Slonk embeds AI models into Ethereum smart contracts, trains unique NFTs using CryptoPunks, and the higher the slop value, the more valuable they are. They can also be split into $SLOP tokens for trading on Uniswap.
Author: TIGER
NFT or GameFI?
The perfect design of Hook v4 – Slonk
1/
I bought 20 Slonks floor tokens on OpenSea in the last two days. This project launched on May 1st, and in just 5 days, the floor token price has risen from mint to 0.062 ETH, with 318 ETH traded in the last 24 hours.
Let me explain what it is, why I bought it, and what I expect from it.
2/
In short: feed 10,000 CryptoPunks to a tiny transformer that’s plugged into the Ethereum mainnet, and let the model be redrawn.
You heard right, he did indeed embed an AI model into the smart contract.
AI drawing has always been criticized for its flaws, making it easy for people to tell that it was drawn by AI. The author has taken advantage of this.
He had the model on the smart contract imitate CryptoPunks, and there were bound to be some errors. Contrary to common sense, the more errors there were, the higher the score.
The slogan “Slop is the art” has become a project name, despite being one of the most criticized terms in the AI era.
Therefore, the token corresponding to an NFT through a V4 hook is called $slop.
3/
There are three important numbers on each NFT:
First: Original version number
It refers to which punk number from 1 to 10000 the AI is imitating.
Second: slop value
How many squares did the AI draw incorrectly? Each card is 24×24, a total of 576 squares, so the maximum slop is 576. For example, 287 means “287 out of 576 squares were drawn incorrectly”. This number is the most important attribute in the entire game; the higher it is, the more mistakes were made.
The third: Level
The default value is 0, and each merge increases the level by one.
The entire game revolves around these three numbers.
4/
You can do three things in the game.
First item: Merging
Take two cards of the same level, burn one of them, and upgrade the remaining card by one level.
What happened: The AI averaged the “impressions” of the two cards in its mind and redrawn one. The result—compared to the original, the difference was definitely greater.
In other words, the lower the similarity between the card you merge with and your original punk, the less the resulting punk will resemble the original. The less similar the pixels are, the higher the slop score.
Slop value can be exchanged for tokens and sold, and of course you will also get a high-level NFT.
The cost: the merger is irreversible, and the card that was burned is gone forever.
5/
Second item: Split into tokens (contract will be launched tomorrow).
The game will issue a token called $SLOP in the future. You can “disassemble” a card to exchange for this token.
The rules are very straightforward: the number of slops on your card determines the number of tokens you receive. A card with 287 slops will earn you 287 $SLOPs, and a card with 450 slops will earn you 450 tokens.
This action transforms an “indivisible painting” into a “decentralized token.” The token can be sold for ETH on Uniswap, or used for the action described below.
Why do it? The simplest logic is arbitrage. If a card sells for 0.06 ETH on OpenSea, but can be split into tokens and sold for 0.10 ETH, then it should be split.
When choosing a card, a higher Slop value means it’s more valuable – it has a higher coin content.
6/
The third option: Use tokens to win a ticket (not yet available).
Burning tokens allows you to “spin” a card in the game.
But what you get isn’t a new card; it’s a card that someone else previously dismantled. The game saves them, and the AI will redraw them—so even the same punk number might be drawn completely differently.
There’s a 50% chance the drawing will be perfectly neat, with a low Slop; a 49% chance it will be a mix of normal and random; and a 1% chance the AI will completely go crazy—drawing a drawing with a near-perfect Slop that looks like nothing at all. This 1% is like a lottery ticket, potentially worth a lot of money.
The price isn’t fixed. It’s a Dutch auction, starting at 576 tokens, decreasing by 1 token every few minutes, with a minimum of 100. But if someone buys, it immediately bounces back to 576 and then drops again. So, buying early is expensive, waiting for a cheaper price is risky, but while you’re waiting, someone else might snatch it up first.
7/
What interests me most is not the narrative, but the engineering implementation.
It truly puts neural networks on the blockchain. The 22.7 KB transformer has its weights divided into 9 blocks and stored in 9 functionless contracts using the SSTORE2 model. Each time a mint or merge occurs, forward inference is run in the EVM, and the SVG is drawn on the spot.
The vocabulary size is 10,000, the embedding is 10-dimensional, and there are 18 attention heads. The configuration is small, but it is indeed running.
8/
The total amount of $SLOP is 5,760,000, which is exactly 10,000 × 576.
The mechanism works like this: you send a Slonk into void, the contract automatically counts how many defective pixels it has, and gives you an equivalent amount of $SLOP. Burning $SLOP allows you to extract a new one from void; the new one is redrawn by AI using the original punk and adding noise.
I haven’t seen this kind of NFT cutting into pixels and using them as tokens in other projects.
9/
Its design is quite self-consistent.
First, NFT collectors can collect based on their preferences. Some like the rare types in the original crypto punk, while others prefer the hybrid types that have been fused together multiple times.
The ability for people to create artwork spontaneously on the blockchain is itself an innovation. It also completely eliminates the need for IPFS hosting.
Furthermore, players who treat it as a gamefi game can calculate arbitrage opportunities and find enjoyment in combining cards.
10/
It features technological breakthroughs, innovative designs, and caters to the diverse needs of different players.
The only downside is that it’s not very intuitive to understand, but fun games often have a bit of a learning curve, and once you really get into them, you might have a group of die-hard fans.
I hope my article can lower the barrier to entry a little bit.
Innovation on the blockchain deserves respect!
