This is a summary of the Feb 11 Moonsama community call on Exosama, compiled and organized by pnin, edited by CSaint02

Moonsama is the first generative NFT collection launched on Kusama/Moonriver. It has a current floor price of 300 MOVR (roughly 27k USD at the time of writing). Moonsama has quickly become a hyper-ambitious builder community, already creating an NFT marketplace, a popular minecraft game, and is now destined for the Kusama Metaverse.

Donnie, known as Donnie "Big Bags", is known for promoting exciting new projects, he’s also fittingly known as Donnie "The Builder". He often takes the helm in pushing innovative and exciting new ideas forward as a visionary, director, and charismatic speaker—

So charismatic that during this casual Moonsama discord community call focused on the Exosama project, it attracted 350 listeners from the start, and even running 30 minutes overtime, 325 members remained through to the end.

Donnie describes himself as "mega hyped" about Exosama, especially since they had originally barely hinted at Exosama, and, "just look what happened" (referring to the near-immediate 15k discord members and the actively engaged community).

What is Exosama?

Exosama will be Moonsama’s flagship NFT collection for the RMRK 2.0 standard. It will showcase composable, customizable, multi-resource, fully decentralized, and evolving NFTs that simply couldn’t be created on any other platform. There will be a large number of RMRK 2.0 NFT projects launched, but Donnie believes that no one will come close to what Exosama will be doing.

Most metaverses and NFT collections have limited utility, ultimately coming down to a discord membership or a cool image. Even in more intricate games and metaverses, the amount of centralization, and the static nature of the NFTs, makes them too similar to the games we already have today.

Exosama is focused on exploring the full decentralized potential of NFTs, and its utility won’t be limited to any single platform, game, or metaverse.

It began as a silly idea where you were in a bar and could hire the bar girl and equip them with NFTs, give them guns to fight off the baddies, but the whole thing was, "too seedy". So Donnie decided to still make the cute girls because there’s demand, but focus on the cyberpunk theme.

What makes Exosama truly special is that they are what Donnie refers to as "Spirit NFTs". These Spirit NFTs have intricate data stored completely on-chain. The NFTs will continue to evolve with the technology, and can remain the sandbox of NFT development.

On RMRK and Kusama (and a New Parachain?)

RMRK 2.0 is an NFT standard coming soon that will allow the most advanced NFTs available on any blockchain. In summary, it’s multi-resource (mixing audio/video/image, or being stored in multiple locations), allows infinite composability with Nesting and Conditional Rendering (NFTs can own other NFTs that are transferable or non-transferable, and the NFT looks or behaves based on on-chain actions like dancing in different ways based on different music that is equipped).

Parachains are secured by Polkadot or Kusama blockchain infrastructure, allowing them to focus on the specific market utility they are interested in. Because of this, and the crowdloan systems, Kusama has attracted a lot of builders that are very interested in working together. It’s important to note that there will be many close relationships with other parachains.

Because most metaverses are still quite centralized, or too expensive to operate on, Kusama is the perfect solution. Even the computing could be decentralized through a relationship with Phala and a partnership with Kanaria skybreach, by Bruno (behind RMRK), the first truly decentralized metaverse, is practically guaranteed.

While the RMRK 2.0 smart contracts standard doesn’t have a concrete launch date yet, Exosama will start as an ERC 721 token with 2D images, but as soon as RMRK 2.0 is secure and ready, Exosamas will become Exosama 2.0s and everything will be unlocked immediately.

With this system, you could even move to the RMRK 2.0 standard, modify anything composable and customize your NFT even more, and then bridge it back to its ERC 721 form with a totally new look on EVM compatible chains.

And what about a Moonsama parachain?

Donnie is considering the idea of a parachain. Kyilkhor, a major Moonsama developer, seems confident this would be possible. If so, they wouldn’t even need to crowdloan as they could fund the parachain themselves. The reason they might not do this is because it would require hiring a rust developer and those funds could be better used elsewhere.

However, in theory, and maybe ideally, becoming a fully substrate-based project would be the best future for Moonsama. It could create a metaverse where not only the whole Kusama community could join, but anyone could join without needing to start with Metamask or an expensive EVM, with gasless transactions. It could be one of the best use-cases for a parachain.

About the Mint

Exosama will be a collection of 10k. With a 10k mint, there needs to be a decent amount of variation, especially since the RMRK 2.0 standard can switch out hair styles, guns, clothes, etc (with some secret surprises as well). The mint will probably happen in 3 weeks or less.

The art is ready to ship, and they could launch tomorrow if they’d like, but they are going to "pound the shit out of it" in the next weeks, so that they are ready to over-deliver.

Right now, the artists are very focused on the guns.

Since the launch of Moonsama, they’ve learned a lot about mints and Donnie has faith that they will handle the Exosama mint flawlessly. He admits he can’t say these things in blockchain because, "shit goes wrong," but he does feel that they have it handled.

They haven’t committed to mint price, and for regulatory reasons, it’s important they are just selling art. The funds from the artwork will 100% be used towards development of the project.

Donnie has never taken any money from Moonsama, and it will be the same for Exosama. In fact, he has put in about half a million into Exosama so far.

Next week, there will be some demoing of the NFTs, with "insane promotional art" revealing how the Exosamas look, and he will be sharing some other utilities after that. It’s important to "keep things interesting before mint."

On Whitelist

Donnie has a lot of mixed feelings about whitelists, but he feels it’s necessary. There will always be people dissatisfied, but you need to market and you need to make sure you have the most diverse set of holders possible—or, "Fuck whales and VCs", in Donnie’s words.

He will see how well they execute this distribution goal on-chain, and it is a difficult challenge, but it’s his hope.

There have been many ways to get whitelists, which was detailed in this prior article by me and CSaint02: https://app.subsocial.network/6110/exosama-a-vision-erupts-an-article-composed-by-csaint02-31363

Follow and participate in their discord for the most up-to-date methods of whitelisting. https://discord.gg/EsTzXEUV

Donnie emphasized that while many Kanaria bird owners were whitelisted, it was to a select group. Only people who have interacted with their bird were whitelist. He believes the point of the metaverse is to interact with it, after all.

On Games and Metaverses

Most metaverses and games are boring, Donnie says. People check it out, look around, and then they don’t care anymore. At best, there might be some degenerate gambling, or perhaps corporate events, but games are needed to bring people in and keep them there before expanding beyond gaming.

p2p is critical in this, which is why building a minecraft game was important. People need something to do in their metaverses. The success of Moonsama’s minecraft has been proof of Donnie’s beliefs, but Moonsama was never a minecraft project alone. Even if it’s accessible, people won’t respect them for doing something similar to something else that’s already been done. Instead, they needed to create some "groundbreaking metaverse stuff."

The next obvious step was a solid FPS. MOBAs are huge, too, and one of Donnie’s dream projects is a 2D Final Fantasy game (with AR?).

Exosamas will be able to interact with all these games and metaverses, carrying their skins, their history, stats, and other data with them. He envisions entering into an arena or fight pit, and then entering the game or event of your choice, or even a fragmented game within a game. A FPS is like building a house, and from there you can build a city. A solid First Person Shooter can become a full-on 3d metaverse, and by working with Phala, it can be fully decentralized.

There’s a large scale possibility that they can eventually deliver the first 3d immersive fully decentralized metaverse.

Challenges

The new player experience is a big obstacle. Lots of people haven’t even chopped a tree down in minecraft, for instance. If you’re older, you’ll be like "I can’t find a tree", and they’ll lose players there and people won’t experience what the metaverse is.

There is always talk about economic incentives, scaling, and playing the game. The truth is that no one knows, and they are all experimenting. They need to protect the in-game economy. While people are arguing over numbers, but there’s no economist that knows this world and can predict it—they just have to play with it and adjust it as necessary and make sure that it doesn’t ruin the game.

There is a perception that Donnie is a "shitcoin shiller", but he considers himself a builder. He wants to ship something quickly that is polished and can really scale and grow.

In the metaverse, there will be many different styles. Exosama and the FPS will be gritty, and others like minecraft will be family friendly. It will be interesting to see how genres cross.

The Moonsama NFT holders are the core community, but some people have used other assets as a backdoor to get involved in a way that has taken away from some of the Moonsama community in the past. This comes back to economic designs that will constantly need to be adjusted.

Free to play players and pay to win are always challenges that could "break a game." The only solution seems to be an efficient taxation system, but if they create a system, it has to be fair for all.

On VCs and Funding

Donnie shows a strong aversion to VCs. He has seen too many great companies and projects that have been ruined by VC influence and advise. The more they can self fund and protect Moonsama, the better. A smaller and more flexible team is often better.

He states that they don’t need to earn money, but they do need to hire people. This is another reason that they may consider a parachain. Donnie does admit that at some point, it’s quite possible VC support will be necessary, but if they have a demo that they can "handle their shit", every VC will "foam at the mouth" and thus, let them keep more power and control over their projects.

If they do real big things, they need them—that’s fine, but they will do their best to keep them away from the NFTs, the token, etc.

Whatever the case, they don’t want to be controlled by institutions and to answer to them. "No one will ruin this beautiful project being birthed," and for now, they have more than enough funding and talent to pull off what they need to do.

They have actually been aggressively hiring, and already they have around 20 artists and "they are still completely overwhelmed. When you build stuff, you need everything, so there are still gaps even if we are hiring all over. Such as music. We are still looking for a music guy for the immersive experience."

Alpha

"You remember that Venom looking character?"

"Exosamas will be playable characters in the FPS… Oh shit, was that a leak? Well, the Exosama brand itself is so strong that—why not use it for the FPS? Let’s see how it goes."

"If someone creates in the metaverse, of course I’ll make sure they are rewarded."

"You don’t realize how important Carnage is for Exosama. Loot boxes dropped. Minecraft creations. These are multiverse weapons, man. You can equip them on the Exosama. The Exosama weapons will be default, but think of the massive flex of having Carnage weapons."

"You can’t equip Kanaria items on Moonsamas, but you can on Exosamas."

"We need just one bridge. Maybe Kyilkhor will build one. Hell. I’m just going to do it."

"We are probably going to set up a shell company in Europe. We’re not finding enough talent in crypto and we’ll be hiring people on salary that are from traditional game development."

Donnie frequently mentioned pets, along with a hint of Kanarias in the FPS.

"We do need to include Moonsama in there, but let’s be realistic, Moonsama is like a governance token. Exosama is character utilization. We don’t really need Moonsama characterization. We can talk about it, but Moonsamas…don’t really fit."

"We aren’t minting garbage like many projects. Everything is utilized in everywhere on the metaverse. These are not single dimension that will be neglected."

"I’m staying tight lipped on loot boxes, but loot boxes are good backup plan for the economic rebalancing."

"There will be a Moonsama/minecraft season 2, for sure. The plan is to focus on the kusamaverse and supporting the NFT community. I’m really looking forward to seeing Kusama Kings each having their own castle, Bonobos Apes having their own jungle, donkey kong style. Everyone ruling their own world. That’s the real metaverse. That’ll be exciting to witness."

Hype Statements

"People don’t recognize the full potential. These NFTs won’t be static. These NFTs will have data stored within them."

"The Exosama universe in going to be absolutely gigantic. It looks absolutely beautiful. It’s hard to believe how much development has been done in such short amount of time. I get too excited, frequently, so I need to step back sometimes just to communicate with the community about what is being done."

"We get shit done faster than anyone. No one can touch us. We leave them in the dust."

"Moonsama community is filled with people that can do things that even I didn’t think was possible. There are multiple teams within Moonsama. They won’t share everything with me because I might leak everything and they’d lose their heads." "I love seeing the characters come to life and really want to share, but I can’t. I’ll say that the Exos dynamic orientation is wow."

"The idea of transposing these characters between metaverses…mind blowing."

"We are relentlessly building. Just keep building."

"When things start hitting socials, there will be a lots of eyes on Exosama."

"This is going to be a lifelong project. But if you really enjoy something, it’s not even work. It’s easy."

"I’m from a world where you can get anything done in 5 months. I’d hate to work on a slow team that takes 2 years to deliver something."

Other Thoughts

"When you bridge, you are effectively staking your assets and securing the game economy."

"Most utility of most blue chips, you get access to a discord/telegram channel. But Kyilkhor has built an api that has a metaverse visualization built. Like, imagine actually bullying people and putting a "traitor" sign on someone who sells out. Haha, I’m just joking. But seriously, people need to spend actual time and have actual discussions in the metaverse."

"Right now, it seems like you take a game, add nfts, and then it’s suddenly a metaverse. It’s more than that and we’re focusing on principles. Building stuff that people want to use."

"The goal is not to make players rich. It’s about taking care of the people who supported from start."

"We had an Egg idea, and the idea that on-chain actions could dictate what hatches from the egg was great, but now is not the time. If we released the egg too far from RMRK 2.0, people would be sitting on eggs too long. It’s better to mint Exosamas as ERC 721s to start with because then you have interoperability from the start."

"When you bring talent onto the team, let the talented people get the job done. For instance, our designer worked for Universal, Nickelodeon, Hasbro, etc. He works and he’s delivering in a matter of weeks."

Shout Outs

"Moonsama has really evolved. The community has stepped up in so many ways. Everyone on the Moonsama team is delivering. There’s rapid development across the board. All the educational stuff like the wiki is also really needed and is a massive help.

"I didn’t expect 4 weeks ago that the community would be like this. Shout out all the community moderators that me focus on the building."

"Voxelle is doing an absolute amazing job. Voxelle is someone you can rely on. You tell him what you need, and if he can’t do it, he’ll bring in a whole team. He’s very resourceful. He’s the wizard. Pro game dev that ran the biggest minecraft servers in the past. He’s cocky, which I love, and he goes ham like in Rome’s colleseum. He codes so quickly building things like auto class selection, teams, etc in no time. His real talent is really showing. He didn’t originally want to do the FPS thing, but he’s been stepping in and taking over."

Q&A

-What do you expect from an ideal community member. How can they contribute? "I’m the wrong person to ask, but there are a lot of people who want to get involved and the truth is everyone working is busy. We can’t micromanage. If you want to participate, you have to manage yourself and do something, and if you demonstrate what you’re good at—then boom, you’re in. The next time we need something, we’ll tap you on the shoulder.

"Some people are lazy and want to get involved, too—that’s fine. Just use your imagination if this is you."

-Do you need an Exosama to play the game? "Exosama will act as anything. If we need to test anything, Exosoma for sure. But if the game is really good, we don’t want to restrict access. At the start, maybe—because we need to limit the player base. Maybe we’ll limit it to 2000. It’s a good question. We’ll see what the community wants.

"Minecraft was limited to 250 players, and always has 350 waiting, but Exosama—5v5, or 10v10, we’ll have lots of different servers, so it’s different."

-Are there plans for community participation in the lore? Or do you have a dedicated storytelling team? "Lore is very important, for sure. Right now, it’s a collapse of mankind—nuclear war or something. Nova city was built within nuclear crater. The guy who built it was a great man. After he died, his son took over, something happened, and an advisor to the army took control of Nova and oppressed citizens. He used bioengineering to do this where a parasite takes over people.

"The Venom looking character we teased is part of that. Milder infections can be seen. Exosamas might be using dna altering stuff, controlling animals. Something tomorrow might reveal (hint: Kanaria). Red eyes, color skin, all will be important to the lore/theme of the enemy design. I’m really excited for that part. While cute girls are interesting—I love the horrific monster and cute girl contrast. There needs to be a horror element, and Resident Evil is certainly an inspiration."

-Will breasts be customizable? "We need to be careful not to hypersexualize. No, boobs will not be equipable. Boob physics were requested, but boob size won’t be customizable…though it theoretically could be…

"Anyway, there’s a fashion brand we’re pitching to, and maybe Exosamas could be the perfect way to showcase their fashion in the metaverse.

-Will Exosamas be able to level up, have stats that carry over? "Spirit NFTs will be a substandard that let characters store stats/data."

-What is the utility of the umbrellas? "Every NFT asset on RMRK is multiverse enabled. I don’t want to say anything so that people don’t go buying umbrellas and expecting things, but Moonsama assets that were hard to get…you think we’d just leave them behind?"

-Have you, or will you, build anything that has no use? "No. No way."

-You’ve had a lot of success with Moonsama—lots of hurdles even if it’s not seen by the community. What are some of the challenges you are facing? "More challenges were at the start. For instance, we had a person on the team and we clashed, a lot, back then. Too many chefs in the kitchen can be a problem. There needs to be some form of centralization to move fast. You have someone that is president that can be voted in and out, sure, but it’s just politics. Everyone has their self interests. It’s difficult. Maybe a senate? Maybe we should look at Rome, maybe? You have to be careful who you onboard.

"Minecraft was fun, but it was a bit of a trap—it sucked us in. Minecraft is a lot of responsibility, on top of Moonsama in general, and realizing that was challenging. But now…now it’s fun. We made it a success.

"A major challenge right now is that we have a good hold of what we are doing, and we are moving really fast, but I’m impatient. I have a lot to prove here. Being patient is the hard part.

"Other than that, it feels easier than it should. I don’t know why I was shilling everyone else’s bag before instead of just building."

Closing thoughts

Donnie thanked everyone for their support and emphasized the importance of community calls, especially since things can change fast and the calls keep everyone on the same page. For instance, they blasted through the 2022 roadmap on Moonsama in no time.

He acknowledges that the website needs more work, but also thinks it’s maybe a blessing in disguise that the marketing "is dogshit right now." It means that only the people who are following closely know.

He doesn’t really know if they really need to market hard. If Moonsama becomes a dao—he doesn’t really want speculators to come in. They want the good guys, not the bad ones with money. Marketing might affect that.

Whatever the case, he says they have "a lot of tricks up their sleeves" and the point of the metaverse is to come together.

Finally, he told the community to expect reveals mon-wed, and re-emphasized that if anyone wants to do anything, just do it.

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