SPOt-light #014 [DexoWorldsNFT]

In the vast universe that is Cardano, there are numerous wonderful galaxies, solar systems, dustclouds and meteor showers. Among these phenomenon special things sometimes pop up. One of these, according to us, is DexoWorlds. An NFT Project that has all the elements to become a huge succes: it’s brightly coloured, collectible, relatable, limited and most of all FUN! Read on and find out more on this exceptional initiative!

Hello Jarred, Tell us a little bit about yourself, what are your areas of expertise? (Tech, finance, traveling at warpspeed, space exploration, other), how did you learn about Cardano and what led you to adopt the role you currently play in the ecosystem?

Hello, my name is Jarred— I’m a student in astrophysics and my main research focus is in the field of gamma-ray astrophysics. I’m particularly interested in data analysis, deep learning, and gravitational waves. When I’m working, I spend most of the day at a desk coding in python, but a few times a year I get the privilege of staying up all night to operate telescopes!I first learned about Cardano in January of 2021 this year while browsing reddit on a night off during one of these telescope shifts. (It was 6am, just before bedtime!) I loved the fact that every step of Cardano’s development process is supported by peer-reviewed research…and the more I learned the more I got hooked! Now I’m the creator and lead developer of DexoWorlds, a CNFT project based on the scientific field of exoplanet discovery. We want every backer of the project to feel like an astronomer, and learn something along the way. For this reason, our motto is “50% science, 50% art!”

So from getting to know Cardano, you now are a core part of it, by means of enriching the NFT space with a touch of, well, space! How has that started, can you highlight some development issues or breakthrough that made this project to what it is?

The project itself took about three months to develop, from developing the art, coding the backend, and designing the website. The last point was my biggest challenge, as I had no frontend experience at all before taking on this project. I definitely owe one to youtube! Until recently I was also working full-time, so all my Dexo efforts were going on until the wee hours of the morning.The largest setback we faced was on launch day. There was an issue with the way our minter was handling transactions, and when many payments arrived simultaneously the system slowed down to a halt. It took a couple days to get back on our feet, thanks to the help and patience of some really kind community members! I think this caused some people to lose interest in the project, but since then we’ve built a really wonderful and dedicated community of which I’m really proud.My biggest breakthrough moment was learning that I could generate and render scenes algorithmically in Blender using just python! It really opened up the floodgates in terms of what I could do to make DexoWorlds what they are today.

Where are we at? I mean, there is a limited supply, how will the road forward look and what happens when all worlds are sold?

Right now the sale is ongoing, but it is true that at some point the sale has to end. There are 11008 DexoWorlds in orbit around 2500 different stars. Our most immediate plan is to make CNFTs of the stars redeemable to anyone who collects all the DexoWorlds in orbit around the same star. In addition, we are developing a trading contract we are planning to deploy once Alonzo is released. Our goal is to facilitate trading in order to find more worlds orbiting in systems you’ve already explored! My passion is generative art, so you can be sure that after the sale ends the momentum behind Dexos will not stop!

Were there any problems in getting the sale automated, cause I’ve bought one and the process is smooth as a moonlanding. How did you tackle obstacles (if any) and what resources did you use?

As smooth as a moon landing! Thanks for the great compliment! As I touched upon above, we had some initial problems with the backend. But since that fix it’s been running smoothly! The entire minter is written in Python, which was naturally the easiest pick for me since I feel very comfortable with the language. This also allowed me to take advantage of python’s huge ecosystem and easily implement some fun features, like our Discord bot which announces every new mint as it’s happening!

So, the partnership with us, STAYK, we heard that someone tipped you off on a server somewhere, who was that and what sparked your interest?

We both owe a big Thank You to the artist Spherical (or do we say Nate?) for putting us in touch! Spherical makes incredible art, art which really goes hand-in-hand with DexoWorlds in a way. He takes photographs of smooth rocks that truly look like they could have been pulled directly from a NASA probe. And no 3D rendering tools are used at all! I’d recommend anyone reading this to check out his amazing work (@sphericalnft)

How is the initiative looking, it only launched the 16th of august but have you received applications already? And what are the general responses to it?

Our SPO initiative is going great. We have a number of small pools who have already submitted applications, and many have provided some really positive feedback and proposed some cool ways we can work together. I’m so excited to get started.

What can people do when they don’t operate a pool, but want to get the pools they are in some much needed support and exposure. Can you give some general recommendations?

I think we can agree that this is one of the biggest challenges that pool operators and their delegators face! Most people who are active in the community already have a pool that they are loyal too. I can’t pretend to have the answer for this catch-22. However it seems that pools and their loyal delegators who are good at finding and educating people who are new in the Cardano community tend to be very successful!

We see a lot of different Pool operators ranging from the small, all purpose, mission driven pools all the way to the monstrosity that is pool clusters run by various Exchanges. This idea is specifically targeting small pools, why is that?

The more single pools run by a diverse group of people around the globe there are, the more decentralized and secure the validation system of the blockchain becomes. In addition, many of these pools provide real value to the Cardano community (via tools and services) or to their own local communities (by supporting charities and causes relevant to their mission). For these reasons, we recommend that everyone take their ADA off of exchanged as fast as possible and delegate to a small pool who is aligned with your interests! By working with small pools, we hope to use the funds generated by our project to support various missions and bring attention to some really deserving pools and operators. We’ve heard from a number of people that DexoWorlds is their first CNFT or NFT altogether, so we believe that as our community grows, so can the pools with whom we collaborate!

So, back to the DexoWorlds NFT’s, what would the ultimate goal be, and what lies beyond it? Trading games? Wallet galleries?

As I mentioned before, releasing stars are the next big step in our roadmap which will allow people to complete, and gain a “complete scientific view” of, their solar system. The main goal behind DexoWorlds has been and always will be to fill the space that lies between science, art, and decentralized technology, tying into our vision of “50% science, 50% art”. We hope that our CNFTs and Discord community can make astronomy and astrophysics fun and feel accessible to everyone. If you spend some time on our website, you’ll see that nearly everything is worded in terms of scientific research, as we hope that all holders can feel like an astronomer or an astrobiologist investigating a new world. The Veran Way Galaxy is going to continue to expand for a very long time to come, and we can’t wait to develop more ways for people to explore our universe: outer space is full of surprises, and our project is no different.

Any final thoughts? People to thank, shoutouts to give?

First and foremost I have to thank the Dexo team: @ChiNFTs and @CardanoKristof, who were so consistently and insistently helpful and wise from day one that they naturally became absorbed into the team. No decisions get made anymore without going through them first. In addition, I’d like to thank everyone in our Discord community who is so active in their support for us, my career, and the project. In particular, I want to thank @TelFiREgames, @Xiomek, @sphericalnft, @JessQtin, @LucksBox, @nodnarb_1, @Trainwreck_89. Finally, thanks to you Bas, for your patience, for reading over countless versions our proposal and for your valuable feedback!

Well, i can only say i enjoy these interviews more and more, and this one has certainly not been an axception! Our collab has just started and I hope we can make one of our delegators very happy with a unique DexoWorlds NFT!

Special thanks to:

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