It’s a shame that such a high-profile set lacked any and all imagination when it came to design. A low-effort failure in the generative NFT world.
When I first heard that Donald Trump had released a generative NFT drop, I thought it was a joke. But then I saw the video of him shilling the thing, and immediately went to OpenSea to have a look at the NFTs. His collection lives here.
As my blog is about generative NFTs (art/design, teambuilding, execution, smart contracts, etc.), I’m not going to get into any politics here. But I do think this set provides what I’d call a “teachable moment” in the art of producing generative NFT sets.
If you’ve read my past articles, which cover just about every imaginable aspect of NFT set design, one of the common questions I get is: “How many traits are needed in a generative NFT set?” I answered that question at length here, and I’ll save you the trouble of looking: My answer was “around 200.”
But that answer took a few things into consideration:
- First, it was meant as a bottom limit. I do think you can “get away” with less than 200 traits for a 10k set, but if you want good variety, you should design more traits. Closer to 200 is better. More than 200 is even better. (I think my record is 1,200, which was crazy-high!) Let’s see how many Trump’s team used:
- Second, my “around 200” number was in reference to a set with 10,000 NFTs. Trump’s set has 45,000 (which is a great number for him, of course). But the problem is that he’s got 4.5x more NFTs than a normal 10k set, and he’s already super low on traits.
Here’s a fun math problem for anyone reading: Low #s of traits + high #s of NFTs + failure to code for preventing dupes == high probability for [anyone want to guess]?
That’s right, it means tons of DUPES likely. Like these:
Too bad I didn’t handle this set. I’d have:
- pushed for 5x more traits, even if it meant a lot more prep work by whomever designed it;
- pushed for more visual variety, which would translate into a much more appealing set in which few individual NFTs look overly similar;
- coded to ensure that straight-up dupes, like those shown above, would not be allowed.
I didn’t like the 1/1s either, to be honest. For example, they did stuff like this:
Same “1/1”, only one is digitally signed, the other isn’t. For a 1/1, if you’re going to offer digital signatures, then you should either:
- Sign them all; or
- Only sign some, but don’t offer any 1/1s that are just a dupe of a signed one, only without a signature.
Overall grade: D.
I do give it some points for the thematic lightheartedness and comedy of it all, and for the fact that at least a lot of new users will now enter into the NFT world because of this. Still, the whole thing smacks of a really a low-effort Photoshop job, to be painfully honest. Not presidential level, anyway. (Hey
Barack Obama, if you ever want to do an NFT set correctly, give me a shout!) Anyway, I hope new NFT collectors coming into the web3 space will look deeper and discover some of the amazing art and tech being rolled out, and not judge what generative NFTs are based on this example.
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