Written by: 0x21, 0xLaughing, Rhythm BlockBeats

「My precious！」

I believe that most people's first reaction when they see the newly promoted "big brother" goblintown is Gollum from the Middle-earth world in the movie "Lord of the Rings". What echoes in their minds is the "my precious" weird voice. Just imagine the effect of repeating the words "wen road map?", "wen token?", and "airdrop!" with a grunt pronunciation.

That's right, on the twitter space of goblintown NFT that just ended, all holders of goblintown NFT used such a "magic" method to brainwash the NFT players again. The screen recording of twitter space is crazy Spread among major social media and communities. The 3-hour twitter space has been played more than 45,000 times. Even Neo Tokyo founder Ellio Trades tweeted: "xxx, I also want to make a goblin voice"

There is no Road, an anonymous founding team, freemint, CC0, and more importantly, it is difficult to look directly at it. No matter how you look at it, goblitown NFT is not so "star-like", let alone when the NFT market is facing a cold winter. So how did goblintown go up from the floor price of 0.04ETH in the secondary market to "against the market" in just 5 days, reaching about 2ETH, and successfully won the OpenSea "ranking one"?

imitation game

On May 21, the goblintown official push officially announced the start of mint. In fact, on-chain monitoring showed that the contract had already opened mint on May 20. After the goblintown official push was announced, it has been tepid.

Until the founder of The BlockMike DAOdasAfter lightly saying on Twitter that he also participated in this free mint, it was finally sold out. When everyone thinks that this humble project is also a "picture dog", they don't know that there is still a very crazy viral marketing behind it.

We are YugaLabs?

On May 22, with the end of the casting, goblintown official Twitter sent a promotional picture, the content is an interesting dialogue between two goblins (English transliteration):

"Is your sense of smell out of order? you smell d (e) af"

"You heard we are from Yuga? You here (hear) we Yuga?"

"What Yuga? What Yuga (Wat yuga)"

"That monkey. That Monkey (Day munkee)"

"But, we are goblins. But we goblins"

「...」

The dialogue released by goblintown caused restlessness, and for a while players began to think that goblintown might be YugaLabs' hidden NFT project. In fact, this is not nonsense. As early as the beginning of the year, in the more than 90 pages of Deck released by YugaLabs, it was mentioned that there will be a treasure hunt called Trezor (Treasure) Hunt in the middle and late May after the release of Koda. It just so happens that Treasure The word is also changed to "Trezor" through the English transliteration of goblin, and the word "treasure hunting" is also closely related to the image of Goblin.

In YugaLabs' Deck, page 86 of the income statement, it is indeed mentioned that 1% of the income source will be goblin(s).

As this speculation broke out, more and more people joined the army of "proving that goblintown" belongs to YugaLabs.

Someone found an image of one of the suspected YugaLabs teams in the avatar of the founding team on the official website of goblintown.

Others compare goblintown with the line thickness of BAYC and MAYC.

There is more and more "extremely terrifying" evidence to show that there is some connection between goblintown and YugaLabs. Even though YugaLabs officials did not make any response, it did not affect the rapidly rising price of goblintown. In two days, it rose from the original 0.04ETH to 0.6ETH. If it is said that "pretending" YugaLabs to make goblintown get a ten-fold increase can stop them here, then we would have underestimated this long-planned "gulu" too much. In fact, their "imitation game" has just begun.

We are SuperStar?

While NFT players were still speculating that YugaLabs was the team behind goblintown, and were confused about the authenticity of this "rumor", some new "rumors" began to ferment.

At 4 a.m. on May 22, goblintown turned around and turned to the well-known musician "Pengci"Steve Aoki, goblintown official tweeted: "What Yuga Labs? We are Steve Aoki." Steve Aoki is a DJ musician with 9.95 million fans on social media Instagram, "Pollstar" once named him the highest-grossing electronic dance music artist on a North American tour.

This time "Pengci" is not groundless. There is indeed a rare model in the goblintown NFT collection that looks somewhat similar to Steve Aoki, and this rare model was also released on May 25.TheSandboxGameThe official wallet of the company bought it from the secondary market at a high price of 26ETH.

After "touching porcelain" Steve Aoki, Goblin's "rumor engine" did not seem to stop. Just six hours later, goblintown's official tweet changed again: "We are not Steve Aoki, we are Beeple." Beeple said He is a well-known digital artist in the circle. He once sold an NFT artwork at Christie's auction house for US$69.3 million, breaking the record in the digital art world.

NFT players haven't woken up yet. Less than 4 hours later, goblintown's official tweet was changed again in the same format. This time, the target of "Pengci" isFrederic Duquette. Frederic Duquette is a 3D artist from Canada. He once published a series of NFT works named "FVCK_CRYSTAL//". The cumulative transaction volume on OpenSea exceeded 11.5K, and the current floor price remains above 0.6ETH.

On May 25th, when everyone thought that goblintown officials were tired of this "imitation game", a voice of "we are all Snoop Dogg" went to "pretend" the famous rapper Gouye, which once again aroused everyone's curiosity .

Who is the King of Goblins?

In the "The Hobbit" movie, there is a Goblin Kingdom under the misty mountains in Middle-earth, and the image of the Goblin King is described as a huge, repulsive, fat, evil creature. A baroque throne with goblins as a mat for his ascent and departure.

So in the goblintown series, who is the king of goblins? Open and transparent on-chain data revealed some clues.

From the data on the chain, it can be seen that only 15 minutes after goblintown officially deployed the last contract, an address named mikedudas.eth called the contract "Makingobblin" to mint, and mikedudas.eth account The owner is none other than Mike DAOdas, founder of The Block we mentioned earlier.

Associating the data on the chain with his initial "kind reminder", more and more people speculate that Mike DAOdas is the driving force behind goblintown. Later, there were more and more rumors about this matter, and Mike DAOdas had to come forward to clarify this matter: he did know the goblintown team, but sharing the news of this free mint was just a benefit, and he hardly benefited from it.

Since then, the viral marketing of the team’s background and the behind-the-scenes players seems to have come to an end. The goblintown team used “rumors” to leverage their strength and aroused extensive discussions among NFT players. The marketing methods are not unsophisticated.

"Goblin Mode"

In addition to superb marketing methods, goblintown caters to the "Goblin Mode" meme culture in the context of the current epidemic, which arouses everyone's resonance.

"Goblin mode" refers to a person who is generally disheveled due to laziness or an aversion to going out, who may not have showered and behaves "savagely," and the term has also been widely interpreted as a way of describing someone who is scruffy, unkempt, and lazy . It's been used for years on sites like Tumblr and Urban Dictionary. And this model has a new scenario in the current epidemic environment: people are forced to stay at home, hardly get out of bed, don't change into new clothes, eat fast food without cooking, and indulge in social media every day middle.

"Goblin mode" has no aesthetic feeling at all, or rather, it is ugly. After all, who cares what a goblin looks like?

The famous art critic Stephen Bayley said in "Appreciation of Ugly: The Aesthetics of Everything": "The more you think about ugliness and the longer you look at it, the more treacherous and changeable the concept of ugliness becomes."

Reflecting the "Goblin mode" on the works of goblintown, everyone's first impression of goblintown is almost "ugly" and "disgusting". Even so, it still captures a large number of followers with its unique culture, it seems "Not ugly" anymore.

Goblin "Culture"

goblintown uses words and sentences similar to "GGG". This style is unique in the entire NFT circle. Someone found that the official tweet of Bud Light's best-selling beer series even uses "Goblin language". One of the Ads for .

In order to better use "Goblin Language" to participate in Goblin Online Discussions, some people even spontaneously organized "Goblin Speaking Classes". In addition, everyone has made a lot of meme expression packs to spread the community culture of goblintown.

Easter eggs!

In the goblintown release series, there are 5 Easter egg NFTs besides Goblin. At the same time, the goblintown official Twitter announced and promoted it on May 21 and May 23 respectively, and revealed the information: "This egg is very special." Watching it gradually crack its shell and reveal an eye, everyone is very curious What will this egg look like? The goblintown team once again gave everyone an unimaginable progress: they smashed the egg to pieces.

The goblintown team played cards unreasonably, which once again aroused everyone's curiosity. Currently, this easter egg is sold on OpenSea at a minimum price of 77.77ETH.

At the same time, on their official website, the goblintown team photo frame will change every day, and the goblin images of the team members will appear in turn every day, which can be said to whet the appetite.

After all, how could a cunning goblin let you guess what it's thinking?

Answer?

The famous Italian literary critic Benedetto Croce said: "Ugliness is the expression of failure."

Although goblintown was launched with an "ugly to the extreme" artistic image, in less than a week after its listing, its price has skyrocketed from the initial free casting to a maximum of more than 2ETH. Its marketing methods and community spontaneous meme Culture and performance in the secondary market can be said to be very successful.

The story of goblintown is still going on, and people are picking up the "bread crumbs" left by the goblin along the way, looking forward to it revealing the answers one by one.