Unpause: Immortal Player Characters (2018) Historic Paper Wallet NFTs with On-Chain Innovation

In Jan 2018, shortly after Ethereum NFT projects like Crypto Punks, Ether Rocks, and Mooncats; legendary veteran programmer and game designer Ed Annunziata announced an NFT project that combined the best features of on-chain NFT loot stats, physical RPG collectibles, Open Source art, and metaverse building lore. On March 15th 2018, the first mint of these Pre-ERC721 tokens became available via an innovative physical Paper Wallet system.

UPDATE: There were 2,604 IPCs minted on-chain in 2018. Less than 200 minted between 2019–June 2022. The collection stands at 12,000 NFTs.

This recently re-recognized project is Immortal Player Characters by Ed Annuziata, creator of Ecco the Dolphin, and lead on Sega Genesis titles such as X-Men I & II, Spider-Man, Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun, and many more.

Immortal Player Characters Paper Wallet

The following is an explanation of the project, information about the creator, how to obtain an Immortal Player Characters NFT, and more about the NFT Archaeology community.

Disclaimer: Not all aspects of the Immortal Player Character blockchain smart contracts have not been explored or documented by the author. Proceed at your own risk. Interacting with any contract, including this one, may have unknown implications. Do your own research (DYOR) please!

Immortal Player Characters is a series of NFTs that depict on-chain DNA for generative avatars with stats that describe their basic features like height and gender, as well as RPG stats like dexterity and luck. These loot-like stats enable each IPC NFT token to be used inter-operably across different blockchain games. These NFTs are also compliant with the ERC721 standard, though the contract was deployed before the official start of the ERC721 era on March 19th 2018 with SuSquares.

Below is NFT Relic’s history of explored ERC721 NFTs on Ethereum before March 19th 2018, created before this was published (Shout out @BlackstarXXI 🙏🏾). Many of those projects are recognized today as historic and innovative including Etheria, Curio Cards, CryptoKitties, and MoonCats.

[embed]NFT Relics: The Timeline of Collectible Vintage NFTs on Ethereum until the ERC-721 Standard Implementation

In researching Immortal Player Characters, launched March 15th 2018, it seems the project has been waiting years for the community to catch up with the vision. Below is an in-depth analysis of the IPC project from Crypto Currency News published around the launch.

[embed]Immortal Player Characters: Blockchain Game Characters You Can Keep What's one of the worst things that can happen to a gamer? They build up a character-experience, inventory, what have…cryptocurrencynews.com

These on-chain generated characters were designed to be platform independent. Take your Immortal Player Characters (IPCs) to whatever metaverse or game platform you choose. In addition to minting IPCs on the Ethereum blockchain, Annunziata also crafted an innovative Paper Wallet system to physically hold and trade your IPC. More on that later, next we’ll learn more about the creator of Immortal Player Characters, Ed Annunziata.

About Creator, Ed Annunziata

The history of video games would not be the same without legendary game developer, Ed Annunziata. According to strafefox on Youtube in the mid-80’s, “a young programmer and game producer worked at Sunburst Communications.” where he helped create educational software like titles like, “The Voyage of the Mimi.”

Later (as better explained in the video below) Annunziata, as a game producer for Sega of America, created licensed titles such as Spider-Man, X-Men, and Jurassic Park before getting the green light for his long envisioned aquatic masterpiece, Ecco the Dolphin. If you don’t know Ecco, this game was considered both financially and culturally a phenomenon at the time of release. Here’s a commercial from the time:

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Strafefox’s video goes much deeper, but stay with me and let’s learn more about Immortal Player Characters after the jump…

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About Immortal Player Characters

Immortal Player Characters is an ERC721 compliant NFT Project on the Ethereum blockchain, deployed on March 15th 2018. The smart contract is located here and is unverified. You can view the contract by reading the White Paper and interact with the contract by using MyEtherWallet:

• Go to the MyEtherWallet website
• Select Browser Extension to sign in via wallet connect
• Go to Contract on the left column, then Interact with Contract
• Finally, select ImmortalPlayerCharacters from the Contract Type dropdown menu in the middle

The project was created by the team at Playchemy, a video game studio based in Montara, California, USA. The 2D RPG pixel art is cleverly open sourced (CC BY-SA) from OpenGameArt.org. This appears to make Immortal Player Characters one of the earliest Open Source Art NFT projects. Ed explains:

“The art is a representation of the DNA of each IPC, but that DNA can be translated into other visuals based on the game. For example, if you bring your IPC to a world where all the characters are realistic horses in Unreal Engine 5, then the IPC DNA will translate the traits of your character to fit that instance of the NFT token.” — Ed Annunziata, Creator of Immortal Player Characters

The IPC Smart Contract full text is available inside the whitepaper on the IPC website HERE. There are functions in the contracts such as:

• BuyIPC (purchase from contract marketplace. I’m still testing this function, suggest waiting to use, updates coming when available, DYOR!)
• CreateRandomizedIPC (mint function)
• RandomizeDNA (reroll your character)
• SetIPCPrice (sets the selling price of your IPC in the contract marketplace)
• Many others that will be explored in future articles. You can interact with them using MyEtherWallet’s website. View IPCs on the MyIPC.io website.

Here is a link the Opensea collection. The images do not appear (yet!) and the contract is not verified (yet!) because the Playchemy is building its own viewer (IPC Explorer) and marketplace (MyIPC.io), to be explained further down. The tokens are tradable ERC721s on Opensea, Looks Rare, etc.

How to obtain a paper wallet Immortal Player Characters NFT minted in 2018

The first ERC721 IPCs from this contract were minted on March 15th 2018. At the time, IPCs were claimed physically, mostly by mail, using the innovative Paper Wallet system. The Paper Wallets are Ethereum wallets, and each has the IPC minted inside, with the private key printed on one side and the IPC stats printed on the other side. As of publishing, Playchemy has about 500 2018 minted IPCs still in inventory for sale using Paypal. Here’s the link if you’d like to collect Immortal Player Characters in a 2018 Paper Wallet.

https://www.immortalplayercharacters.com/product-page/ipc-in-her-own-ethereum-wallet

A total of 2,833 have been minted. There is a contract function that would allow the Dev, Ed Annunziata, to create an additional batch (or tranche) in the **IpcReleaseControl** function. Accord to Annunziata, he will be reaching out to the IPC Collector community in the coming months to get feedback on this function, which is not fully understood by this author at publishing.

Mint an Immortal Player Characters NFT from the Smart Contract using MyEtherWallet

If you would like to mint a randomly generated Immortal Player Characters NFT (unknown collection size limit), you may do so by connecting your non-custodial wallet to MyEtherWallet. Use the instructions above, then from the IPC smart contract:

• Go to the CreateRandomizedIPC function and fill in the sections below
• _name (string): Type in a name of your choice for your random IPC NFT
• _price (uint256): Set the price for your IPC in cents. It can’t be zero. Must be between 1 cent and 100000000 cent ($1 Million). Annunziate says, “If you never want to sell you IPCs, then set the price at $1,000,000” (use the number 100000000 in the contract form).
• ETH amount: The mint price is $0.27 per IPC NFT according to the IPCPriceinCents function. Send at least $0.27 per IPC (MyEtherWallet made me put at least 0.0018 ether as of publishing to complete the transaction, so DYOR.). The contract will send back any extra but you need to send at least the ether equivalent of $0.27 (possibly more) to mint.
• Hit Write button and confirm the transaction to mint an IPC, you’ll pay gas fees to the Ethereum blockchain as well (Likely ~$2-$10 in eth)
• Go to MyIPC.io and enter the Token ID of your newly minted IPC to view it

Note: Newly minted IPCs will all be 2022 mints, minted on-chain at exactly the moment you interact with the IPC smart contract. Only the first 2,604 NFTs existing in Paper Wallets and early digital mints are 2018 minted IPCs. An analysis of mints by year is coming.

After the jump we’ll talk about how to join the Immortal Player Characters community and view your own IPC in augmented reality and online.

Jeremiah Long’s NFT Archaeology Talk at The Boardroom Bleachers at Veecon 2022

I had the opportunity to share information about Immortal Player Characters at Veecon. It was great to see the reactions to this 2018 project and to the field of NFT Archaeology. More on that later!

Dapps: MyIPC Viewer and IPC Explorer

There are two excellent Dapps for interacting with your Immortal Player Character. The classic solution is the IPC Explorer, on Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store app that lets you view your IPCs in augmented reality or AR. You scan your IPCs QR code (the bottom one), then point your phone’s camera at an IPC logo. Your IPC will pop up animated in augmented reality. I find that the button placement could use some fine tuning, but otherwise this is a fun and very visual way to interact with your IPC. I have shown this app to NFT collectors, collectibles experts, techies, and kids; and it is always a fun experience to share.

IPC Explorer Augmented Reality Viewer

The other Dapp is a recently upgraded online IPC viewer called MyIPC.io. Developed by Johnny de Alba /mode7.eth for Playchemy, MyIPC is a great way to look at the entire Immortal Player Characters NFT collection. Incredible work by a talented Developer!

“The part I enjoyed the most has been trying out new technologies and exploring how other NFT projects do things. To do this I have been following the NFT community and have taken up NFT collecting so I can better understand what makes them so special to people. I’ve even found myself enjoying NFT collecting and the communities surrounding some of these great projects.” — mode7.eth

Feature rich, this website viewer shows the IPC stats, gif animation, XP (?!?), and Gold (?!?!). MyIPC has plans for future upgrades that will enable further interaction with your IPCs.

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IPC City — 2018 Metaverse exe

In the future there will be a publicly available version of the prototype metaverse, IPC City, also demo’d in 2018. Underlying all these Dapps and ideas is a backbone of Ethereum Smart Contracts that allow for outside developers to create additional use cases for the Immortal Player Characters ecosystem. There’s a lot to explore in this territory that we’ll cover in future articles.

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How to collect your own Immortal Player Characters and contact the Playchemy team

The most straightforward way to collect your own IPC is to buy it from Playchemy’s official Immortal Player Characters website to buy a physical 2018 Paper Wallet. This wallet will be mailed to your location. Pay via Paypal.

[embed]IPC in her own Ethereum Wallet | ipcs Simply the easiest way to acquire IPCs. These random IPCs come to you beautifully printed with all the stats, immutable…www.immortalplayercharacters.com

Ed Annunziata and team are available to talk about IPCs on Twitter and in the NFT Relics Discord. If you would like to contact the team at Playchemy, either use the form on the IPC website or reach Ed Annunziata directly via Twitter:

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For a deep dive explainer of the project, check out this great video from January 29th 2018 by Tech Feed on Youtube:

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Author’s Note

As a self styled NFT Archaeologist, Jeremiah Long, is a journalist and Web3 Buidler based in Atlanta, Georgia. Known to stay up all night looking through Etherscan cataloging interesting projects on the blockchain. He is the founder of NFTATL.io, a decentralized Web3 Conference and Resource for under-represented artists and creators in Atlanta. Currently working on NFT Archaeology Digs and decentralizing historic archives.

NOTE: Most NFT Projects are not worth sharing because of issues with the contract, no Devs, no socials, lots of reasons. This project was found on Etherscan, then the website was found with the buyable Paper Wallets through Paypal. I made an order for 2 Paper Wallets. I did not hear anything back for a few days so I reached out the website, and Ed Annunziata answered my email. After talking with Ed, I ordered an additional lot of 86 IPC Paper Wallets that I’ve been mostly giving away to the community at NFT Archaeology talks. The IPC website did not originally contain much of the jargon we see today like “NFT” or “Discord” and the Paper Wallet system is uncommon, which is why, IMO, this project was not widely known. Much time was spent studying and understanding it before reaching out to the greater NFT Archaeology community to get some peer review on the work.

Even then, this is a complex project with many moving parts, and many more hours of research and work went into producing this final story. NFT Archaeologists around the world do this work with no guarantee of support but we believe it is important to understand the history of the blockchain.

Thank you to historians of all kinds, especially the uniquely qualified, out there working at night in the dark, your work is appreciated!

Please follow me on Twitter for more info and updates. https://twitter.com/_jdl