The Future of JPunks

With the one year anniversary of JPunks over and the year one roadmap coming to completion we wanted to talk to you about the future of the project and its current position in the market.

Everyone has worked tirelessly since its inception on August 2021 to make JPunks a successful web3 business and global brand, committing every waking hour to delivering what we promised to you in our year one Road Map. Founders, artists, creatives, devs, marketing & partnerships have all been pushing with a singular goal.

Although we have delivered our year one plan, with some extras along the way (see our anniversary post - https://medium.com/@jpunks-nft/jurassic-punks-1-year-anniversary-7d9be1f542db ), unfortunately we haven’t been able to generate a consistent revenue stream which is required for the longevity of the business.

When we minted we listened to the community and halved our mint price stating this would be everything we needed for our year one Road Map. Our year one was very considered and built around the revenue streams we believed we could hit, Fashion, Clothing/Merch, Future collections & secondary Volume.

One of our main goals was to bring JPunks to the forefront of Digital Fashion, creating motion captured digital catwalks and shows. Our initial proof of works were amazingly received and got us in the room with a lot of big brands. However getting them to commit and take that jump into web3 was tough.

We poured countless days, weeks and months, creating many tests to try and get these partnerships over the line however many didn’t want to take the risk. We employed specialists across all fields of fashion to help facilitate this and took the job very seriously but ultimately many brands felt the jump too risky.

As the market shifted and fear grew it has become even more difficult to get these partnerships and brands in place and many we were talking to decided it was simply not worth the risk at all. Fashion and working with brands was our key USP and was the key revenue driver in our year 1 business model. Without revenue coming in from this sector it has now forced us to look for alternative methods for generating revenue.

We did a genesis drop of JPunks merch, the first of planned multiple drops and the start of our push for a JPunks clothing brand. It was highly anticipated by the community and something that was requested many times, however the truth is we only sold around 54 items and we lost money from the merch drop rather than generate any revenue. We were very surprised by the lack of sales and it all but confirmed to us that generating future revenue from additional merch drops and a JPunks clothing line would not be possible in the short to medium term.

Raptors were always planned as a free claim for OG holders and was in our roadmap from day one but we also have plans for further collections with many built around our fashion goals. With the current state of the market we do not feel its right to release more collections to help fund further years and we believe it would be very difficult to sell out a new collection.

Lastly although not our primary route, secondary volume was a way to bring in revenue but with the state of nfts and creator royalties being all but extinguished this is now not an option either.

The harsh reality is that the JPunks brand is not a revenue generating business at the moment and hasn’t been generating revenue since mint. We have spent a lot of time looking at potential revenue streams and have been exploring various investment opportunities for a JPunks year 2 roadmap.

Because of these issues highlighted above we have had to pivot to a new direction as these revenue streams can no longer be relied upon.

We have put this statement together as we want to be as open and honest as possible with our community and explain where the project is at and what the plan is for the future.

With our backgrounds in professional VFX we set out to run the project like a professional creative studio, hiring the best teams of artists, creatives and devs, letting the quality of work and utility lead the way. But as we know in this space sometimes that is just not enough and hype, fomo and financial speculation can have the ability to outshine quality of work.

This has been a big disappointment to us as we never set out to be a hype project as it’s not true to our ethics and we firmly believed and still believe that by introducing our skillset into the space we would help be a small part of shaping the future of the metaverse and primarily fashion.

Fashion and on boarding brands were key to the success and longevity of the project as they would provide the company with a healthy and regular revenue stream and allow us to operate as a successful business. Along with this any other traditional routes of revenue simply aren’t applicable anymore within NFTs with royalties all but extinguished and new mints a much harder sell in current market conditions.

Because of this we are pivoting from fashion for now as we believe at this current time it simply is not a reliable way to generate revenue in this sector, especially for JPunks. We know a lot of people will be frustrated and disappointed but unfortunately without revenue the project and team simply cannot continue to the standard needed to be a profitable business.

We really have poured everything into this, and have lived and breathed this project for nearly 2 years, 24/7, and although the project has officially only been going a year since mint, this is now nearly our 2nd full year of building with our first year purely self funded. It’s been our sole passion, our lives revolve around JPunks and there’s not been a single day where we haven’t pushed to make it a success.

That said we have been working hard behind the scenes for months on the future of JPunks and we are looking at various routes to take the project forward with the most important factors being revenue and utilising our skill set. But we want to be transparent with you all that any route we do take will require investment to get us there which we have been exploring for quite some time now but to reiterate if we can’t secure this investment we cannot move on to a brand new year 2 roadmap.

We understand that this will come as a bit of a disappointment to our community and want to reassure everyone that we are pushing hard for investment and have been for the past few months. While we enter into this planning and strategic period we would appreciate that our community have patience and faith that we will do the right thing and do everything we can to take us beyond year 1.

We will be updating the community regularly on all developments as and when they come in and will continue to work on the launch of the free claim for Raptors in early May. We started this journey with principals and honesty and we will always continue to keep this up that is why we felt it was so important to release this article now and share everything with our community to keep you as informed as possible while we try to negotiate a future plan for JPunks.

Thank you all for your support as you have been key to everything we have achieved so far.