Meebits is a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) project from Larva Labs, maker of the popular CryptoPunks. The project features 20,000 unique 3D pixelated avatars that can be used in virtual worlds, gaming, and VR. ^[1]
Different Meebits

Meebits project was released on May 3, 2021, and the public sale of 9,000 NFTs ended within 6 hours. ^[3] According to data from Dune Analytics, Larva Labs made more than $70 million from the public sale. ^[6]

In August 2021, Meebits signed with United Talent Agency for representation across film, TV, video games, publishing, and licensing. UTA will also represent Cryptopunks and Autoglyphs, two other crypto-art projects created by Larva Labs.  ^[3][9]

Overview

Meebits Dancer T-Pose

Meebits, the third Non-Fungible Token (NFT) project by Larva Labs, was launched in early May 2021. The project boasts 20,000 procedurally generated 3D characters that are tradeable on the Ethereum blockchain.^[2]  According to the company's Medium post, the collection features characters with rare details like Autoglyphs-style generative tattoo patterns on particular Meebits. The company will roll out an "asset pack" for each Meebit which allows the owner to take a "T-pose" version of the avatar and use it in any game or virtual world that supports humanoid avatars. By doing this, owners can activate or "bring their Meebits to life." ^[1]

The company distributed the Meebits avatars through a Dutch auction, meaning the price for buying and minting a Meebit will lower to zero ETH (plus Ethereum gas fees) over the course of a week.^[2] [3]  As with the Cryptopunks, there is a file hash stored in the smart contract. Once all 20,000 Meebits had been minted, the team released the file matching that hash on IPFS. This contains all the attribute and voxel data for each Meebit, so they can live on in perpetuity. ^[4]

Art Work

Meebits is inspired by the pixelated, low-res visual style made famous by games like Roblox and Minecraft. The 3D-voxel character collection is meant to behave as an avatar that can be purchased and used in immersive virtual reality settings.
Meebits can be purchased, sold, and collected in a variety of types, attributes, and rarities. 18,881 Meebits are of the human type, the most prevalent, while just five of the 20,000 Meebits are of the dissected form, which is the rarest. The kinds include dissected, visitor, skeleton, robot, elephant, pig, and human, listed in decreasing order of rarity.
Each Meebit is unique in addition to these seven varieties and other characteristic categories (tattoos, jersey numbers, earrings, necklaces, beards, etc.) should make it easier for potential purchasers to choose the ideal Meebit for them.
The intellectual property (IP) rights for both CryptoPunks and Meebits were purchased from the Larva Labs team in March 2022 by Yuga Labs, the group behind the enormously well-liked Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection (and its several spin-off collections).

The Launch

The Meebits launch had two distinct components: a community grant and a sale.

Community Grant

Through the community grant, CryptoPunks and Autoglyphs owners can "redeem" their collectibles for a free Meebit. Owners can still keep the Punk or Glyph but the Meebits contract will mark it as "used" once the Meebit has been claimed. The remaining Meebits will be available for sale. Nobody knows which Meebits they will receive, but holders will have the chance to trade their collectibles on a newly-developed marketplace. ^[1]

The Sale

The remaining Meebits that aren't locked up by the Community Grant are available for sale. The team set an initial price of 2.5 ETH, and this price was to slowly decrease to 0 over the course of the week, or until the Meebits are sold out.^[4]  Within six hours of going live, the public release was sold out. This meant that one Meebit was priced above 2.4 ETH at sellout time.^[5][7][8]

The Marketplace

Meebits are standard ERC-721 tokens, but they also have their own marketplace built-in. This marketplace not only allows user to buy and sell for ETH, but also offer complex trades, with any number of Meebits on either side of the deal, plus some ETH on either side as well. Furthermore, proposing a trade simply involves signing a message with a user's wallet. No Ethereum transaction is required, and therefore no gas expenses. Only the 'taker' of the deal pays a gas fee. ^[4]

Notable Sale

On the 9th of july, 2021 , the art piece by Meebits Meebit #17522, tokenized on OpenSea, was acquired in the secondary market for 1000 Ether, an equivalent of $1,332,220.00. Another one of the Meebits, Meebit #8598, was sold for 420 ETH (more than $1.4 million at the time of the sale)

Team

Meebits was developed in May 2021 by Larva Labs, the group responsible for CryptoPunks, Autoglyphs, and other ground-breaking initiatives bridging the digital art and technology worlds.
Matt Hall and John Watkinson formed Larva Labs, which has been working on initiatives both inside and outside the cryptocurrency sector for some time. The group is most well-known for its revolutionary NFT series, CryptoPunks. Since its debut in 2017, CryptoPunks has grown to rank among the most recognizable and valuable NFT collections to date.
Meebits was developed by Larva Labs to build on the popularity of the 2D-pixel aesthetic used in CryptoPunks and Autoglyphs with a 3D-voxel collection made specifically for new metaverse games like Decentraland and The Sandbox.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection (and its several spin-off collections) creators, Yuga Labs, purchased the IP rights to both CryptoPunks and Meebits from the Larva Labs team in March 2022.