Marshies

Early 2022. A project called Exiled Marshies mints, ending with a sold supply of 1,387.

Very slightly later in 2022, Exiled Marshies rugs.

Enter Lopez.

Essentially elected by the community, Lopez took over the project and began the derugging process. Fast-forward about nine months and we're hours away from the new Marshies mint. A lot of work has been put in these past nine months to get to where it is today, so let's look at what the project is about to see if the work will pay off!

Art

It all starts with the art. After working with several artists before finally settling on one they liked, they've landed on a pretty solid collection. The base character is clean and the lines are crisp. Of course, as always, I can only go off of the sneak peeks which tend to be the better-looking ones, so I'm curious to see if the full 5,000 supply will hold the level of variety that we've seen in the previews. But overall, it's solid art.

The main attraction of course will be the 1/1s. There's a total of 20 of them mixed into the supply, each of which was done by a different 1/1 artist, which is really cool. They are some of the top artists in the space as well, so I'm really excited to see what they've come up with and hopefully get my hands on one of them. Upon the reveal of the collection, the 1/1s will remain with a placeholder image and will slowly reveal over the coming weeks.

Utility/Roadmap

After hosting an AMA with Lopez and speaking to him more in-depth about the goals for the project, I think it's important to outline off the bat that this is first and foremost an art project. Not just the art of their collection, but the main idea is to support artists and find ways to enhance the 1/1 ecosystem.

There are two main ways that they plan to do this. The first is through physical products, most of which would be merch. They are aiming to establish a streetwear feel, with fresh limited-supply drops that create high demand. The designs for these items can be created by 1/1 artists, therefore providing them with possible earning opportunities and ways to get their work out there.

The second way is through software they are developing to assist artists with contests or giveaways. A short while back, Marshies hosted an art competition for people to submit their own 1/1 Marshies. The winner got their Marshie included as a 1/1 in the collection and will collect the full 10% royalty that will be tied to all of the 1/1s (5% for the rest of the collection). There were a bunch of extremely well-done submissions, and the competition did really well on social media. It allowed the artists to gain a lot of exposure, even if they weren't the winner. Piggybacking off of this success, they want to create software that can help to achieve similar results for artists on a larger scale.

Team

While they have established a solid team of artists and members from respectable communities, it really all comes down to Lopez in my opinion. He has put so much work into this project over the past nine months and has busted his ass to form a ton of lasting connections in this space. This project will go as far as he can take it, however far that may be.

Summary

I think the best comparison for this project would probably Critter's Cult, which was also primarily art-focused as well. While maybe not at the same scale due to the following that RGB has, I do think it's possible Marshies can follow in their footsteps. I think they'll need to have much better pacing than CC though and constantly be doing things to remain relevant, or they may be left behind due to the rapidly moving space we live in. If Lopez can continue to utilize the inroads that he has made over the past year, then this could end up being a nice wholesome art community project.

*Disclaimer: Lopez is on the Research team at NFT Radar, and we definitely want to be as supportive of him as we can. I tried not to be biased in this article because of that, but do take my opinion with a grain of salt here*