How to Buy Your First VeeFriends

I have spent the last year imagining, creating and developing a project called VeeFriends. Now — after all the hours spent researching, learning and of course, drawing — my vision has come to life. I invite you all to the inaugural auction of my personal NFT project which launched Tuesday 5/11 at 5:55pm ET. For those of you who have been keeping up with me on Discord or Instagram, you know it’s not something you want to miss!

via GIPHY

This article will teach you everything you need to know in order to make your first VeeFriends purchase, but before we get to that, I want to say thank you. You all have been the most “Patient Pandas” imaginable, and it has been so exciting seeing my community asking questions and getting educated on the crypto world these past few months. I could have done this project with fiat money or credit cards but I didn’t. That’s because I know that this is the future – all things digital, crypto, NFT — and I want to make sure you are all ready for the shift! 

That being said, you shouldn’t buy a thing — mine or otherwise — without first doing your due diligence, your research, your 50 hours of homework. If you’re starting now, don’t worry. I will link to all the latest blogs you need to check out to fully understand what I’m doing with VeeFriends and the larger context of the NFT market throughout this article. I also encourage you to join my Discord group, which has become an epic networking community — 140K members strong! — for all those interested in supporting or learning more about the project on a moment-by-moment basis. 

For now, Team GaryVee and I will get you set up to buy your first VeeFriends today! 

WHAT IS VEEFRIENDS? 

VeeFriends is an ambitious NFT project centered around characters that have traits I truly believe in and want people to aspire toward. It is also a blueprint launch or example for anyone with an audience on how I believe a truly valuable NFT project should be developed and executed.

HOW VEEFRIENDS WORKS

VeeFriends started as a collection of characters conceived and hand drawn by me. All the characters have alliterative names — like “Adventurous Astronaut,” “Courageous Cockatoo,” “Empathetic Elephant” or “Independent Inchworm” — which correspond to the most positive attributes that I value in myself and others. Most importantly, VeeFriends makes use of the smart contract technology of NFTs to provide real value to anyone who owns one. 

There are 268 characters in the VeeFriends world and a total of 10,255 tokens. These tokens are broken down into three categories: 9,400 Admission tokens, 300 Access tokens and 555 Gift Goat tokens. Every single token is also a ticket to VeeCon, a yearly multi-day superconference that I will throw over a three-year period (2022, 2023 and 2024). This conference will be an iconic event rivaling some of the greatest conferences in the world around entrepreneurship, marketing, ideas, creativity, community building and more. 

VeeFriends is bigger than art or drawings; it’s about IP, community and legacy. It’s the beginning of an intellectual property empire that I will be building for the rest of my life. VeeFriends is my Harry Potter, my Hello Kitty, my Star Wars, and I will be spending the next 45 years making these 268 characters mean something in culture — from television to video games, streetwear, consumer packaged goods and more!

Now that you have a baseline understanding of what VeeFriends is all about, I will kick it over to Team GaryVee to explain the auction and purchasing process. 

Team GaryVee here 👋

Hey everyone! We couldn’t be more excited for the launch of VeeFriends.com. To prepare yourself for the drop, let’s go through the process you’ll need to follow step-by-step. First, please note that VeeFriends cannot be purchased with fiat money or credit cards. In order to participate, you will need to be set up with ETH in your non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet. To learn more, please check out one of our recent blogs, 4 Steps to Make Sure You Have Ethereum in Your Wallet.

HOW A DUTCH AUCTION WORKS

VeeFriends will be sold according to a Dutch Auction style. This means that each token will have a ceiling start price and every millisecond that the auction is live, the price will be DECREASING until it hits the floor end price. In this case, the lowest cost tokens will start at 2.5 ETH and auction down to a floor of 0.5 ETH. Once a token hits the floor, it will no longer decrease in price. 

GAS FEES

On top of the auction price of each token, you will need to be prepared with enough ETH to cover gas fees. Gas fees are the additional costs of performing transactions on the Ethereum network. Think of them like an Uber surge charge – the more people active on the Ethereum blockchain at the time you’re trying to make a purchase, the higher the gas fees will be. Unfortunately, this is just a part of how the blockchain works, and neither Gary nor MetaMask or VeeFriends can do anything to reduce them. It is important to note that even if you lose or cancel your bid for a particular token, you will still have to cover the associated gas fees. VeeFriends does not control or receive any portion of these costs.

That being said, you do have the option to edit your gas fee amount – we will walk you through this process a little later in the article. Generally, the higher your gas fee, the faster your transaction – aka, the better your chance of winning your bid! If you really, really want a particular VeeFriend, you may consider paying a higher gas fee to speed up your transaction. Alternatively, paying lower gas fees seems like a good idea upfront, but may hurt your chances. Like paying extra for next day shipping, higher gas fees are sometimes an unfortunate cost of convenience. 

Ultimately, you should only pay an amount you are comfortable with and make sure you have enough ETH in your wallet to cover both the price of the token itself and the gas fees needed to complete the transaction. 

VEEFRIENDS AUCTION SCHEDULE

The inaugural release of VeeFriends will be a 5-day auction event held exclusively on the official VeeFriends website starting Tuesday, May 11 at 5:55pm ET. Each day at 5:55pm, tokens will drop and have a 20 hour auction period until they hit their floor price. Take a look at the full auction schedule below! 

STEP 1: CONNECT YOUR METAMASK WALLET 

Now, you are officially ready to buy your VeeFriends! First things first, you will need to have a non-custodial crypto wallet. For ease of use and accessibility, we recommend MetaMask. While you can go the mobile app route, we recommend using the MetaMask desktop Chrome extension for the best and easiest experience. If you don’t yet have a wallet, check out our blog How to Make a Cryptocurrency or NFT Wallet, but we have also provided a video walkthrough below:

Once you have your MetaMask account set up with ETH, go to the VeeFriends website and click the large “Connect Wallet” button in the top right hand corner. Then, click “MetaMask.”

STEP 2: CHOOSE YOUR DESIRED VEEFRIEND

Under the “Auctions” tab at the top of the screen, scroll through to browse the VeeFriends collection. You can search all tokens, or search by the Admission, Access and Gift categories. Check out the posts below for a crash course on how each token category works!

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by VeeFriends (@veefriends)

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by VeeFriends (@veefriends)

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by VeeFriends (@veefriends)

STEP 3: MAKE YOUR PURCHASE

Once you find a VeeFriend you like within your budget, click “Buy Now,” and a “Checkout” page will appear with a Token ID and the auction price as well as your balance:

Click “Proceed to Payment.” A pop-up will appear letting you know that your purchase is “In progress.”

At the same time, your MetaMask Chrome extension will also open with a notification pop-up:

Here you will see the gas fee with an option to “Edit.” If you are comfortable with the listed gas fee amount – and you have sufficient funds in your wallet – you can click the blue “Confirm” button. If, however, you wish to increase or lower your gas fee amount, click “Edit.” This will bring you to a screen where you can choose between “Slow,” “Average” or “Fast.” Remember, you will have to pay the associated gas fees regardless of whether you win your bid or not.

Gas prices will vary based on the network usage at the time of your purchase. You can check current gas prices via websites like Gas Now and Eth Gas Station, and historical gas prices via Etherscan. Also, check out this helpful resource to learn more about gas fees and transactions. 

🚨Important Note🚨

Once you’ve entered your desired gas amount, click “Confirm” and you will see that your purchase is now in progress. Once you get to this stage, it is important to be patient while your transaction is pending – this can take several minutes! Sometimes, people think their bid has failed when in reality, it is still pending. If you attempt the same bid multiple times, this builds up a queue that must be cleared or canceled. When this happens, you will be charged gas fees to cancel each transaction. For this reason, we recommend that you do not repeat the same transaction over and over so that you don’t lose excessive money in gas fees. 

If you have a rejected or failed transaction when purchasing your VeeFriend, wait, reload page, and make sure the VeeFriend is still available for sale before repurchasing. Do not keep clicking retry, as this can result in multiple gas fee transactions. To confirm your NFT transaction was completed, visit Etherscan (https://etherscan.io/), search by wallet address, select the drop down menu next to “Token,” and it should display your tokens. VeeFriends will be listed under ERC-721.

You can also easily check the status of your bid via your MetaMask Chrome extension in the “Activity” tab. If it’s still pending, sit tight until your transaction is complete. 

After a successful bid, your VeeFriend will be visible in your MetaMask wallet. Congratulations! For a visual demonstration of the exact process you need to follow to buy your very own VeeFriend, please check out this video breakdown: 

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee)

VEEFRIENDS GIVEAWAYS

This project represents Gary’s lifework up until this point and for the next 45 years. For that reason, he wants to make sure that you guys — his OG community — are able to benefit from it! Gary understands that many of you may not be able to afford some of the token prices and gas fees, so to make sure you can still get in on the VeeFriends magic, he’s doing some free giveaways! 

To be eligible to possibly receive a free VeeFriend, please make sure you are all set up with the following:

1. Join the VeeFriends Discord community, a growing network of over 140,000 people
2. Make sure you are keeping an eye on the channel #giveaway-info in the VeeFriends Discord 

Do not worry. Gary has reserved a large number of tokens specifically for giveaways, so stay tuned and stay ready! 👀

TAKEAWAYS

Let’s go over the steps one last time: 

1. Once the site is live (5:55pm ET), take some time to browse through it and understand how it all works! — the token types, Dutch Auction, gas fees and purchasing process
2. Connect your MetaMask to your Chrome Browser
3. Browse the VeeFriends collection and choose your desired token 
4. Make your purchase and enjoy! 

VeeFriends is officially here and we can’t wait for all of you to see what Gary and the team have been working so hard for. 

Thank you for reading! If you found value in this article, please share it on your favorite social platforms or send it to a friend interested in VeeFriends today!