Welcome to Goblintown

“F@#king enter already.”

Unfortunately, anyone who entered “goblintown” by Thursday afternoon found that they were already too late — “sold out f!@kers,” the website read.

Of course, the action didn’t stop after all 9,999 goblins had been minted for free. Goblintown was the most popular NFT collection on Thursday, according to data from CoinGecko. In the preceding 24 hours, its floor price shot up 168%, briefly topping 2.3 ETH ($4,200). Its trading volume was almost double that of second-place Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Goblintown floor price. Source: CoinGecko

Interested buyers looking to learn more about the arguably hideous, profile picture-style NFTs were hard-pressed to find much information.

“AAAAAAAUUUUUGGGHHHHH gobblins goblinns GOBLINNNNNNNNns wekm ta goblintown yoo sniksnakr DEJEN RATS,” reads their description on NFT marketplace OpenSea. “oooooh rats are yummmz dis a NEFTEEE O GOBBLINGS on da BLOKCHIN wat?”

The website wasn’t much better, featuring a mock SMS conversation between goblins “garf” and “urki” and some brief notes for the curious: “No roadmap. No Discord. No utility”. People who’d arrived in time could mint one free goblin per wallet by just paying gas fees.

“Don’t be f@#king greedy,” the note read. “That’s how we got ourselves here.”

The team behind the collection has kept 1,000 goblins for themselves “because we want to.”

‘Brilliant’

Their heads resemble potatoes that have been left in the pantry too long. Their features are asymmetric, misshapen. Their colors, earthen. Their closest pop-culture references are Dobby, the tormented house elf from Harry Potter, and Gollum, the emaciated, Ring-obsessed hobbit of Lord of the Rings.

In short, they’re (intentionally) ugly.

“COME TF ON maybe no one has blatantly said it but how TF are people so amused by these corny ass goblin spaces??” tweeted JED_131. “This is positive for the space? IMO this is a slap in the face to all the real creators trying to bring value to their projects and their holders.”

Twitter user fonkydonk, on the other hand, was surprised by how polarizing the project was.

“I believe it to be a brilliant, storytelling first, deep immersive experience that actually says something about the space,” they wrote. “And it was free! Other people just say ‘They’re so ugly why are they worth 1.5 ETH??’”

FungibleTokn had four theories as to why the collection had become such a sensation despite the lack of marketing or utility.

“1. Word of mouth buzz among Veecon attendees 2. Pent up buyer emotion 3. The art is different 4. NFT Twitter,” they theorized.

Jumpmanft said there was more to goblintown than the art.
“Spend less time coping and complaining about the art and more time digging into the site’s source code to find the easter eggs,” they wrote. “Convinced we’re only scratching the surface…”