If you haven't heard of the NFT collection WonderPals yet, chances are you will very soon.
September 27, 2023
How WonderPals Streamlined their Launch with Bueno
NFT collectors, enthusiasts, and traders have waited weeks for the launch of this adorable and fun-loving collection.
A quick glance at this collection of tokens might lead you to believe that Mina – the Founder and artist behind the project – has been launching NFT collections since non-fungible tokens hit the scene. On the contrary, despite her immense talent and professional career in design, Mina was new to creating NFTs and was by no means a veteran at launching 10k collections.
Despite being new to generating and releasing a 10k collection, Mina's current success with WonderPals highlights how even someone new to NFTs can create a coveted collection with Bueno.
Mina and the beginning of WonderPals
There aren't many creators like Mina in the world; she's a rare talent with skill that only comes from hours upon hours of honing a specialized craft. Speaking purely professionally, Mina has ten years of experience and a list of household name clients. Companies like Tiffany & Co, Target, and Pinterest seek out Mina's skill set to bring out delightful customer experiences in their products.
While Mina continues mastering the craft of visual languages and branding, she's also passionate about producing art that elicits a sense of joy and positivity for her audience. This drive to create something that is built on happiness is how the seed for WonderPals was planted.
A squad of cute WonderPals
WonderPals are NFTs that everyone can identify with, regardless of age, gender, nationality, and other labels that tend to separate humans from one another. WonderPals is about community, support, optimism and is a unifying force in a time when the world needs it the most.
To amplify this powerful message, however, there was still the matter of creating, executing, and launching the collection. Mina turned to Bueno and began to bring WonderPals to life.
Making 10k WonderPal NFTs with Bueno
While Mina had creative assets in hand, and already a dedicated following on the WonderPals social channels, she still had the task of generating the 10k tokens. Like many others looking to launch an NFT collection, she had to take care of:
- Setting rules and rarity on every token
- Generating the 10,000 tokens with metadata
- Creating an optimized smart contract
- Minting the collection
- Delivering a smooth presale and public sale
Collaboration was a vital element of this project with multiple milestones to hit, plans for working with other artists, and goals for growing the community.
The Bueno Generator and working with the Bueno dev team allowed Mina to carry out each task seamlessly while staying on track for her scheduled launch date. This synchronization was essential because WonderPals had already built up a large and loyal community.
With all this in mind, how Mina created her collection with Bueno requires a deeper look. A huge component, and probably the best starting point, is examining how she used the Bueno Generator to produce 10k unique WonderPals characters.
Bringing WonderPals to life with the Bueno Generator
Mina has spent years doodling, drawing, and creating, and mastering her craft, but the process of generating a collection of 10k unique characters was a new task.
After uploading her artwork to the Bueno Generator, Mina was able to fine-tuned the 10k collection. More specifically, she was able to create rules while also refining the rarity of specific traits.
Mina also created 1-of-1 WonderPals, plus she also made pals that featured traits from other popular PFP collections. What should be music to creators' ears is that Mina did this without writing a single line of code, which was a significant factor in having a smooth workflow.
The visual components of a 10K PFP collection like WonderPals are only a part of creating a successful project.
Developing the smart contract for WonderPals
Smart contracts are a critical part of launching any token on the Ethereum blockchain. While working with the Bueno dev team, the goal was to make a smart contract that kept gas fees to a minimum for the minter, while ensuring WonderPals were in the hands of real people rather than bots. The Bueno team implemented an efficient ticket-based minting flow, leveraging the trusted & battle-hardened ERC-721 base contract from OpenZeppelin.
The optimized allowlist minting flow made it possible to greatly reduce the amount of gas necessary to mark an allowlist spot as used. It also made it possible to have variable mint quantities depending on wallet address, without needing to write that logic into the smart contract itself.
Minting experience for WonderPals
Simply put, minting means publishing a token you've collected on the blockchain, which then means it's a purchasable digital asset. Minting NFTs can vary slightly depending on the marketplace, platform, or tool.
When it came to the WonderPals minting experience, the main focus was on keeping the gas prices low, having a flexible window for minting a WonderPals token, and ensuring that the experience was bot free, and as fair as possible.
Mina and the team decided on a 48-hour window for minting, giving collectors plenty of time to complete their mint. Additionally, before the launch, Mina eliminated all bots or alternate accounts, which was vital in keeping things equal for everyone collecting WonderPals.
Another factor that the dev team had to consider was building a reliable website. With the hype brewing on the social channels and talk of a smooth minting experience, it was clear that the web traffic was going to be substantial. After working with the backend providers, there were no minting outages despite tens-of-thousands of concurrent requests.
It took a coordinated effort to make a mint experience pleasant for each collector. After seeing the positive reviews from those who were able to get a WonderPals, it’s clear that attention to these phases of a collection are well worth the effort.
Successful launch and rising floor prices
With an initial minting price of 0.08 Ξ, the average price per WonderPals jumped to 1.2769 Ξ after launch. With the hype already bubbling around the project plus a rising floor price, the collection quickly sold out.
On the secondary market, rare WonderPals are selling for up to 18Ξ (around $50k in fiat). Although this is NFA, WonderPals looks to stay firmly in bullish territory.
Of course, NFTs aren’t all about financial success; thousands of collectors and NFT enthusiasts are aping into the WonderPals fray and enthusiastically showing off their cute new tokens on social media.
Hopefully, this was (and still is) music to the ears of the 7k token owners, the WonderPals team, and other creators who are ambitious about creating their own NFT success story.
Praise for WonderPals and Bueno
Before launching her project, Mina imagined that WonderPals would generate a modest but dedicated following. Now, with over 150k followers across varying social channels, a growing list of WonderPals owners, Mina's dream of developing a brand has become an NFT reality.
There is plenty of evidence of the enthusiasm as well. Here are just a few Tweets that are flooding the WonderPals timeline:
All of this boils down to several key points:
- A genuine community matters
- A quality minting process goes a long way for potential token owners
- The right tools and team can be essential for creating a successful final project
Mina and the WonderPals team were able to nail each one of these checkboxes, and as she mentioned to our team during the Twitter Spaces with her team, "Bueno helped her see the huge range of possibilities for artists in the NFT space."
An optimistic outlook for creators
For even the most senior designers like Mina or tech-savvy individuals on top of every development, jumping into the NFT space can seem intimidating. However, projects like WonderPals prove that the Bueno Generator and the Bueno dev team can turn an idea into a successful NFT collection.
Whether you're a creator with no experience or a part of a business that's invested in reaching new communities, Bueno can help break down the barriers of entry to the NFT space and turn plans for an NFT project into reality.
As Mina herself said in our Twitter Space, her dream was to "create and grow a brand that came from a simple idea." That dream is now a reality.
