They’re cute, they’re punk rock, and they’re working to provide copious amounts of liquidity to Remilia projects! Last month, the Punk Rock Cuties mint began on Scatter. Punk Rock Cuties is the flagship project from Punk Rock Capital, a collective led by FloorDAO founder nobi. Punk Rock Capital’s stated intention is to increase liquidity within the Remilia eco while exposing their holders to exotic NFT-Fi yield strategies.
If you’ve studied the Milady lore closely, you’ll likely already be familiar with FloorDAO. A DAO dedicated to sweeping floors and providing liquidity on collections selected by its token holders. The campaigns to get Milady, and later Remilio added to FloorDAO’s treasury were sagas in their own right, and since that time Remilia assets have provided some of FloorDAO’s best returns. The enthusiasm Remila’s community had for floorDAO led nobi to want to create a more targeted, Milady-centric project, that could give back to the ecosystem in ways that FloorDAO cannot due to its scope.
nobi explained the projects beginnings:
I have always loved the I’m Cute, I’m Punk Rock Milady trait and I wanted to make a Remilia-aligned “fund” (for fun, not for profit)...Over the last few years of putting all my time into NFT-Fi, I’ve learned that liquidity is one of the most important things a project should have to succeed. PRC was a mind-child I had while on the train back from ETHDenver 2023, where I met plenty of NFT-Fi chads and brainstormed some exciting things, many of which are planned for integration in PRC should it mint out.
The vital role that liquidity providers and AMMs play within both Remilia and the broader NFT space cannot be understated. Pools on protocols like NFTX, Sudo, and Caviar were the saving grace for many collections during months of low volume and little volatility. Punk Rock Cuties aim to solidify the Remilia eco’s position as a leader in NFT liquidity. Through Punk Rock Cuties, market participants can gain exposure to exotic NFT-Fi strategies that they may not be interested in navigating solo. nobi explained how, like in Defi, the learning curve has left many disinterested and confused by NFT AMMs. As well as fortifying the Remilia eco’s activity, Punk Rock Cuties hope that their project will encourage others to take a look at tools like NFTX and other AMMs:
People just aren’t aware of how these things work. The NFTX academy page does a pretty good job at breaking everything down, but there’s still that classic Defi learning curve that everyone has to overcome before it really starts to click.
Liquidity mechanics and sweeps are great, but like any NFT project, Punk Rock Cuties is also about its art. Along with nobi we were also able to speak with the team’s artist Mason. Mason has long been a staple of the Scatter community, having launched RadLibs, a well-loved project from Scatter’s early days.
nobi explained how he and Mason originally connected.
I (nobi) reached out to a few different community members about starting a project centered around FloorDAO votes and Remilia liquidity about a year ago, and one of those people was H8. H8 had a few artists make mock-ups of a character that I’d come up with, and the one that stuck out to me was Mason’s.
Fans of Mason’s previous collection Radlibs will find familiar elements within the PRC collection and its traits. Though the vibe/aesthetic is quite different, Mason’s cartoonish style shines through all the same.
In coming up with the look/feel for the project Mason wanted to show reverence to the Remilia influences, while also creating something unique and recognizable in its own right.
If Milady is cute with subtle hints of attitude and edge, Punk Rock Cuties is a deliberately campy ersatz-apotheosis of deriv culture - as if we took what Milady, YAYO, and Remilio represent, as envisioned by a group of relative outsiders and stuck it in a blender, and then plated it with magnificent care.
The cartoonish style certainly serves to differentiate PRC from its contemporaries, but the influences go beyond just the Remilia eco. Mason discussed how inspiration for the project came from three of crypto Twitter's favorite things, firearms, anime, and rugcore art.
I love the way that weapons are often implemented in Remilia collections, but in the same vein I wanted to really make it overt and over the top. These weapons were not going to enter the image from off-screen, they would be held prominently and will peek into the normal PFP crop on Twitter or elsewhere.
More specifically we started with the heavy line weight of a Kaiji or Powerpuff Girls, which affords a heavier appearance, while also making the figure more cartoonish, which I knew would provide a good offset to the fairly realistic weapons I wanted to illustrate. And then we mixed in the cute chibi aesthetic (particularly in the eyes and shading) of Di Gi Charat, with a massively oversized head.
At least one person has described it as rugcore, which I think is hilarious, because I kept looking at the “Fiverr Remilio” (Friend Trait) and being like yeah it’s kind of like that but, you know, good. To dig a whole lot deeper would require a lot more text with some supporting imagery, but the process was extremely organic - we used a lot of anime and manga references of course, but also iconic video games, films, music videos and photoshoots, and genuine military garb and weaponry through the ages.
Punk Rock Cuties truly aims to capture everything Remilia enthusiasts look for in derivatives. Original but recognizable art that honors the source material while not ripping from it, a team made up of established community members, and mechanisms by which the continued growth of the project can feed back into the core Remilia ecosystem by bolstering liquidity across collections.
Ready to make the leap into NFTLP plays but aren’t sure where to start? There’s no easier opportunity than minting a Punk Rock Cutie!