The Legend of Project 555 and the COCKPUNCH Mint

On Dec 7th 2023, Tim Ferriss's popular NFT project, The Legend of CØCKPUNCH, sold out before ever reaching the "public" mint. But the Legend of The CØCKPUNCH Mint traces back much further than that. Let's revisit the early days of this NFT project, how it was announced, who got airdrops, how Mint day and Reveal day went down and so much more!

TimTimNifties Is Born

September 19th, 2022
The story begins in September 2022 when Tim registers a new Twitter handle @TimTimNifties most likely because he didn't want to crowed his feed with the inevitable influx of NFT banter to come. The first tweet on was:

It's unclear whether Project 555 was already referenced in @TimTimNifties's bio on Twitter, but this was the codename given to the project which would eventually to be known as CØCKPUNCH.

5-Bullet Friday Waitlist

October 14, 2022
The first public announcement went out to subscribers of Tim's newsletter, 5-Bullet Friday. In it, he announced his new NFT project, "Project 555" and promised:

It’s going to be very elaborate and unbelievably bizarre.

Since day one, he's disclosed that:

100% of primary sale proceeds will go to the Saisei Foundation.

But most interesting to readers is that this email contains the only known link to the project's waitlist which was hosted by premint.xyz founded by Tim's old buddy mull.eth.

Tim Ferriss's 5-Bullet Friday Email

The link to the original waitlist was https://www.premint.xyz/tim/ and shows that registration closed October 21st at 11:59PM ET. The total number of items in the collection as well as the mint price hadn't been finalized yet, but it was expected to be somewhere between 0.25-0.5 ETH per NFT. The rules for accessing the waitlist were simple:

  1. You needed to be a subscriber of 5-Bullet Friday and your email address would be cross-checked with Tim's email list
  2. You needed to follow both @tferriss and @TimTimNifties on Twitter
  3. You needed to have at least 0.5 ETH in your wallet
Cockpunch Premint Allowlist

First Look at Project 555 Artwork

November 8, 2022
Tim tweeted a shadowy first look at the artwork which was clearly designed to throw people off as the would be chicken was in a wolf's clothes.

Although later that evening he shared a sketch from his main account clearly showing the characters have beaks!

Two days later on November 10th, we got some shoes.

And later that day it was unveiled that the project had yet another Twitter account, @The7thScribe, who's cryptic bio says:

I am the Seventh Scribe. So few things are what they seem...

As of November 10th 2022, @The7thScribe had only posted two times, both of which was sharing weapons.

On November 11th, 2022 we got a wolf mask:

November 13th, 2022 brought us an Emerald:

And November 15th, 2022 frog legs?

Project 555 becomes CØCKPUNCH

November 17, 2022
One month after the waitlist was released to newsletter subscribers, Tim unveiled the true name of the project on Kevin Rose's Proof podcast followed by a replay on Tim's Podcast. A few highlights from this conversation include:

  • Tim got into NFTs on his trip to Mafga, TX in 2021
  • Tim holds some Chromie Squiggles
  • Recorded Nov 8th, in the wake of the FTX collapse
  • Kevin still didn't know what the name of Project 555 would be
  • Mint date hadn't been established
  • The project is an opportunity for Tim to combine his passions for art, world building and fiction
  • Tim first revealed that there would be 8 primary great houses aka clans, each with different characteristics, strengths weaknesses, cultures, religions, natural resources and it's all been written already
  • Tim already hired a voice actor to perform the story as a limited edition Season 1 podcast with lots of embedded secrets and mysteries for fans to piece together and explore
  • Tim has maps of the lands laid out of the known territories
  • There's a primary character who acts as a stand in for the listener who's also on a similar journey to figure things out (probably @The7thScribe)

In the episode, Kevin and Tim talk about what the final NFT collection count will be and they bleep it out! It isn't until the launch tweet is shared that we know the final collection count.

As part of Tim's CØCKPUNCH podcast tour, he also hopped on Ryan Carson's Daily Dose Twitter Space November 22nd and Bankless November 28th to chat with rsa.eth and davidhoffman.eth:

Mint Day Announcement

November 29, 2022
The official CØCKPUNCH Twitter account announces that the total supply will be 5,555 and that mint day will be December 7th at 10am PST followed by a reveal on December 9th. There will be less than 5k available for mint. On December 1st, it was added that the official mint price will be 0.3 ETH.

CØCKPUNCH Meme Giveaway

November 18, 2022
Tim starts a "Meme Contest" on Twitter with 3 winners each receiving a CØCKPUNCH NFT.

When the time came to announce, 8 winners were unveiled! You can see all the winners here.

Cockpunch Meme Contest Winner

The CØCKPUNCH Airdrop

December 6, 2022

The day before the mint, the first 555 tokens (#0-554) were minted to the project’s treasury - the same address which receives ETH from sales and royalties.

Seconds after the first 555 were minted, 160 cocks were minted and airdropped to:

Tim included friends, colleagues and advisors amongst the list of airdrop recipients. Less than 100 NFT's allocated to what we're calling the "homie airdrop" feels low considering the scope of the project. For fun, here's who we've uncovered was included:

#612-636 (25 cocks!) all went to this unknown address, the most of any single address that was part of the airdrop. Not sure what those are for... It appears #637-654 were contest winners and #655-714 were hodlers of Tim's Grails NFT. You can see the full list of addresses included in the airdrop here.

CØCKPUNCH Mint Day

December 7, 2022
Everyone knew the Mint Day would be December 7th, but it wasn't until the mint page was released that the schedule was unveiled. The schedule would be as follows:

  • 10am PST: Allowlist - Wallets that won an Allowlist spot
  • 11am PST: Waitlist - Wallets that won a Waitlist spot on Premint
  • 12pm PST: Public - Anyone can mint

If for some reason the project didn't mint out within the first 24 hours, any remaining NFTs would be sent to the project's treasury. But the Public mint never happened...

Apparently the Allowlist was over allocated by about 10%. Anyone with an Allowlist spot who didn't mint during that first hour lost their spot to people on the Waitlist. When the 1 hour allocated to the Allowlist came to a close, 271 cocks were gobbled up by the Waitlist within the first 2 blocks (16134775 & 16134776) or 23 seconds according to our research. This was also confirmed by mull.eth.

The CØCKPUNCH Allowlist

So who got on the Allowlist in the first place? Some of the details are blurry but it looks like:

  • 3,333 - The original 5-Bullet Friday waitlist page was eventually moved here where it shows that 3,333 spots were reserved for people who registered via this waitlist. This was by far the biggest allocation and where the bulk of the NFTs went.
  • 500 - mull.eth confirmed that 500 were allocated to holders of the Premint Collector Pass
  • 350 - Raffled to members of the Proof Collective.
  • 300 - Raffled to readers of CozomoMedici's Medici Minutes.
  • 250 - Raffled to Moonbirds hodlers.
  • 150 - Raffled to Ledger Genesis Pass hodlers.
  • =4,883 - Plus the 555 in the treasury and 160 airdropped, this over allocates the allowlist by 43 slots and lines up with the previous disclosure that there would be less than 5k available for mint and ~10% over allocated. Tim did not disappoint.

The CØCKPUNCH Waitlist

The waitlist was comprised of losers of mull.eth's 2 NFT giveaway, of which roughly 250 got a chance to mint.

Secondary Market Stats

December 9, 2022
In the moments leading up to the Reveal, we captured the stats regarding the secondary market sales from the time of the mint through the time of the reveal. Some highlights include:

  • Sales - 3,000 sales totaling 3,985 ETH
  • Floor - Highest floor price of 30 ETH moments after mint to a low of 0.881 ETH
  • Price Range - Highest 4ETH to lowest of 0.8 ETH
  • Price Average - After the initial pop, price trended between 1.4 and 1.8 ETH
  • Ownership Distribution - 82% owned 1 NFT, 13% 2-3, 4% 4-10 and 1% > 10
Cockpunch Pre-Reveal Stats

The Reveal

December 9, 2022
Until now, everyone's NFT looked the same, a floating, spinning gauntlet:

Cockpunch Pre-Reveal Gauntlet Placeholder

But on Dec 9th at 11:11am PST, we got our big reveal and everyone's gauntlet changed (surprisingly instantly) to our 1 of 1 birds.

Floor price was 0.92 at the time of the Reveal and quickly dropped to roughly 0.6 (the lowest sale to date) as people offloaded the cocks they didn't like. Surprisingly within the first hour, only 100 cocks traded hands totaling 90.66 ETH.

Attributes

With the reveal came a wide range of attributes including:

  • 10 Background Colors
  • 4 Ball Colors
  • 5 Beak Colors
  • 89 Bodywear (outfits)
  • 8 Clans
  • 9 Eyes
  • 11 Eyewear
  • 7 Facial Expressions
  • 29 Footwear
  • 67 Gauntlets (right hand)
  • 83 Headgear
  • 8 Nose Rings
  • 44 Tail Feathers
  • 9 Toenail Colors
  • 110 Weapons (left hand)

Rarity

cxkoda.eth worked with Tim on assigning the attributes to the collection which determins the rarity. They wrote a Twitter Thread detailing how randomness was generated and the precautions they took to ensure fairness and transparency.

The rarest cocks according to OpenSea's Open Rarity score tended to be the ones fully copper and fully pewter colors.

Cockpunch Rare Birds

Demand for various clans and other attributes will certainly fluctuate as The Legend of CØCKPUNCH is unveiled over the coming weeks and months. We'll revisit the collection in time as the story unfolds. For now however, it's safe to say that The Legend of Project 555 has officially come to a close. Long live The Legend of CØCKPUNCH! 🐓🥊


By gerbz.eth on December 9th, 2022