Loot

Loot is an on-chain NFT project on Ethereum consisting of randomized adventurer gear stored entirely in smart contracts. Each original "Loot bag" is a black image containing eight lines of text naming a weapon, chest armor, headgear, gloves, footwear, belt, ring and necklace; stats, images and other functionality are deliberately omitted so that third parties can interpret and extend them. The first collection, Loot (for Adventurers), comprises 8,000 bags; bags #1–#7,777 were open to public minting for the cost of gas only, while #7,778–#8,000 were reserved for the project's founders, and all 8,000 were claimed within four hours of launch.

The project has expanded into a set of related collections and an ecosystem referred to as the Lootverse. Alongside the original 8,000 bags there is Synthetic Loot (free bags derived from any Ethereum address, with 2^256 possible bags, not mintable or sellable), More Loot or mLoot (1.5 million free-to-claim bags with roughly 250,000 more released per year), and Genesis Loot (2,540 bags summoned by collecting complete sets of eight Genesis Mana distilled from bags containing items "of" Orders). Derivative and community-built collections and tools listed on the project site include Banners (25,000 society/politics NFTs), Crypts and Caverns on-chain dungeon maps, Rings (for Loot), Realms (8,000 procedurally generated territories ruled by 16 orders), The Rift leveling and XP infrastructure, character collections such as Loot Characters, Loot Explorers, HyperLoot, Lootpunk, M3taloot 3D game assets and Loot Swag avatars, and games and exploration layers including the Atlas of 50,000 points of interest and The Crypt raiding series.

Loot has no company owner, team or roadmap in the conventional sense; it is described as collectively owned by its community and unaudited, developing through crowdsourced creation. The Loot Project website is community-operated and open source, guided by the Loot Alliance, a collective of builders and designers that maintains listing criteria for which projects appear on the main page versus the resources page (requirements include having a website, shipped code, active usage and an active team).

Founding story

Loot was introduced on 27 August 2021 by Dom Hoffmann, a co-founder of Vine. The NFTs were released without art, stats or defined use cases and could be claimed for the cost of Ethereum gas alone, with the intent of building the foundation of a gaming universe and leaving its interpretation and development to whoever found it interesting.

Business model

Loot itself has no owning company, corporate team or roadmap; the base collection was distributed free (gas only) and value accrues to holders and to the derivative projects built on top. Ancillary collections in the Lootverse are minted at set ETH prices — for example Genesis Loot at 0.25 ETH, Loot Characters at 0.2 ETH, HyperLoot at 0.05 ETH, Loot Explorers at 0.04 ETH and Lootpunk at 0.01 ETH, each plus gas — while Synthetic Loot and More Loot are free to claim.

There is no company-level revenue model; distribution occurred via free or gas-only claims and secondary-market trading on venues such as OpenSea and Loot.exchange, with derivative collections charging mint prices denominated in ETH.

Traction

All 8,000 original bags were claimed within four hours of launch. Roughly two weeks after launch, about $230 million of Loot had changed hands and the cheapest bag traded around $21,000; the highest recorded sale was bag #748 at 420.69 WETH ($1.4 million) on 3 October 2021, having earlier sold for 250 ETH (about $800,000). Later reporting cited more than 100,000 ETH in cumulative trading volume, an OpenSea total volume figure of 74.7K and a 1.19 ETH floor, and noted that roughly 126,000 of the 1.5 million More Loot bags had been minted. The community website repository has about 413 stars and 207 forks.

Latest developments

The project site presents a multi-chapter structure: gearing up through Banners, Crypts and Caverns, Rings (for Loot), Realms and Genesis Mana distillation; leveling via The Rift; character visualization through Loot Characters, Loot Explorers, Lootpunk and forthcoming HyperLoot and M3taloot 3D assets; and quests including the Atlas of 50,000 points of interest across the Realms and The Crypt, a chapter-based raiding game series.