Genuine Undead (GU) is one of the few success stories amidst 2022's ongoing bear market. There are lots of reasons behind its rise to prominence, but none are more pertinent than the project’s community-orientated ethos.
Community first
Community starts with the top of any organization. After implementing a free mint, the mysterious Founder of GU stepped aside. He gave literally everything away. This included handing over Discord, Twitter and depositing his legendary PFP (Nature) into the community wallet. The Founder’s act of creation now belongs entirely to the community—and what a community! A quick dip into Discord shows just how energized that community is.
“Undead-talk,” the GU discord home channel, is endlessly lively with multiple messages per minute; even more interesting is the “gu-fan-art” channel. It's a thriving hub of drawings, paintings, videos and storytelling inspired by the project. Crucially, and with contributions from across Twitter, this storytelling builds lore. The community becomes the story. It creates the GU world, shaping its future.
Community art is a big part of Genuine Undead.
The project website proudly boasts that “community is utility.” This isn’t an empty slogan. Genuine Undead is governed by 11 creative councils that come up with new ideas, create content and generally push the project forward. The Founder even reduced royalties from 7.5% to 2.5% when he stepped away, truly handing Genuine Undead over to its members.
Love & War
The infamous ‘Love & War’ event is already legendary in the GU community. It involves two collectors. Skel owned four 1/1 legendaries (Chaos, Faith, Love and Strength) and Veryserious owned War. Skel proceeded to buy War from Veryserious for 8 ETH. Veryserious bought Love from Skel for the same sum. Skel then took the incredible step of burning War.
Love and War side by side.
Why? Because Skel has connections to Ukraine. He knows the cost of war and thinks that “nobody should own it.” Using blockchain as a performance art medium, he gave out Love and took away War. There aren’t many more powerful NFT moments than this, proof of how the Genuine Undead are more than just PFPs. They are symbolically important, engaging their community in a way that few other collections manage.
Genuine Undead has accomplished startling growth with zero publicity and no artificial hype. “Community” is used so frequently across the NFT space that it’s become an empty buzzword, but perhaps the equation is far simpler than past projects ever realized: just be genuine.
