NEW CHALLENGER APPROACHING
It's been an exciting week here at Scatter! On the 12th of June at 1:00 AM UTC, the Kawamii Teens mint went live on Scatter. Exactly 95 seconds later, the final NFT in Kawamii's 3000 piece collection was minted, and just like that, it was over. Over the next 48 hours, Kawamii Teens generated over 200 ETH in volume on secondary markets, according to Blur. Needless to say, the speed with which Kawamii Teens minted out and the consistency and resilience of the secondary market has exceeded the expectations of both the Kawamii team and us here at Scatter. You may be wondering as to what makes Kawamii special? Aspiring creators can read on to understand the efforts and thinking that went into achieving another massive W for the Remilia ecosystem.
Made with Love and Reverence
One brief glance over the Kawamii Teens collection and the passion for Remilio and gamer culture is immediately apparent. The collection is soaked in lore and rife with easter eggs immediately recognizable to any keen-eyed Web3 bag chaser. The art produced by the Kawamii team, however, goes beyond merely being 'Remilio + Video Games'. Any team could easily have stuck Mario hats on some neochibi heads, thrown in some controllers, and called it a day. Instead, Kawamii has woven the gamer culture traits into the Remilio lore. Overwatch weapons, Keyblades, WoW skillbars, Kawamii is steeped in citations of the fast-paced, hyper-competitive time sink media that so heavily contributed to the broad 'extremely online' zoomer culture embodied by Remilio. The Kawamii team spent many a night booting up old consoles and combing through video games from their childhood to curate a set of traits that would resonate with the Remilio community. Their efforts were so great, that prior to launch there were actually 70 layers/traits that wound up on the cutting room floor. With these carefully curated references, Kawamii begins almost to feel more like an unofficial extension or expansion of Remilio rather than simply another derivative.
Where the Remilio represents the sigma grinder J.I.T. energy, with zoomers chasing a bag through the trenches of modernist dystopia, the Kawamii is the escapist, idealized mirror image. It's a callback to a simpler time before monetization, streamers, and superchats; a time when you played games purely for their quality, not to grind down a battle pass. Where the Remilio is getting bread, the Kawamii is hitting an epic killstreak. Where the Remilio is sigma grinding for shiny Rolexes and fat stogies, the Kawamii is mogging scrubs in the CoD voice lobby and running WoW raids with the fellas. A Kawamii is the in-game avatar into which the Remilio logs in to unwind and soothe his warrior spirit.
For the Betterment Of the Network
The love and respect that the Kawamii team has for the broader Remilia ecosystem is reflected not only in the art itself but also through the team's actions in the days before and following the mint. From before the mint even began, the Kawamii team aimed to set their fellow Remilio and Milady up for success with their utilization of Scatter's affiliate system. While affiliate links have become a mainstay for Scatter collections, the Kawamii team aimed to think outside the box to make their affiliate program more useful/lucrative to holders of Remilia NFTs. Unlike many other projects, Kawamii placed permission on their affiliate program, allowing only holders of select Remilia collections to enroll and create ref links. This helped to alleviate the issues sometimes seen with Scatter's referral link system where a collection has enrollment for all, giving every minter their own link, leaving less opportunity for participants to take advantage of the program. The tightened constraints on the affiliate program placed by the Kawamii team proved very effective, with the top ten affiliates alone earning a collective 13.44 ETH (22,101 US$ at the time of writing). These rewards mean more money in the pockets of Remilios and Miladys which means more liquidity in the network, but the Kawamii team didn't stop there.
It has become a cultural rule of sorts within the Remilia ecosystem that derivative projects truly wishing to honor and add to the network should use a significant portion of mint funds to sweep flagship Remilia collections. Since their successful mintout, the Kawamii team has acquired a Milady and swept the Remilio floor. They even went one step further in sweeping the now canonized Pixelady, the de-facto gold-standard for Milady derivatives. These purchases show a genuine interest on the part of the Kawamii team in the continued growth and prosperity of the wider RemCo network. It is also worth noting that the love has by no means been one-way. The Remilia co-founder and Milady Maker architect is currently wearing the honorary piece created for him by the Kawamii team, and many larger personalities within the Network have enthusiastically voiced their support for Kawamii's continued success.
Carving Out a Community
The Kawamii team has hit the ground running on developing their own unique community. In addition to active engagement with their holders on platforms like Twitter and Discord, the Kawamii team has long term plans for competitive gaming events for their community, with their first event being their upcoming 'Kawamogus Night', a live streamed competitive Among Us event for the Kawamii community. Specialized on-theme events and competitions like this go a long way to helping a project define itself in a sea of competitors. They also provide on-ramps for new entrants perhaps intimidated by going in cold to Milady-Twitter.
The Big Picture
Above all else, the Kawamii team found their success through showing a genuine love and appreciation for Remilia, the Lore, Network Spirituality, and the broader community. Quality art, utility, holder perks, these things are all well and good, but here at Scatter over the last few months and particularly in the wake of the Kawamii mint, we have come to realize the one thing that truly propels collections into reaching escape velocity, is authenticity; it is clear to anyone with a pair of eyes that authenticity is something the Kawamii team has in spades.