Project Phäros, Koodos and the Future (Which I Can't Predict but I Gotta Do Something So...)

Yo! A lot has been happening lately! As we continue down this road in web3, especially during the current bear market (which this post will last longer than), I have no plans of slowing down. In my continued journey to build and be great, I wanna chat about the next chapter of the journey: Project Phäros.

The next era of what I’m up to is going to be through executing the vision of Project Phäros, started by Matt Monday and myself. At current, we like to call Phäros a Web3 Music Product Packaging company, which means that we’re focused on creating combined physical and digital experiences for music, rooted in web3 technology. More than anything, we’re focused on bridging the cultures we’re passionate about — rap music, streetwear, sneakers, anime and gaming — with web3. Project Phäros believes that culture transcends the means which is receive, and while we’re passionate about web3 as a technology, we want to lead with culture, taste and really fucking cool ideas. Phäros, named after the Lighthouse of Alexandria, is designed to be a beacon to all those who resonate with the culture and ideas we believe in. I know this idea can seem a bit exclusionary, only looking for those who believe in what we’re up to, but culture, especially outside of popular culture, is in some ways exclusionary. “If you know, you know” is a resounding mantra for the community and products we’re building at Project Phäros. Let’s dig into our first product, Koodos.

Koodos is the very first product and experience we’ve put together at Project Phäros. It’s the packaging, experience and execution around the latest album by Matt Monday. The album itself is something we’ve been working on for a few years, and through its many iterations, it’s finally found a home in web3. There’s a lot to the Koodos experience, but I think explaining it here will give you guys an idea of the level of thought, work and care we’re putting into everything we’re doing at Phäros.

Koodos, at its most basic is just a few things:

• An NFT (that you can still mint here)

• A physical package

• An album worth of new music by Matt MOnday

• An augmented reality experience

• A comic book

• A bag of vegan and gluten-free kettle-style popcorn

If you dig a little deeper, there’s a lot more that comes with this product and experience. At first glance, Koodos is already such a cool concept for releasing music, but the details are where it really shines. We worked with PSSYPPL, Holliday Horton and Quantum Tech to execute this vision. Lets dig in:

First, Koodos is an album that has three unique covers which are reflected on the NFT you purchase. You’re able to choose which cover you want. The artwork you decide to mint corresponds with the physical package you’ll receive. There are limited and different stock counts of each design, as well, totaling in 1500 NFTs across the trio of designs — with the physical package claimable through the Koodos website. Quantum built a truly unique NFT minting experience, allowing you to choose which of the three artworks you get, all while adhering to the predetermined stock counts of each design. The quantity of each design is staggered, in counts of 700, 500 and 300 — and giving you the choice as to which design(s) you get opens up a world of reasons to get them. You could guarantee yourself the rarest box of the three, you can intentionally claim the whole set or even just get the one they like the most. Quantum also built a unique experience when it came to claiming the physical version of your NFT. If NFTs exist as a representation of identity AND a gateway to utility, it’s important not to burn the NFT when the physical product is claimed. Quantum worked to bring us an experience that changed the metadata when you redeem from a Deadstock (or unclaimed) state to a Scooped Up (or claimed) one. Along with the change in redemption state, the visual for the NFT goes through a change as well. On the security side, Quantum made sure to create an experience that doesn’t link the wallet address of the token being transferred to the physical address by creating a one-way encryption and hashing system that will only show us on the Koodos side a hash and the shipping information. In an anonymous + pseudonymous world, we know it’s important to maintain as much privacy as possible, and Quantum built something great for us to use on that end.

Continuing down the path of talking about the NFT itself, the Koodos NFTs are special because they have the ability to hold other tokens inside of them, that are able to be deposited and withdrawn through a courier dashboard we will unveil to everyone in the future. Quantum has already built this into their NFT collection Doji Crew, and when putting together Koodos, we were given the opportunity to use this tech in our NFTs as well. Koodos NFTs will be able to hold, send and receive fungible (ERC-20) and non-fungible tokens. Having this tech at our disposal opens the floodgates for all kinds of unique and special experiences, whether it’s going through the minting process or after Koodos has fully sold through. We can’t wait to come up with ways for you to enjoy Koodos far after the mint ends and the album release period has died down.

With the physical Koodos experience, we’ve got a multilevel unboxing experience, eventually bringing you to the box that has the artwork that matches your NFT. That artwork is the first instance of augmented reality that you’ll experience through Koodos. Shouts out to PSSYPPL for the art and Holliday Horton for putting together the augmented reality. More augmented reality experiences will be added to the other sides of the box as well as the comic book in the future. Koodos is designed to be a story told from many angles and media, so using AR to do that allows us all sorts of opportunities. More idea floodgate talk.

Inside that final box is a bag of popcorn and a comic book. The cover of the comic matches the NFT you decided to purchase. Augmented reality experiences will be making its way to the comic book pages soon!

Click here to check out the website and mint one if you’re into it.

As someone working and creating in web3, a lot of the time I have no clue what I’m doing, but I what I do know is that it’s important to continue exploring my ideas. Every day is another set of ideas and I try to execute them before the idea gets boring or overtaken by a more advanced version of the idea. I’ve been thinking a lot about iteration and how creating digital goods allows for iteration in a relatively seamless fashion. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I can release music in ways that are interesting that also don’t de-emphasize the music. I think a lot about how to bring the work and experience closer together to as seamless as possible. The future is just me thinking a lot about things, trying things, thinking about them again, and then trying them. Thanks for joining me on this journey.