Avalanche is the 404 Chain

If you're reading this, I'm going to assume you have at least a basic understanding of NFTs, tokens, and how they are different from each other.

TLDR: A 404 is a hybrid token-NFT that combines the collectibility of an NFT with the tradability of a token.

Also, you should buy Kingshit, the first legit 404 PFP project.

Origins

In February 2024, a new "protocol" dropped called ERC404.

There was a lot of controversy amongst devs because it's not a real ERC–a standard process by which developers discuss and create new protocols on Ethereum.

Instead, a project called Pandora just made up a new protocol and called it ERC404, presumably playing off of "ERC not found" as a joke, and launched the first hybrid NFT of its kind.

Here's how the first 404 tokens worked–in a nutshell.

• You buy either fractions or whole tokens on a DEX like Uniswap
• When you collect 1 whole token, an NFT is automatically generated in your wallet
• So if you have 1.8 tokens, and you buy 0.2 to have 2 whole tokens, you will now have 2 NFTs
• On the other hand, if your balance drops below a whole number, an NFT is automatically burned
• So with a number like 1.99999 tokens, you still have 1 NFT
• That being said, you can trade the 0.99999 like a regular coin

Pandora garnered a ton of attention as well as capital, quickly reaching $30,000 per token and almost $300M in market cap. So–that's $30k per NFT at that time.

As with many coins, the market cap has shrunk tremendously, but a lot of people still see the potential that hybrid NFT-tokens bring to the table.

Thesis

My personal thesis–which is reflected in my project with artist Scribble Warlock called Kingshit, as well as the 404-launchpad that I created called Bullet–is that hybrid assets like this have the potential to appeal to a larger segment of the market.

Many meme coin participants have lamented that trading these coins is less fun and less community oriented than NFTs were during the 2021 and 2022 hype.

On the flip side, many traders really hate how illiquid NFTs are and how difficult they often are to sell.

These "404s" solve both of these problems simultaneously.

Pandora was actually a bit limited when it comes to this, but thanks to some innovations that we made with Kingshit, 404s can be exactly as collectible as normal ERC721 NFTs.

They can have exactly the same properties of rarity, 1/1s, traits, and etc.

In addition to that, if you launch a collection on Bullet, you have burned liquidity generated by default, so the collection will forever be tradable on a DEX like Trader Joe.

Collectors are happy.

Traders are happy.

Kingshit

When 404s came onto the scene, Scribble Warlock and I immediately began having conversations about what kinds of things we could do with them.

Pandora was pretty lacking in the art and collectibility departments in our opinion.

We wanted to do some kind of funny PFP project.

In my head, what made sense was that it needed to work as a strong PFP, but it also needed to work as a good meme coin. In fact, it was both simultaneously and equally.

Scribble had the idea for rubber ducks because they are iconic, nobody really owns the concept, and we could make something funny out of them.

He sent me one drawing with a crown and a kind of blank stare on the ducks face, and the word "Kingshit" just popped into my head.

Kingshit felt like a great meme.

It's upbeat, has a kind of attitude about it, and it's also a bit aspirational (people doing king shit).

But the ducks also had potential for being a good brand and a hilarious profile picture project.

In order to make the contract work, we had to modify the concept that Pandora pioneered to allow for a bounded set of IDs, which I'll discuss in a more technical article some other time.

When we launched, it quickly became the most expensive PFP NFT on Avalanche, doing more daily volume (in the millions) than projects like Crypto Punks for over a week.

Now, we're focused on both community activation and growth as well as building out an e-commerce, streetwear brand.

404s on Avalanche

After the success of Kingshit, a number of other projects launched their own 404 collections.

TEENSONACID launched a really cool collection called SICKO, which has done really well. The Acidverse is a very active and growing community, and it's definitely worth a look.

Another awesome collection is called Swol Beach with ticker SWOL.

Swol Beach has an active community and is building out a fitness brand with things like supplements and protein powders for sale on their site.

I think both of these are excellent in terms of blending collectibles with memes.

There have been a number of other collections beyond these, and there will be many more.

Bullet

Launching a 404 collection is quite a bit more complex than a regular NFT mint.

You have to have some strategy for the team or artist receiving some funds, but also generating meaningful liquidity in an LP on a DEX.

If you want to do this in a trustless way, it's especially hard.

We solved this problem entirely on Bullet.

It's slightly detailed, but you can deploy a new collection with all kinds of configuration options in just a few clicks.

Once you know how it works, it probably takes 10 minutes total. I'll publish a nice "how-to" soon.

In addition to making launches easy, we built in a 0.25% creator royalty that lives directly within the contracts. Since the LP generated at mint will in all likelihood be the largest (at least during the early stages of a project), that means the team or creator will get onchain-enforced royalties as long as that LP is used.

This is a significant advantage over marketplaces that can choose to honor royalties or not.

Conclusion

Nobody ever knows how anything in crypto is going to play out exactly, but there are many reasons to be bullish on this new type of asset.

There are a lot of really cool projects that have been using this tech for a while, and if you get in on them now, you are likely buying into things quite early.

If you're interested in launching a 404 collection and have questions, feel free to reach out to me at @0xMoonbags on X.

Also, go buy some ducks.