We did reach our goals for this season. We sold out, we’re very pleased with the collection and created an engaging and exciting end to Chapter 1. We also improved our production process and overall quality when compared to last season.

We did deliver within our set deadline. We started the production strong and were ahead on the owl production and script for the film. But due to different circumstances, we lost the advantage we had in the middle part of the timeline which created a very hectic sprint to get everything done on time.

The teamwork has improved as we are getting more comfortable working with each other. Last season was the first season we all worked together and we have all noticed a clear improvement since then. The relationship between the creative and the mod teams are more cohesive now, which means Kent no longer needs to be a constant bridge between these two teams.

We had a better production plan this season and it made things run smoother but there's still much that can be further improved.

Having an all whitelist mint (due to collection size), made things much easier in terms of information. Everyone was well informed about the mechanics of the whitelist. People had almost a month’s time to get verified and ensure their spot on the WL. People seemed less confused compared to last mint.

We did the first ever BlockOwls charity mint which was nothing but a huge success. We raised $23.000 (after taxes) in 24 hours for humanitarian aid in Ukraine. We are so proud of that achievement and our deepest gratitude goes out to this amazing community for making it happen.

The design contest is arguably the favorite events both for the team and community. We did see a drop in participants this season but we thought the quality of design entries was higher. We did improve the voting system by restricting it to verified members which we thought worked well. The winning entries turned out great!

The all whitelist mint purpose was to provide a relaxed mint, unfortunately that was disrupted by an exploiter.

The minting itself went smooth aside from the exploiter. The transactions were quick and our community seemed to receive their Owls almost immediately. Token airdrop worked well as a solution to the exploiter problem.

All C#1 Owls were uploaded with metadata to website in a timely manner. Even when we had to pause the mint, the unrevealed mythic Owls were “censored” to avoid spoilers which seemed to be appreciated by the community and only added to the suspense.

We did a better job at having announcements prepped and ready in advance.

Overall it has been going well, we have grown a substantial amount, but we still have a lot of untapped potential. We need to work on a stronger strategy on getting our twitter following converted to discord and ultimately grow the owl family. We will have to opportunity to create some more intrigue and mystery leading up to the launch of the Jabi-z’s that we will aim to capitalize on.

The team work and project management was working well at times but it was harder for periods than last season. This was due to different circumstances but the main problem was unpredictable individual work capacities. It was hard to follow the production timeline when we couldn’t coordinate it with the productions happening in our two separate production companies. This problem will be resolved once we’re all one company.

We are still a bit unorganized at times especially with smaller tasks and issues that arise, which often ends with Kent just fixing them late at night and results in him getting dragged away from more important tasks. We generally need to improve our project management structure.

Our use of Google forms seems to be outdated and we need to find a better solution for the future. A bot could maker lives easier. Using stake addresses and the way Tygar performed the last mint seems to be outdated as well. It’s time for us to look into new ways of minting. Multisig could be a solution to this.

The only negative feedback we got was from some community members being unhappy with some participants campaigning their designs. We can see how this doesn’t sit well with some but put on the flip side it also get more people engaged in the contest.

Looking back at this whole ordeal, we can conclude that the use of Google Forms is outdated, especially when it comes to a whitelist only sale. People do not want to miss out and that tends to bring out the worst in some who are willing to take advantage in any way possible. Fortunately, 95% of the cheaters were eliminated after the check-up. However, if someone forgot to add their wallet address and someone abused that name, it was impossible to follow up since there was no double name to find with a different address.

Moving forward we will not use a Google Form, but rather a bot where people can submit their wallet addresses. In this case multiple new roles should be created since our WL spots are stackable. We are sure that with some good organization, this can be solved very easily.

Generally limited collections are harder to work with as we balance rewarding our holders and bringing new people into the project. Luckily, Jabi-Zs will be a large collection, which translates into both a whitelist and a public sale.

Unfortunately, an exploiter caused, what should have been a relaxed mint turned out to be quite a chaotic experience. Nonetheless, one that has taught us all a valuable lesson. Ultimately, this boils down to the whitelist system we had in place which was taken advantage of when it came time to mint. The mint itself went smoothly. Transactions were quick and our community seemed to receive their Owls almost immediately.

However, an exploiter exposed a flaw in our minting system (see “The Mint Exploit” below for full explanation) that has potentially been there since our first mint back in December. Thus, we paused the mint until we could securely re-open. Fortunately, PB and the Anvil Minting Services team, along with various other community members, reached out to us and were willing to work with Tygar on a quick resolve. The token airdrop provided us a quick and clever solution to the exploiter problem.

Luckily, despite the exploiters efforts, we were able to ensure that all whitelisted community members received all of their allotted Owls. Going forward, there should not be any more address drops. These are outdated, easy to take advantage of, and overall are not a good look for our reputation.

Overall, everyone was informed of everything. However, some people missed the last round of minting due to lack of information in regards to the timing of the mint. After re-reading the announcement, we agree that this information was not as easy to find and could be better announced/more easily accessible going forward.

What we believe happened:

According to CIP-19, Cardano addresses comprises two parts, a one-byte header and a payload of several bytes. The header defines which type of address it is and which network it belongs to. The payload normally consist of two parts, payment part and delegation part. The payment part indicates the ownership of the funds, while the delegation part indicates the owner of the stake rights. These parts are actually hashed public keys, where the address owner controls the private key counterparts.

When spending Ada from an address, the transaction needs to be signed using the private payment key before submitting to the Cardano network. This is proves the rights to spend these Ada and transaction is accepted into the chain. However, it is not required to sign the delegation part. Therefore, it is actually possible to create an address that contains someone elses delegation part. This is also known as a Franken address. Cardano wallets often have many addresses, using multiple payment addresses that all share the same delegation address.

During the exploited whitelist mint, eligible owners were required to pay the minting price to a specified address. The Vending Machine checked the payments to this address, took the delegation part of the sender address and verified it against the whitelist. The NFT was then minted to the senders address.

The attacker used publicly known minting criterias and identified eligible addresses on the Cardano network. Then a delegation part was copied and a franken address created to impersonate another wallet. Paying the minting price from this address resulted in a positive match by the Vending Machine, which resulted in stealing an allocated Owl from another community member.

We planned the owl designs, rarities and animations in advance which helped making sure we had even distribution and a good variety in all rarities. Shows that the more we plan the smoother the production will be.

Implementing a new naming convention helped the team create the film and allowed for more flexibility when there was a need to add extra shots.

We will stop using google forms and set up a bot instead.

We will move on from minting with stake addresses over to a new system such as multisig.

Optimize the animation render files so still images are captured at useable frame to alleviate from going over every owl after rendering to find a suitable still image.

Double check all master animation files to make sure they have correct settings and textures.

Implement a new setup and process for review and approval animations and designs. We will see if Anchorpoint can help this process.

Completed assets need to have a simple setup for proficient fps in the viewport. Therefore, all assets should have a checkbox for viewport optimization.

Implement a script that automatically sets up render settings, passes, paths and files names. This will alleviate a few clicks for each file and can easily be automated.

The audio design process and score for the film worked fine, this time we used temp music during the pre-viz. It worked well, but for next film we want the composing of the score to happen earlier in the process so the edit is based on a draft of the original score and not temporary music.

The sound design for the owls worked very well, the animations where completed early so it was possible to start the owl audio design earlier than last season.

Over the three owl drops, we have managed to establish a recognizable soundscape. This helps strengthen the brand and creates an opportunity to play even more with the owl soundscape in the future - hopefully push the boundaries further without losing the distinguished sound that has become Blockowls.

After last season we had plans for an internal review session of completed owls. We never implemented this, partly due to the time constraint at the end. Nonetheless, it should have been implemented as we would have saved time getting more eyes on each owl to ensure all mistakes where found at once.