What Are Mad Lads xNFTs?
The Mad Lads NFT collection is created by Coral and features 10,000 edgy unique illustrations of human characters with different attributes on the Solana blockchain. Mad Lads NFTs are executable NFTS (xNFTS) that feature embedded codes that can be executed from within the Backpack wallet, which is also developed by Coral.
Key Takeaways
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Mad Lads is a collection of 10,000 NFTs featuring edgy, comic-book style illustrations of human characters with unique designs and attributes on the Solana blockchain.
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Mad Lads was created by Coral, a Solana framework development company, that is also the company behind Backpack, a web3 wallet designed for xNFTs like Mad Lads.
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xNFTs are a special form of NFTs with embedded codes that can be executed from within the Backpack wallet without requiring a third-party applications.
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Mad Lads NFTs have enjoyed a positive reception from the Solana and NFT communities, and have seen exponential growth from the initial minting price of 6.9 SOL to over 200 SOL at time of writing.
Mad Lads NFTs has been constantly achieving new all time highs in floor price between mid-November to early-December 2023. At its all-time high, the floor price reached 229.425 SOL, with an estimated value of over $16,000 based on the value of the Solana coin at that point in time.
According to data from CoinGecko, trading statistics for the collection have seen significant growth during this time with a growth in trading volume and market cap. A couple of catalysts have contributed to this growth. A minor catalyst is the rise in the value of the Solana coin, which has recorded over 300% growth YTD (year to date).
More importantly, news of the launch of a cryptocurrency exchange by the team behind the NFT collection, along with additional developments around infrastructure associated with the NFT collection, are likely to have also contributed to this rise in value.
Even before this meteoric rise, the Mad Lads NFT collection has received considerable attention since inception, thanks to events surrounding its minting and also the technologies that are associated with the Mad Lads NFT collection.
The Mad Lads NFT Collection
Mad Lads NFTs are a collection of 10,000 unique artwork featuring human characters with specific attributes and rarity, minted on the Solana blockchain. At the time of writing, about 9,966 Mad Lads have been minted and are held by over 4,200 NFT collectors on the network. Each piece of art in the collection has a unique identity; the attributes apply to the character’s gender, clothing, facial expression, type, and hair, amongst other features. Depending on the rarity, some NFTs in the collection have additional features like Mouth, Smoking, and Glove, which further impacts the value of NFTs that possess these features.
Like other art NFT collections, Mad Lads NFTs can be traded on NFT marketplaces on the Solana network, including Tensor, Solanart, Magic Eden, and HadeSwap. From information obtained from Solana-based NFT marketplace, Magic Eden, the highest asking price for a Mad Lad NFT at this time is 42,108 SOL for art #1313.
Background of the Mad Lads NFT
Mad Lads NFT was created by Coral, a Solana Framework development company. Mad Lads NFTs were offered at an initial minting price of 6.9SOL. The minting events played a part in the quick rise to fame of the NFT collection. Coral, led by Trystan Yver and Armani Ferrante, curbed the influence of foul players on the minting event by redirecting bots and foul players to a honeypot replica of the original minting website – a response to an attack on the initial minting platform.
Thanks for playing.
— Mad Lads (@MadLadsNFT) April 22, 2023
We'll be returning all SOL in the honeypot by the end of the day. https://t.co/Xj4NBRYnrd pic.twitter.com/H1GO1pMZaC
Over $250,000 worth of SOL was recovered from the fake minting platform and refunded to the users, while the actual mint kept more of the NFT drop supply for the collectors who wanted to be a part of the project.
The project generated over $8 million from the minting event and quickly gained the attention of the larger Solana NFT community, drawing the attention of Solana co-founders who showed their support for the NFT collection. The Mad Lads NFT launched on the Solana network at a time when notable NFTs like DeGods and Y00ts were leaving the network; this also gained the collection some attention along with reduced competition.
Adding to the collection’s popularity is its association with the Backpack wallet. The NFT minting event was exclusive to the Backpack wallet, where the Mad Lads NFTs could only be minted via Backpack. Unlike most crypto wallets, the Backpack wallet was designed to support a new type of NFTs – xNFTs.
Mad Lads and xNFTs
Contemporary NFTs are mostly artwork and multimedia with digital signatures stored on the blockchain and designed for easy verification and transfer of ownership. While this is enough to gain NFTs an application in diverse sectors, they are limited to their specified attributes and drive their value from their rarity and factors related to the creators and possible applications. This is not the same for xNFTs.
xNFTs are known as executable NFTs. They are NFTs with an embedded code script that can be executed by an application that supports them. xNFTs are in fact, applications, like the .exe files downloaded to your personal computers or the .apk files downloaded on mobile devices. xNFTs can be parsed by an application developed to run these scripts and implement the commands defined in the scripts, without needing to access third-party platforms.
Mad Lads NFTs are xNFTs, even though they haven’t fully gained significant functionalities as xNFTs at the time of writing, and they are minted exclusively on the Backpack wallet, which is designed to support xNFTs. The Backpack wallet is like an operating system with support for the Mad Lads collections’ xNFT code scripts, transcending the regular functionalities of a crypto wallet.
As xNFTs, Mad Lads NFTs can run several operations, depending on the scripts. According to available information, the programmable nature of xNFTs means that users don't need to access third-party platforms to stake xNFTs; instead, the feature is integrated into the asset.
xNFTs and the Backpack Wallet
Coral is the company behind the Mad Lads NFT collection, the Backpack wallet, and the upcoming Backpack Exchange. The Mad Lads NFT collection is designed to be the "cultural component" of Coral's Backpack's tech, with the goal of onboarding non-crypto natives, generating demand, and showcasing how NFTs can also be decentralized applications. Each Mad Lad NFT is a clickable ticket into the Mad Lads story via Backpack, where holders are granted access to anything the creators choose to offer them without needing to connect to any third-party applications.
“I could do things like play games with [xNFTs], I could do things like see if they’re online and connected and what they’re doing on the blockchain. I think building this as a primitive and exposing it to applications is going to be a really powerful feature. That’s going to be the unique thing that brings all this together to create a truly social experience that wrangles a lot of the problems that we see in web3 today”
- Founder of Coral, Armani Ferrante
Beyond Mad Lads, the larger vision for xNFTs sees them acting as native applications within the Backpack wallet, where any user with an xNFT in their wallet can launch the application or experience within the particular xNFT. The project describes xNFTs as "analogous to WeChat mini-programs; they represent a portal to applications, games, or assets built on any chain." Using Backpack, users can access all their supported assets and decentralized apps natively in one place, while developers and projects can create customized experiences for their communities.
What Can You Do With Mad Lads NFTs?
Now, let's take a look at what holders can do with their Mad Lads NFTs.
Collectible Art on the Blockchain
Like most other NFTs on blockchain networks, the Mad Lads NFT series is a collection of art with digital signatures minted on the Solana blockchain. Art collectors can purchase these artworks according to their evaluation of the attributes. The 10,000 pieces of art in the collection are unique, which means different parameters for value determination. Above all else, holding a Mad Lads NFT allows the holder to be part of the Mad Lads community.
Staking Mad Lads NFTs
Holders of Mad Lads NFTs can stake their NFTs to earn gold coins that are held in a soulbound inventory system, where the items in each Mad Lads inventory cannot be transferred and are owned entirely by the holder. While the exact utility of these gold coins have yet to be revealed, tweets from Ferrante suggests that these gold coins will play a part as the Mad Lads team creates a loyalty reward program that leverages its strong community.
Through Mad Lads, we want to create the most compelling loyalty rewards programs in crypto.
— Armani Ferrante (@armaniferrante) June 12, 2023
This will require many things.
Utilities Powered by xNFT Technology
As already stated, Mad Lads NFTs are xNFTs, where holders of these xNFTs can interact with other web3 applications. At time of writing, each Mad Lads NFT is a tokenized application that enables staking through the Backpack wallet without requiring a third-party platform. Beyond staking, Mad Lads xNFTs also showcases the potential of Backpack and xNFTs, such as token-gated chats, loyalty rewards, collection locking, and more.
Collection locking enables users to lock their Mad Lads, where anytime an app tries to modify the locked Mad Lad NFT in any way, the Backpack wallet will automatically reject the transaction signature request.
With this new feature, I can confidently say @xNFT_Backpack is the safest place to hold your @MadLadsNFT.
— Armani Ferrante (@armaniferrante) October 10, 2023
Introducing NFT collection locking.
Quite literally, Only Possible On @solana. pic.twitter.com/sruvfXSbbo
Final Thoughts
As it is with most new technologies, NFTs are in constant evolution. Coral, through the Mad Lads NFT collection, is creating new use cases for NFTs and augmenting these new technologies with tailored utilities like the BackPack wallet. It is not certain how these technologies will be propagated in the future; however, the current status is promising. NFT collectors are attracted, not just by the arts and their attributes, but also the potential these NFTs hold.
As an investor, it is also important to understand how the NFTs’ operations affect you. Also note that NFTs, just like any other investments are prone to value fluctuations and this could be volatile. This article is not meant to serve as investment or financial advice. Always ensure you do your own research before investing in any project.
Joel is deeply interested in the technologies behind cryptocurrencies and blockchain networks. In his over 7 years of involvement in the space, he helps startups build a stronger internet presence through written content. Follow the author on Twitter @agboifesinachi
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