Normally, I’m a guy with plenty of stories and things to say, but when it comes to the success of Reyu Genesis, our first Hero NFT claim this past weekend — I’m speechless.

Let’s cut to the chase:

• We sold out! All 20,000 Reyu Genesis Hero NFTs were claimed
• During the open event, 18,000 Hero NFTs were claimed in under four hours

If there was ever a time to toot our own horn, well, it’s now. Because sure, these Reyu Genesis NFTs were free, but we wanted to ensure that our community and fans got these Heroes — not ‘bots. So:

• To get a Reyu Genesis, you had to be whitelisted (only 2,000 whitelist spots were granted) or you had to be playing our Unioverse Collectibles game to earn enough Protens.
• Not only that, but users had to register an account with us and provide a phone number.
• We minted on our own site, not a third-party platform, so our fans had sought us out.
• And oh yeah, we’re neck deep in a crypto winter that’s seeing tons of other NFT projects falter.

Despite those headwinds we knew how excited our community was, but we didn’t fully appreciate how exciting the actual mint would be! To balance rewarding early and ardent players of our Collectibles game and making Reyus accessible to relative newcomers, we released Reyus across four different phases with the price going down over each phase.

Phase one — the most expensive batch at 2,000 Protens a pop — sold out 2,000 Reyus in under two minutes. Phase two sold out an additional 2,000 Reyus in three minutes. We kept hitting refresh on the Hero count and watched in awe as it plummeted. When it was all said and done, it took less than four hours for more than 18,000 Reyus to be claimed.

We really want to take a moment to thank our community for showing up yesterday. We are, after all, a community-owned franchise and we’re building all of this — the Collectibles, the Heroes, the games — for you. So thank you.

But we are not resting on any laurels here. We’re airdropping claimed NFTs to their wallets as we speak and will hold a global reveal starting with a live event on January 17 a 2:00 p.m. US MT / 10 p.m. UTC. After that? We’re right back at it, creating more awesome Collectibles, and prepping the release of our second hero — Krishah!

If you haven’t jumped on board the Unioverse train yet, now’s the perfect time to do so. Follow us on Twitter and join our Discord and learn how our Collectibles and Protens work. See you at the next mint!