Shadow Monkey Comics

it starts with a whisper...

Lighting the Path

Storytelling

Storytelling is a foundational pillar to human society that we’ve taken part in for thousands of years. It’s how we learn and grow, it’s how we entertain ourselves, and most importantly it’s how we relate to each other and understand each other. We believe NFTs have begun the next great storytelling renaissance with their ability to organize communities in fundamentally new ways around rich lore, fueled by common interests, and technology’s enablement of immersive experiences.

Community

Our personal passion for NFTs is driven by the strong communities we’ve joined over the years, living on the bleeding edge of technological development and creativity. We're here for the culture and the vibes. Community comes first where people can share new ideas, experiment with new technologies, and come together from all over the world to kick back. These degen vibes are important to maintaining the culture of these communities. Mix in fun and finance, and we’ve got something magical.

Join our Community

Discord

Twitter

Technology

Technology is key to bringing these stories and lore to life in brand new ways. One of the new technologies we are most excited about, and believe will unleash the full potential of NFTs, is on-chain metadata using Creco.xyz’s DNA methodology. They have implemented a new extension to the ERC721 token creating the ERC721-M which stores NFT metadata on-chain in a cost effective way. By leveraging this bleeding edge NFT token we know we are continuing to push the bounds of what has been done before us, on a journey to bring our Shadow Monkeys to life in unique and novel ways. Not to mention we have been blown away by the skill of the Creco team and are grateful for their support in this process.

LEARN ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY

Shadow Monkey Comics

Putting storytelling at the center of our community, the Shadow Monkey Cabal is thrilled to be launching our Genesis Edition comic, Shadow Monkeys: The Adventure Begins!

Join the Adventure

These will be the first NFT comics with both truly on-chain metadata powered by Creco.xyz, and generative unique cover art. NFTs are meant to be non-fungible so it’s important to us to make these as collectable and unique as any other top tier NFT project for the community to enjoy and build on. As degens who have been active in crypto communities for years, we’ve seen a lot. Communities that work, and many that don’t. Some built on hype, some built on curiosity, some built on alpha, and everything in between. We believe it’s critical to put storytelling at the core, and lean into technological innovations to drive the project forward.

Genesis

The Story

Many things have changed in the NFT landscape since January 2021, but one thing remains true… the Shadow Monkeys still have a story to tell…

Ooooh, it’s story time.

They are the Shadow Monkey Cabal!

…the eyes…

It’s the monkeys!

Even with all of this, the Shadow Monkey itself is still trying to be understood… Is it a reflection of our deepest desires? Is it our protector lurking in the shadows to keep us safe? Is it a lost voyager just looking for a friend?”

Tomorrow, a new chapter begins.

Shadow Monkey Comics

Shadow Monkey Comics

Genesis Edition

Explore the Story

Shadow Monkey Comics

Genesis Edition

Explore the Story

Shadow Monkey Comics

Genesis Edition

Explore the Story

Shadow Monkey Comics

Genesis Edition

Explore the Story

THE SHADOW MONKEYS

The Shadow Monkey Cabal is a group of passionate NFT degens and more broadly crypto OGs. Before NFTs took off in 2021, many of them had their start in the 2017 bull run or before and enjoyed DeFi summer in 2020. The group came together following the launch of the Hashmasks during the tribe competitions of March 2021, and the Shadow Monkey Cabal was formalized as a Hashmask liquid team in February 2022 when we received a community grant after an overwhelming community vote of confidence with 98 voting in favor of our grant, 3 votes against, and 2 voting to abstain.

See the work

Twitter

Discord

The current team leading the Shadow Monkey Cabal is Lemondrop, Kojak, ajg, and Oly.

AJG

Co founder

@ajg_eth

Kojak

Co founder

@VPopulo

Lemondrop

Co founder

@LemondropETH

Oly

Co founder

@0xastrodegen

What are Hashmasks?

Let’s start by talking about Hashmasks. The Hashmasks are one of the most OG and historic NFT collections of all time. Created by 70 artists worldwide and comprising 16,384 unique pieces, Hashmasks launched us into the 2021 NFT bull market. Minted in January 2021, the last three of the collection were minted for 100 ETH each at the end of a bonding curve. There has been roughly 43,000+ ETH in total trade volume on the secondary market OpenSea, it was one of the first collections to introduce full commercial IP rights, and it was the first to launch a native naming token (NCT). The original Hashmask community developed some of the first rarity tracking tools and NFT services that we all use today.

Learn more about Haskmasks

What is a Shadow Monkey?

Within this collection of 16k+ Hashmasks, there are only 233 Shadow Monkeys. These Shadow Monkeys have captured our imagination and led community members to launch projects inspired by them previously as well. As a community formed around this iconic creature, lore has been slowly building to bring them to life. Some say the Shadow Monkey inspired many other ape projects. Others say the BAYC founders were OG members of the Shadow Monkey Discord. There have been legendary treasure hunts based on the Shadow Monkey, and we even see the Shadow Monkey integrated into brand new NFT projects continuing to push the lore even further.

See the Monkeys

The Journey

Hashmask Launch

The Hashmask art collection launches us into the 2021 NFT bull run with the January launch. Created by over 70 artists worldwide and full of mystery, it captivates the crypto community’s imagination and sets new records for NFT sales.

Shadow Monkey Cabal Formation

As the Hashmask community was trying to make sense of the 16k+ NFT collection, community members started to self organize into subgroups around notable attributes. One of these groups was the Shadow Monkey Cabal which organized around the 233 shadow monkeys in the Hashmask collection.

Join us around the campfire

Tribes Competition

March 2021, the Hashmask team organized the “Tribes Competition” to promote community engagement. Pitting the subgroups that organized around attributes against each other to create lore and other creative challenges, the winner was the first NFT to be displayed on a billboard in Times Square NYC. This Hashmask became a legend named Draco.

Treasure Hunt Rise of the Shadow Monkey

Following on from an epic Tribes Competition, the Shadow Monkey Cabal had established itself as a strong subcommunity with passionate members. Continuing to build on the mystery, and with a desire to further explore the Shadow Monkeys, a prominent community member philipplgh created an unbelievable treasure hunt experience called Rise of the Shadow Monkey. It was so well designed that the BAYC founders reached out to explore ideas for their own treasure hunt before the launch of the BAYC collection. Rumors have it, the shadow monkey was one of the inspirations… but this is just rumor… for now…

Visit theshadowmonkey

Grant Award

The idea of continuing to launch Shadow Monkey inspired projects originated at NFT.NYC 2021 (back then hosted in November). By February 2022, a submitted proposal had been passed by overwhelming community support with 98 votes in favor, 3 votes against, and 2 votes abstaining. The Shadow Monkey Cabal was now a funded liquid team.

Comic

The Genesis Edition of the Shadow Monkey Comic is now completed after iterations with a script writer, illustrative team, and more recently the Creco.xyz team who designed custom smart contracts for launch and to implement on-chain metadata. The story incorporates the mysterious nature of the Hashmask collection by exploring one of the most iconic traits in NFT history in a whole new way. We are also excited to include some of our partner collections throughout as well.

The future

Merch Drops

Who doesn’t love some great merch? Not only are we excited to launch merch for the community, but we also firmly believe that the shadow monkey lends itself to great looking designs. We love what our ecosystem has done with merch and plan to follow the popular model with limited curated drops.

See the Monkeys

IRL Community Events

Discord is great and all, but we personally love IRL events. So expect some of these at or around the crypto conference cycle. We can say without doubt that we will be getting together in person for NFT.NYC to celebrate the comic and continue strengthening the bonds we have already forged.

Interested in attending

Second Edition Comic

Of course given this is the Genesis Edition we plan to create a second edition to continue the story and continue developing the ecosystem. Rumor has it, our creative team couldn’t help themselves, and may have already started working on Issue #2.

Mint Genesis Edition

Metaverse and Beyond

Who knows… the Shadow Monkeys could take us anywhere…from the otherside to defi and everything in between, around, and about.

In true Shadow Monkey form, we believe in under promising and over delivering. We aren’t going to make tons of grand claims about the future to encourage speculation, in fact we want to minimize speculation so that we have a healthy legitimate community rather than transient speculators. We want you to want to be here to stay, hang for the vibes, and call the campfire your home.

Join us around the campfire