Interview with ICPCS NFT: A Celebration of the Home PC

We interviewed Vlad, the 3D artist, and Ivan, the Co-founder and project lead of ICPS. These two tech enthusiasts wanted to pay homage to the most iconic designs in computing history and have created a fantastic collection, a user-friendly portal for everything IC and an innovative reflection rewards system for holders tied to NRI.

Do not take this multi-faceted project lightly. There is some serious talent in this team.

*DC Editor side note: I tried the portal, and the interface is awesome! I'll definitely be using it for easy access to Internet Computer dApps.

1. How would you describe your artistic style?

It's hard to judge your artistic style, but I would say that coming from a career in visualization, I would describe it as a minimalistic realism with a sentimental, slightly nostalgic feel to it.

2. What drew you to NFT creation rather than traditional canvas-based art?

I'd say that NFT creation is just the next step for me as a creative individual. I can't call myself an artist in its traditional meaning; I feel more like a creator, to whom the main artistic value is in the act of creation itself and not in the final result.

3. Are there any artists who have inspired you? What do you like about their work?

I don't think I can provide you with any particular names – it's a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Every day we see hundreds of art pieces without even realizing or noticing them for the most part. We live in a very information-rich environment and interact with different pieces of art subconsciously, which is inspiring to me personally.

4. What made you create NFTs?

More than anything, I think I was bored with traditional arts. I started learning 3D graphics a few years ago for the same reason. When Ivan offered me a position on the ICPCS team, I felt that it was a turning point for me.

Taking part in the front lines of something new and yet undiscovered, like blockchain technology and NFTs, is an opportunity that happens once in a lifetime, and I didn’t want to miss out on that. Imagine living in the Age of Discovery and just sitting at home your whole life? This is the same!

5. Can you tell us about your project?

Here is a brief overview of what we are building:

Collection of 7,777 uniquely generated PC setups with attributes ranging from cases, peripherals, accessories, posters, and more
ICOS - a web-based, customizable, and user-friendly portal for everything IC related, with built-in utilities, dashboards, widgets, games, and a dApp browser
ICDM - a reflection rewards system for holders, tied to NRI

The NFT collection itself could be described as a celebration of the home PC. Personal computers have evolved drastically throughout the years, and we wanted to pay homage to the most iconic designs in computing history – after all, while primarily utilitarian devices, many PCs could be considered pieces of art in and of themselves. We’ve also included various environments and cultural references to give each NFT its own unique aesthetic.

6. Can you give us more details about ICOS?

Absolutely! Our overarching goal is to actively improve the user experience of every Internet Computer enthusiast. The IC ecosystem already has a sizable number of amazing platforms built on it, and what we’re aiming to do is create an intuitive, OS-like portal where users can interact with their favorite dApps quickly and seamlessly. Other features will include quality-of-life utilities, games, dashboards, and more.

A closed beta release is now live for all of our OG Discord members. In this phase, community testers are already able to suggest improvements and request new features. The public release version will be on-chain, modular, fully open source, and open to contributions via GitHub.

Aside from regularly posting updates on Discord, we will publish a litepaper on our Medium page at icpcs.medium.com for anyone interested to know more!

7. Any details about ICDM?

ICDM (Decentralised Mining) is the combined naming for all of the passive income opportunities granted to ICPCS NFT holders. Each ICPCS NFT sale on the secondary market will have a 7% tax, 6.5% will go to the reflection pool, and 0.5% will go to charitable causes of our confirmed partners to offset our carbon footprint. Your weight in the reflection rewards pool will be directly linked to the collective NRI of your holdings.

In its base, ICDM is a dApp that allows holders to manage their ICPCS collections, claim reflection rewards, staking rewards, send NFTs between wallets, track market data, and more. Want to check the rarities of your mints? Claim your monthly rewards? Or just check how the collection is doing on the open market? All of that is possible within ICDM!

8. How many NFTs will be minted?

The total supply of our Gen 1 collection will be 7,777 ICPCS. Of that number, 7,500 will be available to mint, and the rest will be reserved for airdrops and partnered communities.

9. Can you talk us through the process of how you create the art?

This is something we put a lot of work into. There are many aspects to creating a compelling NFT collection, and teamwork is imperative here.

As a first step, we select iconic pieces of vintage and modern tech, as well as cultural references and easter eggs. Our 3D artist then assembles the assets and renders them in layers, followed by our developers making sure all combinations look aesthetically congruent and unique to a point where every single NFT stands out on its own.

10. Will your NFT be able to breed, stake, or ever be in a game?

Staking is a planned feature of our ICDM program. As we expand functionality, we will be adding features through which users will be able to stake ICPCS and partnered projects’ NFTs for passive income rewards in our own native token – essentially a form of NFT liquidity mining.

We firmly believe that projects merging NFTs and DeFi are in a unique position to leverage the best of both worlds. Our team is committed to pioneering this approach on the Internet Computer.

11. What benefits do you think the Internet Computer has over other L1 blockchains when it comes to creating NFTs?

One of the common complaints about NFTs is that the assets themselves are stored on external storage solutions like IPFS, Arweave, or even AWS. Because of this, there are no guarantees that the assets will remain available in perpetuity, and your NFT could at some point become nothing more than a pointer to a ‘404’. The great thing about the Internet Computer is the meager cost and high capacity of on-chain storage, which eliminates this problem.

From a user’s perspective, transactions are blazingly fast; gas fees are a non-issue, and thanks to the network’s scalability, it is much more resilient at peak usage times than competing L1s.

All in all, choosing the Internet Computer for our first solo project was a move we do not regret in the slightest.

12. What other art have you seen that excites you in the Internet Computer NFT ecosystem?

Almost every project we’ve seen so far is doing something unique in its own way, so it’s hard to pick our favorites. We are big fans of Poked Bots – the art is top-notch, and we’re very excited about the launch of Gen 2.

Rustin from Animal Guardians is doing admirable work with contributions to a wildlife charity, and we intend to give our full support in the upcoming launch on March 4th.

On a similar note, Crypto4Changemaking is making significant progress in offsetting the carbon footprint of projects on the Internet Computer. A common complaint about NFTs from the general public is their environmental impact. While the IC is already much more efficient than other blockchains, we hope to use C4C’s services to ensure that our project is as green as it can be.

Finally, we would be remiss not to mention BTCFlower, who are smashing records since their launch! Excellent project, and we are looking forward to their future drops.

13. What excites you most about your launch, and which date is your launch?

I’d say the most exciting part is to finally see the culmination of all our hard work. We want to deliver something our community can be proud of being a part of. We’ve planned some special prizes for launch day, and it will be awesome to see everyone’s reaction!

Our launch is scheduled for March 11th and will be hosted on Entrepot.

14. What advice would you give to anyone trying to enter into the world of NFTs?

There are many excellent guides out there for investors, but it always boils down to doing your own research. Look for projects that are backed by utility, an active and transparent developer team, a clear roadmap, and an engaged community. There are many variables at play, and there’s no clear-cut recipe for success, but I think those things are always good signs.

For creators: first and foremost, assemble a strong team. Throw some ideas around and implement the best ones. A lot of work goes into NFT projects, and if the artists, developers, and marketing aren’t all on the same page, you will soon have more problems than you can handle. A good team should quickly identify and resolve any hurdles you might run into on the way.

15. Do you have further plans to work with ICP Squad in the future after this initial sale?

One hundred percent. Dfinity Community have cemented themselves as the go-to source for everything ICP related, and having them as partners is a massive benefit in spreading the word and keeping the community engaged in our project.

16. Can you envisage a future where the most valuable NFT space is on the Internet Computer?

There is lots of competition for sure, but I believe it’s entirely possible. The IC ecosystem has proven time and again that it is the source of high-quality projects that deliver on their promises. Once the wider NFT community realizes this, I’m sure we’ll see a boom in the IC NFT space.

17. Why do you think NFTs have become so valuable in such a short space of time?

Digital scarcity is undoubtedly a compelling idea in and of itself. With more and more people getting interested in blockchain tech in general, NFTs are a quite user-friendly entry into the crypto rabbit-hole. Even if the general public might still be skeptical about NFTs, I think that with time almost everyone will be interacting with them in one way or another and perhaps not even know it. With how versatile the technology is, we’re already seeing more and more innovative use cases, and signs point to this being just the beginning.

18. Can you tell us about your team?

I’d love to! We are a small but passionate team primarily based in Croatia.

Andrei and I (Ivan 👋) are the co-founders and lead developers. Our backgrounds are in full-stack web development and system administration, respectively. We’ve been active in the crypto space since 2017 and have experience developing DeFi and NFT projects on Ethereum, Solana, and Polkadot, primarily as part of our university work. ICPCS is our first solo venture, which we are working on full-time.

Vlad is our very talented 3D designer. His main field of work was 3D product design and augmented reality for the past year and a half. As he puts it, he did not find enough artistic freedom in “the faceless world of corporate product design,” he started looking into NFTs and joined our team shortly after.

Jan is the marketing manager responsible for planning community events, giveaways, and promotions. His work is instrumental in both growing our community and keeping it engaged!

Denny, Boris, and Velius are our Discord admins and collaborators on ICOS and ICDM. Their input on our (sometimes hasty) code has saved us many headaches during troubleshooting.

19. What advantages do you believe you have over other competitors?

I’d say our development pipeline has been a great advantage for us while building up the project since the most critical parts of our core tech were well into development before we even created our social media accounts.

This has given us time to properly test for bugs and ensure a smooth user experience. In turn, we have lots of cool features to showcase to our community even before our launch, and these are just going to get even more fleshed out as time goes by to provide clear utility to our holders.

20. Do you have partners? Please tell us about them

We are fortunate to have partnered with some fantastic people both in the ICP space and beyond, and we sincerely couldn’t do this without them.

The team is very grateful to Dfinity Community for giving us a platform to introduce our project and helping us reach a wider audience than we could manage on our own.

The great people at Toniq Labs and Entrepot have been a massive help as well in getting the collection ready for launch and featured on their marketplace.

Once all details are finalized, our other strategic partners and sponsors will soon be jointly announced.

21. Tell us about the challenges you face while building your project?

Managing a project of this scope is certainly no mean feat. It is often challenging to coordinate the team on priority tasks while engaging with the community and ensuring our deadlines are respected. Our international moderators have been a great help in keeping our Discord members informed on the latest events while we focus on development and partnerships, so a big thank you to them!

22. What are your short and long-term achievements and targets?

Our current priorities are finalizing the Gen 1 collection, growing the community with collaborations and giveaways, and expanding ICOS with features requested by our beta testers.

Long term, our main focus will be fleshing out our dApp ecosystem with more and more functionality, starting plans for our Gen 2 collection, as well as expanding into DeFi with our own token.

23. Give us some details about your roadmap?

An itemized roadmap is available on our website at icpcs.io. We frequently update it as we add more tasks to our workload.

This is the brief version:

FEBRUARY – Prelaunch
Our focus in February will be community growth, acquiring more partnerships, giveaways/airdrops, and, of course, further product development. We will also be launching the first closed beta of ICOS.
MARCH – ICPCS NFT Gen #1 Launch
Launch of the first NFT collection to fuel the upcoming dApp ecosystem. Owners of these unique NFTs will gain access to our ICOS and ICDM programs.
APRIL – ICDM (Passive Income Launch)
Launching our reflection rewards dApp through which holders of ICPCS and partnered projects will be able to claim rewards based on secondary market trading volume, as well as the rarity of each NFT they own.
MAY – ICOS 1.0 (Public Release)
Public launch of ICOS - our open-source, web-based operating system hosted on the ICP. We will also be expanding ICDM.
JUNE – Tokenization
Plans to enter the ICP DeFi space. Details will be announced at a later date.

24. Any plan to move into Metaverse?

Yes - we are already flirting a bit with this idea through our augmented reality model viewer, which you can test out on our site by clicking the showcase previews. We plan on expanding on this much further once we start work on a 2nd Gen collection.

25. Will your NFT be tokenized in the future?

Yes, we are planning on launching our own token on the ICP and are in the process of consulting with some experienced advisors on tokenomics and integration into our existing dApps; this is still a ways off, but we will provide more details in our upcoming site update.

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions 😊