Frank DeGods is the pseudonym of Rohun Vora who is a former UCLA film student who later founded two nonfungible token (NFT) projects — DeGods and y00ts. ^{[1] [2]}

Early Life

According to the founder, the pseudonym “Frank” was inspired by the musician Frank Ocean. The LA-based NFT founder was exposed to movie sets as early as 15, which inspired his film studies — but he dropped out of UCLA to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams. ^[14]

One of Frank’s earliest business pursuits was Duffl, which he founded in 2019. Duffl used e-scooters to deliver groceries to customers. Before Duffl, Frank also founded NutAds in May 2018, a creative agency focused on building brands for early-stage startups. ^[15]

He was later accepted to the startup fund and program Y Combinator, where he was able to raise $1.3 million. Soon after, he joined a coding bootcamp and landed a job at MainStreet, a software development company after briefly studying software engineering at General Assembly. Frank worked there as a one-person marketing team, raising a $500-million valuation. ^{[3] [4]}

DeGods founder, Frank DeGods stayed anonymous all through DeGods' development but finally revealed his identity via Twitter on November 29, 2022. Frank DeGods revealed himself to be Rohun Vora. ^[5]

Career

DeGods

Frank DeGods founded DeGods in March 2021. DeGods is a Solana-based deflationary NFT collection that consists of 10,000 colorful gods. Staking for DeGods went live in January 2022, with more than half of its supply staked within the first day. This marked a significant increase in the popularity of the collection. ^[6]

DeGods NFTs are deflationary which means that when a DeGods holder burns their NFT, it increases in value. DeGods holders can stake their DeGods NFT to earn $DUST – the collection’s native taken. $DUST enables participation in raffles, upgrades, auctions, and more. DeGods holders also gain access to the community-owned content platform. There, holders can publish their own content and reach out to other holders. ^[8]

On April 28, 2022, DeGods DAO purchased the basketball team Killer 3s, which forms part of Ice Cube's Big3 League. The purchase gives the DeGods community some level of control over the basketball team, including the role of CEO, president, and vice president. It also provides the DAO with intellectual property rights to create officially licensed merchandise. ^[7]

“This is probably the most fascinating experiment in the entire NFT space right now. It’s cool because owning and operating a basketball team is a dream for millions of people. Now, we get to make that dream true for our holders.” - DeGods founder, Frank DeGod said.

Y00ts

Y00ts, originally called Duppies is an NFT collection from the DeGods team that went live on September 6, 2022. It consists of 15,000 NFTs that allow users to make their own PFPs. The collection revolves around a sheep avatar, with layers of metadata that give each NFT its unique characteristic.^{[8] [9]}

According to the y00ts paper,

“Each collection would have its own ⓨ registry, where it’s easy to track who’s approved to be using the NFT’s IP. This allows projects to approve & reject usage requests at Web3 speed.”

To mint a y00ts NFT, interested individuals had to apply for a scholarship to get on the y00tlist – the y00ts version of a presale list. ^{[10] [11]}

Polygon Grant

In January 2023, Frank DeGods announced that DeLabs — the startup behind DeGods received a $3 million non-equity grant from Polygon to expand the team and scale an upcoming incubator project. He mentioned that there were other chains that had offered more money than the Polygon team, but he chose Polygon as it was the best direction for the y00ts project overall. ^[12]

Frank also stated that the company will expand its business with growing teams including business development, graphic design, content creation, and event coordination personnel. The revelation of the investment came a week after the DeGods team announced its plans to shift blockchains. ^{[12] [13]}