PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The long-awaited collection combines intricate 3D art, deep interactive storytelling, immersive gaming experiences, and cutting-edge blockchain technology in a limited collection of 123 unique sentient robots
Feb 22, 2025 — Today marks the official announcement of Trashformers, an innovative NFT collection built on the Chia blockchain that transforms digital trash into treasure. Developed meticulously over two years by a team of three passionate creators, this collection introduces 123 uniquely designed sentient robots crafted from the discarded remnants of a future civilization, blending humor with technology in an unprecedented digital collectible experience.
The Trashyverse Awakens
Trashformers reimagines a distant future where humanity’s discarded junk has gained sentience, creating an entire society of robots constructed from everyday items. Drawing inspiration from the iconic gonk droids of Star Wars and the comedic sensibilities of Spaceballs, the collection delivers a humorous take on science fiction while establishing its own distinct intellectual property and universe known as the Trashyverse.
The project originated when the Spacebucks discord community reached out to Seth, a member of CNI and creator of the successful Chia Friends collection, seeking an NFT collection for their ecosystem. Seth then enlisted the talents of Grig and Eliott from the BatGAN community, another Chia-based NFT project designed to foster creator collaboration and innovation within the Chia ecosystem.
“What if all these trash robots had a history? What if we dive into the backstory behind these trash robots?” said Seth, describing the project’s genesis. “We wanted to do something that was Spaceballs-adjacent while also being its own intellectual property and lampooning all of science fiction. It had to be really fun, enjoyable and silly, but it also had to push us in a new direction.”
The timing coincided with significant life events for the creators. Eliott was a new father for the second time when he joined the project, often working late nights on his iPad creating the intricate designs while simultaneously caring for his newborn. “A lot of late nights spent on the iPad, working on all the Transformers artwork, while also feeding the kid at the same time,” Eliott recalled, highlighting the passion that drove the project forward despite personal challenges.
Beyond Traditional NFTs: A New Standard in Digital Collectibles
Trashformers pushes the boundaries of what an NFT collection can offer, setting a new standard for digital collectibles on the Chia blockchain. Each character features extraordinarily detailed 3D voxel art designs with unique parts, personalities, and histories. These aren’t simply static images but fully realized characters with background stories connected to a comprehensive 25-chapter book that details the entire Trashyverse.
The technical specifications of each NFT go far beyond industry standards. Every Trashformer includes high-resolution 3D models compatible with future metaverse applications, AI-ready character data for potential interactive experiences, and advanced metadata supporting future composability and customization. The collection implements Chip-0015 technology for rich metadata embedding, allowing for unprecedented detail and functionality within each token.
“One of the things that I’m doing this year is working on a series of publishing tools for creating content that can be integrated more deeply than just basic NFTs,” explained Grig, CEO of Sumset.tech and the developer behind NFTr.pro which makes NFT tools for creators. “Each character has its own AI prompt data. It takes everything from the main storyline and all of the attributes and stuff that couldn’t be baked into the story and creates a detailed description for an AI being that would be able to have a conversation with you.”
Grig’s contributions to the project were extensive and multifaceted, encompassing technical development, story writing, universe building, game development using the Unity game engine, Chia blockchain with WalletConnect integration, music and sound effects design, AI integration, rendering, custom programming of the Unity-based variant generator, development of Mintr (the free tool used for creating the collection—NFTr.pro/Mintr ), and designing the composable metadata standard and implementation. His vision for the technological aspects of the project helped elevate Trashformers beyond a traditional NFT collection into a 3D online digital experience.
Eliott, an industrial designer by day who normally creates kitchen appliances and countertop products for major corporations, brought his professional skills to the project, creating the 3D models and detailed character designs. His background in CAD and product design proved invaluable in developing the unique aesthetic of the Trashformers collection.
“This was made in a very interesting headspace,” Eliott shared. “I think I almost needed to be sleep-deprived to be able to come up with some of this stuff in a way that made sense enough for me to spend a few hours doing it at the time. Seth was always just pushing us to make it weirder, make it weirder. Like what can you do to push it one step further?”
The resulting character designs range from recognizable objects like toasters and pizza boxes to more abstract combinations of junk, each with a distinct personality and backstory. Characters like the “Omni-glyph,” which began as an accidental compilation of multiple components, became fan favorites due to their unique appearance and backstory.
Revolutionary Minting Experience: Turning Trash into Digital Treasure
Trashformers introduces a groundbreaking minting process that significantly enhances the collector experience through an interactive narrative journey. Rather than simply purchasing an NFT directly, collectors engage with a carefully crafted storyline that brings the Trashyverse to life.
The process begins when collectors purchase a “dumpster” NFT using Spacebucks cryptocurrency. These dumpsters appear on Mint Garden alongside the revealed Trashformers, creating an evolving collection that transforms as more dumpsters are converted into characters. After acquiring a dumpster, collectors visit trashformers.xyz to engage with an interactive vendor within a virtual storefront.
The interactive experience, built using Unity with custom Chia wallet integration, allows users to connect their wallet and present their dumpster NFT to the vendor. The dumpster is then “burned” through a special Inferno script developed by community member Lucky Eight, which facilitates a clean swap where the dumpster is sacrificed in exchange for a randomly assigned Trashformer character.
“I don’t know of any other NFT project, especially on Chia, that has the quality of a minting experience that we’ve put together,” said Seth. “About a year into it, we said, ‘You know what we should do? We should have a really cool minting process.’ And we thought, ‘Okay, yeah, that’ll add some scope to the project.’ It definitely took a lot longer, but I think it’s worth it. We definitely are in this for the long haul. We were just like, we want to go quality over speed on this project.”
The minting experience represents one of the most sophisticated implementations of blockchain technology in a user-friendly interface, seamlessly connecting the Unity game engine with the Chia blockchain. The system is compatible with both the Chia reference wallet and Sage wallet, automatically detecting which one the user is accessing and adjusting accordingly.
Meticulously Planned Phased Release Strategy
The collection is being released through a carefully orchestrated rollout strategy designed to reward early supporters while ensuring fair distribution:
The first week, which began yesterday, features 42 NFTs available exclusively to BatGAN NFT holders at a discounted rate. These are released through a series of daily riddles and puzzles in the BatGAN Discord channel, with six NFTs available each day. Interested collectors must first join the waitlist by messaging Seth, then solve the daily riddles to earn the opportunity to purchase.
The second week will see another 42 NFTs made available through the Spacebucks Discord community, maintaining the same daily release schedule of six NFTs per day. This phase acknowledges the connection between Trashformers and Spacebucks, with Trashformers serving as the official NFT collection of the Spacebucks ecosystem.
The final phase will be a public release of the remaining NFTs, potentially through a single batch release on NFT marketplace Mint Garden. The team is also holding back a select number of NFTs for giveaways, community engagement events, and possible Mint Garden auctions.
The complete collection is priced at 250,000 Spacebucks per NFT, with discounts available for BatGAN holders. This pricing structure reinforces the connection between Trashformers and the Spacebucks ecosystem, creating a circular economy within the Chia blockchain community.
“We thought it through, and we want everyone to have a chance. Ideally, it’ll go to the people who really want them,” Grig explained regarding the distribution strategy. The phased approach also allows for growing awareness of the project while giving dedicated community members priority access.
Technical Innovation: Setting New Standards for NFT Technology
Trashformers represents a significant leap forward in NFT technology, leveraging Chia’s latest blockchain capabilities while introducing innovative new approaches to digital ownership and interaction.
The collection implements Chip 15 for rich metadata embedding, allowing for unprecedented detail in each NFT. This includes not only visual attributes but also extensive character information, positioning data for 3D models, and AI-compatible personality descriptions.
One of the most impressive technical achievements is the custom Unity code integration with Chia wallet connectivity, extended into WebGL for browser-based interactive experiences. “A lot of what took a while was me messing around with technology and trying to build stuff that nobody’s tried before,” Grig explained. “One of the things is building in the wallet connect logic into Unity and then extending that into WebGL.”
This integration allows for a seamless connection between the game engine and blockchain wallets, creating possibilities for interactive experiences that respond directly to token ownership. The system supports both the Chia reference wallet and Sage wallet, with the team recommending Sage for the most reliable experience.
The special Inferno burn script used for the NFT transformation process represents another technical innovation, allowing for a clean exchange without a moment where the user owns both the dumpster and the Trashformer simultaneously. This maintains the integrity of the collection while providing a satisfying conversion experience.
Each NFT contains extensive metadata including the 3D model components, descriptions of where they sit in 3D space (rotation, scale, and location), turntable MP4 animations, high-resolution stills, and AI-ready data formatted in markdown. This comprehensive approach to metadata ensures that the collection will remain compatible with future technologies and use cases.
“The metadata is basically every part of the full model,” Grig described. “So you get, with each NFT, the individual sections and the description of where they sit in 3D space, their rotation and scale and location, and that way anything can read them in and build a new one from them.”
A Universe of Stories: Comprehensive Worldbuilding and Narrative Depth
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Trashformers is the depth of its storytelling. Beyond the visual appeal of the characters, the collection introduces a rich narrative universe through a complete 25-chapter book written by Grig during the project’s development.
“While everyone else was out having fun in the sun this last summer, I spent most of it writing,” Grig shared. The resulting book details the entire Trashyverse, including individual character storylines with interconnected histories, factions, and special character types throughout the collection.
The narrative begins with the premise that human civilization has discarded its refuse into the galaxy, and at some point in the distant future, this junk gained sentience and began to wonder about its origins. This premise allows for both humor and subtle environmental commentary on consumption and waste.
“There’s a message there which would be the garbage that you are producing has an impact too,” explained Grig, suggesting potential educational applications for the project in the future, such as children’s books with environmental themes.
The writing process was extensive and meticulous, requiring detailed tracking of characters across chapters. “I didn’t realize how much tracking I was going to have to do of every chapter and every character,” Grig noted. “In fact, there’s more detail than the book ever could contain. It turns out that you end up with more than you end up writing about.”
The storytelling also incorporates puzzle elements, with hidden challenges embedded within the narrative that collectors can solve to unlock additional content or experiences. This gamification of the storytelling adds another layer of engagement for the community.
“I’ve always been interested in writing. I’ve never published anything, but I’ve been a fan of Douglas Adams and a lot of sci-fi,” Grig shared. “I love how deep those universes can get. I really wanted to explore that world and inject this idea of comedy à la Spaceballs and a little bit of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy into a sort of new hybrid of sci-fi comedy.”
Future Vision: The Trashyverse Expands
The Trashformers team has outlined ambitious plans for the project’s future, seeing the current collection as merely the beginning of a larger ecosystem of creative content and technological innovation.
Foremost among these plans is integration with metaverse platforms and game engines. The 3D models and comprehensive metadata were designed specifically with this future in mind, allowing the characters to be imported into various digital environments. The team has selected GLB files (a binary compressed version of GLTF files) as the format of choice for future iterations, ensuring wide compatibility with game engines and metaverse platforms.
“I’d love to see another collection come out. This first round, there’s been just a lot of core technology being put together and tested,” Grig explained. “What I’d like to see next is characters with rigging so that if you’ve got spider legs, it actually walks like a spider when you drop it into a game engine.”
AI-powered character interactions using the embedded personality data represent another exciting frontier. Each character’s NFT contains detailed markdown-formatted data that could be used by AI systems to create interactive versions of the characters that maintain their unique personalities and backstories.
The team envisions numerous content extensions, including spinoff stories focusing on individual characters, potential children’s book collections featuring the robots, and even possible film adaptation opportunities. “I definitely would love to see somebody in the film world get excited about the potential of turning this into a film,” Grig shared. “I think there’s a lot here. It’s just rich with detail.”
Further development of the composable character technology could allow for customization and recombination of character parts, potentially through integration with “fusion technology” that Grig, Tim, and Mikey Zoo have been developing for other projects. “My hope is that these characters can be used in the fusion project in the future,” Grig explained. “Ideally, you’d be able to buy a few and make your own.”
Community Connection: Building Bridges in the Chia Ecosystem
The Trashformers project maintains strong ties to multiple Chia communities, serving as a bridge between different segments of the ecosystem. Having originated from collaboration between Spacebucks and BatGAN communities, the project continues to foster connections through its distribution strategy and ongoing engagement.
The BatGAN Discord, described by Grig as “a really fun place,” has been instrumental in the project’s development. “Seth set up all kinds of channels in there, from generative art to pixel art to literally just setting up channels for individual people’s projects,” Grig explained, highlighting the collaborative environment that birthed Trashformers.
Interactive giveaways and puzzles through Discord channels keep the community engaged during the release process. The daily riddles that determine who gets access to purchase the NFTs create a game-like atmosphere around the collection’s distribution, encouraging active participation rather than passive consumption.
Twitter-based competitions extend this engagement to the broader cryptocurrency community, with retweets and likes determining winners of free NFTs. During the Twitter Spaces announcement, the team conducted a live giveaway using this method, demonstrating their commitment to community-building beyond their immediate circles.
The project’s official designation as the NFT collection of the Spacebucks ecosystem creates a meaningful connection between the cryptocurrency and the digital collectibles. By pricing the collection in Spacebucks rather than XCH (Chia’s native cryptocurrency), the team reinforces the utility of Spacebucks within the ecosystem.
“I wanted this to be the first NFT that you could buy with Spacebucks,” Seth explained, though he acknowledged that others like Mikey Zoo had previously experimented with similar approaches. “It’s really powerful and it really does create a more circular kind of ecosystem where everybody kind of benefits.”
When asked about plans for the Spacebucks received through sales, the team emphasized their commitment to the community: “Working on this project for two years, we’re really all about building that community and getting it to grow. It wouldn’t make any sense to go at it in the crib like this,” Eliott assured concerned community members during the announcement.
The Creators: A Confluence of Talents
The Trashformers project represents a unique confluence of talents from different creative and technical backgrounds, coming together to create something greater than the sum of its parts.
Seth, previous creator of Chia Friends and member of CNI, brought together the creative team and guided the project’s vision. His experience with successful NFT projects on the Chia blockchain provided valuable insights into both the technical and community aspects of the launch. Seth’s push for creative boundaries—his constant refrain of “make it weirder”—helped drive the project’s distinctive aesthetic and tone.
“I generally think the world needs more weirdness and just more fun,” Seth explained. “That seems pretty ironic because most of my day job is spent doing work in enterprise-type startups, and there’s not a whole lot of fun in those. So this is a great outlet to have more fun out in the world.”
Grig, CEO of Sumset.tech and developer behind NFTr.pro, led technical development, storytelling, game integration, and metadata design. His contributions encompass story writing, universe building, game development, Chia integration, music and sound effects design, AI integration, rendering, custom programming, and development of essential tools for the collection.
Grig’s technical expertise allowed the project to push boundaries in multiple directions simultaneously, from the interactive minting experience to the comprehensive metadata structure. His interest in writing and science fiction brought depth to the Trashyverse, creating a rich narrative foundation that elevates the collection beyond simple digital art.
“Working on by yourself is kind of lonely. There’s only so much that one creative brain can come up with,” Grig reflected. “If you get a bunch of really creative people together, it’s like lightning in a bottle. Super exciting.”
Eliott, a professional industrial designer who normally creates kitchen appliances and countertop products for major corporations, created the 3D character models, bringing his product design expertise to the digital world of Trashformers. His background in CAD and 3D modeling provided a solid foundation for the collection’s distinctive visual style.
For Eliott, the project provided a creative outlet that contrasted with his day job: “It could be a little bit draining and life-sucking. So it was kind of funny to come back at night or on the weekends and make these appliances that were trash from the future. I was able to use the skills I use every day, but in a more fun, lighthearted way.”
The collaboration between these three creators, each bringing different skills and perspectives, created a synergy that allowed the project to transcend traditional boundaries between art, technology, and storytelling. Their commitment to quality over speed—evidenced by the two-year development period—has resulted in a collection that sets new standards for what an NFT project can be.
Environmental Themes: A Message in the Medium
Beyond entertainment, Trashformers carries subtle but meaningful environmental messaging about consumption and waste. The core premise—that humanity’s discarded junk eventually gains sentience and begins to question its origins—serves as a gentle prompt for reflection on our own consumption patterns.
“The human race eventually discards all of its refuse into the galaxy. And at some point in the far future, it gains sentience and starts to wonder where it came from,” explained Grig. “There’s a message there for children, which would be the garbage that you are producing has an impact too.”
This thematic underpinning gives the project additional depth and potential applications beyond pure entertainment. The team has discussed the possibility of children’s books featuring the Trashformer characters that could communicate environmental messages in an engaging and non-didactic way.
“I think kids would really love to see these robots made of trash, and the Trashformers have exciting stories to tell. There’s an underlying concept of learning that your trash goes somewhere, and has a long life after it’s thrown away.” Grig suggested. The combination of humorous characters with subtle environmental themes creates opportunities for educational content that entertains while it informs.
Conclusion: A New Chapter in Digital Collectibles
With its blend of intricate 3D art, deep interactive storytelling, immersive gaming experiences, and cutting-edge blockchain technology, Trashformers represents not just a new NFT collection but a potential paradigm shift in how digital collectibles can function in the broader digital ecosystem.
The two-year development period has resulted in a collection that pushes boundaries in multiple directions simultaneously, from the technical implementation of metadata standards to the creative development of a comprehensive fictional universe. By prioritizing quality over speed and focusing on long-term value rather than quick returns, the Trashformers team has created something with enduring appeal and potential.
As the collection rolls out over the coming weeks, with BatGAN members currently gaining first access through daily riddles and puzzles, the wider Chia community eagerly anticipates their opportunity to participate in this innovative project. Whether viewed as digital art, interactive storytelling, technical innovation, or environmental commentary, Trashformers offers something unique in the rapidly evolving landscape of blockchain-based digital collectibles.
For more information about Trashformers, visit trashformers.xyz or follow @TrashformersNFT on Twitter.
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About Chia Blockchain
Chia Network is building a better blockchain and smart transaction platform which is more decentralized, more efficient, and more secure. Founded by Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent, Chia uses a novel consensus algorithm called Proof of Space and Time, creating an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional proof-of-work blockchains.
About Spacebucks
Spacebucks is a cryptocurrency on the Chia blockchain that serves as the official currency of the Trashyverse. It facilitates transactions within the ecosystem and creates economic connections between different projects and communities.
About BatGAN
BatGAN is an NFT project on the Chia blockchain that focuses on building a community of creators developing projects within the Chia ecosystem. Founded by Seth, the community has become an incubator for creative collaboration and innovation.