Today the Smurf’s Society, a new Web3 project dedicated to the popular animated franchise, launches a bucket auction for 3,000 NFTs of the highly detailed, 3D-rendered 12,500 NFTs of The Smurfs' Society Legendary Collection. The NFTs are based on beloved comic book characters such as Smurfette, Papa Smurf, Brainy Smurf, and others.
The iconic Belgian comic book franchise, created in 1958 by artist Peyo aka Pierre Culliford, took the next step in its evolution after the success of the dozens of animated films and video games that brought the popular characters to the Web3 space.
"The collection consists of 250 unique Smurf characters with 50 individual variants. Each NFT is unique and customized with over 300 randomized traits including skins, background FX, lighting, and more, and designed in collaboration with influential artists as well as our partners and community members. This truly distinctive collection has an unrivaled level of diversity that speaks to a global community," the official announcement reads.
The creators of NFTs have taken great care to ensure that each piece in the collection is unique and has its own exclusive benefits, utilities and perks that are characteristic of specific comic book characters. The list of utilities provided by the Smurfs NFTs is impressive. They include raffles where NFT owners can win prizes, physical prints, and access to artworks, services and products offered by the project's artists and partners.
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As per the January blog post from the team behind The Smurf's Society, the project is "a new, fully on-chain, immersive, gamified experience," that "unlike many traditional entertainment icons who rushed their first steps into Web3 following last year's NFT fever, the team of the project has taken the time to build a rich, thoughtful venture that could inspire the many brands looking to set foot in the Web3 world in the coming months and years."
"On their journey, members are encouraged to work together to help save the Smurfs through virtual treasure hunts, cryptography-inspired riddles, and a cutting-edge magic potion-making adventure where all the ingredients are non-fungible tokens," the Smurf Society team explained in the post, adding, "These steps give users a chance to win guaranteed, discounted access to the main NFT collection in early 2023 through an interactive, sequential process. In addition to making members a part of the universe and not just consumers, it encourages engagement and strengthens collaboration, building value in the community itself and leveraging the concept of collective intelligence."
Now The Smurfs' Society is launching the sale of the first portion of its NFTs as a bucket auction. According to the project's official website, a bucket auction is "a type of auction that allows the market to decide on the mint price," and it is one of the ways "to set a single price for the whole auction, known as the 'clearing price.'" This price is calculated by "determining the highest price at which all NFTs could be sold at the same price without going past the total supply of NFTs."
To win, users must submit a bid that is higher than the clearing price. However, if their bids are higher than the clearing price, the difference will be refunded. In addition, users will receive several NFTs if they bid a multiple of the clearing price.
At this stage, the developers will distribute random Smurfs, which means that buyers will not be able to choose specific NFTs. Still, the right to select an exact character will be granted to users who gain an access crystal. This can be either purchased on OpenSea or won in gamified activities hosted by The Smurfs' Society. In the meantime, the unveiling of all the Smurfs from the Legendary Collection is scheduled for May.
The long-term goal of the creators of the Smurfs' Society is to build an entire Web3 ecosystem. "The team's long-term vision is to introduce new ambition to Web3 by combining innovative experiences, individual rewards, and collective interests to support 'for good' initiatives. These community and 'for good' values are at the core of the Smurfs brand," The Smurfs’ Society creators said in their blog post.
Interestingly, the creators of The Smurfs’ Society build the plot for their NFTs based on the concept of the decentralization provided by the Web3 space. "There is dark magic powerful enough to centralize the Smurfs and use their energy for evildoing. But if humans can work together, they should be able to decentralize the Smurfs and revive them! They must act quickly, for if too much time passes, it will become impossible to bring them back, and their smurfiness will be lost forever," the official story reads.
While modern Smurfs embrace decentralization, which symbolizes freedom and power, writer Marc Schmidt has noted after his discourse analysis that the popular comic book story could be a metaphor for Marxist utopia.
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In his analysis, Marc Schmidt went through each main character and found evidence to support his theory, including the equality of Smurfs, the similarities between Papa Smurf and Karl Marx, Gargamel's representation of capitalism, and Azrael, Gargamel's cat, as a typical worker of a capitalist state.
At the same time, French sociologist Antoine Buéno considers Smurfs totalitarian and racist. He gave one of his arguments in his 2011 interview with The Wall Street Journal, "The first comic strip, 'The Black Smurfs,' was intimately concerned with what you might classify as a racial threat because in that album the smurfs are sick. And when they're sick, they don't turn purple or red or anything like that, they become black." Buéno added, "And when they become black, they lose all trace of intelligence. They become completely moronic. And furthermore, they can no longer speak, they just go 'nyap nyap nyap.'"
