The social virtual world Habbo released their first NFT project, and sold each of the 10.000 unique avatars in a Dutch auction. An extra 1.000 NFTs will go to the existing Habbo community. The reveal of the avatars will happen on October 5th at the latest.
The project has the name Habbo Avatars, and these are unique, pixelated avatars. They are very similar to the avatars from the 2001 world of Habbo Hotel. Each of the avatars has been generated using 284 traits, making each of them unique. Of course there will be rarity mechanics at play here. Each avatar will have at least one of the 74 traits that are completely new to the world of Habbo.
The Dutch auction started at 0.5 ETH and drop a bit every hour. A quick look on OpenSea already reveals a floor price of 0.6 ETH, as people try to make an easy profit.
Habbo Avatars roadmap
Now there’s something important to note here, because these Habbo Avatars can’t be used in the game world yet. However, this is one of the plans on the roadmap. When these avatars become usable, NFT owners will be able to receive exclusive items, and gain access to Habbo Club and Builders Club memberships. According to the roadmap they will have finished all this before the end of the year.
Habbo has more plans for blockchain technology, as they want to tap into play-to-earn for example. The developers want to integrate play-to-earn mechanics into Habbo and Hotel Hideaway. However, the developers do note that it’s very time-consuming to create such an economy on top of their existing worlds.
NFT PFP avatar hype
Ever since Hashmasks released their artworks late February, the NFT community has seen a tremendous hype surrounding profile-picture avatar NFTs. Hashmasks will now release their own profile pictures, while we’ve seen celebrities like Elijah Wood, Shaquille O’Neal, Mike Tyson and Snoop Dogg full embrace the NFT community through CryptoPunks, Deadfellaz, Bored Apes, Cool Cats and many other NFT projects. It’s not without reason that Bored Apes and CryptoPunks find themselves in the spotlight right now, because having full ownership over a digital representation will become valuable.
In the gaming space we’ve seen Gala Games release Vox, while celebrities like Paris Hilton invest in avatar platforms like Genies. There’s value in owning a certain avatar, as it unlocks access to certain content or perhaps to certain people. At the same time there are companies like CryptoAvatars working on an open standard for avatars in the metaverse, so that we – in the future – can own an avatar and make it walk around in Somnium Space, Habbo Hotel and World of Warcraft alike.
