If you’ve been on Crypto Twitter lately, you might be asking yourself: WTF are all these goblin NFTs clogging up my feed? We had the Kevin spinoffs from Pixelmon, the CryptoDickButts, the MFers … and now this?
But if you’ve been lucky enough to avoid much of the meme-laden JPG fodder, let Decrypt introduce you to the one—and only—Goblintown.
Goblintown isn’t a real place. It’s a state of mind that involves groaning, moaning, memes, and an undying obsession with urine and fecal matter. Its community mispells more words than a kindergartener (it’s intentional), and its official OpenSea description is little more than a few discernible words embedded among all-cap letters.
To join this exclusive community of gibberish-speaking fetishists, you’ll now need at least $16,000. The minimum purchase price (floor price) of one Goblintown NFT more than doubled overnight into Wednesday from 3.9 ETH to 8.95 ETH at one point, which in this market dip equates to about $16,600.
So far, the highest goblin sale was a 1-of-1 orc NFT, which sold for 77.75 ETH ($144,600) on LooksRare early Wednesday morning. Though it’s worth noting that this may be a product of the marketplace’s rampant wash trading.
Regardless, some are paying five to six figures for ugly goblins—The Sandbox blockchain metaverse game purchased a 1-of-1 Goblintown NFT a week ago on OpenSea for 26 ETH, roughly $48,000.
Perhaps, dear reader, you might be asking yourself, Why on Earth would anyone buy such an ugly NFT—a unique blockchain token that signifies ownership over an asset—for thousands of dollars?
That’s a good question. For one, the NFT community has plenty of “degens” who enjoy “aping” into new projects.
Add to that the fact that the Goblintown collection, which currently has 4,600 unique holders according to OpenSea data, prides itself on having “No roadmap. No Discord. No utility.” The reason for the NFTs’ skyrocketing price appears less and less to have any clear rhyme or reason beyond being “for the memes.”
To a large extent, it is about the memes. There are plenty of Goblintown memes online, and there’s even a 1-of-1 NFT based on the Pixelmon collection’s much-memed Kevin.
Image: The Goblintown NFT community is playing into the “McDonalds” jokes that come with each crypto market downturn. Source: Twitter.
Over the past week and a half since its free mint, Goblintown has already trickled into mainstream consciousness. Netflix Director of Product Design Kristy Tillman called Goblintown’s Twitter Space last week (where NFT holders made goblin sounds) “either an absolute new low or brilliance. The line is very thin here.”
Proof Collective and Moonbirds NFT Co-Founder Justin Mezzell called Goblintown “a crazy journey” to watch but admitted “the goblin town vibe isn’t for me.”
Markus Magnusson, Founder of the Ethereum NFT collection Invisible Friends, suggested that the hype around Goblintown was “killing” other NFT collections, including his own.
But the NFT community on Twitter sees it differently—and has a simple reason for splurging on images of creatures with traits like “Flappy,” “Dawwww,” “Clubbin time,” and “BLINGG.”
“Why I bought this Goblin for $11k+,” NFTNick.eth wrote. “It was good content.”
It seems that much of Goblintown’s success comes precisely because its associated art is so comically ugly.
“OOPS. I just Goblin’d in at 8.1[ETH].. Look at this UGLY F’r,” one Bored Ape Yacht Club holder wrote on Twitter.
Goblins kinda built a whole world and language with their project I’m not surprised people liked diving into it
— realgrl.eth | PRISM WORLD JUNE 24 (she/her) (@grlkrash) June 1, 2022
As the NFT community rallies around goblin JPGs, many are left scratching their heads. The founders of Goblintown have yet to reveal themselves, leaving Twitter power users with nothing but speculation.
One self-described “meme connoisseur” admitted that even they were baffled by Goblintown’s rising floor price.
“Anything you thought you knew about the NFT market you don’t,” they wrote, “[and] clearly neither do I.”
But if you think the Goblintown founders have finished all they set out to do, think again.
A mysterious tweet written in goblin-speak surfaced on the official Twitter page Wednesday morning, hinting at a possible free drop through the official Goblintown website this Friday evening. The tweet appeared along with an image of what can only be described as mutant burger juice.
