The bull and bear reincarnation of the two-dimensional NFT

(Image source: VnEconomy)

In the interesting field of the second dimension, the enthusiasm of a batch of NFT projects is reuniting.

The concept of NFT was widely disseminated in the industry in early 2018 and has gone through a small hype cycle. After CryptoKitties, well-known teams such as Axie Infinity and Neon District began to take off and focused on the core community.

Subsequently, the entire market entered the downward phase, and many NFT teams were also undergoing reshuffle and iteration. At the same time, some high-quality NFT projects had settled down and returned to construction. The emergence of NonFungible.com has brought the NFT market even more. Come to an observation platform, let the term "non-homogeneity" become the main vocabulary to describe this new asset class.

Since the second half of 2020, when the new round of NFT tide is rising, some veteran teams and projects have once again returned to sight. The two-dimensional NFT projects and teams that were "dying" in the bear market have suddenly begun to have new trends. Fans re-dig.

These projects are extending inward from some niche areas and have also become one of the main venues for "outside the circle" to discuss NFT.

Some time ago, Crypko (crypto girl), who once set off a "small boom" in the community with the concept of two dimensions in 2018, has already started a new action.

The hot project in the previous round of the bull market has emerged, and it is the popular track. Fomo's mood is rising. Or is the niche field opening a new batch of "breaking circles"?

The top tier of the last ``Two-dimensional NFT''

When the tide of new NFTs was high, the established teams and projects returned to sight.

After CryptoKitties became popular in blockchain collection games in 2018, this style quickly extended to the two-dimensional field, and a number of interesting projects recognized by the community appeared, Crypko is one of them. Crypko is the abbreviation of Crypto Musuko, and the official Chinese translation is "crypto girl".

(Image source: Crypko)

This project is the same as makegirlsmoe, the originator of the two-dimensional avatar automatic generation project. As early as 2017, the founding team of the project founded makegirlsmoe, and combined the blockchain collection method in its own community, which made the popularity of websites that were originally popular in the second-dimensional circle spread to the blockchain and brought Crypko The first batch of users.

Dating back to the early days of two-dimensional avatars, the makegirlsmoe website was opened to users in 2017. In this website, users can set attributes to make the website generate a two-dimensional character avatar. The effect of the generated character has been hand-drawn by the painter at the time. The characters that come out are very similar.

(Image source: makegirlsmoe)

According to the white paper, Crypko was subsequently re-founded by some researchers from Fudan University, State University of New York Stony Brook and Tongji University. After CryptoKitties became popular in the market, the team developed Crypko on the basis of makegirlsmoe.

After introducing the idea of ​​NFT, Crypko has been operating as a game in the form of a beta version for some time. The developer provides 50,000 characters for players to purchase, and users can obtain the corresponding two-dimensional character image by paying ETH. After purchasing these characters, by consuming a certain amount of ETH, the characters can merge and produce new characters with the characteristics of the original characters. At the same time, the role as a fusion material will not disappear, but there will be a cooling time limit. Depending on the level of each character, the time it takes to cool down is also different.

Crypko also adopted the design idea of ​​card games, divided into UR, SSR, SR, R, N and other different levels to highlight the value of advanced cards.

After generating new roles, these NFT roles can be leased or sold. Crypko refers to the form of the encrypted cat for all the two-dimensional images, and uses the standard form of ERC-721 to form proprietary attributes and codes. Let the image stay on the blockchain forever.

In the beginning, the innovation and imagination brought by the second dimension were well received in some communities. According to official information, Crypko originally planned to launch the official version in the summer of 2018, but in order to make a bigger difference with the beta version, it decided to postpone the official version.

However, confined to the subsequent overall market downturn, in the long bear market, the project gradually depressed after the testing phase. Subsequently, the Crypko team participated in Comic Market, the second-dimensional event in Japan, and continued to build in the direction of the second-dimensional content production.

In early March this year, the game official suddenly became active. In the two-dimensional community, most people generally think that the leap of this update is not small. The "head portrait" has been transferred to the "character drawing", which turns the character with only the head into a bust, and all the clothes are Random. In addition, Crypko can also be used to generate simple animations.

(Image source: Crypko)

The status quo of the two-dimensional NFT: Encrypted cat + GAN

The new trends of the two-dimensional NFT popular projects may bring new development directions to the current hot NFT concept.

In the last round of NFT bull market, the two-dimensional concept project also appeared in the market several times. Many projects are imitating and fine-tuning in the form of CryptoKitties and Crypko, but most of them have not survived the last bear market.

Another project that has brought deep memory to the industry is "Chain Circle Idol". At the end of 2017, American artificial intelligence company ObEN publicly announced that it would cooperate with idol group SNH48 to create an exclusive artificial intelligence image through AI technology. And run on the blockchain.

According to the concept of the project, the target of Chain Circle idols is mainly aimed at people who are interested in idol groups. In this community, everyone can generate their own AI image and interact with idols. They can also purchase idol surroundings, performance tickets, etc. through the project Token, and members can also trade with each other. However, according to publicly available information, the subsequent progress of the project has been slow. According to some information, due to the arrival of the bear market, the project has been difficult to operate.

At the beginning of 2019, Tron Idol, a two-dimensional NFT project based on the Tron chain, also adopted a similar idea to transform a personal image into a two-dimensional blockchain asset. The user uploads an avatar image to generate the corresponding second element on the TRON blockchain. Dimensional encryption idol. The gameplay is similar to that of CryptoKitties. Through the TRON public chain, the game speed has been accelerated. However, since the game is based on Tron, known as the "gaming chain," it has also been questioned by the community.

The interesting point is that the project has also designed an "anthropomorphic" image for many currencies, and has also participated in the "Shanghai Modu Comic Exhibition CP-24" with its surroundings. However, at the end of 2019, the team has rarely spoke out formally.

(Image source: Link idol)

At the moment, the latest NFT project of the two-dimensional element that the community of two-dimensional enthusiasts is still paying attention to is "waifutoken". Among them, "waifu" is the pronunciation of "wife" in Japanese, which continues the characteristics of the two-dimensional community, and the Japanese two-dimensional painting style on the official website Full. The platform is expected to introduce some comic creators in the two-dimensional field. However, when the progress of the project is still unclear, its tokens can already be traded through Uniswap, allowing many players in the community to label it "meme imitation" and believe that the project is not innovative enough.

(Image source: coinmarketcap)

The logic of the current two-dimensional collection games is mainly considered to be "block cat + GAN". In the initial Crypko and other cases, the main application is the GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) deep learning model.

GAN is one of the most popular subjects in machine learning. It was first proposed by the generative model designed by Goodfellow and others in 2014. In the GAN setting, two differentiable functions represented by a neural network are locked in a game. The two participants are the "generator" and the "discriminator", and they have to play different roles in this framework.

The generator attempts to generate data from a certain probability distribution. Among them, the generator tries to maximize the probability that the discriminator mistakes its input as correct, and the discriminator guides the generator to generate a more realistic image.

After combining with blockchain technology, its technical principles can be analyzed in a few simple steps (take Crypko as an example):

1) Get the code of Crypko from the blockchain

2) The deep neural network will generate corresponding Crypko cards through Crypko coding

3) You can combine two Crypko cards to create more derived cards through native cards

How to generate new gameplay on the two-dimensional NFT may also be closely related to the development of GAN and the combination of blockchain technology. In any case, the market has always maintained a lot of expectations for the Japanese animation IP projects that have been regarded as "natural NFTs".

On the other hand, according to NonFungible's statistics, in the past 30 days alone, the total amount of NFT market transactions exceeded 218 million U.S. dollars, and more than 164,151 NFTs were sold. Its transaction volume and activity have far surpassed the previous hype cycle.

(Image source: NonFungible.com)

A recent report by NonFungible shows that as of the end of 2020, the total market value of NFT reached US$5,229,650 (approximately 42720 ETH). In the second half of 2020, NFT sales increased by 200%. As of now, NFT sales in a single month have consistently exceeded US$1 million. 2021 may usher in a "new bull market in the NFT industry".

The search growth of NFT has accelerated even more than "cryptocurrency" and "DeFi". As more and more people participate in the NFT boom, the NFT project is also in iterations.

Since the second half of 2020, the development of NFT has attracted many new players. The integration of community building, consensus building, encrypted character cards, artistic creation and other fields has also seen new gameplay and diversified integration in this field. In the current NFT panorama, the areas that have been covered include art, competitive sports, two-dimensional peripherals, social networking, copyright, virtual world, public welfare, etc., including NFT and DeFi, NFT and public chain, etc. Combination of different forms. After the veteran two-dimensional NFT project takes action, this niche market may be worth looking forward to.