Aether: 2018 NFT Metaverse Rediscovered

Adam McBride
3 min readSep 13, 2021

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Screen capture from https://portal.aethercity.org/

NFT archeological digging has turned up another long-lost project.

Launched on March 11, 2018, Aether is the world's first metaverse built to the ERC721 standard.

With metaverses exploding over the past year that this project was the first to institute the ERC721 standard makes it a historically significant NFT project.

Please read everything before proceeding and DYOR.

Main Contract:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x31d4c5be1082a88f2abafea549b6c189c2cf057f

Website:

https://portal.aethercity.org/

DISCLAIMER: Anything you do after this is 100% on you. Any lost funds, failed investments, or other unforeseen consequences are 100% on you. I am not responsible in any way. Turn away if you do not accept 100% responsibility.

Because Aether is build to the ERC721 standard getting onto Opensea was quick. But because Aether has only just received verification on Opensea, it has not yet been able to integrate its API, resulting in NFTs that all appear with the same image.

Image of Aether NFT on Opensea

Once the Opensea API is integrated each NFT will have a unique look on Opensea.

Supply

Aether is built on a 30 by 30 grid that contains 104 buildings and Units (apartments) within the buildings.

All 104 buildings and 298 Units were minted in 2018 and once fully minted there can be up to 902 Units.

When viewing on Opensea note that numbers 16 to 118 are buildings and any number 119 or higher are Units.

Buildings

Buildings in Aether are of two types, Private and Public.

If you own a Private building you own the exterior, the bottom floor, and you have the option of minting Units within the building. The bigger the building the more Units you can mint.

In a Public building, you own the exterior and the bottom floor but anyone can mint Units within the building.

Why should you care about owning the exterior of a building?

Think of it as a canvas that you can put anything on. That may hold some value;)

Public to Private

One of the cool features of Aether is that owners of Public buildings can change the building to Private by interacting with the smart contract.

The benefit is that if the world expands and your building gets bigger you will have the option of minting new Units in the freshly created space.

Nice.

Expansion

While the grid is currently 30 x 30, Aether can expand up to a grid that is 100 x 100.

The developer has already made it clear to the community that there will be zero expansion for a period of six months and future expansion would need community approval.

Expansion of the grid benefits genesis building holders because as the map expands their buildings grow taller, creating more space to mint new Units.

Note: Buildings that are closer to the center grow exponentially larger than ones that are on the edges. Imagine a string pulling the grid up from the center and you get an idea of how the buildings closest to the middle will be rewarded.

Buildings in Aether with red square indicating the center of the grid.

Genesis buildings are currently at 15% of their maximum height potential, so a growing community can greatly increase the number of Units, and value, of a building.

After a successful lottery to early Discord members, the dev is distributing the remaining buildings and Units through FAST 1-hour Dutch auctions on Opensea beginning now.

To view the current auctions on Opensea click here.

And join the Discord here.

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Adam McBride

Passionate about humans, freedom, and how crypto empowers both.