Brian Friel sits down with Famous Foxes Federation Co-founder DraxxTS to hear how he built one of the most admired NFT projects on Solana.

Show Notes:

01:19 - Origin Story / Background

06:41 - What is Famous Fox?

08:15 - The importance of the community

10:01 - The Team

13:08 - Top utilities available to users

17:47 - How Famous Fox approaches collaborations

20:33 - How to decide what to build?

23:21 - The future of NFTs

27:08 - Builders DraxxTS admires

28:09 Info and contact

Full Transcript:

Brian (00:06):

Hey everyone. Welcome back to The Zeitgeist, the show where we highlight the founders, developers and designers who are pushing the web three space forward. I'm Brian Friel developer relations at Phantom. Today, we have a very special guest, the co-founder and general of the Famous Fox Federation, DraxxTS. DraxxTS, welcome to the show.

DraxxTS (00:27):

Thanks for having me, Brian. Appreciate it.

Brian (00:27):

Thanks for coming on. I'm really excited about this episode today. You guys are a well-known NFT collection that has really come to embody the builder spirit on Solana. Before we get into all that, I think it'd be great if you could walk us through a little bit about your background, who you are and how you got started with Famous Foxes.

DraxxTS (00:44):

Yeah. Excellent. I'd love to, so my name DraxxTS, co-founder of Famous Fox Federation, like you had pointed out. As far as my background goes, my degrees, if you will, an undergraduate in electrical engineering and actually my graduate degree is in business and finance. And realistically, I've been in the web3 space slash-like involved with crypto since like early 2017. I've always kind of had a passion for investment products and such. And so late 2016, I actually had gotten more into Bitcoin Ethereum and just like the concepts of them, but didn't dip my feet in until early 2017 and really just been part of different groups for trading crypto and such in last year had just seen so much of a general interest happen with NFTs. I was around when CryptoPunks first came out, never bought any, unfortunately.

Brian (01:37):

You and me both, don't worry.

DraxxTS (01:38):

Yeah. And there were a bunch of them, but at the time, to me didn't really make much sense just like what they were. Who's going to spend $50 on a picture? In hindsight, obviously it was a mistake, but last year, part of one of the crypto groups I was in, actually, it kind of started up like a little bit of a fund for like trading NFTs and someone was a designated trader and everyone else just funded them and they were trading CryptoPunks and they were making like almost an ETH profit power. And that was when punks were like around 10, 11, 12 ETH or something like that. So they were doing quite well with it. And one day, I think they had eight punks in total. They all sold out and the trader didn't want to get back in. So they dissolved it and paid everyone their profits and that kind of went on.

DraxxTS (02:20):

And for me, the idea that they all sold out on a day and the floor price had pumped them kind of like, why? These things were going for 20, 30 ETH and didn't make any sense to me as to why people were paying so much money for it because I just really didn't understand what NFTs were about. And so since that time frame, that was probably early summer of last year, of 2021, just kind of wanted to learn more about NFTs and about Ethereum and about like the way that the chain works and all that kind of fun stuff and had met Dev and at the time our artist for creating our collection through just trading groups that we were part of for crypto. We talk often and understood that we have a pretty diverse skill set between us to possibly make something that's worth value to the space.

DraxxTS (03:12):

And that's really where Foxes were born. We actually were planning on doing our collection on ETH because we really wanted to do Solana, but at the time Solana seemed more of a country club and mints were quite challenging to do since it was so brand new. I think most of the original collections had minted early August. And so we determined that we were going to start doing a project around that time and we really wanted to be on Solana. Because we saw the benefits of the chain, the speed you could do the pricing of transactions. There were just so many benefits to it from really what we determined could be our strong suit from a builder's side, but we still thought there was enough opportunity on ETH to get involved, looking at how L2s were working and developing.

DraxxTS (03:57):

We just saw there was a potential opportunity there. And I think it was like midway through September, just saw an opportunity open up and Solana became a little bit easier to get onto. And so we just pivoted our marketing towards SOL. I think we probably did onboard some ETH people into SOL at the time. And then from there we just built out our product. I mean our roadmap one, which I know we'll probably talk a little bit more in-depth on some items we far surpass that. As far as the under promise over deliver aspect, that's always been part of our ethos. And once we had created our project, we just wanted to be as creative as possible and to create as much value as we could have.

DraxxTS (04:37):

And our Mint price was one SOL at the time. I think SOL was around $160 and originally it was two SOL, we cut it in half and then air dropped out part of our collection for folks that had minted originally, but we just were not priced properly in the market. And we've kind of been just building out really unique tools and a fun way of building out our brand through some of the other pieces such as missions, which I think are one of our most popular benefits for our collection as far as Fox holders go. And yeah, so we've kind of had an idea for what we wanted to do on our roadmap V one and we've far destroyed that. And then for our roadmap V2, we wanted to get more buy-in from our community. We got a ton of buy-in and we've been exceeding that one as well. We still have some items left open on our roadmap V2, but the builder aspect for our products has for sure been our strong point. And I think it's kind of garnished a lot of trust and respect within this Solana ecosystem.

Brian (05:34):

Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned, this time going back to summer 2021, I think a lot of people first recognized Solana around that same time. It was right in this crazy way where the mainstream world was discovering what NFTs were. You mentioned that prices were doing these ridiculous things. Some people decided to leave projects around this time. You guys came in and really buckled down and built a project that has really built this lasting community on Solana. In your own words, what is Famous Foxes? How would you describe it to somebody who's maybe not familiar with the NFT space at all?

DraxxTS (06:06):

So my definition for Foxes kinds of changes every once in a while. And I think it just really depends on how much we've built and seeing the value that we've created for the space. Right now, I kind of almost consider us like a Swiss Army knife of NFTs within the Solana ecosystem, both from a creative side that we just kind of develop really unique tools for folks to try to make their life easier. We've been early for a lot of different tools that we've created. And then at the same time we have a sustainable model to be able to give a good bit of benefits to our holders outside of just our tool usage. Because I think that kind of concept has been an interest in a lot of projects and once they run out of funds then that project kind of really does end up dying for the most part.

DraxxTS (06:57):

And so for us, I would kind of consider us like a Swiss Army knife of Solana tools. I think our community is amazing. I think they're probably our largest asset realistically within the space and we're very flexible, adaptable, creative, and I think a very well, trusted brand if I will, within the Solana ecosystem. Whenever we put out a new tool, people don't really question it for the most part. If it's something that they've been interested in trying to use, they just go in and use it and we usually get really good feedback for it.

Brian (07:30):

Yeah, no, that's awesome. I think, me personally, the a-ha moment that kind of clicked for me with NFTs – I used to be a bit of a wild gamer growing up. I think a lot of folks in this space have some sort of like MMO gaming experience, but this concept of having a guild, like a community that you kind of trust that you kind of build tools together and use these tools together, you can go further in this, exploring a new space then that you can on your own.

DraxxTS (07:55):

Yeah, 100%. I

Brian (07:56):

I don't know how you feel about that.

DraxxTS (07:57):

Yeah, I was going to say I actually was a RuneScape player.

Brian (08:00):

Okay. There you go.

DraxxTS (08:01):

I've put in probably close to 4,000 hours in RuneScape from back in the day. So yeah, 100% agree with you and I think that's a really good way of looking at it. A lot of products really just refer to them as community, but I really do think it is more so like a guild when you look at certain projects like ours, for example, even though we are primarily like a utility project currently, we have a lot of the branding for our PFPs and such.

DraxxTS (08:27):

And so it also promotes our brand by having people use our NFTs as their own individual identities within the digital space. And I think that's kind of critical for a lot of projects because when you look at most utility plays, they aren't primarily a PFP project or that have PFPs associated with them. So, knowing who's part of that community can be kind of challenging. And then also the people that are in there as they represent that brand, it does reflect what you've been creating as well as a project creator.

Brian (09:04):

Yeah, totally. No, I think it's a very internet native phenomenon, but it's a way that you can recognize people online, know that you have these shared experiences and know you're working together cooperatively, which is pretty cool to see. You mentioned back in the day it was yourself, I believe, was it two other co-founders, Dev, and you also had an artist as well, is that correct?

DraxxTS (09:25):

That is correct. Yeah. So we were three original co-founders and we had at the time, I want to say about 10 or so, like moderators and other folks had helped our team out for our marketing and community management and all that kind of fun stuff. The team has kind of shifted around quite a bit since then. I want to say right now we're probably pushing 15 total between marketing, creatives, additional developers, system admins, and then moderators as well. So yeah, we've got quite a sizable team, but we're also now only two co-founders that are left for our project at the top.

Brian (10:03):

That's really cool. And how have you gone about assembling this team? Are these folks from the community that you've engaged with? I think building an NFT team is a bit of a new field and you guys are a bit of a pioneer here. Do you have any advice for other teams who are looking to grow their project? How have you guys gone about assembling your team?

DraxxTS (10:23):

Yeah, that's a fantastic question. For the most part. The answer there is yes, it's folks from our community. I think that's what we've come to understand. The people that are the most interested. If you look at the way structures are, I'll say with most NFT projects, they're not really able to offer equity in a company or what have you to people that want to participate. And usually that's an incentive for people to participate more because then they get more of a reward from it.

DraxxTS (10:54):

So we just see a lot more value for people that have been a part of our community. Even if they've only been doing it for themselves, from a creative angle, from a marketing angle, from a developer angle, people can be involved in other projects and things might not work out, but if they've been part of our community, they understand our core OGs that we have, they understand the structure, they understand the way that our community typically is being helpful and respectful on the space and having a little bit of a builder's mindset, because everyone in our space certainly likes to provide feedback on ways we can improve what we've created.

DraxxTS (11:31):

And I think that's kind of critical for us as a brand to keep continuing to have that general mindset within our team. I think it's kind of important. I think you can bring on outside people. I think you just have to be a little bit more mindful as to who you're bringing on and you know, as long as they understand your core business, they're dedicated with what you guys are doing, then they're going to be a perfect fit. And I would highly suggest that too, especially for folks that are building new brands or new products within the space, you want to have someone that's more than just an advisor. And if there are ways you can give them a little bit more skin in the game, you definitely want to try to do that as best as possible.

Brian (12:39):

Let's switch gears a little bit and talk about some of these features that you guys have built. Famous Foxes is quote, unquote, "famous for building so many features and utilities into the project." If you go to your guys' website, you can see tons of tools that let you do easy minting, swapping, sending raffling messaging, all kinds of things that can extend the functionality of apps. And while it's like Phantom, you guys have also built missions into your guys' site. What do you guys see as some of your top utilities and features that your community is most excited about?

DraxxTS (13:09):

Yeah, that's awesome question. So for us, we do kind of see ever evolving metas. So I'll go with, based off what is currently true for our project. I think the number one utility from like a SOL volumes perspective would be our peer-to-peer swapping platform, Foxy Swap. So that's been something that we've also had to create a separate Twitter channel for. And it's one of our oldest utilities that believe it's actually the second utility we've created for our project, but on any given day, we can have up to 10,000 -ish SOL of NFTs that get swapped on that platform. So it's a way for a trusted peer-to-peer way for people to swap. We don't have a platform that's created to find these different individual trades.

DraxxTS (13:55):

Everyone finds them on their own. It's not to miss out on anything in particular, it's just for people seeking different NFTs and a lot of times too, you'll have swaps from NFTs to NFTs or like a combo deal might be like a five for one kind of deal. Based off the way a transaction is created on Solana, you can have up to six NFTs in a single transaction. So that way it doesn't have a chance of partially filling and failing or anything along those lines. So it's been quite utilized, I'll say like consistently, since we've created it, but it certainly has ramped up, I'll say over the past few months.

Brian (14:29):

Yeah. That's a ton of volume just for OTC. That's really cool.

DraxxTS (14:32):

A ton of volume. Yeah. It's a ton of volume and it's interesting too. Because a lot of communities... I mean, we don't just onboard like every single project that wants to be on there. So we do get buy-in from communities as well to be on there. And there's certain communities such as Okay Bears that have their own separate area on their discord for doing OTC trades as do the DeGods and a bunch of others. So, projects are definitely aware that people will do OTC trades and they want people to do it in a safe fashion. And we've also kind of seen a tick up in like people trying to scam each other saying like our site isn't working or something along those lines when that's not the case, like we would send a message out to everyone to let them know if there's any issues on our website, which has not been the case.

DraxxTS (15:17):

But yeah, it's very interesting to see that meta exist. And you know, I think it's just based off of current market sentiment, my personal opinion. But yeah, that's what I would say is probably our most heavily used tool right now. Second to that, I would probably say as our raffle tool that we had created. So that's where anyone can create their own raffles. It's by no means a perfect product. People set their own prices. It's SPL tokens that have been integrated into that platform. Projects actually will kind of commit a number of FOXY to be added onto that platform. So it's like a business to business service if you will. But it also benefits our collection by also taking out of some of the emissions from our system. And outside of that, I mean, I would probably say, as an underdog, is Ding!, our messaging platform, a lot of people use it for different reasons. We've seen anything from people accidentally setting NFTs to wrong wallets and getting them recovered to messaging, I'll say [messaging] celebrities and actually getting a response back from them.

Brian (16:19):

Shaq.sol

DraxxTS (16:20):

Yeah, basically. And so also for projects, such as DeGods, when they were on their initial rally to break 333 floor, there was somebody that had one listed, I think at 330. And I don't know if there was like no one interested in buying it, but a bunch of their members had sent dings to that wallet to basically tell them that they can sell it, but just to re-list it at 3:33. And so they peer pressured them to move it up. So I've seen a bunch of different use cases and of course people will send messages to low ballers and all that kind of stuff. But we do have a browser extension for Chrome that you can access. And I think it's got over well over a thousand people that have it enabled, but you can go right directly from Magic Eden and send a ding to someone. You know, if you wanted to shoot them a message to try to get them to lower their price or to do an OTC trade or anything along those lines. So I think ding is probably our most underrated utility, if you will. And actually our very first one that we created.

Brian (17:19):

Oh, no way. That's really cool. That's the whole array of really creative projects that you guys have built. You mentioned a couple things in there about collaborating with other projects. Okay Bears maybe being on the OTC platform, I've seen, you can use other tokens like DeGod's dust for the raffles. How have you guys approached these collaborations?

DraxxTS (17:40):

Yeah. So we've done it in a bunch of different fashions. I would say the earliest collaborations for us was actually pre-mint and that was really to kind of just co-mingle communities. I think, to just find more people that are in the space. I think that was probably one of the more difficult things back in September. And after that, it's kind of just been around what we've created. And I think primarily what really started us getting deeper in collaborations, almost like partnerships was our missions. So we have missions that I didn't really talk too much on, but our staking has kind of evolved from just a regular stake it into a wallet and forget about it to a more active staking environment. So for our missions, you send foxes out for a six day mission. They come back with experience, which we call fame, to be the most famous fox.

DraxxTS (18:29):

And then on top of that, you also get like a chest which can have different kinds of rewards in it. Anything from FOXY, which is our native token that we have, to NFTs from our collection to rooms for dens to NFTs from other collections via orange BOX or golden BOX. And then we've also been adding in on a weekly basis. That's not including weeks. We do our monthly raffle more expensive entity. So the very first one we did was with Blocksmith Labs and we did Degen Ape Academy. And the last one we did was a Cats on Crack. And so we kind of approached collaborations, a plethora of ways. For the most part, a lot of projects that reach out to us and say, "Hey, we just created a project or there might be a more popular project in the space."

DraxxTS (19:15):

We have a token we'd love to integrate it into, your different platforms and we've created forms where folks can fill them out. And then I would also suggest to DM myself or someone else from the team just to kind of get the ball rolling. Because there are some forms that have just been inundated with requests that can kind of be like helpful, not helpful. And you know, it really doesn't take too long to integrate onto our platforms. Within 24 hours, for the most part, we can get any other SPL token integrated into our system to add collections is kind of the same way we've had to kind of be a little bit careful with adding collections just because we have to make sure there's like a certain number of volume and a certain amount of like people that are part of that community.

DraxxTS (19:55):

So that way people can't just like change a mutable NFT to look like something else and possibly scam someone, our platform. So that is one thing that we've had to kind of be a little bit more conscious of, especially in the current environment. So yeah, we approach collaborations in many different fashions, especially for like newer projects that are coming out that are popular. You know, we'll also reach out to folks as well. And you know, it's been very fruitful for both sides. Being able to have the utilities that we have into another project where they might not want to wait a month or three months or spend a whole lot of money to get it integrated. They can kind of reach out to us and we can try and strike up a deal and get them involved in one way or another.

Brian (20:38):

That's awesome. You know, you guys have built a ton here. I got to know, or I got to know from you, how do you guys decide what to build next? Are these ideas that come from the community? Do you guys have a big roadmap as part of your team that you're sticking to? How do you guys decide where to put your resources in all this building?

DraxxTS (20:56):

Yeah. Yeah. That's, I'd say probably that's probably the number one question that I think a lot of projects would be interested in knowing about. Yeah, primarily that's exactly right. It's community driven for the most part, I would say two thirds plus of our utilities have actually been suggestions from our community. And I mean, realistically, our community has more eyes on everything else collectively than what we do as a team. You know, even for a 15 person team, if we have a community of 3000 plus people that are fairly active in the space, they're going to have a lot more opinions and eyes and different things that exist in the whole ecosystem than we ever could for being 15 people. And our original roadmap when we had created it, we've destroyed everything on that in short order. And we do have a current roadmap version, 2.0, that's out again, majority of the items on that were suggestions from the community.

DraxxTS (21:53):

Most of those have been completed will actually be putting out our merch, this coming weekend. That was another item on our roadmap 2.0, and then we have a few other items that we're building out there as well. That should be coming out shortly, such as our attribute upgrades and our Boom Box, which is our music NFT marketplace, which will be coming out shortly as well. And we really, for our like roadmap 2.0, we just basically shot out like a discord thread. And we said, show us ideas. What, what are problems that exist in the space that you think we can solve better? And we just got a ton of suggestions. A lot of times too, they might be smaller ideas that might be more beneficial for just our community or certain things such as missions, which will integrate over time.

DraxxTS (22:39):

But for us, we kind of really looking for like big ideas, like Hype-o-Meter as an example where we can kind of leverage our community to do different tasks. And at the same time, try to garnish some kind of a reward for a specific set of people. And it doesn't have to be like an actual NFT. It can be a reward such as a trait teaser for our upcoming attribute upgrades or anything along those lines. But yeah, I think getting the buy-in from our community and suggestions from our community has been monumental in our success so far.

Brian (23:12):

That's really cool. I can tell that you guys are going to be busy for the next couple months here. You guys have no shortage of things to do on your roadmap. You know, we mentioned kind of at the start, like at a very high level, this concept of internet community, we talked about guilds. How do you see NFT collections evolving over the next, say like three to five years? Where is this space heading? And, and what's in the future for Famous Foxes?

DraxxTS (23:37):

Yeah. Three to five years is a very tough timeline, I'll say, to kind of gauge, but realistically, I mean, we do kind of look out that far. I mean, from a project standpoint, that's kind of what we want to do. We don't want to just look at what's going to happen in three months in my personal opinion. You know, I think in the next three to five years, I mean, I think there will be a lot more people that will be concerned with and interested in the ownership side. I think NFTs will kind of bridge a little bit of that understanding, but also crypto too into owning what is actually yours. I think that'll kind of be a really big thing, in my opinion. I think too, like you had mentioned the community side, I think you're starting to see a lot more interest in people that might have a large fan base, but little connection with those individual fans on a regular basis.

DraxxTS (24:27):

And it could be anyone from the music industry, from the sports industry, from just general celebrities and things that might be interested in having their own hub for users to come into and chat with them if they're interested, not everyone's interested, but I think that too is going to be a pretty decent portal. We're already starting to see that kind of trend exist in the space. But I think having direct access to people that you are interested in, like learning more about or asking questions and then tying NFTs into it by added benefits of being able to maybe talk to the person once a month or once a quarter or something like that, or to even have like one on one time with someone like Gary V or anything along those lines.

DraxxTS (25:13):

I mean, I think you're going to start seeing a lot more of those utilities initially, and then it's going to kind of fold into more where you then have airlines offering NFTs for like mileage and different kinds of rewards and free upgrades on seats or free baggage and stuff like that. I've already started to see local businesses have NFTs that I think are just like a promotional item currently, but I could see them also integrating that into, like food offerings that they have or some way of kind of building it more into like their actual physical products.

Brian (25:47):

Yeah. Loyalty programs. Yeah.

DraxxTS (25:49):

Loyalty programs. Exactly. I was kind of surprised to see that as local as it is like literally down the street. I just kind of found that quite funny, just one day random happenstance, but you know, I think NFTs personally, I think the one thing that people look at is that Bored Apes and such are kind of like such a big picture if you will as like the face of NFTs, but they don't all have to be very expensive. They don't all have to do all these crazy things. You can literally have like free NFTs. Like I think when people branch out of just the Ethereum chain, even on our site you can mint an NFT using our Foxy Mint and it costs like 0.012 SOL. So you're talking like a few cents to kind of create their own NFT and then you can do whatever you really want with it.

DraxxTS (26:35):

I mean, there's just so much opportunity with how you can integrate it into your own website, your own platform. You can just do nothing with it, just make it for fun. There's just so many options out there that I think it'll become more and more popular for people to do or to be involved with. And worst case scenario, I mean people get involved with whatever level of money they want to get involved with, but again, you don't have to come in with hundreds of thousands of dollars or anything, get involved with it. And also you don't have to stay around discord 15 hours a day and all that fun stuff. It's as much as you want to get out of it, you can. And I think that's kind of the beauty of web three is that it exists all the time if you want, and you can kind of take it as bits and pieces as you go along.

Brian (27:17):

That's really cool. Well, DraxxTS, this has been a really awesome discussion. One question we always ask at the end to all of our guests, and I would love to know this from you, given you guys this prolific building history is who is a builder that you admire in the Solana ecosystem?

DraxxTS (27:33):

Ooh, that's a good question. Who's a builder that I admire in the Solana ecosystem. I have to say I will 100% throw this out there, not to sound ignorant, because I'm not 100% sure who the actual creator was, but the mercury platform from blocksmith labs I would say is the most impressive thing to me in my personal opinion from what's been created and the level of integration that happens with that tool itself with other projects and people that exist in the ecosystem, I think is probably one of the best other tools that are out there outside of our own. So I will apologize for not knowing the actual creator for it, but that's who I would certainly tip my hat to.

Brian (28:16):

No, that's a great shout out. And I think you're the first one to shout them out on the pod. So we'll have to get them on as well to hear their story.

DraxxTS (28:23):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll definitely have to get Blocksmith Labs on that for sure.

Brian (28:26):

That's great. Well, DraxxTS , this has been awesome. Thank you so much for your time. Where can people go to learn more about Famous Foxes and get involved?

DraxxTS (28:33):

Oh, 100%. So our website is famousfoxes.com. Twitter is @FamousFoxFed. And our discord is also a vanity link, which should be Famous Fox Fed as well, but you can also get to that, those different items from our website. So I would say famousfoxes.com is probably the best one stop shop for finding about Foxes.

Brian (28:57):

Awesome. DraxxTS , thank you so much.

DraxxTS (28:59):

Thanks for having me, Brian.

Classic: Beishan Broadcast Wall