata. They can be listed and traded on any NFT exchange like OpenSea. The image files are hosted in the IPFS blockchain to ensure they remain available and unchangeable for all time.
Tokens, token limit, metadata URI, the GPL license, fee amounts, and custom names are all stored in the custom smart contract, which is open source with a MIT license, verified, and visible on Etherscan. You can interact directly our smart contract even if our site no longer exists in the future.
Contract Address: 0xd5e793c08ce6e4bc225b64f19496629a81873c22
Once all Wapuus are minted and revealed, we will write a provenance hash of all Wapuus combined to the Smart Contract.