The N Project: NFTs of Random Numbers Hit $40 Million Market Cap

What if you stripped away all the fantastical elements from Loot NFTs—the parts that conjure up the first light of a hero whose life depends upon their “Ghost Wand” and “Gold Ring of Fury," and move Ethereum developers so deeply that they work around the clock to create a videogame around lists of virtual treasure?

What about if you got rid of all of that, and instead printed 8,888 character sheets containing nothing but numbers zero through fourteen in a blank serif font and told people to use them in “any way you want”?

Then you’d have an NFT collection with a market cap of 10,256 ETH (about $40 million) called The N Project. It’s the fifth-most popular NFT project just three days after launch, and the average selling price for one NFT in the collection is 1.15 ETH ($4,537). 

A cynic might say that the anonymous creator of The N Project, or n for short, is cashing in on Don Hofmann’s original collection of Loot NFTs, since Loot files can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars and plenty of offshoots, like Bloot’s self-proclaimed “worthless” virtual cock rings and its associated BGLD currency, are one of the hottest things on Ethereum right now.

An optimist might say that the creator of n, described by a Discord member to Decrypt as a “huge genius gigabrain”, is even more abstract than Loot, and thus full of infinitely more potential since a developer could wrap those numbers around any game they like. 

Developers have already crafted psychedelic visualizations and bots that hunt for rare numbers (there are only six 0s), and there's a 1,400-strong community on Discord. By comparison, Loot’s homeworld is bound to medieval mythology (although developers could redefine, say, a short sword from Loot as a paintbrush for use in another game).

 NFT Revolution

What is Loot? The Surging Ethereum NFT Role-Playing Phenonemon

If last week’s surprise launch of Ethereum NFT project Loot (for Adventurers) appeared to suggest a lack of imagination in the burgeoning crypto collectibles space, then you probably weren’t alone in thinking that. After all, it’s just a list of text on a plain black background. What’s the point? However, the project has quickly proved naysayers wrong in the way that it’s inspiring the imagination of others. Yes, it’s just a list of items—a randomized bag of weapons and equipment from a fictiona...

Another optimist might quip that The N Project is a genius meme since a Twitter account from 2014 that appears attached to it retweets speculative drool about the NFT market and MrBeast Bitcoin giveaway announcements. The creators must be having fun. 

Yet another optimist might guess that n's success is all part of Hofmann’s well-trodden ambition as a serial entrepreneur. Hofmann’s previous projects, Vine, Byte and Peach, only grew to success when online communities developed his embryonic ideas into rich social networks. 

The N Project is just another innovation—a riff on the mother project, which is composed of 8,000 different randomized lists of text detailing gear from medieval fantasy RPGs. n sits neatly alongside other innovations, including Loot Visions, which makes pictures out of Loot, Abstract Loot, which makes Loot character sheet loot like acid blotter paper, and a Loot marketplace called The Grand Exchange.

 NFT Revolution

Bloot NFTs, X-Rated Spinoff of Loot, Hit $27M in Volume

When Dom Hofmann launched Loot, an NFT project of 8,000 randomly generated treasure sheets for a videogame he hadn’t yet created, Ethereum developers filled in the gaps by crafting character sheets, artwork and music.  But the most popular offshoot project in the past 24 hours has nothing to do with the noble romance of Loot’s medieval lore. Its most prized asset isn’t a magical robe or a well-honed sword—it’s a virtual cock ring.  Bloot, or Based Loot, replaces the medieval treasure of Loot NF...

So far, Loot remains bigger than any of its derivatives or offshoots. Surprise released on August 27, Loot NFTs currently hold a floor price of 12.8 ETH (about $50,000) and a total trading volume of $226 million. But The N Project’s numbers are undeniably impressive.