What you need to knowabout keepers

The Keepers are a frontier community. At genesis, there will be up to 500 Keepers, each represented by a Keepers NFT on the Ethereum blockchain and its associated digital artwork featuring a unique Keepers avatar. Over time, as the community develops, there will be up to 20,000 Keepers.

Every avatar in the collection begins with a base body. On top of that base body, one can choose among hundreds of meticulously designed items to create a unique digital identity or visual fingerprint. Each of these items was crafted by combining natural elements with modern designs.

Every piece in the collection is brought to life digitally as a fully-rigged and gameplay-ready, 3D metaverse asset. Each avatar is represented in the form of ultra high-fidelity files that are downloadable and ready for use in 4K film, media and AAA video game environments, among other opportunities across the digital and physical world. Pursuant to the Keepers NFT Terms, each Keepers NFT owner has digital files and comprehensive commercial rights to the avatar associated with that Keepers NFT. As we move toward a new frontier of spatial computing, each Keeper can develop as a projection of oneself or as a dynamic, independent character for immersive film and TV scripting, gaming, social influencing, and beyond. Throughout a Keeper’s journey, it can undeniably prove its identity with cryptographically signed messages. Keepers are designed to be a cornerstone of digital identity.

Keepers were designed to be a cornerstone of digital identity. If you own the Keepers NFT associated with a unique Keepers avatar and are in alignment with the Keepers NFT Terms, you have digital files and comprehensive commercial rights securing your use of that Keeper in 4K film and media, AAA video games, and networked metaverse environments, among other opportunities across the digital and physical world.

While there are many possibilities, some tangible examples may help illustrate the potential of each Keeper. For example, with respect to use in film and media, you have the rights and digital files to be able to develop your Keeper as a character in a movie or tv series with Miramax. You could simultaneously sign that same Keeper to a talent agency, negotiate its use as a playable character in an upcoming AAA video game franchise, and develop physical and digital merchandise for that Keeper’s fanbase. You could further use your Keeper directly or programmatically in 3D computing interfaces, allowing an immersive, live interaction element to your character. A Keeper can develop as a projection of oneself or a fully independent, dynamic character.

As part of delivering a professional-grade digital art product for Keepers NFT owners, we found it essential to provide natively high resolution digital files and comprehensive license rights for each Keepers avatar. One of the primary problems with having a profile picture or a still image serve as the foundational artistic reference for your NFT is that you are left without sufficiently functional files to use the art across a variety of use cases and resolutions. However, even if you commission the creation of those files, you are likely missing a sufficiently detailed foundational design specification and would need to substantially improvise on, for example, how your character may look below its torso, in a 3D vs 2D environment, at a higher resolution, etc. Just as we found it crucial to provide a thorough foundational design specification, we also wanted to empower Keepers NFT owners with the thorough foundational intellectual property rights and licenses needed to secure their use of a Keepers avatar in line with the requirements and expectations of the film, media and entertainment industries.

Every Keeper comes fully-rigged and ready for import and use in various 3D software applications like Unreal Engine, Unity, Blender, and Maya, enabling you to create high-resolution film and media content, incorporate your character into video games, and more. To use your Keeper in Unreal Engine please follow the steps below:

Step 1: Access and Download Your Keeper Contents

After your Keeper is configured, visit the avatar management page to access your fully rendered GLB file. Click on the "3D" button in the download tab to download the GLB file and the “Unreal” button to download the Unreal Engine file specific to your Keeper.

Step 2: Download the Keepers Unreal Project File

After the completion of the configuration period, an Unreal Engine Project File will be uploaded to the collection website at the avatar management page.

Step 3: Bring your Keepers Contents into the Keepers Unreal Project File

Once you have downloaded your Keeper Contents and the Keepers Unreal Project File you will unzip the downloaded project folder to a designated location on your computer. Open the project folder and add a runtimeavatarmesh blueprint to a third-person character blueprint. Load your downloaded GLB file into the project by following these steps:

a. Select the third-person character and locate the Avatar Runtime, which should be a child of the third-person character.

b. Click on the option to add the location of the GLB file.

c. Click "Load GLB" to integrate your Keeper into the Unreal Engine project.

Using Your Keeper in Other 3D Software (Unity, Blender, Maya):

Each Keeper contains a GLB file that is compatible across a multitude of 3D softwares. For software other than Unreal, like Unity, Blender, and Maya, a few adjustments might be needed to the Keeper's skeleton and texture to ensure compatibility.

In the coming days, we will release a comprehensive Keeper Tutorial Video. If you have any comments or feedback please send an email to [email protected]

A Keepers NFT begins as a Mint. Each Mint has a unique token ID, associated artwork and, in special cases, on-chain naming rights. Otherwise, a Mint is an open opportunity to define a Keeper avatar within the collection. A Keepers NFT remains a Mint until it takes on a unique identity determined by a specific combination of items in the collection, becoming a configured Keepers avatar. A Mint can be actively configured by its owner via the configurator or otherwise will be passively configured by waiting approximately 24 hours after the start of the mint process when the configuration window closes. After the configuration window, any unconfigured Mints will be randomly configured based on the pool of remaining, available traits.

A Mint can be purchased after connecting a wallet via the Keepers.com interface or directly from the Keepers contract on Ethereum, as long as any of the contract’s 20,000 Mints remain available. If all Mints have been issued, Mints may still be available via secondary sales on OpenSea or other NFT marketplaces or protocols. A Mint should be visually distinguishable by appearing as an empty Keepers head in the center of the image while a configured Keepers NFT should show a specific avatar in the collection.

As part of our efforts to try to ensure wide and fair participation in the Keepers release, each Ethereum account can only buy up to 4 Mints directly from the Keepers contract.

Value is subjective, and opportunities for rarity exist in a number of distinct NFT attributes. For example, there is rarity in token numerology. In a given collection, NFT #1 may be valued very differently from NFT #9642 just on the basis of its unique token ID within the collection. Further, for Keepers, certain Mints may have unique associated artwork and on-chain naming rights. As a result, we designed a cryptographic mechanism to try to ensure that everyone can participate in this process on equal footing.

The process of acquiring a Mint from the Keepers contract involves successfully running two transactions on the Ethereum network. First, a commit transaction accepts the number of Mints you are looking to buy and the payment for those Mints. Then, approximately a minute after your commit transaction confirms, you can run a reveal transaction that uses information unique to your previous commit transaction paired with new information about the updated state of the Ethereum network to randomly assign each of your Keepers NFTs with a specific token ID, associated artwork and, in special cases, on-chain naming rights. This process limits the abilities of sophisticated players on the Ethereum network to get more desirable attributes for their own Keepers NFTs than other participants in the minting process even when they may have an edge in submitting transactions faster and within a certain sequence.

Every Mint provides an opportunity to define a unique Keeper within the collection. If you own a Mint via a connected Ethereum wallet, you can enter the configurator on Keepers.com to choose among hundreds of meticulously designed items or traits and ultimately identify that Keeper with a unique combination of those traits.

Beyond providing a live-rendering view to preview the visual aesthetic of a Keeper with a certain combination of traits, the configurator can help you submit the specific configuration transaction needed to lock in your desired trait combination on the Ethereum network. It is important to understand that others may be configuring their Keepers in parallel, and your configuration transaction can only confirm if another Keeper has not already been configured with that specific combination of traits and all of the traits that you selected are still available.

If you do not identify with a specific set of traits via the configurator, approximately 24 hours after the minting window begins, all unconfigured Mints will be randomly assigned a set of traits based on certain probability distributions applied to the selection of traits that remain available.

After a Keepers NFT is configured, it has immutable on-chain metadata detailing its unique combination of traits. Anyone with access to the Ethereum network can openly query the configuration of any Keepers NFT at any time by calling the traitsForToken(‘tokenID’) read function of the Keepers smart contract. The full, human-readable configuration of each Keepers NFT exists directly on-chain.

While the best source of truth for configuration information is the Keepers smart contract on the Ethereum network, you can also check configuration and other aspects of each Keepers NFT via the Keepers.com avatar management page where you can download stills, videos, and digital files associated with your Keepers NFT as well as third-party interfaces and marketplaces like OpenSea.

Historically, NFT collections tend to render high-specification digital artwork associated with each NFT in advance of a mint. As a result, the NFTs that you mint live would already have a preassociated connection to predecided digital art configured independently from your taste and vision.

Keepers were designed to be a cornerstone of digital identity. As part of that vision, we needed to allow Mint holders to create a unique visual identity of their choosing. In order to accomplish this, we built a configurator that lets you try items in the collection in a live-rendering Unreal Engine 5 cloud instance that pixelstreams a game-world preview of those Keeper configurations back to you in real time.

If you use the configurator to lock in a visual identity, we automatically start generating high-resolution still and video renders for that Keeper and assembling its digital files. As part of this live-rendering pipeline, it is possible that certain art assets may have render issues on first pass. If this is the case, please email [email protected] or message us directly on Twitter so that we can fix any render issues that may occur. While we can certainly fix issues with respect to how a Keeper with a certain configuration is rendered, we cannot change the configuration of the avatar associated with your Keepers NFT after a successful configuration transaction since the source of truth for every configured item or trait exists immutably on Ethereum.

We created the Keepers NFT Terms in collaboration with established players in the film, media and entertainment industries. Those terms can be found via the Keepers.com interface or can be openly, directly queried at any time by calling the getTerms() read function of the Keepers smart contract on Ethereum. By including the full, human-readable Keepers NFT Terms within the Keepers smart contracts, anyone can see the collection terms with the availability, openness, and transparency guarantees afforded by this information existing directly on the Ethereum network. Similarly, the license status of a specific Keepers NFT is similarly publicly recorded and openly made available via the Keepers smart contract by querying the hasValidLicense(‘tokenID’) function. While the owner of a Keepers NFT has unmitigated ownership of that NFT, the status of the licenses granted in the Keepers NFT Terms for that NFT are determined by way of maintaining alignment with those terms. For example, one of the ways that you can lose the license for a Keeper is by its associated Keepers NFT being the subject of royalty evading transactions. Another includes using a Keeper associated with a specific Keepers NFT to promote hate speech that could harm brand value for all owners. As detailed further in the Keepers NFT Terms, it is important to understand that while there should be no expectation or guarantee of any specific benefits or entitlements being offered to Keepers NFT owners, certain benefits or entitlements may only be offered to a Keepers NFT holder whose Keepers NFT has not been subject to the violation of the Keepers NFT Terms and has not had its licenses revoked.

There is a 7% creator royalty on secondary sales of Keepers NFTs. As part of maintaining the licenses granted in the Keepers NFT Terms for a specific Keepers NFT, that Keepers NFT should not be the subject of royalty evading transactions.

We put a tremendous amount of effort into the creation of this digital art collection. Delivering high-caliber creative requires a sustainable business model that can support the talented individuals involved. This is needed to deliver increasingly large works at increasingly high levels of quality. We believe that preserving creator royalties is a foundational component in ensuring a high standard of digital product for our community.

Unfortunately, there will always be on-chain means of evading royalties. For example, one could attempt to evade creator royalties on secondary sales by wrapping an NFT in a contract and instead only exchanging around receipts that could later be used to unwrap that NFT, redeeming the underlying NFT without honoring any royalties on those exchanges in between. Some creators have responded to this reality by proposing more widespread adoption of long-term transfer restrictions that limit some of the fundamental expectations of NFT ownership as well as a range of applications that should otherwise be able to involve those NFTs. Instead, a Keepers NFTs is still technically able to be involved in royalty evading transactions but doing so risks that Keepers NFT owner’s continued access to the associated avatar’s digital files and comprehensive license, limiting the overall quality of digital product associated with each Keepers NFT. Nevertheless, even in such a scenario, the functionality that is often expected with NFT ownership for a Keepers NFT would remain untouched and the surface area of on-chain applications involving that Keepers NFT would remain as wide as possible.