What are cryptomonKeys?

CryptomonKeys are freely distributed, community-driven, meme-rich digital trading cards based on NFT technology, here to disrupt the meme economy. The project was launched on September 19, 2020 by the co-founders SoggyApplePie and bantano, both core team members of the cryptocurrency project BANANO. The intention behind the project is to create a digital trading card series we ourselves would like to collect, and to connect the BANANO ecosphere and its meme-rich community culture to the world of NFTs/digital collectibles with an educational and gamified attitude.

Where do MonKeys come from?

CryptomonKeys are built on top of the BANANO MonKey concept, where each BANANO address is visually represented by a unique MonKey avatar. Learn more at MonKey.banano.cc

What is an NFT?

NFT stands for non-fungible token. An NFT can be a digital asset such as a trading card, except you can cryptographically verify that the token is authentic as well as who it belongs to, how many exist, and the maximum possible number of an NFT (mints) that can exist. Like physical collectibles, they can have real monetary value. However, they are even easier to store, trade and verify. Plus the corners of your cards never crease!

What is BANANO?

If you don’t know BANANO yet, it’s obviously perfect to just read BANANO’s animated, meme-rich and interactive Yellowpaper! BANANO is a cryptocurrency (forked from NANO in April 2018) powered by DAG technology — here to disrupt the meme economy. BANANO has memes, and also 100% feeless and near-instant transactions, a highly active community, and active technical development! The BANANO community doesn’t take themselves too seriously, but they’re here for the long run and enjoy what they do. On top of this, BANANO is super easy to use and puts an emphasis on free and fair distribution, gamification and crypto education. BANANO is used in thousands of daily on-chain transactions mainly for tipping on several major social media platforms. 
Further reading: Website | Coingecko | Coinmarketcap | Exchanges
Help getting started at banano.how

What is WAX?

WAX is a cryptocurrency project that makes it easy to create, buy and sell NFTs. Unlike the Ethereum blockchain, which is still used for most of NFT creation and trading and which involves considerable transaction costs, the WAX blockchain allows very fast transactions with very low transaction fees. For the purpose of the cryptomonKeys project which involves sending thousands of NFTs per month to different users/wallets for free, the WAX blockchain is currently the only viable option.

Getting started with WAX is pretty easy; you can simply and easily create a WAX address in a few seconds by logging in with your Discord or Google account: https://all-access.wax.io/
After logging in, your WAX address in the format abc12.wam or similar will be shown in the top right corner.

After getting started easily this way, you can (and should!) learn more about WAX, e.g. here or here.
Your aim should be to eventually also create a non-custodial WAX address where you control the keys. Click here to see a guide created by CryptoStache.
Links: Scatter wallet | Anchor Wallet

If you’re further interested in how the WAX network works, here’s a good explanation of different kinds of fees involved.

How are cryptomonKeys different from most other NFT card series?

Apart from highly detailed, monKeyfied artwork, the main difference to other NFT card series surely is that cryptomonKeys are freely distributed. We don’t sell the cards, but instead we create the art, mint the cards and give them out to as many people as possible through different types of airdrops, giveaways and contests, and to contributors.

But that’s not all! Unlike most other projects we don’t have card packs, we don’t have variants, and we don’t have any unclear rarities. This is all in an effort to keep things simple and clear for collectors. Each card is revealed and minted one by one, without variants. Cards are numbered and have defined, provable rarities that can be identified by a rarity indicator on the card front.

What are the card rarities and what do they mean?

Well, the cool thing about NFTs is that you can make several copies (called ‘mints’ ) of the same artwork, and you can encode a maximum number of mints (or the total supply) in the NFT template. While most collections do not commit to defined mints for their rarity values, we do. A legendary card is always minted exactly 19 times, an epic card exactly 91 times, a rare card exactly 423 times, and so on:

Even if we wanted, we couldn’t make more cards based on the same template. And of course, since these cards are non-fungible tokens, every card is unique and has its exact mint number recorded and attached to it. So if you get a card, you won’t only know that it is provably rare, it also is unique, is identfiable through its asset ID, and has a traceable history of previous owners, all on the blockchain. Here’s an example of how the #1 mint of card number 7, ‘unimonKey’ looks on AtomicHub.

Why are these NFTs given away for free?

We feel that it is important to make the entry into the NFTs as easy as possible for everyone. It’s a lot of fun and we not only enjoy NFTs but see great potential in it. Free distribution for us seems a good way to grow the community and help getting new folks started with NFTs. Unfortunately for many people joining the space, the idea to buy digital art or NFTs is hampered by the process not being very easy, and the sheer number of projects and assets can initially be quite overwhelming. This is why we just offer to give them NFTs for free to play around with, and educate them how to receive, send or trade NFTs at the example of cryptomonKeys.
Free distribution does come with its own challenges. The team does generously donate their time to the project without expectation of profit, but domain name, server hosting, and on-chain card minting aren’t free. To try to offset these costs, there is currently a 7% trading fee for secondary market cryptomonKey card swaps on Wax. 19% of this revenue and 100% of charity auction revenue go to charity (more details at https://www.wp.cryptomonkeys.cc/charity/).

How can I get cryptomonKeys?

CryptomonKeys are freely distributed, meaning we design and mint the cards, reveal them, and then distribute them freely in many different ways. We do giveaways, airdrops, events and contests, and give cards out to our team/supporters. Sometimes, we just give them out to people who are active in discord or other social channels. Basically just follow our social media channels for updates and you’ll learn how to get them.

Most of all, if you join our Discord server you’ll find current ways to get free cryptomonKeys detailed in the channel #how-to-freebies. Not sure how to get your first cryptomonKey? Say hello on discord. We give out a random card for every unique and thoughtful introduction.

After reveal, most cards are quickly distributed. Thus, there is a fairly short window of opportunity to win each successive card from the initial giveaways. Also, some very rare cards can’t be given to everyone simply because there can’t exist enough mints to give one to everyone. There are two solutions for that:

1. You can buy the cards from others who are up for selling them on secondary markets. Trading ‘trading cards’ is pretty intuitive. For example, some collectors just might have double cards from different events and be up to trade them for WAX or other cards to complete their collection. You can trade cryptomonKeys very easily on AtomicHub:
    Collection overview with market links
   cryptomonKeys currently on sale on AtomicHub
   Sales overview at Waxplorer
2. Whenever we mint a new card, we reserve a defined number of cards for future events and lock them up for 6 months in our account ‘monKeysvault’. That means you might still have a chance to catch one of those when we give them away in the future.

In addition, we recently launched the ‘monKeyfarm’ program which is explained further below.

What is monKeysvault?

Whenever a new card is minted, by default a defined number of cryptomonKeys (Legendary: 1 card; Epic: 2 cards; Rare: 4 cards; Uncommon: 16 cards; Common: 64 cards) is sent into the vault (account link). Those cards are not distributed directly like most other cards, but are locked up for 191 days (counted from card reveal day). After that time, they can be distributed by the team in airdrops/giveaways or be used to reward future contributors with ‘early days’ cards. In a simplified way monKeysvault can be considered the NFT part of the ‘dev fund’ of the project.

What is monKeyfarm and how does it work?

The monKeyfarm concept was originally announced on October 21, 2020. The basic concept: Holders of cryptomonKeys cards (and especially holders of one of the first 19 legacy cards) will have the chance to receive new card drops (monKeydrops) automatically for each new card revealed, forever! The chances to receive monKeydrops will be higher when you hold a wider variety of cards, and the chances will also be higher for holders of more rare cards. On average, 19% of all new cards will be distributed this way to reward the early adopters and passionate collectors. More details may be released over time after we received more feedback on this. Be aware this concept is early stage and might be subject to changes. Of note, number 1 mints will be regularly included in random monKeyfarm drops as well. More details are provided here.

Why is there a market fee and how are collected fees used?

While the cryptomonKeys project is not aiming to make profits, we have to make sure all costs are covered, that we have some funds for marketing and development, and rewards as incentive to the team (even though likely low and rather symbolic since cards are distributed for free and not sold) are available. The market fee assigned to the cryptomonKeys collection is currently 7% and applies to all sales happening on trading platforms honoring it (currently AtomicHub). This market fee is lower than the 8%+ fee many commercial projects have set, in addition to them actually selling most or all their cards in the first place (while we give those away for free and only collect the market fee from secondary market sales).

The market fee and other potentially incoming WAX funds (unless specified otherwise) are allocated to cover direct project costs such as on-chain card minting, or website/server hosting costs. Potentially remaining funds are assigned as follows: 19% to the co-founders each, 19% shared with all active contributors based on their estimated contribution, 24% to a project/dev fund for (future) marketing/development costs, and the remaining 19% will be donated to charity. Calculations and distribution will be done regularly, i.e. every few months.

Can you provide more details on cryptomonKeys distribution?

The overarching aim is to make sure cryptomonKeys are distributed widely and in a fair way. At the moment we experiment with different distribution modes and plan to continue to vary our methods. So far, distribution has happened in the form of numerous simple giveaways at social media by us or third party content creators, as AtomicHub claim drops, as contest rewards, as airdrop to holders of specific cryptomonKeys assets (see also monKeyfarm), as airdrop to holders of assets from other collections such as GoPepe or Nifty Wizards, monkeyDropped to active community members on discord, and some were simply gifted to people who do great stuff in the space, by developing apps or tools, or by being engaged in crypto/NFT education. We also recently launched our Discord NFT tipbot and started to tip cryptomonKeys to meme-makers. All noteworthy distribution events are logged at the cryptomonKeys discord chat server in the channel #distribution-log.

To ensure that distribution is fair and giveaways are objective, the core team is disqualified from participating in regular distribution, i.e. they will not participate in giveaways and not receive random monKeydrops or monKeyfarm drops. As incentive they still will receive a defined amount of cards when they are released for their private use as follows: Legendary: 1 card; Epic: 3 cards; Rare: 5 cards; Uncommon: 7 cards; Common: 13 cards.

In addition, other contributors (moderators, artists, content creators etc) receive free cards based on their respective contribution but can still participate in events & giveaways. Contributor card rewards are decided by the core team regularly (~every 2 months currently).

What is the purpose of cryptomonKeys? What can I do with them?

Currently, cryptomonKeys are mostly collectibles, or trading cards. You can collect and hold them, or you can trade them with others. They are also useful for monkeyFarm. Most recently, cryptomonKeys are used to earn the cryptocurrency BANANO in the MonkeySlots game. We have ideas for more apps/dapps and games and plan to realize some of those in the future, but we are right now focusing on card creation and distribution, and setting the grounds for future card utility within a community/ecosphere. Thus we are currently not promising specific additional dapps or games, or give any ETA.

Other ‘usecases’ already established within the project now, as mentioned above, are education and charity.

We feel that free distribution paired with education is ideal to help new users join the space and starting to enjoy NFTs as much as we do. Since we started, we already witnessed many new users joining the space and learning a lot about the world of digital collectibles/NFTs, which is great! Some even sent a cryptomonKey to their friends! We’d like to see and establish the cryptomonKeys community as a welcoming, intuitive and easy entry for many more to join.

In terms of charity, we have committed to donate 19% of all proceeds from secondary market fees as explained above. In addition, we decided to auction off a maximum of 1 cryptomonKeys cards in average every 19 days (this started on Nov 20,2020) and donate 100% of the proceeds from those auctions to charitable organizations.
Of note, auctioning off 1 NFT every 19 days currently means we actually sell 0.04% of our cards and distribute 99.96% still entirely for free.
The first of these charity auctions ended recently:
It was mint #1 of the first ever created cryptomonKey: monKeyprinter Go BRRR Mint #1  which was sold for 19191 WAX ($706 at the time of the auction). We will provide regular updates on charity donations and recipients for transparency here on this dedicated page.

If cryptomonKeys are freely distributed, how can they have value?

CryptomonKeys NFTs are given out for free initially. Nonetheless, due to a finite number of mints paired with awesome artwork and a growing community not everyone simply can get every card. Cards are traded on secondary markets, and the respective demand from buyers and newly joining collectors give cryptomonKeys value, all decided by the markets.

I want more cards! Can I use more than one account?

You are allowed to store cards in more than one wax address, of course. However, you should only ever enter a giveaway with one single address. That is one address per real person. People who don’t follow this rule might be excluded from future giveaways. For clarity, this means you may only mine on monkey lands with one account, you may only post one account to a twitter giveaway, you may only post one address in a discord giveaway, etc.

Why didn’t I receive an airdrop I think I should have received?

For monKeyfarm, we often airdrop new cryptomonKeys cards to holders of a specific asset. The team may adjust airdrop recipients either randomly (if assets are too limited) or by other means which ensure fair distribution (‘yellow formula 1.9’). Our tools for distribution are thorough and precise; however, if you think you should have received a certain monKeyfarm drop or other cryptomonKeys airdrop but didn’t, you can DM all information to @Vyryn or @bantano on our Discord for verification. Answers to such requests (but no ETAs) may be provided on a case-by-case basis to ensure the cryptomonKeys team can focus on creating great cards and getting them into your wallets freely and fairly.

How do I safely trade NFTs with someone?

The safest way to trade NFTs is on AtomicHub. https://wax.atomichub.io
If you would like to trade for banano or another currency, we suggest asking someone with the @serenifty role on our Discord (green name) to escrow for you.
An escrow is a trusted third party who will hold your card, hold the other person’s ban, and then make the swap. This way, the risk of the other person scamming you is reduced.

How can I trade cards for Wax directly and safely?

Presently, you can’t. If you receive a trade offer of your card for nothing, with a memo saying something like ‘I offer 350 wax’ It is a scam. The only ways to trade cards on AtomicHub right now are either to put it up for sale and have the other person accept the sale, or accept a trade offer in which both parties give cards and only cards. If you trust the person you are trading with, you may be able to negotiate an alternative deal. But we recommend against doing this, especially with strangers.

[Discord Specific] What do all the colored discord roles mean?

@monKeyprinter are the cryptomonKey core team. Soggy is the primary artist, Bantano our community manager and writer, and Vyryn our core developer.
@serenifty are general helpers. They are recognized for contributing something to the project. Niftys have moderation permissions in order to keep the peace, but moderation is not the primary purpose of this role. Generally Niftys are rewarded with cryptomonKey cards proportional to their contributions. They usually do not have any special insights into the project or future card releases.
@SupermonKey are exceptional @serenifty who take on an extra role in the community. They help with more complex things.
@Pro-Waxxer are outreach leaders, youtubers or leaders of other projects that cryptomonKeys has collaborated with. This role is a symbolic representation of that contribution.
@nifty artist have contributed to cryptomonKey art in some way.
@Green Wizard is our custom NFT tipbot.

[Discord Specific] What can I share in discord?

Please post drop links in #free-drops. Only free drops are allowed. No drops that advertise paid drops are allowed.
Helpful and/or relevant links in monkeytalk are allowed.
Paid drops and/or promotional links are only allowed for projects that have received approval from the core team.
Unrelated links are always forbidden.

[Discord Specific] How can I send crypto tips on discord?

Bananobot++ is specially made for the Banano server. Here we use tip.cc instead. You can DM @tip.cc#7731 ‘help’ to get started. Please do not spam tip.cc commands in public channels. To withdraw banano from this bot, message it ‘withdraw ban’.

[Discord Specific] I got a link from the bot but it doesn’t work!

Do not share your link with anyone. This should be an exceptionally rare occurrence, but if you think it’s happened to you, direct message @Vyryn with the link ID, or the link with the ‘key=’ part removed.

These cards are so cool, how can I make my own?

A tutorial can be found here.

Who is behind cryptomonKeys?

SoggyApplePie is our co-founder and main artist, and she hand draws each cryptomonKey with care and passion.
Bantano is our co-founder and community manager, who has grown the cryptomonKey community many thousands strong. 
Vyryn is our core developer, who built our tipbot the Green Wizard and takes care of technical matters.
We’re also joined by nearly twenty awesome Serenifty and Supermonkey volunteer helpers, who contribute to the project in a wide variety of ways. Without them, the project surely could never have taken off.

How can I contribute to the project?

Everyone can contribute to cryptomonKeys. If you have bantastic drawing skills or any other skills that can help the project become better in any way (or if you even want to develop an app/dapp/game using cryptomonKeys) please get in contact with any core team member, ideally at the cryptomonKeys Discord Chat Server which is the headquarters of our ecosphere. Otherwise anyone can help us grow and reach more people by sharing this project with others, telling friends, retweeting, etc.

Where can I ask more questions or discuss about cryptomonKeys?

The best way to contact us is to join the cryptomonKeys Discord Chat Server and DM any core team member (role: monKeyprinter).

Thanks to the hard work of WhiteFlag, Rosemarys, Phantoad and Frena91, we have Spanish and Italian translations of this FAQ If you would like to help translate this FAQ to another language, please reach out to Bantano or Vyryn on  our Discord.
Versión en español
Versione italiana