RIDE ON ART #16 - KUSAMA KINGDOM

I think we don't need to do a deep introduction. I believe everyone in our ecosystem knows the Kusama Kingdom project that was created in 2021. Read on to learn more about their successful journey.

In October 2021, the Kusama Kingdom project commenced with the launch of the Kusama Kings collection on Singular, which is built on the Kusama network. The primary objective of this NFT project has always been to emphasize community engagement and continue to add utility as the project progresses.

The Kusama Kings and Queens are two of the most successful projects in the Kusama ecosystem. Owning one of these NFTs grants you a load of benefits. Today we interviewed KBL, the co-founder of Kusama Kingdom from the UK. 

1. Let's hear the beginning of the story. How did you get the idea? What inspired you to create Kusama Kingdom?

   The Kusama Kingdom was conceived in September 2021 while I was on holiday with my girlfriend in Kyrgyzstan after seeing a picture in a church, I had been in crypto for many years and had recently started watching the increased interest of NFTs however I was finding it very hard to value NFTs and invest in them, especially in Dotsama so I wanted to create one that followed clear release schedules, rarities, and utility. So after seeing this picture, I instantly thought it would make a great basis for an NFT, a King-like figure holding two items and on that day the Kusama Kings were born.

   

   I messaged my cousin Rachel that evening as she is a graphic designer, I gave her a brief message explaining what an NFT was with the picture I had seen earlier in the day and asked her to mock up a King holding a canary and a sword and we went from there, a few drafts back and forth and we had our Kusama King. We had very little experience in marketing and social media but we came up with a strategy that included giving away the first King to drive hype and the auction model to sell them which would create sustained engagement and also allow the market to decide the price rather than us setting a price, this also allows you to build the community trust over time vs doing a single mint, as founders we need to sell them over a long period of time and therefore also have to put work into continuously building the community and utility over that time. 

2. Why did you choose our DotSama ecosystem? Was that your first choice?

   I was already an investor in the Dotsama ecosystem so I had a small network of people I knew, I also knew going to ETH or a bigger network there would be no chance of gaining traction. The projects there at that point had big teams and big budgets so it would have been very hard to compete. So it naturally meant Dotsama was our first choice and we are so glad it was. The communities and artists here are fantastic and we have been lucky to work with many of them. 

3. What can you tell us about the creative process? Who is behind the art? 

   Rachel is my cousin and has a background in animation and graphic design so it was great that we could do this together. The creative process involved many of us bouncing ideas off each other and she would then bring them to life. Her talents made it an incredibly easy process for us with very few clashes on concepts or needing for changes, this allowed us to stay on top of our release schedule every week, and we never missed one. This was so important for us as consistency and reliability are important for collectors/investors. A lot of collections miss this point. 
   

4. There are 110 Kings and 110 Queens with different rarities. Which King and Queen are your favorites? And why?

   Hippie King: This was the first King Rachel drew outside of the limited design. I absolutely loved it and when I saw it, I thought we could have something special here.

   

   Wine Queen: I bought this Queen and gave it to my GF given her love for wine.

   

5. The main collections are Kings and Queens. What can you tell us about other collections you have in the Kusama Kingdom?

   We have a couple of other collections intertwined with the history of the Kingdom:
   
   The Legend of the Lost Swords: This is a collection of 10 swords, one sword in the style of each Legendary King, which can/were claimed if you hold the Legendary King plus a king of each rarity. If you hold one of these swords in your wallet, you are eligible for a 2x payment on the Kings Bounty payments.

   

   The Mystery of the Cursed Frogs: Again this is a collection of 10, and similar to the swords to claim a frog you had to have the Legendary Queen plus a Queen of each rarity. Holding a frog gives you the equivalent of a 2x payment of a limited Queen from the Queens Jewels Defi fund.

   

   The Royal Babies: This is a collection of 50 and is completely customizable. If you held a King and a Queen you were able to wed them and claim a ring, you could then burn the ring to create a baby with the genetics of the King and Queen (the higher the rarity, the stronger the genetics). These do not have any utility atm and there are still 23 babies yet to be born. We really love seeing the combinations people create with these. It makes for some pretty wild NFTs.

   

6. Are there more collections coming to the Kusama Kingdom? If yes can you maybe give us some ideas?

   We currently have no plans to release additional collections all of our focus is on delivering value and building out the utility for the current holders. We have recently had our Astar dapp ‘The Royal Raffle’ approved by the Astar community so we are really excited to start working on that.
   
   This will allow anyone with Astar tokens to stake to our dapp and enter into a monthly Raffle for a share of the dapp rewards as well as additional prizes, the first couple will include certain Royal NFTs up for grabs so definitely keep an eye on that.

7. One of the utilities of your collection is joining your closed community - The Great Hall. What does this community look like?

   This is our private discord, which started off as just one channel ‘The Great Hall’ This has since expanded to over 80 channels, covering everything and anything. There is a real investment focus within our community. People share and speak openly about strategies, trading, and their investment thesis and this is what the community is at its core.

   The other utilities that we focus on are the King's Bounty and the Queen’s Jewels which are the investment funds we have for each collection. These are both over $100k in value atm with the Kings focusing on venture deals and blue chip crypto investing and the Queens focusing on generating yield through defi. We have community members who are elected and help run these. The ability to access seed rounds of projects across ecosystems is bootstrapped by the work I do at Silvermine Capital where I am the principal so this allows great synergies between our investment fund and the Kusama Kingdom.

   

   In addition to these we wanted to give holders the ability to participate in private investment deals with their own capital and as such one area of focus is providing those opportunities. We are going to be rebranding this area of the Kingdom soon and launching ‘Kingdom Ventures’. Think of this as a community-focused VC/Investment group that allows all holders to pool capital to enter deals outside of the King’s Bounty and Queens Jewels we have done this as a community before but now we are going to take it to the next level and launch its own stand-alone brand and website. More to come soon... 

8. What is something you are particularly proud you managed to achieve with your collections?

   We get a lot of great comments and messages from people saying we inspired them to create a collection so that is really great to hear, but also there have been some amazing stories within our community of people helping each other either through tough times in their real lives or small things like needing to borrow some money quickly to sort something out and the trust that has been built within our community for people to do that without a second thought is really powerful.
   
   This is the best part. We have made genuine friendships that transferred from online into real life. I have met many of our holders IRL and consider them genuine friends as I know others have done.

9. Do you also have other NFT projects you are interested in?

   Lucky Friday is an entity that I am a part of alongside a couple of other King holders. Through this entity we are releasing Teddy DAO which is an NFT project purely for social good and charity, this will be launching in the coming weeks and we are really excited about this. If people want to learn more, then please follow them on Twitter.

   

10. What are your plans for this year? We heard about moving to EVM. How will it look like and what can your holders expect?

    Given the news of RMRK/Singular sunsetting on Kusama, we are looking at all possible routes for the collection and as a community will collectively decide where the future lies for the Kingdom, EVM is looking most likely as it will also tie in really well for some of the plans we have for Kingdom Ventures. So this year will be focusing on establishing our plans for the move, building out Kingdom Ventures, and continuing to be active within the space. 

    But one of the most important things coming up this year on the 26-27 April is our annual meet-up in Amsterdam for Kings Day! There are about 25 of us headed there to celebrate and make memories. This is another part of the Kingdom that is so special, the friendships that have been made along the way.

Thank you for telling us more about your journey. Kusama Kingdom is one of the important projects that helped our NFT community to grow. If you read it till here, you can say that you learned something more about Kusama's history of NFTs.

With RMRK2 support coming to KodaDot, now you can see these collections also on KodaDot beta. Before it is released to production, we still need to finish a few more things. Follow the Kusama Kingdom on Twitter to stay updated!

Our KodaDot team believes that building better relationships with artists is essential. Feel free to comment or write me about who should be next on my Twitter. You can also join our Discord to learn more about our community.

I wish you all a nice day!