As one of the earliest and most recognizable collectors in the NFT space, Pranksy has long championed creativity, collaboration, and accessibility in web3. With House of Pranksy, he’s turning that ethos into a home for artists, collectors, and enthusiasts who miss the camaraderie of the space’s early days. Built around storytelling, education, and connection, the project brings together online and offline experiences designed to rekindle the joy, curiosity, and experimentation that first defined NFTs.

In this conversation, Pranksy discusses how House of Pranksy aims to create a non-speculative, community-first environment rooted in creativity rather than hype. He shares the inspiration behind the project’s design, the importance of storytelling in reclaiming the NFT narrative, and his hopes for rebuilding a space where genuine connection and collaboration can thrive once again.

OpenSea: Let’s start with the basics. What inspired the creation of House of Pranksy and what gap did you see in the NFT space that you wanted to fill with this membership? 

Pranksy: House of Pranksy is inspired by the comradeship of the original NFT space. Since those early days, we’ve lost a lot of the positive interaction, the working together and the experimentation leading to interesting projects as the whole thing moved to looking more like a financial market. I want to change that. One of the best things about the web3 space were the private communities that were built within it between friends and I want the House of Pranksy Discord to be like a huge private Discord where people genuinely connect with each other. 

House of Pranksy is a gated community with articles that educate and dive into the history of the space. Members will get to hear from me, Pransky, and other key figures in digital art, crypto and games. 

If they’re interested in physical collectible cards, we’ll be hosting online card breaks. As someone who always loved collectibles, both digital and physical, as seen by my early purchases in NBA TopShot, I’m really looking forward to this aspect. This ties Pranksy Breaks, our dedicated collectible card channel, into House of Pranksy. There will be exclusive opportunities for meet-ups or events in North America, Europe and, of course, the UK. We will have artists or projects in residence who will collaborate with us on drops, exclusive to House of Pranksy members. We also hope to get some merchandise out too. One part I’m excited for is the potential for members to have personalised profile pictures made by our art lead. 

In today’s community, there’s a lack of original and in-person events, as well as an online corner for people to get to know one another. I wanted to fill that gap and, hopefully, create something that helps the NFT community grow in a positive way moving forward. The in-person events we’ve held previously, such as the Pranksy Street Art Bus Tour at NFTLondon, have resulted in us meeting some great people and we wanted to expand on that idea. 

OpenSea: The project is described as non-speculative and non-toxic. What do those ideas mean to you in practice, and how do you plan to maintain that kind of environment? 

Pranksy: Toxicity can be tied to speculation within the NFT space and by removing one, you reduce the other. So much of the speculation in NFTs wasn’t based on recognising valuable traits, but, instead, on dodgy insider knowledge and projects making promises they couldn’t keep. Membership NFTs for House of Pranksy are soulbound, which means they’re non-transferable and therefore there can’t be speculation around membership price or any reliance from us on secondary royalties. 

Obviously, in 2022, overall NFT volume was depleting and marketplaces were fighting each other for buyer attention. This led to artists and projects’ secondary royalties being reduced to nought. There were very few projects that had enforced royalties at smart contract level, so marketplaces had the ability to make the decision to cut them. Their removal of this

revenue stream resulted in projects being unable to pay teams and being forced to shut down. There was no longer incentive for projects to focus on their original collections anymore, they needed to find revenue from other places. The market then became diluted by multiple releases from the same teams and buyers lost interest in the continual new mints. It also resulted in artists and musicians seeing less overall value in the technology. 

We’ve made a decision not to rely on or expect secondary royalties from House of Pranksy, which means we as a team have to continue delivering regular content. There are two tiers to the House of Pranksy membership. The regular tier is a lifetime membership, you buy it once. However, in the highest tier, ‘Close Personal Friend’, the buyer only pays for one year. This means the onus is on us to keep making House of Pranksy a fun and engaging place to be. 

OpenSea: The website and Discord are designed like a literal town with rooms like the School, the Oracle, and the House. Can you walk us through what each of those spaces represents and how members will interact with them?

Pranksy: Yeah, sure. It’s been a pleasure to watch our art lead expand on what was just an idea and create a fully-fledged world that brings back millennium vibes. 

The House sits at the top of the hierarchy as the parent to everything else. It’s the general home for everyone in Discord. There’s an inner sanctum within the house, exclusive to the ‘Close Personal Friend’ tier. 

The School is a place for members to come to learn about the history, the technology and the potential the space has. 

The Oracle is an area for opinions from both me, Pranksy, and other key figures in the space. We hope to host some interviews with exciting projects and people who are still genuinely experimenting with NFTs. 

One of our main aims is to create a community that’s interested in interacting with each other, so we wanted our corner of the NFT space to represent that. The idea from the tier name ‘regulars’ came from the idea of regulars at a pub – a great British tradition. It’s rare in modern times for fact and opinion to be split, but we felt it was crucial to make it clear which was which. 

OpenSea: House of Pranksy brings a sense of nostalgia for the early NFT days. How do you think the culture of NFTs has changed since those early years, and what do you hope to recapture? 

Pranksy: In the early days, the community was tight-knit and relatively small. There was a punk ethos running through the lifeblood of the community, members saw the opportunities for the people to take back finance through decentralised finance and to market their own art (including fine art, digital art, animation and music), rather than needing agents and galleries. Members were experimenting with a genuine deep interest in the technology and its potentials. They were generally willing and excited to collaborate because they wanted to explore together, not simply as a marketing ploy.

As we all are aware, COVID hit in 2020, leading to a general increase in the use of technology. The NFT space grew and, by 2021, was noticeably huge compared to those early days. In March 2021, the Beeple Auction happened and NBA Top Shot surged in popularity, leading the NBA players to become aware of NFTs. As NBA players bought into projects, musicians became aware of NFTs and, finally, other celebrities got on board. It is worth noting a small number of celebrities were quietly aware from the early days. At this point, we saw Profile Picture Projects (PFPs) become the dominant thing. However, this led to a huge reduction in creation as new projects simply ‘copied and pasted’ the template. 

During this time there was a huge influx of new faces, the majority chasing money and internet fame. Toxicity in the space increased and became day-to-day. Members who were genuinely doing exciting things or trying to experiment were drowned out by a constant stream of very similar projects and the general public developed a negative view of NFTs across the board. NFTs became defined by their floor price and not the projects or specific NFTs’ interesting traits. 

A huge culmination of factors, including floor price being the focus and COVID lockdowns ending, led to lack of interest and people leaving the community by the lorry load. Many of the original community remain, but in the changed landscape, were left to try and rebuild a wasteland. Equally, their experienced views are being drowned out by token traders, bots 

and people who came in during the boom only to be disappointed. The latter tend to be the toxic voices. 

We hope to create a space where the community is, again, excited to collaborate and explore together. House of Pranksy should be a corner of the NFT space where old, new and in-betweeners can all join and know they can have genuine conversation around NFTs. It’s a safe space for the weird, the wonderful and the neurodiverse members can have fun networking with peers. 

OpenSea: There’s a lot of emphasis on community and storytelling. Why is storytelling such an important part of this project, and how does it connect to your larger vision for NFTs? 

Pranksy: In context of the white noise and toxicity in the wider NFT space, storytelling has the ability to truly connect with people. Originally, the NFT narrative was strong but quiet, and belonged to those trailblazers who experimented with the technology. However, it was taken from the NFT community itself and manipulated by scammers, opportunists, some select celebrities and the media. We want to take back the narrative for the NFT people — in the style of the original Punk ethos of the space. 

I think it’s important to say that there have been some celebrities and brands who had really interesting projects and ideas, who really added value to the space and its history. 

Storytelling is a big part of all of the things we do at Pranksy. For example, we collaborated with Asprey Studio for our Mayfair art exhibition, ‘NFT REvolution: I am Pranksy’, where a narrative was created, both overarching and for each room, that took the attendees on a journey. One of things that Magpie, my wife and co-conspirator, noticed at some of the other NFT exhibitions was that there was a lack of curation with no flow between the art pieces and very little information on both the piece and the artist. I feel we successfully changed that and every member of my team played a huge part in making the exhibition a reality, which was an amazing experience, as we really saw what we could achieve together.

OpenSea: You’ve mentioned that memberships are represented by marbles, a fun collectible twist. How did you land on that concept, and what do the different tiers unlock for members? 

Pranksy: We wanted an item that could be a physical object, as the NFT space and the digital items can feel new and untethered. We often prioritise things with history and marbles connect to the idea of people collecting items way before the internet was invented, let alone web3. Also, it will be a fun idea for members to show off their marbles and it’s an idea we hope to expand on. 

The ‘regular’ tier is a lifetime membership that will always grant you access to the Discord, core articles and specific opportunities to register interest in the meet-ups and more. 

The ‘Close Personal Friend’ tier is limited in number and lasts until the end of the next calendar year. It grants guaranteed access to RSVP to meet-ups and events, as well as all content released within that year. Anyone in that tier gets first dibs on registering interest in limited releases and collaborations. Once the calendar year expires, unless the ‘Close Personal Friend’ chooses to renew their membership, they will automatically revert to the ‘regular’ tier, giving them lifelong Discord access and the opportunities that come with the regular tier. 

OpenSea: House of Pranksy is collaborating with projects that reflect old-school NFT values. How do you choose which partners to work with, and what do those values mean to you today? 

Pranksy: We look for projects who are genuinely engaged and in the space for the right reasons. If they’re only driven by money, numbers and sales, then they aren’t the right project for us. We want to work with people with exciting ideas that challenge the copy and paste era that the space had in the past. We believe diversity should be the norm and not the exception in the NFT space, and elsewhere, so we love working with projects who share this ethos. 

I think the NFT community’s old school values were being free from centralised, hierarchical decisions; having a direct line from creator to buyer; exploration and experimentation; challenging the norm; free access to information (opensource); and a tight-knit, interest-driven community. We’re excited to work with Good Vibes Club and Claynosaurz because they uphold some of these original values, collaborating with art platforms, rather than financial, and focusing more on community than floor prices. I think it’s very hard to find these values today, not just in the NFT space, but across the entire open internet. As the internet becomes flooded with more content and algorithms designed to make you angry, gated communities are a way to shut out the white noise. I see the irony in this, though, as it’s a more centralised way of creating a community.

OpenSea: You’ve said the project isn’t about what’s the floor, it’s about fun and connection. What’s your hope for how this community will evolve over time, both online and in real life? What does success look like for House of Pranksy? Is it about numbers, longevity, or simply bringing back the sense of joy and creativity that started it all? 

Pranksy: It’s definitely about bringing back that sense of joy and creativity. I hope the House of Pranksy community can reflect the original NFT community in its values. While we need to keep paying our fantastic team, this isn’t a project that’s about chasing sky-high profits, it’s a desire to create something meaningful in the space that the community can really benefit from. I want members to be building real connections that grow over time. It would be great to see people collaborating together and House of Pranksy being the place they met.

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