1/ A Re-Introduction to Loot (for Adventurers)

I've been seeing some excitement for @lootproject on the timeline here and on Twitter, so I figured I'd take a chance to introduce the project to a new audience that probably wasn't here during the last big NFT cycle of 2021, and maybe even reintroduce it to some who were.

Probably sitting on a stool | Shower thinker | Collaborative Worldbuilding | Community Games

/farcastles /brians-rescue /fellthedragon

2/ Loot was released by @dhof in August 2021 and gifted to the internet as a public domain (CC0) project. The mint was free (+ network fees) and sold out in just 4 hours.

There was no team, no roadmap, no plan for future development, no embedded images, stats, or lore. And all of this was done intentionally. 

From the onset, Loot was meant to be interpreted. It was a digital Rorschach test that beckoned the collective imagination of the internet.

3/ The Loot project re-contextualized what NFTs were to a lot of people at the time. Perhaps the most popularized form factor for an NFT was the JPEG. NFTs were supposed to be about the art, right? But there was no "art" to be seen with Loot. Just eight lines of white text on a black background. But these inconspicuous "lists" were much more than one would assume at first glance.

6/ The Lootverse and Lootverse vision deserve a separate conversation all by itself, but perhaps more importantly, was the discovery of Loot's true nature months after its creation.

Many in the Loot community became curious to look underneath the hood to see what was happening inside the Loot contract. What they discovered was more than just a random item generator, but embedded lore and gems left behind by Dom for the community to find.

5/ With just this basic understanding of what the Loot project was, dozens of individuals and teams from around the world gathered to build out this universe of Loot derivatives, tokens, add-ons, maps, games, lore, art, etc. A community-run Discord server was set up to onboard new members to the Loot community. Weekly town halls were held to discuss plans for the Loot project, share ideas, or present projects. Some of the most popular derivatives included Realms, Crypts & Caverns, Genesis Loot, and Adventure Gold ($AGLD).

Some projects even decided to take the Loot vision into their own hands and take a different approach. Most famously, Treasure DAO and Dope DAO emerged as early derivatives of Loot. 

All of these projects could also be categorized under the wider Loot Umbrella, known as the Lootverse (Loot universe).

4/ All Loot NFTs (called bags) consisted of eight items: a piece for an adventurer's weapon, chest, head, waist, foot, hand, necklace, and ring. If you're familiar with RPGs (Runescape, EverQuest, Diablo, etc.), you'd probably immediately recognize this as a game character's equipped items. However, the Loot items appeared to be a set of equipment from a game that didn't exist... yet.