Codex Secret Uncovered: BYTES and Becker are back in NeoTokyo

Launched through one of the most successful social-engineering campaigns of 2021, the NeoTokyo NFT project emerged as a keenly-coveted collection last Fall. The genius of NeoTokyo was in the way its founders, Alex Becker and EllioTrades, transfixed Crypto Twitter with subtle hints. Instead of issuing a press release, leveraging their large followings and selling overpriced pieces, Becker and Ellio said very little–they didn't even reveal the project's name! What he duo did do was build hype by embedding clues within Twitter posts. Those CT sleuths who were savvy enough to parse the clues, discovered the secret NeoTokyo website. There they found their keys to “the citadel,” aka to the project’s whitelist.

In total, there were four rounds of puzzles + mints to create what is now known as an S1 citizen. This meant there were weeks of clues and rabid attention placed on every Becker and Ellio post. The clues led the lucky to obtain identities, vaults, items and land. Combining the four NFTs created a unique citizen of NeoTokyo. The art is a futuristic, yet retro, Cyberpunk inspired style. At one point the floor for an S1 was over 100 Eth!

But after the hype and highs of 2021’s bull market, 2022’s bear has seen a steady decline in the project’s price; this was especially true of NT's native currency, BYTES. Criticisms were thrown at Becker–the more involved of the two founders–for not doing more to pump the project; the highly inflationary BYTES received the most reply-guy caviling. Months passed without changes. Then a week ago, NeoTokyo and Alex Becker responded; if there’s one thing this project has repeatedly done, it has always punished the impatient.

On November 23rd, NeoTokyo announced a huge revamp of BYTES tokenomics (BYTES 2.0) and a new “codebreaker” easter egg hunt. As a result, the project’s token and NFTs have pumped hard. More importantly, the fixes to BYTES have been presented as part of a long-term plan. The vision is to create an ecosystem of dapps built around the NeoTokyo community and their token. As Alex Becker is fond of saying, the citizens of NeoTokyo are going to be the “gaming crypto illuminati” of the future. 

Joining the illuminati sounds nice… and if you’re a “worthless meatbag” that wants to “upload” into the citadel—as NeoTokyo acolytes would say—now you have a chance to do it for free. The wave of announcements came with hints to “pay attention to the codexes.” Even the project’s news page covered the topic. The hints are a re-initiation of the riddles that introduced the project. Thus, it is clear that a giveaway of highly prized NeoTokyo NFTs is afoot.

So what do the codexes say? Seemingly, only 3 of 7 codex pages have been revealed. Although, a little hint to you all, this video shows a date of 12/3 in its final seconds with an animated red four appearing last. Twelve divided by three is four and it is this author’s opinion that the video is hinting about a fourth Codex page being revealed on December third. 

Those who are passionate about NeoTokyo are betting that web3 gaming will become one of the biggest industries in the world. Some of the citadel's citizens got in for free: they searched the internet for Easter Eggs and found keys like Parzival of Ready Player One. Others purchased on the secondary market. Regardless of how they became citizens, the vast majority of NeoTokyo holders are hardcore crypto gaming builders and devs. The community sees NeoTokyo as a staging ground—and they're planning a takeover of the global digital economy. Between the next few weeks of Twitter riddles and the next few years of building, it is likely that NeoTokyo will remain one of the most influential NFT projects in web3.