Why Are NFT Collectors Looking for Loot on Ethereum?

Timothy Craig

Sep. 3, 2021

A new type of NFT is letting imaginations run wild.

Why Are NFT Collectors Looking for Loot on Ethereum?

Shutterstock cover by James Steidl

Key Takeaways

LOOT (for Adventurers) is the latest NFT project to soar in value.
The project takes a bottom-up approach, with the decisions over how to use the NFTs in the hands of the community.
One derivative project, Adventure Gold, has already hit a market cap of $500 million.

LOOT (for Adventurers) is the latest set of NFTs to soar in value, inspiring creators to launch several successful derivative projects.

The Loot Craze

Just as the NFT market appears to be cooling off, another new project starts making waves.

LOOT (for Adventurers) is a collection of 8,000 unique bags of adventure gear. Visually, the NFTs are represented as nothing more than a list of items, with “stats, images, and other functionality intentionally omitted for others to interpret,” according to the project’s website.

Loot NFTs — Loot NFT examples. Source: Loot Project

The items listed on the NFTs follow a high fantasy theme, similar to items in games such as World of Warcraft or Dungeons and Dragons.

The project is little more than a week old, but the rise in price has been unrelenting. The cheapest examples are currently selling for almost 20 ETH or $79,000. On release, anyone could claim the loot bags for free, only paying the Ethereum gas fee.

On the Loot website, the project describes itself as the first of its kind and explains the function of the NFTs as:

“The unfiltered, uncensorable building blocks for stories, experiences, games, and more, in the hands of the community, at no cost. Loot pursues complete decentralization from day one.”

As opposed to a top-down approach where the decisions of NFT developers create value, Loot takes a bottom-up approach. The value derived from the project comes directly from how the community engages with it.

Fueled by the endless possibilities for Loot, a strong community has formed around the project. Loot owners have already started building pixel art characters, a metaverse, and quest maps, using the same on-chain generation and randomization as the original Loot project.

However, one derivative that has stolen the limelight is the Adventure Gold token (AGLD). Created by Ethereum veteran Will Papper, Adventure Gold is an ERC-20 token representing gold coins, a common currency in fantasy role-playing settings. Like Loot, AGLD is an open book, with the community deciding how the tokens should be used. Adventure Gold was distributed via an airdrop, with all Loot NFT holders receiving 10,000 AGLD, creating a current max supply of 80 million tokens.

Since its launch, the price for AGLD has gone parabolic. In the past 24 hours, the token has risen over 1600%, reaching a peak of $7.29 Friday morning before cooling off. Anyone lucky enough to receive a bag of AGLD could have sold it for $70,000, almost as much as the Loot NFTs currently cost. The total market capitalization for AGLD currently stands at over $500 million.

When the price of Ethereum broke out of its previous range earlier this week, NFTs appeared to be losing steam, with floor prices for popular projects dropping. However, Loot seems to have reinvigorated the space, providing something fresh and unique for NFT aficionados to rally around.

Disclaimer: At the time of writing this feature, the author owned BTC, ETH, and several other cryptocurrencies.

Disclaimer