What is the Animetas NFT that Xu Jinglei changed her avatar into? It caused congestion on the night of the 1559 upgrade

Wu said author | Colin Wu

Editor of this issue | Colin Wu

Official website introduction: Animetas is a collection of 10,101 unique NFTs designed by pixelGustavo and generated by @cyberh49.

Animetas are virtual entities of humans (and other species) who have their brains created on the Ethereum blockchain and live happily in the Animetaverse, inspired by 80s and 90s pop culture, created in an ancient future where Earth is no longer habitable for humans.

The series is very inclusive, in addition to different species, there is a 1:1 ratio of male to female, transgender representation, characters of all ages, and many more surprises. Our variety of characters is unprecedented - 100+ clothes, 50+ hairstyles, hats, masks, and more.

There are two news about Animetas. The first is that on the night of Ethereum's most anticipated EIP-1559 upgrade, the sale of Animetas' NFT caused Ethereum's gas fee to soar in a short period of time, exceeding 1250GWei at one point, causing great congestion. On August 14, the community discovered that the famous Chinese director/actress Xu Jinglei changed her Instagram profile picture to Animetas.

Therefore, this NFT project, which is completely unfamiliar to the Chinese community, has attracted some attention from Chinese readers. In fact, the official website only noticed it after seeing the discussion on Twitter. According to rumors, this NFT was a gift from someone to Xu Jinglei. So what exactly is Animetas? We interviewed team member cyberh49, and interested readers can continue reading.

Q: Please introduce your team.

A: We started with two team members - cyberh49, head of R&D, marketing and community management, and pixelGustavo (Gustavo Viselner), head of art and design.

Cyberh49 is an algorithm developer with a PhD in Machine Learning and Computer Vision. pixelGustavo is a world-renowned pixel artist who created all the pieces in the series in his amazing style.

Last week we hired a PM and 4 developers to help us achieve our next goals.

Q: Where does the name Animetas come from?

A: Animetas is an amazing collection of 10101 (21 in binary) unique characters designed by pixelGustavo and generated by Cyberh49. The style of the collection is very retro-futuristic and deeply rooted in cyberpunk culture, as well as American and British pop culture from the 80s-90s. The collection is very aesthetically pleasing and the diversity of the characters is exciting. Not only do we have over 4000 different accessories and features, we also have different groups such as humans, children, zombies, superheroes, aliens, etc.

As soon as we came up with the name Animetas, a combination of the beloved Japanese cartoon style Anime and meta, we knew it was the name of our project.

Q: How did you come up with this design theme?

A: This theme came to us very easily. We wanted to create a world that was a mix of all the things we love - anime, nostalgic pop culture, pixel art, old-school video games, but in a very modern style. We thought people would enjoy entering this world with us because you can do so many things with it - comics, movies, role-playing games, and more!

Q: On the day of the EIP-1559 upgrade, your sale caused the gas fee to soar. What did you do?

A: We were really surprised to see Gas spike so much. We believe that the community we built over a month before launch and the shared language around the project attracted so many people and made the series so popular. That being said, we know that promotion is just the beginning, and we are working hard to make this series and the world we built around it even more exciting!

Q: What was the American and British pop culture in the 1980s and 1990s? Can you introduce it to Chinese readers?

A: As kids growing up in the 80s and 90s, we were fascinated by pixel-style video games, anime, American retro-futuristic movies, and science fiction, so it’s mainly about reliving our childhood. Who says we can’t use our imagination and play carefree like we did as kids?

Q: Your works have a strong science fiction background, the background is "a future that is no longer suitable for human survival". Why do you have such a setting?

A: We have a strong sci-fi background because we love everything about sci-fi, and basically, we want to create a world that allows us to world-build, tell stories, etc. It is easier to create such a world in the distant (unknown) future, where you don't know what reality and humans will be like, and you can use your imagination.

Q: What about the Three Body Problem? Do you want to work with them?

A: We’ve watched the trilogy more than once. Liu Cixin is amazing! We’d love to work with him! Maybe we’ll create an Animetas version of a VR video game — The Three-Body Problem — haha!

Q: We know that director Xu Jinglei changed Animetas to her Instagram profile picture. Were you surprised by what you found?

A: We were surprised and honored that such an amazing actress and director like Xu Jinglei liked Animetas so much that she put it on her profile photo on IG. We found it when people started tweeting about it. We were surprised and happy. The Chinese community is great and we want more Chinese people to know about Animetas. That's why we opened an Animetas Twitter page, a Weibo page, and a Chinese channel in our Discord server. We believe that the amazing Chinese culture can bring a lot of new ideas to our growing anime world.

Q: What are your plans for the future?

A: Our plans for the future are varied - first of all, we have a huge airdrop plan - each character will get an NFT of a hover car designed by pixelGustavo. The hover car will be part of the play2earn racing video game. That will be amazing. At the same time, we plan to execute our Animonsters series. The Animonsters series is the next evolution of Animonkeys, where you can burn up to 3 Animonkeys to create on Animonster. This is what we call the combo burn deflation mechanism.

Other than that, we are working on opening an online merchandise store, a fan art collection (Animetas fan art is awesome), an online arcade room with games like pinball, and more.

Q: What would you like to say to the Chinese community?

A: We want to say to the Chinese community that we love Chinese culture and we hope more people will know about Animetas. We are glad that we already have a growing Chinese community that loves Animetas, and we will do everything we can to make this amazing culture and community an active part of our collection and world building.

Q: What is your favorite Animetas?

A: The most popular type of Animetas at the moment is our superheroes - Animighties.