Our next interview is with a project coming up to it’s first mint. The artwork looks to be very high quality and they are slowly building a community around the project.
Introducing Panda Society.
We chatted to the team to find out more about the project ahead of their mint date.
Tell us a little about Panda Society, what type of artwork is it, what size drop?
Panda Society is a good old-fashioned PFP project, our art is the doing of an awesome cartoonist and illustrator named Rick whose attention to detail takes us to the next level. Our upcoming drop will consist of 5,555 unique NFTs that we hope the community will love!
Where did the idea for the project come from?
Originally I approached Rick on Twitter because I was a fan of his work and was curious if he would be interested in bringing his art to the Cardano blockchain.
Once we established our core team, we did a lot of brainstorming and finally decided to go with Panda Society. We knew that we wanted to do an animal PFP project and we figured that pandas are rather underrepresented in the NFT space, which is a shame because they’re amazing animals.
Nothing against apes but it’s time for something new haha!
What makes this project unique?
First and foremost, it’s the art quality and attention to detail that sets Panda Society apart from any other CNFT project currently on the market.
There have been many discussions regarding artists choosing to feature their art on Ethereum or Solana over Cardano due to the better financial incentives, however we are here to make a positive impact and we hope to create a fantastic community around Rick’s art.
What about the team behind the project? Tell us a bit about the team, what are your background(s) and what has lead you to start this project.
Our core team consists of 4 members – Georgie (founder), Rick (artist), Jonas (developer) and Ollie (community manager).
Me and Ollie have been interested in CNFTs for roughly a year now, we’ve witnessed in real time the launches of basically all blue chips on the market aside from SpaceBudz. Jonas has extensive work experience in the gaming industry and brings a lot of knowledge on the developer side of things, while Rick simply needs no introduction apart from his amazing portfolio of work.
What is the long term vision for the project? Is there a roadmap at this stage or will you be building as you go?
We have laid out the foundations for our roadmap which is available on our website because we want to assure that we’re in this project for the long haul, however the finer details will all be decided on with the help of our community.
The NFT space is ever-changing and we will adapt and do what is best for our holders at all times. We are not looking to attach our project to hot themes such as metaverse and P2E because of our own personal tastes in NFTs. We like simple utility and good art, and that is what we are looking to bring to the table.
How important do you feel it is, as a new project, to build a community around your project before rushing into a mint?
Building up a loyal community is very much what makes or breaks any NFT project. The art is what draws people in and the community aspect is what makes them stay.
We have allowed for a fair amount of time before our minting event to ensure that project awareness and recognition are at peak levels, and will be holding many community building events along the way!
What got the team interested in Blockchain and NFT’s?
Me and Ollie developed an interest in the stock market throughout lockdown, which then spiralled into crypto trading and inevitably collecting NFTs.
Jonas ended his first journey exploring Bitcoin before many others had even started theirs, when the DGEX exchange was hacked in 2014. Needless to say, that was a bitter pill for him and he decided to stay out of crypto. However years later Rick approached him about going halves on an ETH mint and the rest, as they say, is history.
What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far with this project?
Overall we’ve found it a tad challenging to get the initial word out about the project, however our efforts are paying off and more people are joining our Discord server on a daily basis which is great to see.
The benefit of having 4 team members onboard has been that everybody only needs to focus on their own responsibilities, which in our opinion is a huge advantage over projects with smaller teams who are having to fill many roles at once.
Why did you choose to launch on Cardano?
We like Cardano over Ethereum because it is accessible to more diverse demographics due to the low gas fees. Solana is the alternative to that, however their NFT space is quite saturated and the overall community vibe is not as genuine and supportive as Cardano’s from personal experiences.
How do you see the NFT space evolving over the next few months?
That’s a difficult question to answer because things change on a daily basis, however we believe that quality community-focused projects will continue to thrive no matter what happens with regards to short-term crypto prices or trader sentiment. On the other hand, hot themes and temporary buzz words might change, sadly leaving some overleveraged projects behind, which is why we are focusing on the fundamentals first.
What project would you ideally love to do a collaboration with?
There is genuinely so many! First one that comes to mind would be Degen Crypto Club because of their awesome community, Cypherkicks is another great OG CNFT project and of course Aeoniumsky purely because of how unique their art is. From a thematic perspective, Lion Legends would make a lot of sense and why not Chilled Kongz!
Collaborations are one of our favourite things about the CNFT space and we’re very excited to see where the future will take us in that regard. Being featured in cNFTcon would be another potential huge milestone for us.
Do you guys collect NFT’s too? What’s your favourite? Can we see it?
I’m currently loving the new 3D Chucks by Cypherkicks x ADA Robots because I own a lot of Converse in real life too.
Ollie has owned anything from Cocoloco (throwback!) all the way to the newest projects on the chain, although this is my chance to mock him for paper-handing Claymates just before they took off 😝
And Rick and Jonas are new to the CNFT space so we will have to sort them out really soon!
Thank you to the team for answering our questions. If you’d like to know more you can visit the Panda Society website or follow them on Twitter.
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