Do you find NFT culture weird and confusing? Wait till you see this website, Goblintown.wtf. This bizarre, ugly, and crooked NFT floor price went from 0 to 7.35 ETH (~$8,000 at the moment) since its release in May. If you’re confused, you’re not alone. Here, we will try our very best to point out what’s going on with Goblintown and explain why this NFT project achieved such popularity.

The Birth of Goblins

NFTs market don't look too healthy at the moment.

Look at the number on the largest NFT trading platform: OpenSea daily volume (Ethereum). Daily trading volume falling from $476M to $17M is never a good sign. This is the lowest single-day volume the platform has seen since December.

Less buying indicates sharp falls in NFT prices. After starting at $400,000 in May, Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs are now only a quarter of that. Similar drops have been seen in other Top Tier collections. The entry price of DOODLE has cratered from a May high of $68,500 to $15,000, while pixelated Moonbirds entry price is $21,700, down from $115,000.

Compounding the chaos, NFTs are dumping right alongside BTC and ETH. Bitcoin’s price has just crashed below the iconic previous all-time high of 2017 at $20,000. Ether fell below $1,000, far from its high of $4,600 in November 2021. This happens as the entire market tumbles amid rampant rumors and ongoing challenges.

But who knew? The 2022 NFT market crash gave birth to one of the strangest NFT collections the world has ever seen. It’s known as Goblintown.

How strange? Listen to their Twitter Space on May 26 (unfortunately, the Goblin have taken down the record). Basically, this was a group of about a dozen grown men making barely comprehensible goblin noises. For three hours. They spoke unintelligibly and at length about serving burgers to people in the audience with "Gary Pee sauce." The crazy thing is more than 86,000 people, including traders, influencers, and prominent investors, have tuned in.

The Goblintown collection went live on May 22, 2022. This wicked project saw all 10,000 of its freely minted pieces claimed in just a few short days. Shortly after selling out, the floor price went to more than 2 ETH ($2,500). Makers throughout the space immediately jumped on the hype, with Goblintown derivatives flooding OpenSea’s volume charts just weeks after Goblintown first opened its doors.

Eventually, the floor price crawled up to 4 ETH ($4,800), and individual NFTs started selling for tens of thousands of dollars. One of the most expensive sales was Goblintown #8995, which sold for $136,440. Today, the Goblin floor price settled for 3.1 ETH ($3500). Phew!

For better or worse, the project took the NFT world by storm.

And to us, Chainslab, Goblintown is not a random project that luckily finds success in the NFT space, but a work of the creative, financial, and social experiment. But, to be clear, this is not financial advice — never spend more than you’re willing to lose.

So, what the F is Goblintown?

Here’s how the creators, AKA kingofthegoblin, describe the project on OpenSea: "AAAAAAAUUUUUGGGHHHHH gobblins goblinns GOBLINNNNNNNNns wekm ta goblintown yoo sniksnakr DEJEN RATS oooooh rats are yummmz dis a NEFTEEE O GOBBLINGS on da BLOKCHIN wat? oh. crustybutt da goblinking say GEE EMMM DEDJEN RUTS an queenie saay HLLO SWEATIES ok dats all byeby". Brilliant, isn't it?

But Goblintown is no ordinary collection. Despite the ridiculous way their founders described the collection, it didn’t seem like an amateur one.

Goblintown is a profile picture (PFP) NFT collection with 10,000 pieces of NFT featuring all sorts of hideous creatures that you may think to exist in Goblin Town. These can be trolls, dragons, wizards, mosquitoes,...

PFP NFT means the popular use of these NFTs as literal profile pictures on social media sites like Twitter, but it is just part of a larger ecosystem. These images represent your existence in an exclusive community, like an elite club or secret society.

Goblintown’s name and site URL, which ends in .wtf, manifest what every NFT collector feels during this market crash: Anger, chaos, desperation, and pandemonium. The name is an informal expression for bear markets, and the project could be seen as a complicated commentary on the state of NFTs during the 2022 drop.

The purpose of the project is also somewhat surprising. Every NFT collectors/investors on this planet assume that an NFT project must have meaningful utility. But, Goblintown’s creators don’t care. From the start, the founders were upfront about the nature of this project. They outlined their plans in bold letters on their official website: “No roadmap. No Discord. No utility. CC0.” That last bit is the only bit worth paying attention to, as each Goblintown NFT is registered under a creative commons license, meaning buyers have the power to do whatever they want with their goblins, from modifying to merchandising.

But, their statement is rather a marketing strategy, which leaves everyone curious about what Goblins will do next. And in the NFT world, curiosity is the key to success.

The NFT project didn’t involve any collaborations, campaigns, whitelisting, or anything, yet it managed to create an effortless buzz in the NFT community.

Goblintown’s floor value increased by 458% in its first six days of launch — in the middle of a bear season when almost every collection in the NFT market had significantly lost value.

So, why can this ridiculous project become a BOOM?

The Power of Community or A Marketing Trickery?

First, to start with, spot on to any NFT project is art. These monstrous, bizarre, and crooked images are not everyone's taste but take a lot of sweat and tear to make. And it was made by real artists, not some 3-years-old kid drawing. The same can be said of the website. The UX is complex and enjoyable, with a number of fun surprises baked into it. And clearly, it was made by someone with a web design and engineering background.

The Goblintown NFT artworks feature goblins who converse in gibberish; even their 193 different traits and descriptions mentioned on OpenSea are Goblin blurbs. These characteristics are enough to get NFT maniacs hooked.

Secondly is the marketing strategy. Their entire Twitter was written in the Goblin language, which later spread around the space at the speed of light. And to further stir the pot, the anonymous team behind Goblin Town hosted a Twitter space podcast that was entirely in Goblin-Gibberish. For 3 hours straight. This is a genius marketing move. More than 86,000 people tuned to hear barely comprehensible goblin noises.

Thirdly, the entire Goblintown collection is free mint. They offer a no-entry barrier to anyone who wants to possess Goblin. Of course, this creates more demand in comparison to supply. And what we see next is the spike of the floor price, from zero to hero. They even toppled Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) in terms of trading volume and sales in the following weeks.

Fourthly, the team behind it remains anonymous at the launch, which keeps everyone guessing. This is a red flag to any crypto project, but not to Goblintown, it keeps up the curiosity.

One of the individuals tied to Goblintown is Beeple. This came about after Goblintown tweeted, “we, not @steveaoki, we @beeple.” The famous digital artist has, however, denied this speculation. Others claim that Yuga Labs (creators of BAYC) might be involved in the project, but they’ve also denied any involvement.

Eventually, Goblintown’s creators came clean and revealed who they are. In a tweet on June 15, Goblintown’s creators identified themselves as Truth Labs. It’s a collective of creators whose mission is “dedicated to sharing delightful blockchain mischief, exploring creatively, developing rich, fun worlds and experiences (both IRL and in the digital realm), and providing a platform for new voices and visions in this space.”

The Truth Labs team previously created The 187 and Illuminate Collective, and these two are both pleasing in their own way. Do check out these 2 if you have time.

Finally, the reason behind Goblintown's success is the Power of Community, the continued power of virality. Despite lacking a comprehensive marketing plan, partnerships with established brands, or affiliations with prominent members in the NFT sphere, it has made a huge mark within the community.

In short, the idea of Goblintown — its irreverent “nothing really matters” tone — struck a chord with collectors who had experienced weeks of stressful financial losses. Plus, it was simply absurd and just made no sense. This made individuals curious and also gave them a sense of FOMO. What is this project? What if it’s a cunning ploy by someone huge? What if I miss out?

These all came together to make Goblintown go viral, and the project quickly transformed into a thriving community.

Closing Thought

Over the past month, Goblintown has provided new breath and energy to the NFT market, despite its current loss of momentum.

To us, Chainslab, Goblintown is not a random project that happens to be a stroke of luck but a work of the creative, financial, and social experiment.

After all, we are in an attention economy. The term “attention economy” was coined by a psychologist, economist, and Nobel Laureate Herbert A. Simon, who posited that attention was the “bottleneck of human thought” that limits both what we can perceive in stimulating environments and what we can do.

Goblintown, and/or Truth Lab, was doing a great job. They create attention around them with a weird concept, free service, and little to no information.

With this method, they have accomplished nearly $3M just from royalty in the secondary market trade. Congrats!