The story of myself (TDuyf aka Tom in real life) and the other founder (Tim aka @Cryp7im ) originates way back at high school. We’ve grown up together ever since. We live in the same little Dutch town, share a group of friends and have played in the same football team (i.e. soccer for the American readers) for over a decade. We’ve basically known each other for nearly 20 years now.
We both share an interest in tech, the internet, websites and all things crypto. Using this common interest, we have been undertaking several little startups in these 20 years, mostly founding little websites and trying new things.
We share a lot of the same interests, but we differ in education and jobs. Tim has a technical background and is a seasoned full stack developer, whereas I have a marketing background and have a job as a SEO specialist. Two different expertises within the same industry. He develops great websites and platforms, I make sure websites thrive within Google’s ecosystem. Our skillset really complements each other and I believe that that’s what makes our partnership in the Radogs project a solid foundation.
It basically comes down to this: Everything that needs developing using code, Tim is able to take care of. Making the artwork, setting up and maintaining the main website (radogs.tech), the socials and community, I take care of.
I first came to learn of Radix late spring of 2021. I was on the lookout of new, upcoming projects and was so bored and underwhelmed of the crypto space during that time. It was the time where there was a new coin being listed using an animal species combined with ‘moon’ as a name everyday and people were getting scammed left and right. That’s native to bull runs I suppose, but I really needed a project with a solid foundation and some idea of where crypto should be heading. It was late spring of 2021 when a tech savvy Discord user introduced me to Radix.
The Radix whitepaper, the tech, the language they used, the background of the team, basically everything about Radix oozed a serious knowhow of how the world crypto ecosystem currently works, what the flaws have been and what is needed in order for DeFi to thrive. That’s what I had been missing all these crypto years. That’s what got me seriously interested in Radix. It’s fair to say I didn’t need much words to get Tim hooked.
Radogs is basically a love child of our complementary skill sets and our shared interest in Radix and its ecosystem. Until November 2021, we weren’t deep into the NFT world, but we saw the rise of Abandoned Scorpions and Nerds and they really inspired us to start our own project. It was in December 2021 that a serious Radix itch started to develop. Babylon was still a long way to go and we felt the ecosystem needed some fun.
Like with every project, it needed a foundation. We liked the pixel art style of Punks, Abandoned Scorpions and that art style was a fit with our skillset as well, but we adjusted the pixel cluster size to give make it more unique. For the base of the design we needed something likable by everyone and something that is far away from any political or ethnic discussion, hence the dog. It needed to have a usecase right from the start, with other functionality to be added later. That’s why the dog is designed like it could have been a self portrait in order to have the usecase of a unique avatar for socials. Our Radog idea was born. We both agreed that it needed to be something that didn’t need to rely on the skills or products of third parties. That would’ve added delays and risks. Lastly, it had to show the strength of the Radix network. That’s why we made a pledge that we would automate as much as possible against the Radix API’s.
Our goal is to be the best shopping experience for Radix NFTs, while having some fun until Babylon comes. Fun, automation and user-friendly are our values.
The entire NFT store on app.radogs.tech we have built ourselves. Since smart contracts are not yet a possibility, we feel like everybody needs to be able to get a Radog. Using React, PHP and Go, we combined the look and feel of a NFT marketplace with the ease of a shopping experience at a common e-commerce webshop. The result is a gallery of NFTs, with the familiarity of a shopping cart icon and simple and clear instructions on how to buy them. On the back-end we gave the messages that the wallet would receive a functionality that would make the entire distribution automatic. It needed to fit our goal: fun, automated and user-friendly. And that it has been since the launch in January 2022.
After the launch of the store, we added functionality that was desired by our holders like a wallet lookup and filters and the possibility to pay with $OCI. You can see all the progression that has been made on app.radogs.tech/changelog.
Radogs has been an avatar based NFT project so far. It embodied the values ‘automation’ and ‘user-friendly’ and for NFT enthusiasts we delivered ‘fun’. But we wanted more fun. Owners need to play with their dogs, because it creates a bond between the human and the pet. That’s when the idea of an arcade, or in our case a Radcade, came along: a way to play with your dog.
Our Radcade provides extra utility for Radog holders. As a holder, you gain access to our arcade. You enter your own wallet, the one you hold your Radogs on, and a randomized password is sent through an encrypted message to your wallet. You enter your wallet address as a username and the password from the message and you are able to enter the arcade.
With the arcade game you earn $WOOFIES, our utility token. These tokens, once held in your wallet, provide access to your upgrading system, just like in an actual arcade where you get tickets from machines. Per 100 $WOOFIES you can change the looks of one of your own NFT into a completely new design. The dog avatar remains, but it will have new traits. Traits the original Radogs don’t have. Unlike our original NFT store, this ‘upgrade’ system is completely randomized. Players do not know which combination of traits they will get and neither will we. The ‘old’ Radog well be overwritten and will no longer exist. Of course, impacting rarity percentages across all other Radog NFTs!
The instructions are simple: You send 100 $WOOFIES to the given stated wallet address and add a non encrypted message containing the NFT number of the NFT you would like to change. After that the automated process does the rest. Your NFT preview in the store will change and you can view your new Radog. For the start there might be a slight delay here, but we aim to fix that as soon as possible.
The idea is to provide a constant flow of new traits in the upgrade system. We even have the idea of themed events, seasons etc. Who knows…
Being a small team of basically one developer and one community/commercial manager, we have to prioritize in the right way and build the foundation right. If we don’t, we just have an empty shell with loose ends. First we want to achieve our main goals. After the radcade, the lionshare of our roadmap should be behind us for now. We will make adjustments to the arcade along the way of course and we still have some cool plans for it, but we are then able to look for collaborations. For instance, the high score list enables us to give NFT or tokens of other projects to the weekly winners. All of this is just a quick step if we get the foundation right.
The radcade gives us the ability to do a lot of cool new things. Just some of the ideas we’ve been discussing:
Our aim has never been to sell out the entire collection (without burning) or get rich off it. We just love the Radix ecosystem and we want to do something for people in it. At the time of writing we have sold a little over 12% of our collection to new owners and we aim to grow organically. With Babylon coming, our main goal (of course) is to introduce Radogs to smart contracts. From the start we have said to each other that, once Babylon comes and smart contracts are possible, we will burn the remaining tokens and NFT in the collection at some point. The reason behind this is to create more value for the current holders since the amount of Radogs in circulation will be less than 10.000 and there won’t be a way to get a new one without buying it from a Radogs holder. It basically kickstarts the trading process. The other side of the coin is that the rarity statistics to this day don’t say much until the rest is burned. So it’s still exciting to see what Radog will be the most valuable after the burning of the tokens!
Logically, after that we plan to list on the most popular Radix marketplace at that time in order to make trading easier for the holders. We plan to keep the radcade alive for a while after that in order to still provide the ‘fun’ value to (new) holders and give people the opportunity to get the new traits.
Our vision of 2023/2024 is that the result of our project is to have a collection with no more remaining supply, an automated upgrading system that users can use, but don’t have to and to provide the holders a possibility to make a profit on their investment if they wish to do so. But let’s face it, what sane person could give away a dog you’ve had for a year…
From the start we’ve been reluctant to throw free Radogs everywhere in constant giveaways. We feel like it devalues the project a little. The creation of our $WOOFIES token gives us an opportunity to do some cool promotions in the upcoming months. What kind of promotions we will have, we won’t share yet :)
There are so many! You can’t say Radix NFTs without mentioning Nerds and Abandoned Scorpions. These have been our inspiration and Nerds have yet to release their artwork, exciting! Outside the Radix NFT world, we really like Ociswap and everything from Caviar. Some great minds on those projects that have 100% dedication towards Radix, have a huge following and seem to do everything right. Hats off to them! But there are so much more we would like to give a shoutout to like Radixcharts and open source projects like RadixLib (Python) and radixir. These libraries helped us a lot as an example in developing against the Radix Network.
Have a vision of what you would like your project to be in a year, but also in three years. Decide what values you would like to use as a blueprint in order to reach that vision. Test every decision you have to make to those values. Don’t take more on your plate then you can handle, even though it may make your progress slower. Organic growth has so much more potential then a quick and dirty start-up.
