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What is LOOT? Discovering the viral social network

What is LOOT? Discovering the viral social network

LOOT is the perfect example of the other side of technology, more niche but capable of generating an unstoppable business. This is a phenomenon that has only recently exploded on the web and can be summarized in a “cocktail” of absolutely extravagant features: it is a social platform in which there are aspects related to the blockchain and the NFT, but also obvious references to fantasy role-playing games.

Explaining exactly what it is LOOT is not at all easy, but there is a detail that appears to be immediately understood: it has produced a monstrous turnover, to the point of changing the lives of some people forever. We cite the case of Jackson Dame, a 28-year-old who holds the role of content and community manager of the Rainbow cryptocurrency portfolio: he bought some LOOT Bags at the exact moment they were placed on the market and a few days later he resold just a couple of them, pocketing a six-figure gain that allowed him to pay off his debts and contribute to the retirement of his family. Dame’s interest in cryptocurrencies was born about eight months ago, having appreciated Bitmap and closely followed the work of Dom Hoffman.

Yeah, because LOOT is a project that bears the signature of the co-creator of Vine, also known for having developed some “minor” social networks, such as Peach and Byte, the latter then resold at the beginning of the year. Hoffman has been following the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchains for about ten years but has only recently shifted his gaze to NFTs. With a very evident goal: to inspire decentralized creative projects, to be modified and expanded thanks to the work of the community.

Bitmap

And so, after selling a work of art he had created as an NFT, he gave birth to the idea of Bitmap, a sort of precursor of what will be known a little later as LOOT. Available since last March, it is described as a “fantasy universe created by the community”: it is a pixel art that, starting from a base of 100 images of 32 x 32 pixels in which elements of fantasy and science fiction are combined, has brought – thanks to the “reshuffle” of the community – to the availability of 1,600 “brothers”. Hoffman’s basic idea was to create images depicting unpublished characters, which could be exploited to subsequently create stories of an imaginary and phantasmagoric narrative universe. Starting the machine, a turnover has been activated that has led to an enormous increase in the value of the Bitmaps: just know that the cheapest one is worth the equivalent of 98,000 dollars.

Bitmap served to charge another of Hoffman’s projects with conviction, later embodied in LOOT. For some time, the developer had in fact cultivated the idea of creating imaginative pieces of equipment (weapons, accessories, and pieces of armor), which could possibly be used in the future as a basis for actual video games. An apparently innovative idea was it not for its realization: there are no images or other “material” elements, but a random string of words generated by a code developed by Hoffman himself.

The success of LOOT

What happened, exactly? More or less, what happened with Bitmap, albeit with the necessary distinctions. The Vine co-creator has grouped all these imaginative pieces of equipment – or better yet, written texts that correspond to warrior weapons – into 7,777 “bags” (precisely, the so-called LOOT Bags ) and made them “free” available on the Ethereum blockchain: those who wanted to grab them only had to recognize the management and processing fees provided by the Ethereum network. Users did the rest: the LOOT Bags changed hands so quickly that they started a business that was nothing short of monstrous. Just think that the marketing of LOOT Bags has yielded, in just five days, the monstrous quantity of 46 million dollars and a capitalization of 180 million dollars.

The increase in value acquired by the “bags” in just a few hours from the start of sales gives notice of the phenomenon: last Wednesday, the cheapest LOOT Bag cost 20,000 dollars; that price has doubled overnight and that same LOOT Bag would now cost more than $ 46,000. This explains the fortunes of Jackson Dame, which we talked about at the beginning of the article.

What will happen now? Obviously, there are no indications of any kind, but only the intuitions of those who have invested tens of millions of dollars hoping that somehow there will be a sequel. But will it really go this way? For the moment, there are those who have made their fortune by betting on a jumble of randomly generated words.

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