Sentient Labs

The much anticipated initial Chicken Derby drop happened on July 16th at 7PM EST. As with many drops, it included high drama in the lead up as well as in the immediate aftermath. Before I cover the more dramatic events I will quickly cover the drop plan that was laid out by the team.

Chicken Derby Drop Details

  • Chicken Derby Drop Size: 11,111 chickens (equaling one third of the total genesis supply), amended to 13,333 the morning of the drop due to high demand and “increased traffic”
  • Minting Cost: 0.033 WETH (Polygon) each

Pre-Minting Mishap

Chicken Derby released a comprehensive minting guide. Within that guide they mistakenly included a live testing link (since removed) to mint chickens. Several savvy readers discovered the link and were able to mint a couple hundred chickens before the official Chicken Derby drop started. The Chicken Derby team quickly noticed the activity and effectively paused minting by raising the mint price to 0.33 from 0.033 before too many were created.

Predictably, the general chat channel on the official discord briefly blew up with questions about how it happened. There was a lot of finger pointing back and forth as the community and team sorted out what happend. Initially there were calls for the early minted chickens to be disqualified or have black marks placed against them for races. But that sentiment quickly dissipated once the full story emerged.

To their credit the Chicken Derby team admitted the mistake and took full responsibility. It would have been very easy for them to take a different path.

Drop Increase Announcement

To ensure roughly the same number of expected NFTs could be minted the team decided to release about 300 additional chickens. This increased the initial drop to 14,000.

While unexpected, this showed that the Chicken Derby team was able to make positive decisions for the community on the fly. The initial statement was a little misleading in that it stated that the link was leaked. While technically true, it was leaked via a document they provided to the community, and encouraged people to use. Within a short period of time however, they updated the information to take responsibility for how the offending link got out into the wild.

Finally, The Chicken Derby Drop

The NFT was available to be purchased on the Polygon network (MATIC). The actual drop, once official minting started, was one of fastest and easiest drops that I’ve experienced. There were no page timeouts or long delays. It was buttery smooth. In short, there was no drama with the actual minting/drop process.

In fact the process was so good that the entire 14,000 NFTs were sold out in just 9 minutes. The speed of this sellout even took the team by surprise. They had opened minting to members of the discord 10 minutes before the “official” start time of 7PM EST. When non-discord people complained that the drop was sold out before the announced time the team decided to release another 6,000 Chicken Derby NFTs immediately. This brought the total released to 20,000 and made some in the community unhappy, but it was ultimately the right move.

All in all the Chicken Derby team did a remarkable job handling the unexpected events. Messaging across all channels, even in crisis, was clear and concise. The minting guide was well written and very thorough. They accepted blame where appropriate while taking corrective steps that showed good faith and a community centric mindset that was refreshing to witness.

Asset Disclosure: As of the writing of this article I hold five (5) Chicken Derby NFTs.

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