Blind Boxes ($BLES) Review: Scaling Mystery Boxes for NFTs

9 min readMar 29, 2021

Introduction

The result of Pransky’s first mystery box: Sold Out In Minutes.

If you are not familiar with Pransky, he is a popular NFT artist. Pransky recently launched mysteryboxes.io, a platform that launches a mystery box monthly curated by their team. While the mystery box was not invented by Pransky, his success shows how well mystery boxes can perform in the crypto space, specifically digital art.

Blind Boxes embraces and enhances the concept of mystery boxes by maintaining a vision of scalability and interoperability.

In this review, we dive into Blind Boxes: their product, tech, tokenomics, team, and more.

What is Blind Boxes?

Blind Boxes is a NFT aggregator, built as a DApp (Decentralized App) to join buyer, creator, and curator and gamifying the NFT purchase experience.

Digital art NFTs are delivered to buyers in the form of a mystery box. The mystery box is unlocked when the entire collection is sold. Buyers then submit their token to redeem their art and see their surprise.

The Blind Boxes platform also supports artists and creators with their Foundation Fund and Creator Launchpad.

Before we explore their products and platform further, let’s discuss real world problems and solutions.

Problems and Solution

Gamification of NFTs

A user who does not enjoy the current options to purchase NFTs.

Blind Boxes changes the entire NFT art buying experience from an auction or buy now to a mystery box process.

Affordable NFTs

A buyer who only wants to purchase NFTs outside of their budget.

Blind Boxes are more affordable and give the buyer a chance at procuring a more valuable NFT.

Creators Need to Create

Some artists cannot invest in their career because of a lack of capital.

Blind Boxes provides a Creator Launchpad to effectively crowdfund artists. Artists can sell their own tokens through the Blind Boxes platform while gaining exposure.

A Foundation Fund is available so artists can apply for a grant.

Curators Get Promoted

A lover of art cannot always participate in the process because of a lack of funds, artistic skills, or opportunity.

Individuals can apply to be a curator. Curators create collections, select art for those collections, and get paid a commission.

What is a Blind Box?

Blind Boxes are mystery boxes for NFTs. Each Blind Box contains a limited edition NFT digital art, collectible, or digital asset. At time of purchase, the buyer is equipped with a list of possible NFT creators along with the purchase price.

The mystery combined with the suspense turns the acquisition of art into a uniquely enjoyable experience.

A Decentralized Marketplace

Blind Boxes acts as an aggregator platform with 3 key players: Creator, Curator, and Collector. To put it simply, the curator selects nfts from creators for their box, and then seals the box for collectors to purchase.

Examples of Curators:

Marketplaces such as Open Sea or Rarible.
Platforms collections such as Blockchain Cuties or Avastars.
Individuals, such as you and me.

The following chart found online summarizes the flow and process best.

Why Participate?

Each 3rd party has a different reason to be interested in the Blind Boxes platform.

Creator

Further distribution and exposure of their art, plus compensation.
Residual sales on resales of their art managed by the smart contract.
Can apply for a foundation grant.
Mints $BLES when selling.

Collector

Enjoys a different way to collect NFTs.
Eliminates “Paradox of Choice” barrier.
Flat prices.
Mints $BLES when opening.

Curator

Enjoys participation in the process and curating art.
5% Commission.

What Artists or NFTs Will You Find?

Considering Blind Boxes is an aggregator, there could be all types of artists or nfts available. The possibilities are limitless when you consider the integrations with other marketplaces and platforms.

Creator Launchpad

Blind Boxes will provide a launchpad for creators to effectively tokenize their career. To summarize the process, creators create a custom token, define the terms, and launch on the Blind Boxes DApp.

Investors, speculators, and supporters will have the option to fund their favorite artists according to the terms. Smart contracts will help ensure everything all transactions are handled according to the terms.

Platform

Blind Boxes is a DApp with a focus on scalability & interoperability. The DApp will initially launch on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) during April 2021. Then, the team’s goal is to migrate to Polkadot by Q3/Q4 2021.

xDai Stable Chain & Ethereum

While ETH will be used to deposit and withdraw NFTs from the platform, the transactions are done in xDAI, a stable coin on the DAI Stable Chain.

Bridging with xDai

This xDai bridge is critical to cross-chain support. And, as most NFTs are on ERC-721, it is essential. The bridge is what allows users to deposit and withdraw NFTs for ETH.

Randomization

Another reason the Blind Boxes team chose xDai is the on-chain randomization through RandomAura. The randomization feature is used to prevent hacking and cheating. Not even the team knows the contents of the box. There are no exact contents until the randomization.

Below is chart found on their whitepaper that elaborates on their platform.

Strategic Partnerships/Integrations

As an aggregator, Blind Boxes is forming partnerships and integrations with other marketplaces and creator platforms. Including:

Opensea
Rarible
Blockchain Cuties
NiftyKit

Revenue & Foundation Fund

Blind Boxes receives a 5% commission on sales.

50% of profits are added to a Foundation Fund. Creators and artists can apply for the foundation.

Competitors

Possible primary competitors include Nifty Gateway, Opensea, and Rarible. Other competitors include any creator platform where the user can buy directly from the platform, such as Avastars or Aavegotchi.

Market Segment

NFT Market Cap as of March 22nd, 2021 is $7,481,550,788. Included in that market cap figure are all types of NFT-centric tokens including the market leader Enjin Coin (ENJ) with approximately 26% of the market cap.

Looking closer, Blind Boxes is most similar to Rarible, a marketplace where artists and creators can easily create their own NFTs for sale. As of March 22nd, 2021, the Rarible Market Cap is $83,693,176.

Token ($BLES)

Ticker: BLES

Type: Ethereum ERC-20 Native, Binance Smart Chain, Future Migration to Polkadot.

Utility

Governance
Grants
Mining

Tokenomics

Initial Circulating Supply: 5,550,000 BLES

Initial Market Cap: $832,500 USD

Maximum Supply: 100,000,000 BLES

Seed/Private/Pre-Public Sale Fundraising: $2,200,000 USD

Seed Sale: $0.08 (5%) for $400,000 USD

Private Round: $0.125 (14%) for $1,800,000 USD

Public Sale Price: $0.15 (1.5%) for $300,000 USD

Initial IDO Date: March 26th, 2021

Uniswap: BLES/ETH pair

Pancakeswap: BLES/BNB pair

Community Minting

50% of the total supply is reserved for community minting. According to a medium post by the Blind Boxes, you can mint $BLES by:

Opening Blind Boxes.
Selling NFTs.
Receiving a Foundation Grant.
Participation in Community Events.
Collaboration on Special Projects.

Release Schedule

Seed: 15% TGE, 8.5% Monthly for 10 months.

Private: 20% TGE, 10% Monthly for 8 months.

Public: 100% TGE.

Team/Advisors: Unknown.*

Total Unlock at TGE: Approximately 5.5%

First 9 Months: Approximately 3% unlocked monthly

Exchange Listings

Uniswap & Pancakeswap Listing Date/Time: March 26th, 2021

Price History

As of March 27th, 2021, $BLES is trading at approximately $7.88 with an opening price of $0.15 (58x).

The current market cap is $43,734,000 based on the initial circulating supply. With barely over 24 hours on the market, the 24 hour volume is $43,915,595.

All time high was hit earlier today around $12.77 according to Dextools.io.

Roadmap

Q1 2021

BSCPad Launch
Paid Ignition Launch
Pancake Listing
Uniswap Listing

Q2 2021

Blind Box Marketplace DApp launch on BSC Mainnet
Additional DEX Trading
May 1st: Blind Boxes’ Creator Launchpad go live.

Q3/Q4 2021

Polkadot Migration

Founders

Anita Angelica Moore (Co-Founder & CEO)

Blockchain advocate and blogger.
Operational experience in a blockchain AI company called Ephelants
Founder of Antler, an early stage VC firm.
MBA from Yale University
Bachelors in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University

David Shen (Co-Founder & Tech Lead)

Senior Engineer with over 30 years of coding experience
Worked with Facebook on News Feed
Built Huffington Post’s mobile app from scratch.
Ph.D. in Applied Math from Florida State University

Recent Catalyst Events

BSCPad Launch (IDO) on Starts: March 25th, 8:00 PM UTC, Ends: March 26th, 2021 at 1:00 PM UTC .
PAID Launch (IDO) on March 26th, 2021 at 2:00 PM UTC.
Pancakeswap Listing on March 26th, 2021 at 3:00 PM UTC.
Uniswap Launch on March 26th, 2021.

Upcoming Catalyst Events

BSC Mainnet Launch in April.
Polkadot Migration (Q3/Q4).
Any future announcements with popular artists.
Any future announcements with popular collector platforms.
Blind Boxes events may be a catalyst.

Conclusion

The team at Blind Boxes is rolling out a scalable, decentralized NFT mystery box platform. Both founders are established with advanced degrees.

Mystery boxes have proven successful inside and outside of crypto. This review specifically cites Pransky’s mystery box as an example.

While similar to Pransky, Blind Boxes’ approach focuses on scalability and interoperability and acts more as an aggregator with integrations into multiple platforms and marketplaces.

The key users on the platform include the Creator, Curator, and Collector.

All references can be found at the bottom of this page. Now, let’s end the review by reviewing the market potential and risks.

Market Potential

NFTs in general have seen massive growth in the past year. According to CoinGecko, the current NFT market cap is approximately $7-$8 Billion. As NFTs are still a relatively new market, it is possible there remains to be more room for significant growth.

The initial market cap of $BLES is approximately $832,500 USD. Rarible is a popular NFT marketplace, albeit very different, with a market cap of around $89,000,000.

Today, BLES is trading at $8.75 with a market cap of approximately $43,734,000. It is difficult to say in the short term where the price will go as it is in price discovery.

In the long term, if Blind Boxes is successful and were able to achieve Rarible’s ($RARI) market cap, long term holders would realize a 2x gain based on today’s prices, or 100x for early investors. That said, there is room to grow beyond Rarible market cap.

In reference to BSC (Binance Smart Chain) projects in general, in the short term, many BSC projects have done very well on initial launch. However, many of those same projects have not performed very well soon after (mid-short term). While I am in no way suggesting this is will happen, it is something I have noticed.

Risk & Concern

Some BSC Projects went through great launches that dive shortly after.
If an established competitor starts to offer a similar experience with easier user access.
Unlocks over the next 9 months.

*I was not able to find all of the specifics on the token distribution and vesting schedule.

Blind Boxes Links/References

Website: https://blindboxes.io/

Medium: https://blindboxes-io.medium.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/blindboxes_io

Telegram: https://t.me/blindboxes

Telegram Announcement Channel: https://t.me/blindboxesnews

White Paper: https://blindboxes.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Blind-Boxes-Light-Paper-March-2021.pdf

Git Hub: https://github.com/BlindBoxesNFT

Discord: https://discord.gg/89jX6m4u