<\/p>\n
Every once in a while, an NFT advent arrives that shakes the foundations of Web3. At first, the sole innovator of the metaverse seemed to be PFPs<\/a>. Then came text-based NFTs<\/a>, open editions<\/a>, minigames<\/a>, and so on \u2014 expanding outward to more conceptual advents like Soulbound Tokens<\/a> and phygital goods<\/a>.<\/p>\n Anecdotally, it\u2019s been anyone\u2019s guess as to what might set off a new trend and bring both interest and copycats<\/a> to a budding sector of the NFT market. Yet, after many hype cycles have come and gone and with no clear breadwinner currently in sight<\/a>, an unlikely suspect has reemerged from the annals of NFT history to recapture the imagination of the metaverse.<\/p>\n Rather than a \u201chot new thing\u201d taking the spotlight, a project called Terraforms, born in the initial NFT boom of 2021, has taken center stage. But why has this unique, large-scale project become the talk of the blockchain once again?<\/p>\n At the most basic level, Terraforms<\/a> is a PFP project. But it\u2019s much, much more than that. Billed as a collection of \u201con-chain land art from a dynamically generated on-chain 3D world,\u201d the project consists of 9,910 animated, text-based NFTs with a roadmap that points toward an MMORPG and metaverse experience called Hypercastles (more on that later).<\/p>\n Launched on December 17, 2021, by product studio Mathcastles<\/a> \u2014 which consists of anonymous developers 0x113d<\/a> and xaltgeist<\/a> \u2014 each NFT within the Terraforms\u00a0collections exists as a piece of animated art rendered on a 32\u00d732 grid. These tokens are meant to represent a parcel of land, and each parcel embodies a range of different attributes.<\/p>\n Similar to the many other land-based NFT endeavors out there (Otherside, World Webb Land, etc.), there are various properties that can be exhibited within any individual Terraform. <\/p>\n These properties include 75 different \u201cZones,\u201d which correspond to color palettes; 92 \u201cBiomes,\u201d which refer to the type of text characters and shapes that make up the grid and animation; and four different options of \u201cChroma,\u201d which govern the speed of the cycling of the animation.<\/p>\n \nWhat are Terraforms?<\/h2>\n