Mekaverse Launch: Let’s take a step back with data!

MekaVerse is a Profile Picture (PFP) collection of 8888 Mekas influenced by Japanese anime/manga masterpieces such as Gundam, Evangelion and even Code Geass. There was a lot of excitement before the launch of the project. With over 200,000 followers on Twitter and they hit the 250k limit on Discord (without “additional authorizations” from the Discord team).

Back to numbers on the launch of MekaVerse

By Thursday, October 7, 172,876 wallets had been used to enter the raffle. Of those 172,876 wallets, 56,945 had chosen one Meka and 115,931 had chosen two Mekas.  The MekaVerse team revealed some statistics about this extraordinary drop:

We had 4,635,249 views and 661,737 unique users on our website. In addition, we had 130,000 visits within minutes of launch.

In the end, 8,593 Mekas were sold at launch at a price of 0.2 Ether (ETH) each, earning the team more than 1,718 ETH, or nearly $6.3 million.

The sales were followed by a 5-day period where holders had to wait to see what their Mekas would look like. During this period, the price floor had its ATH with a value of about 8 ETH. The reveal took place on Tuesday 12 October after being postponed for 24 hours due to some technical problems with the size of the 3D images.

Since the drop, MekaVerse has generated in 10 days about 39,000 Ether (ETH) on the secondary market.  Interestingly that the record sale is held by the Meka #8597 acquired for 125 ETH or about $476 600 US dollars.

Back to the controversies 

From a numerical point of view, the drop was colossal even taking into account the presence of bots. The hype around the project attracted a lot of people and even the slightest mistake from the team was scrutinized and analyzed.

A number of allegations have appeared on Twitter, including suggestions that one of the developers, Wyb0 of Miinded Studio (MekaVerse’s technical provider) managed to purchase one of the rarest NFTs (#6764) through early access to metadata.

The person concerned responded to the accusations via a thread. It is difficult to unravel the truth, however, would Wyb0 have been naive enough to use his public address to commit the crime? You can find all his explanations here. Moreover, the Meka in question isn’t as rare as has been speculated. Indeed, Meka #6764 is ranked 1395, not 16.

In any case, due to this controversy, the profits from the NFT in question will be donated to charity.

Other influencers such as Beanie seemed to have a negative prejudice towards the project. Accusations that sometimes seem unfair when you compare the launch of MekaVerse to other NFT projects and the technical difficulties of launching with so much interest. Ecko, full-stack developer at Miinded, said:

We worked really hard on this project because we only had three weeks to complete everything, and you can’t imagine the strain of having 230,000 people (at the absolute least) watching and evaluating you. We are and will always be humans, with all our qualities and faults. We made a few minor errors, but nothing major

Ecko – Full stack developer at Miinded

Unfortunately, the vast majority of projects have difficulty curbing opportunism and bot involvement at launch. Currently, how many projects can claim a 100% smooth drop, without gas war and without bots?

A missed launch?

The launch of MekaVerse was not perfect, but it is worth mentioning good initiatives during the registration for the raffle: Google ReCaptcha V3, Wallet funds verification, Discord or Twitter authentication, EIP 712 V3 signature. You can find details of the drop from the point of view of Miinded here.  

No matter what we think of the project, MekaVerse was one of the biggest launches in the history of NFTs in terms of hype and volume. A success that was both a blessing and a curse for the creators who found themselves under both praise and criticism..