gm. no typical ALPHA, BETA, DELTA format for today’s post in honor of sartoshi (he’s not dead, he’s just leaving).
the 6/9 announcement from the project ‘mfers’ came in this morning and it was a (slight) bombshell.
@sartoshi_nft, the founder and maybe the funniest person on NFT Twitter, announced that he would be transferring the contract to the community and stepping away from the project.
you can read more into the details here (link just in case they delete this tweet):
starting off with a few CryptoPunks, sartoshi rose to prominence “shitposting” on Twitter and elevating the NFT meme to an art form. odds are, sartoshi is your favorite shitposter’s favorite shitposter.
once he had a cult-like following (myself included), he decided to launch a project based on his own art in December of 2021. you likely know what they look like… stick figures in a chair sitting in front of a computer screen that’s just out of frame. the art was based on one of Sartoshi’s favorite memes, the “are you winning son?” cartoon.
thus, the iconic ‘mfers’ were born (the name itself is derived from what sartoshi lovingly referred to NFT Twitter as) and much like Cryptoadz, they operated under a similar laissez-faire system. there was no roadmap. there was no Discord (though the community eventually made one and its founders are the ones getting the contract). and there was no utility. just mfers.
sartoshi himself actively pushed against the idea of him being the “leader” of mfers, instead of relying solely on the NFT community at large to support the project. though it sold out immediately, it eventually struggled in its early months…selling below the mint price at points. but good things take time.
I recently compared mfers to GoblinTown, in that while not everyone loved their art, everyone almost universally loved what the art was saying.
mfers was one of the first NFT projects to tap into the “culture” of NFTs and form a diehard community around all its jokes and absurdity.
soon, everyone bought in.
mfers rose to the highs of an 8 ETH floor at its peak and for good reason, it was Web3 in a nutshell. mfers created a community of weirdos - a bunch of degens on the internet deciding to collect and trade cartoon JPGs for large sums of money. that in itself is absurd enough.
for a few months, mfers were everywhere, mainly in PFPs. but their influence was on everyone too. mfers showcased all the weird bonds we’ve made in the NFT community over the last year. it was a beautiful thing.
now, in the spirit of Web3, sartoshi “rugs” and leaves the mfers community with the CC0 rights. for that reason, the future of mfers remains murky; the project will be left without the galvanizing force behind its success. I have faith that the community will be able to keep it alive and thriving even without sartoshi, but it’s not a sure thing.
if you really think about it, memes are weird. rarely do we know how they started or who first made them. however, they eventually become so prominent that they take on a life of their own in our culture. you can merely describe the bones of a meme to someone and they’ll completely understand what you’re talking about.
“you know that one meme…”
that’s what sartoshi has done here with mfers. mfers captured the ethos of Web3 in NFT form and so mfers will live on just like a meme…without their creator, but inextriciably part of the culture (at least for now).
I imagine sartoshi is on a beach one day with all his mfers money…he overhears someone describing an NFT, “you remember that one…with the stick figures and the watches!” and sartoshi will just smile.