Moonshot Bots ask collectors to buy a rare NFT and help fund open-source Web3 projects designed for the public good.
The NFT market has produced eye-popping figures of late, as billions of dollars are flowing through the ecosystem in just August alone. Gitcoin, a decentralized funding platform focused on open-source initiatives, is the latest in the crypto house to launch its personal NFT project—albeit with a novel plan for how one can spend the funds.
Earlier this week, Gitcoin founder Kevin Owocki and Gitcoin DAO Steward Austin Griffith announced Moonshot Bots, a limited-edition NFT collection with a most provide of just 303 pieces. An NFT acts like a deed of ownership to a digital item, together with photos, video information, and more—and in this case, it’s for a pixel-based robot avatar (or profile picture).
The NFTs launched with pricing on a bonding curve, which means they start cheap and gradually become costlier as more and more are minted on the Ethereum blockchain. The primary one bought for a tiny fraction of an ETH—0.0033 ETH, or about $10—through the final NFT could be priced at just under 3,038 ETH ($9.8 million), should it ever promote.
Already, 196 of the Moonshot Bots NFTs have been sold, producing more than $1.88 million in the process. All funds might be added to the Gitcoin Grants matching pool, which is used to fund open-source Web3 projects designed for the public good.
“I do not count on that individuals will hold shopping for them, but I might be pleasantly surprised in the event that they did,” Owocki told that today via email. “I stated at the beginning that if we raised $50K for public items then the venture could be successful, so I am fully thrilled that the venture raised $1,881,161 to date and took over Twitter for a few days!”
Owocki said that he and Griffith were motivated by seeing the work of the builders in the Gitcoin DAO’s recently-launched Moonshot Collective, which is designed to rapidly prototype tools for DAOs. (A DAO, or decentralized autonomous group, is a type of formalized group wherein decision-making processes are flattened out across the group, rather than made hierarchically.)
“Austin and I needed to be within the trenches constructing together with the builders of Moonshot Collective, and we needed to reward these builders for their participation with access to the bots as soon as they launched,” stated Owocki.
Anybody should purchase one of the Moonshot Bots NFTs now through the website, although the bonding curve has pushed the minting price of the next one to about 26.8 ETH ($86,900). Given how a lot this venture has already raised for grants, Owocki plans to discover different experimental funding mechanisms for Gitcoin. “We might be taking the learning from this project and iterating towards the next moonshot,” he said.
Gitcoin has helped fund a wide array of crypto projects through grants and bounties, together with decentralized exchange Uniswap, popular crypto wallet MetaMask, decentralized finance publication The Defiant, and the Prysm testnet for the upcoming Ethereum 2.0 launch. All informed, the agency has facilitated $29.2 million worth of funding for open-source projects up to now.
In April, Gitcoin raised $11.3 million within the funding of its personal to additional decentralize and spin-out from Ethereum studio ConsenSys.
