At the start of the new year, the Sappy Seals team, led by Wab.Eth, announced that their team had been working on some powerful new features for holders of the collection; and unlike most teams simply announcing that they have a new collection coming out, Sappy Seals has gone above expectations with an artificially intelligent meme generator and soul-bound tokens (SBT) for holders to celebrate the new year. 

SBT memes

To start, the soul-bound tokens given to holders is a special way for the Sappy Seals team to thank their community because these tokens are non-transferable, meaning they cannot be moved outside of a wallet. 

While not a token that can generate profit like standard NFTs, SBTs provide holders with associated utilities and benefits that can never be removed. They can also be carried as a special status symbol that allows them to pass through any community token-gate so long as the token itself is created to do so. 

Competition with Pudgy Penguins?

Sappy Seals, however, is not the first NFT collection to provide users with SBTs. Late in 2022, Pudgy Penguins and Sotheby's partnered to auction certain tokens from the Pudgy Penguin collection and included SBT tokens to the auction winners to help improve provenance and showcase their interactions with Sotheby's.

Though there is no clear competition between the two collections, there are similarities and it is starting to show. Both collections showcase arctic animals with similar art styles that are cute, friendly, and cartoonish. Further, the fact that both collections offer SBTs is also a surprise because they were announced at similar times. 

AI-generated memes

One thing Pudgy Penguins does not have is artificial intelligence. More than just  SBTs, the Sappy Seals actual announcement is that they have created a meme generator that links Sappy Seal NFTs to an AI machine that then generates a meme based on the token. 

Although this is not the most groundbreaking utility for an AI machine, it is one that still fits the Sappy Seals community, which is strongly encouraged to create memes and jokes using tokens from their collection. 

AI and blockchain

The application of artificial intelligence by Sappy Seals should not come as a shock either. AI technology had significant breakthroughs in 2022 and is starting to become a realistic tool for ordinary people online with websites like ChatGPT leading the way.

There are a wide variety of applications that AI and machine learning can create with blockchain technologies and it is exciting to see these applications extending to NFT communities even with something as simple and goofy as meme generation. 

The thesis at Sappy Seals, according to one of the comments in their thread, is that AI-generated memes have special potential to expand the realm of decentralized IPs which has created great debate within the BAYC community following Ryder Ripps countless attempts to plagiarize Yuga’s artwork. With these discussions being considered by lesser-known communities such as Sappy Seals, it’ll be interesting to see how much more of a role AI technology will play a part in web3.