NFTs and The Story of OzuruDAO
NFT Basics
Non Fungible Tokens, known in short as NFTs, have been on the rise and gained prominence over the past one year. NFTs simply are unique digital versions of items we own (such as artwork, pictures, animation, music, videos, sport collectibles, in-game collectibles etc) which are minted (created) and exist on a blockchain. They can be purchased, sold or transferred between users. In addition, they can be verified on a blockchain to prove ownership of the collector or its creator beyond reasonable doubts. NFTs inherent value is in the proof of ownership together with how unique and rare the collections are. Cryptopunks and The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collections are by far the most popular NFTs in the crypto ecosystem till date.
Evolution
In the hey days, owning fanciful NFTs in our crypto wallets and showing them off to friends was the new cool amongst avid fans and collectors. As NFTs evolves to create more and better utilities (such as earning passive income, gaming, access events (ticketing), upgradable dynamic NFTs, subscription payment, cross-chain bridges, etc), there is a need to build better infrastructure and more efficient launchpad models to improve upon the existing ones and ship out better NFT projects of the future with better value and experience for creators, collectors, users and the larger NFT community. OzuruDAO fits into this evolutionary phase and seeks a different approach to building future NFTs in a more efficient manner that rewards all parties involved.
The Story of OzuruDAO
OzuruDAO is focused on investing in INOs (Initial NFT Offerings) infrastructure and incubating legit NFT projects after a careful curative and thorough screening process to weed out scams and offer premium value to users, collectors, creators and investors alike.
The OzuruDAO project is inspired by the story of four deity gods (named The Stork, The Phoenix, The Tiger and The Snake) in ancient times who created and fostered humans, who many years down the line, founded the present day Japan. It's first ruler, Emperor Yoru under the guidance of the deities which later became the Circle of Three after The Snake was expelled from their midst for trying to enslave man through deception, established a powerful, wealthy and peaceful Shin Dynasty cherished by his people. Tiger, the legendary blacksmith, unknown to citizens of the kingdom as one of god's living in their midst, forged several artifacts and weaponry for war for the Emperor which included the 9,999 royal treasures. These treasures were later hidden away in a safe place on the advise of Phoenix one of Yoru's close advisor.
Despite how well governed the Empire was, Hebishiro one of the Shogun's planned to overthrow the Emperor and his government. The Snake who saw this as an opportunity to fulfil his ambition of enslaving mankind, helped Hebishiro raised a powerful army who killed and overthrew the Emperor and his loyalist. The Tiger wounded, managed to escape the bloody attack on the city and brought Shingen, Yoru surviving son to the Stork who lived a solitary life in the monastery, to be raised until he is of age.
As the years passed by, Shingen under the guidance of The Stork and the highly skilled seven Samurais he helped raised and trained, formed an army that invaded the capital and defeated the evil Shogunate established by Hebishiro with the aid of The Snake. Shingen established the Gao dynasty and with the seven, known as the blades of the Emperor, sought the face of the reincarnated Phoenix who helped them unlock the hidden royal treasures. These legendary treasures were given to 9,999 Samurais to wield and defend the newly formed Shogunate from later impending attacks by Hebishiro and the Snakes evil forces.
Lessons of the Story
The villains and heroes of the story represent characters in the crypto space. The Snake represent those who don't care about the growth and development of the space but themselves. They are selfish, greedy and place themselves over the larger community. These set of people only think of enriching themselves by developing scammish projects. They rug pull investors, traders and others who falsely believe and invest in their projects.
Hebishiro on the other hand are people who support The Snakes scammish projects and will do anything to promote it to others as long as they get paid in cash, commission, guaranteed launchpad spots or free tokens for creating awareness. They too don't care about the community but themselves. Most crypto influencers fall into this category.
The Tiger represent those who erroneously believed in scammish projects without doing their due diligence and got to suffer great losses as a result of this. We can learn from them by performing due diligence and properly researching (DYOR) crypto projects before investing in them.
The Stork represent those who genuinely care deeply about the crypto ecosystem and will do all they can to protect it with the help of the trained 7 Shoguns and the 9,999 Samurais to ensure our investment in future NFT projects going forward is safe and protected from bad players.
The Phoenix represent the model of OzuruDAO INO and NFT incubating system. Through a careful curative and screening process, scammish projects will be weeded out, leaving legit NFT projects degens can invest in with confidence and reap good returns on their investment.
OzuruDAO Project Roadmap
A roadmap is a clear marked out path showing the short and long term goals / plans of a project. It is an important tool for founders and the project team as it helps in preparation and strategic planning towards achieving set out objectives and project milestones. In addition, roadmaps gives would-be investors a quick scan of what to expect from a new project and could form the basis in measuring the team’s readiness, progress and ability to execute the idea. The OzuruDAO NFT project roadmap is divided into five phases. The details as gathered from the community discord channel is shown below.
Pre-Phase
Team Building
Feasibility Study
Website Building
Phase 1
Community Building
Gen-1 NFTs Sale (3,333)
Phase 2
$OZU TGE
NFT Staking
LP Staking
INO Project Registration
Phase 3
INO MVP
Gen 2 NFTs Sale (6,666)
High Table Club
Incubation Registration
Phase 4
Incubator MVP
Multichain Integration
What Next?
The project which is currently in phase 1 of the roadmap, has a strategic partnership with renowned Japanese automobile maker Suzuki, which will give genesis Ozuru NFT holders exclusive access to the car manufacturer’s future themed NFTs to be released on OzuruDAO INO platform. The team promises more exciting partnership announcement in the coming days ahead of August 12th mint date.
There are 3,333 genesis royal treasures NFTs on the Polygon (Matic) chain that will be released on the mint date. The first 2,000 will be available to whitelist (WL) members as a reward for supporting the community building efforts in the early stages of phase 1 and another 1,000 will be available to the public on a first-come-first-served basis. The remaining 333 NFTs will be held by the team and it’s partners. The project team main plan at the moment is to allow genesis holders mint INOs, i.e. those from their partner, Suzuki. The price for the August 12th mint event is free.
You can join OzuruDAO discord channel at https://discord.gg/xc7SVZzNaV to learn more about the project and claim available free whitelisting (WL) spots before the mint date.
Project Update
The founders of OzuruDAO abandoned the project few days after the mint event over unresolved internal conflict claims bordering on misuse of funding meant for payment of staff salaries etc. The community moderators and one of the project collaborators then @CryptoGhosted confirmed this citing one of his chats with the founder (see screenshot below).
The community discord server has since been deleted and the project twitter handle renamed from OzuruDAO to ‘Promoting NFTs.’ Attempts to reach Shingen, the Founder and Okada, one of the principal core team member, for comments have proved abortive.
Disclaimer
Views expressed by the writer are not financial advise. They are purely for learning and research purposes, and should be regarded as such. Readers are encouraged to do their own personal research before investing into any crypto project as they are highly volatile in nature and constitute a risky asset class.