The exciting possibilities of Linked Wearables
“The vision was always to have the ability to play as your Woodie. That was the grand vision for any metaverse experience was to be your Woodie.” said Richard Powazynski, one of the co-founders of the Woodies, a family friendly NFT project launched in September 2021. He was describing the plans his team made to extend the utility of their NFTs with Linked Wearables inside Decentraland. Director of Product for the Woodies, Rebekka Sterz, described her first time stepping into Decentraland, “Being my Woodie, I got chills.”
If you own a special 2D Profile Picture(PFP), that is a NonFungible Token(NFT) like a Woodie, Dolce & Gabbana Disco Drip, or a Nyan Cat, you automatically get a Linked Wearable. A Linked Wearable is a 3D version of an NFT that your avatar can wear inside the open source, web3, virtual world of Decentraland. Currently there are ten official NFT PFP projects with “Linked Wearable” options inside Decentraland(DCL).
The original concept, which began in October 2021, was to create 10,000 one of one Woodies helmets. An avatar in DCL would swap out the default head for a Woodies head. At that time the Linked Wearables Registry didn’t exist. But in March 2022 Martin Shibuya, DCL’s Art Director, suggested the Woodies consider the new option of Linked Wearables instead of the helmets. Going that route was the right decision for Powazynski and his team. “This was more closely aligned to what we wanted to achieve initially.”
Every single one of the 10k 2D images have 3D counterparts in DCL. It was the first project of that scale to accomplish the huge undertaking. According to Mr. Powazynski, because they were the first, “There was no guidebook. We were building blind.” He said there was a lot of back and forth between the Decentraland Foundation developers and the Woodies team.
Was it worth shelving five months of work and starting from scratch?
“Seeing the community fall in love with their own personal Woodies again was a huge thing.” Powazynski explained, “This idea of it(the Linked Wearable) being linked to the NFT and not being an additional NFT just made so much more sense in terms of adding value to the original collection. It wasn’t easy but it was the easiest option for the holders. They have access to that skin automatically.”
It’s the Linked Wearable’s added value and ease of use for the customer that most impressed Waifumon founder, Aaron Leupp. “It’s the future of NFTs and it’s worth the work in my opinion.” Mr. Leupp has been a long time supporter of Linked Wearables. “I was pitching this stuff like nine months ago. It was really hard to explain. Now I can point to these examples. Woodies has helped lead the way with their project in DCL.”
Leupp has applied five times through the DCL Decentralized Autonomous Organization(DAO) to register his Waifumon Gen2 NFT project as a 10k-20k Linked Wearable option. Right now there is no cost for a submission, approval, curation, or storage of a Linked Wearable in DCL. However, a project must first get approval through the DCL DAO’s Linked Wearables Registry. The project’s proposal must receive 4 Million Voting Power(VP) for passage and enactment. The Waifumon Gen2 project was accepted into the registry in December 2022 after receiving 7.1 Million VP yes votes.
Leupp says that for his project, all of the 2D and most of the 3D assets are ready to go. He has a strong opinion about Linked Wearables. “You’re not an NFT collection unless you are linked within these metaverses. That’s why I’m excited for Decentraland. Right now the biggest utility NFTs have is that it’s a Profile Picture.” Leupp said with a chuckle. “But now having that utility where people spend their time; If you can utilize that utility within all these platforms that’s going to be where it’s at.”
What do customers think about NFT projects having a Linked Wearable option in DCL? I first saw (*C) Woodies community members, Chris Wallace and Kevin Thomas wearing their Woodies in Wondermine on the night before their launch in November 2022. In the interests of full disclosure, I own two Woodies NFTs and have used the Linked Wearables for both of them in DCL multiple times.
Relatively new DCL member ASP3N had just started following Tangpoko on Twitter in August 2022. She saw a tweet where Tangpoko was wearing the Strictly Business piece from the Disco Drip collection. She had also seen it at an ArtWeek party around the same time. The Dolce & Gabbana Disco Drip NFT collection consists of 20 unique outfits and was first announced during Metaverse Fashion Week(MVFW) in March 2022. The NFTs of the outfits dropped June 17, 2022 and the Linked Wearable collection of 3D wearables was released on September 2nd, 2022.
ASP3N researched the NFTs on the secondary market and liked the $23 price. She said, “For me as a new person I could get some luxury, statement, collector pieces without having to spend too much. That was really appealing.” She has followed fashion since she was a young girl. She thought the D&G pieces were striking and beautiful. “To me any sort of fashion piece like this has potential to have value in the future. Especially being the first collection. Compared to the stuff in the DCL Marketplace, this stuff was so different.”
Since the NFTs were sold before the wearables were ready there was at least one problem with one of the outfits. “I thought the wearable wasn’t working until I changed gender for a shoot and it popped up!” wrote Bay Backner, Co-founder of Vueltta and DCL member. “Actually I really love it, but yes, I have to be a boy to wear it… and there’s no info on that in the listing.”
The only reason she bought her two D&G NFTs was the promised future utility as a Linked Wearable in DCL. “The wearables themselves are pretty different to the marketing videos in the NFTs.” Unlike ASP3N, Ms. Backner looks at the pieces like a museum collector. “I see wearables as art, so I kinda collect them in the same way,” said Backner.
The DCL member who knows a lot about digital fashion and collecting wearables is Canessa. She’s been in DCL since 2019 and she was a judge for the MVFW 2022 Wearables Competition. She also has two pieces from the D&G collection. Canessa recently posted a Twitter thread asking members, “What PFP projects have come to DCL?”
I had asked her what prompted her to start the thread. She explained that she had a voice chat with Aaron Leupp that really opened her eyes about PFP collections in Decentraland. She said, “PFPs are mostly used on Twitter to flex. Two months ago we almost lost Twitter. If it does go away, where are you going to flex? You can come to DCL and actually be your NFT.”
There are a number of NFT projects that either didn’t have the option of Linked Wearables at the time or couldn’t muster the 4M VP votes for approval into the registry. ASP3N is the In-House Media Writer for GossApe Girls, an NFT project that went the regular wearable route(see below). “We came out with the helmets and some wearables during fashion week last year,” said ASP3N. “I don’t think DCL was initially their focus. When I came on and some community members showed up and generated some interest, there was potential there to use the DCL platform to promote the GG brand, especially as more community members became interested.”
The Bored Ape Yacht Club(BAYC) is one of the most well known NFT projects ever. Before the Other Side and before Linked Wearables, regular wearables in DCL was a good route to go. BAYC parent company Yuga Labs grants full IP rights to every owner of a unique BAYC NFT. They are free to license their ape’s likeness for tshirts, bucket hats, or 3D virtual models. In my research for this article I found ten official BAYC NFTs represented by some wearable in the DCL marketplace. The first link is to the NFT project or specific NFT item. The second link is to the wearable or collection of wearables in DCL.
BAYC:
- 1407 body skin
- 2224 body skin
- 2339 full body skin
- 3592 helmet
- 4081 helmet & full body skin
- 4380 helmet
- 7383 helmet
- 7953 helmet
- 8043 helmet
- 8229 helmet
Other NFT projects and their wearables:
1 MAYC full body skin
1 CloneX modified helmet
1 Mad Rabbits Riot Club helmet
GossApe Girl wearable collection 1, 2, 3
5 Vogu models helmets & Hype collection
MetaDogeNFT helmet & in game full body skin
Penguin Fight Club full body skins and accessories
Snarky Sharks body and helmet collection
Killa Bears helmet & hoodie
The Rockin Uniquehorns electric guitar
Royal Babes NFT chain
The Holy Ones Metaskins avatars
Pillheads full body skin
Crypto Chicks SS22 Collection
Waifumon blue & red fairy
Eyes of Fashion dress, suit and helmet options
A regular wearable costs $150 US per item to submit to the DCL Curation Committee. This non-refundable fee goes to paying the curators and hosting the digital assets on multiple servers in the Catalyst network. Multiply that fee by a thousand or ten thousand and you can begin to see why larger projects find the Linked Wearable Registry a better option.
When we discussed the fact that Linked Wearables don’t bring in any money, Canessa pointed out the other benefits of the registry. “We won’t make money through the wearable submission fees, it will be from people supporting others in the community,” she said of the new people from the NFT projects coming into the space. “They will outfit the rest of the avatar and go to clubs and play games.” The point was to get users into DCL. Her thread was an attempt to get that thought out there. She wanted to learn, “What projects are out there already?” Specifically, PFP projects that already have wearables in DCL but not through the Linked Wearables Registry.
Her Twitter thread was her attempt to find out an answer to that question. It is what inspired me to write this article. If you know of an NFT project that has inspired a wearable or even an emote in DCL, leave a comment or send me a DM.
*Correction: This section originally read, “I first saw 3D artists Chris Wallace and Kevin Thomas wearing their Woodies in Wondermine on the night before their launch in November 2022.” Mr. Wallace and Mr. Thomas are Woodies community members. The 3D artists that created the models for the Linked Wearables Registry were Steven Feigel and Street Beasts. My apologies for the error.
