How Doodles Became One Of The NFT Industry’s Most Loved Collections

Launched last October, Doodles NFT collection is barely four months old. Yet, the collection is storming the charts and has become one of the most loved collections in the NFT industry. From humans and cats to aliens, pickles, and more, the colourful characters have struck a chord with the NFT community worldwide. In fact, the collection’s sales have crossed a whopping $268 million (at the time of writing)!

The Doodles NFT collection features 10,000 NFTs generated from hundreds of traits. Some of the traits include face, hair, head, piercing, body, and background. Besides, as with other NFT projects like BAYC or Cool Cats, Doodles NFTs come with varying rarities. Of these, some of the rarest traits are stellar sweater, devil cat, holographic alien, bubblegum face, bed head, and much more—all of which are available in a single quantity. 

Doodles NFT: A collection by industry veterans

Evan Keast, Scott Martin, and Jordan Castro launched the Doodles NFT collection on October 17. Martin, a digital artist and animator with years of experience, designed the characters in the collection. Popularly known as Burnt Toast, the Canadian illustrator already had several NFTs to his name, helping him garner a name for himself in the NFT space before launching Doodles. On the other hand, Keast and Castro had led the OG NFT project, CryptoKitties. 

“The main focus should be on making good art and reaching a large audience,” Martin told Fortune. “Both of these require a lot of hard work and time to achieve. I was lucky enough to have been building an audience around my artwork for nearly a decade.”

Surely, the team, with a wealth of experience, appealed to the NFT community. Besides, roughly a month before the public mint, the project closed its Discord server after reaching barely 1,000 members—something unheard of in the NFT space. The decision helped add more exclusivity to the project. All of these seemed to work for the project. Because, despite a relatively high mint price of 0.123 ETH, the collection was quickly sold out. The same month, the project’s floor climbed to 2.3 ETH. Today, it has reached a whopping 14 ETH on OpenSea.

Along with this, the artwork in itself played a crucial role in driving Doodles’ growth. After all, compared to the gender stereotypes practised by several top NFT projects, Doodles, with its inclusive artwork, caters to a diverse group of people. With the Pastel-hued line-drawn characters of Doodles, you could be a golden-crowned ape or a rainbow-haired human. Or even a pickle wearing a sunglass. 

Keeping the community first  

Another reason for Doodles NFT project’s huge fan-following is its community-first approach. First of all, there’s the Doodlebank, its community treasury. With over $5 million USD, the treasury will help scale the project and fund products and events voted by the community. Essentially, the Doodles community functions as a DAO or Decentralized Autonomous Organization. In other words, each Doodle serves as one vote in making any decisions relating to the DoodleBank.

As the project notes on the website, “Owning a Doodle allows you to vote on community-driven features, products and events.” Besides, this makes its “roadmap collaborative to be decided by the project founders and Doodle holders via the Doodlebank.”

The team has also set up what they call the “Doodlebank-blessed derivatives”. Basically, the team incentivises developers to submit proposals for derivatives of the Doodles collection. The community then votes on these proposals. The voting system has already given life to two new collections, Noodles and Pukenza. 

All of these seems to have worked for the Doodles NFT project. The Discord server was later reopened and today boasts of nearly 40,000 members. What’s more, on Twitter, the project has amassed over 221,000 followers (at the time of writing). 

The collection’s fans also include celebrities like Steve Aoki, who halted a live show just to show off his Doodles NFT! He bought Doodle #2238, the 9th rarest Doodle. Meanwhile, Pranksy bought Doodle #6914, a rare golden ape, for a whopping 296.69 ETH or around $1.1 million. Remarkably, this was the collection’s first seven-figure sale. Australian DJ Timmy Trumpet is another celebrity who has aped into Doodles. 

Space Doodles, projects, live events, and more

For a community-focused NFT project like Doodles, there was bound to be some additional perks for collectors. First of all, there are live events. Apparently, Doodles founders want the project to be an entertainment company. So their interest in live events comes as no surprise. Back in December, Doodles collaborated with The Heart Project to hold a real-life event during Art Basel Miami. Called Heart Basel Miami, the event included limited-edition merch, a gallery, live music performance, and Doodles murals, among others. 

What’s more, according to an interview in Hypebeast, the founders are planning installations, concert merchandise, and more in the future. Their aim, ultimately, is to “bridge web3 and the real world”. The December event is likely just the beginning of what is to come.

Furthermore, last month, Doodles announced a new collection, Space Doodles. The team will release Space Doodles for all current holders in February. But, unlike companion NFTs of popular NFT projects, Space Doodles are not new NFTs. Rather, each Space Doodle is backed 1:1 by its counterpart Doodle.

“Only one can exist in your wallet at any time and you can wrap/unwrap as many times as you’d like,” the project’s founder explained in a tweet. “And yes, there is a mint w/ unique visual traits, on-chain stats, and dozens of ships from @byburnttoast!”

While the Doodles NFT project is yet to attain the phenomenal success of some of the blue-chip NFTs in the space, it has achieved some remarkable feats in a short span of time. Clearly, the project is on the right path to get to the very top. After all, it checks all the boxes: spectacular artwork, doxxed veteran developers, and a great community.