A New Chapter Begins…
It’s been over a year since we began bootstrapping our decentralized web3 publishing platform. During that time financial and crypto markets have seen their share of highs and lows, mainstream AI has been born, and the digital collectibles market — affectionately known as NFTs — has experienced a downturn. Despite these fluctuations, we have been steadfast, quietly crafting our masterpiece behind the scenes. Now, it’s time to unveil what we’ve been creating: Age of Anura and The Forge, our decentralized publishing and governance platform.
The Age of Anura: by the community for the community.
From the outset, the founders of Age of Anura (AoA) chose to diverge from the conventional approach. We wanted to develop a platform that harnessed the full potential of blockchain technology: Ethereum as a decentralized world computer and system of record, DAOs as community-governed organizations flourishing from the grassroots, and art and storytelling as mediums to captivate a broad audience.
We collaborated with Alchemist Pictures, a leading French digital art studio, to bring our vision to life. Together, we conceived a range of concepts and themes. In a nod to our commitment to community governance, we let our DAO select a winner from a set of themes and protype art. The result: the inception of the Age of Anura collection.
Staying true to our ethos, we centered our chosen concept around “Anura”, a nod to the classification of tailless amphibians our Earth’s frogs belong to. Five class archetypes, or orders, each embodying unique lore and roles within Anuran society, were born:
- The Divine — The voice and mortal hand of the Goddess Anura.
- The Devout — A symbol of strength and nobility within Anuran society.
- The Shaper — The brains behind Anuran cities, technology, and temples.
- The Fury — Known for their unmatched combat prowess, they display unyielding resolve and wild fury in battle.
- The Shadow — They are the silent movers within Anuran society, serving as the unseen hand of the Goddess.
An Immersive Collection with Broad Appeal
To cater to a broad audience, we’ve included both male and female avatars. For instance, The Divine are exclusively female, embodying the guiding force of Anuran society according to lore. Paying homage to gaming culture, the collection’s traits were inspired by the concepts of skins and chromas. With each order boasting an average of 16 traits and 12+ variations, the possibilities run into the quadrillions. To ensure each character was aesthetically pleasing as well as unique, we imposed a series of exclusion rules and collision patterns instead of randomizing traits.
Beyond the 6,700 meticulously curated Anurans, the collection features 270 full-set (chromas) commanders and 30 exemplars. Our artistic team has devoted countless hours perfecting every last detail. The AoA collection has been a labor of love and thought, forming the foundation of the inaugural world of The Forge.
In an era saturated with exceptional artwork collections, it’s crucial to ask: what sets Age of Anura apart? How does this project differentiate itself amidst the surge of web3 businesses emerging in recent years? These were the questions that guided our design process from the very beginning. We yearned to create more than mere JPEGs on the blockchain, something that could drive web3 innovation further and empower our community to operate as a decentralized, efficient organization. Here, we introduce the answer to our ambition: The Forge.
The Forge: Crafting Decentralized Provenance & Intellectual Property
The Forge goes beyond being just another NFT project; it encapsulates our commitment to pushing boundaries and redefining what’s achievable with blockchain and NFTs. It is not just our decentralized publishing and governance platform but also a public facing user experience. It’s our answer to the call for more than digital art and standard functionality.
The Forge is designed to provide our community with the tools they need to evolve in an autonomous and efficient manner. More than that, it aims to be a platform accessible to “normies”. We’ve developed an environment that invites active engagement not only from our web2 audience, but also from a spectrum of content creators. From storytellers, screenplay writers, and authors, to animators and artists, The Forge is a canvas for creativity and collaboration. In this way, we’re building a bridge that not only transcends the boundaries of our community, but also encourages connections between diverse creatives from across the digital landscape.
Our initial unveiling of The Forge platform pivots around the stories of the Age of Anura, focusing on the crucial elements necessary for collective governance, collaboration, and the conception of a brand new world. Broadly speaking, these features include:
- Baseline Lore: A compendium of world lore, crafted by our founding team and open for expansion through the platform. The first story of The Genesis arc, titled “The Five Talons,” has been authored, narrated, and illustrated by our community of Loremasters.
- Governance and Proposal Management Tools: These tools facilitate efficient collaboration for business management, and more importantly, they enable us to commission, curate, and compose new canon.
- Composer: This user-friendly content creation tool enables artists to finalize content that’s ready for the blockchain, making it akin to Medium, but for the web3 domain.
- Publisher: This is the culmination of the governance and composition processes. It’s how our intellectual property is canonized, then moved to Ethereum and Arweave, providing the immutable provenance that only blockchain technology can deliver.
In our next article, we will delve into the above features, all of which will be available pre-launch. Additionally, we will outline our mint strategy including vesting and explain how you can become a member of our DAO for free. Subsequently, we’ll begin to unveil the future vision for The Forge, including its potential expansion to new communities and its broader applications.
