On NFT Day 2022 (September 20th), we celebrated with a great conversation with Gabby Dizon, co-founder of Yield Guide Games (YGG), and held our first auction for NFTs using OCM Bananas (and it definitely won’t be our last). It was a no-brainer to sit down with Dizon to hear about his take on the rise of the NFT industry and what it means for community building as a whole – a valuable discussion for us here at OCM, with the community at the forefront of our organization. If you missed us live, but want to listen in on the talk with Gabby Dizon and get in on the buzz around the auctioned NFTs, you can listen to the recording here.
Gabby Dizon on the !RISE
With over 20 years in the gaming industry, Dizon is an early adopter of the NFT, having been sparked by the creation of Ethereum and Smart Contracts in 2017. The idea that money could be programmable – that it could be turned into software with code – was of specific interest to Dizon at the time, who was already building virtual economies within the gaming industry. The non-fungible token was introduced alongside this digital currency boom, and the rest was history.
Hyper-growth for YGG took off with the rise of the game Axie Infinity. In 2020, the concept of lending within the digital currency/NFT world was introduced in the game – with players who owned a surplus of NFTs agreeing to a revenue share with those who wanted them via Smart Contracts. In a play-to-earn environment, this was a massive scaling within the community and what inspired YGG. YGG has purchased assets in over 40 games, and Web3 and NFT economies are reaching tons of people worldwide – it’s the ultimate community builder.
Like us here at OCM, Dizon is big on community, which is easy to see, with the anticipation of YGG’s new Web 3 Festival, which will be held this November in the Philippines, a country that has had one of the most rapid adoptions of Web3 and digital currency in the last few years. The festival will show how Web3 can impact people in the real world – focusing on NFTs and games but also expanding across the entire ecosystem of the growing Web3 landscape.
The theme of the community also drew Dizon to be a part of On Chain Monkey in the first place. It’s the good people and the banana economy that stand out to him, and he shared that using an NFT community to spread good around the world is something he’d really like to see more of. We’re right there with you, Gabby – and our community knows – we’re already well on our way.
Let the Bidding Begin
Speaking of the banana economy – onto the auction! There were six items up for grabs: 1 OCM Earth, 1 OCM Ledgers, 2 OCM NFT Canvases (a high-quality 18×18 print of a monkey of the bidder’s choice), 1 OCM Karma and the most coveted of them all, 1 OCM Genesis. Available only during our live Twitter Spaces with Dizon, community members placed bids in real-time in our OCM Discord – one of the most engaging hubs for our community to connect, geek out on NFTs, and monkey around.
With 432 members attending live on Twitter Spaces and even more ready to bid on Discord alone, The OCM team kicked off the auction, announcing each item with a starting banana bid. The lead bidder was announced in real-time as it changed, and it – was – exhilarating! Banana bids moved fast, and with just a two-minute timer on each item up for grabs, we’ve never seen our community so engaged. By the end of the auction, OCM collected 6342 bananas, the majority of which went towards the Genesis and Karma NFTs as expected! Here’s the breakdown of how everything sold:
OCM Earth – 142 bananas
OCM Ledger – 550 bananas
OCM Canvas 1 – 700 bananas
OCM Canvas 2 – 600 bananas
OCM Karma – 1600 bananas
OCM Genesis – 2750 bananas
We can’t thank our community enough for the extra high vibes and for participating in this amazing event, and we can’t wait for the next one! We think one thing is clear – we are ALL re-motivated to start earning more bananas!
To keep up with additional updates and events for OnChainMonkey, tune into our Instagram and Twitter!
If you’re interested in joining us, check out the available OCMs for sale on OpenSea, Mintable, and Nifty Gateway. Our holders receive exclusive invites to IRL and online events like ACTAI Barbados and can meet other impact-minded technologists, investors, celebrities and more in our members-only Discord.