When it comes to the growth and progress of an NFT utility project, “lore” is priceless. It serves as a key element that propels the project’s narrative. From Bored Apes to Forgotten Runes to Goblintown and everything in between, lore is frequently regarded as the foundation of a fruitful NFT initiative.

What does the phrase mean, though, exactly?

Lore, a phrase that unquestionably refers to a project’s distinctive and overarching story, has become murky among the NFT community. If you ask any creator or collector of oddities what lore is, you’ll probably get a variety of responses. And how are individuals who are steeped in Web3 meant to know what they’re truly getting when it comes to “lore” as a project deliverable without a standard, common definition, like, for instance, the one published by Webster’s Dictionary?

Defining lore

We must first comprehend what lore is as it exists under its strict definition in order to comprehend how it is seen on Web3. Essentially, lore refers to a set of customs and information passed down from one person to another and kept by a specific community (either through writing or word of mouth). Most people think of folklore when they hear the word “lore.” In other words, people relate the word to stories, fairytales, wizards, knights, dragons, and similar things. And a smart place to start is by comprehending lore as it relates to fiction.

When we think of legend in the twenty-first century, we frequently consider video games, cinematic universes, and other things in addition to traditional storytelling. And within these modern industries, mythology is frequently referred to as “the backstory” — everything that occurred in the past that provided the context for a video game, film, or television show to take place. Lore is essentially passive, whereas tale is active. Thus, according to Urban Dictionary, “the collective history and the sum of all knowledge known about a given fantasy or sci-fi universe” may be the most logical definition of lore that applies to popular culture.

The Saga Begins

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— Solana (@solana) June 21, 2022

We can create a baseline from here. Lore may represent the sum total of knowledge about a particular universe, but it’s crucial to remember that these universes are frequently dynamic. This is particularly true in games like Dungeons & Dragons, which have a rich backstory that dates back to the 1970s and is regularly changed and expanded.

What does that have to do with Web3? Let’s define lore in NFT utility terms as the collective knowledge of a project that relates to the continuously developing narrative that is produced within its ecosystem. Or, to put it another way, lore is a collection of made-up backstories that are always evolving. Sure, that can sound a little confusing, but the main point is that lore is just the fictional foundation for a project. The process is as follows: creators develop legend; lore drives the story; and, as a result, collectors and the community are impacted by a project.

But make it lore Web3

The Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult’s lore is one of the most distinctive examples seen in NFTs. The project, which was first started as a sizable collection of PFP wizards, has subsequently developed into a production firm that makes games, animated shows, comic books, and other things. The Forgotten Runes Book of Lore, a codex for each of the 10,000 Wizards in the collection, is the hub of it all, allowing its owner to dictate details about a specific NFT character’s past.

Forgotten Runes’ Book of Lore greatly increased community participation and established the value and appeal of narrative inside an NFT utility project. By giving collectors control over lore development, all 10,000 Wizards gained the ability to develop original spinoff stories, significantly enhancing the ecosystem while maintaining a connection to the Forgotten Runes IP.

However, while games like Loot and Le Anime, which are akin to Forgotten Runes, benefit from player involvement in the development of lore, not all projects do. Others, such as Woodies and BAYC, set the tone for the collection and sow the seeds for new initiatives, events, and ecosystem expansions by drawing on the notion of lore that was defined in the previous section.

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Indy Lore

For Woodies, NFT lore aided in creating a narrative for the project as a whole; this backstory communicated the project’s grand vision as being concentrated on character development, magical trees, and forest preservation initiatives. It demonstrated that while anyone can abandon a 10,000-supply modular PFP project, lore provides an additional layer of significance and conveys that a collection is about more than just speculation and prospective profit. The community of Woodies was better able to comprehend the project’s purpose thanks to lore, which made them feel more involved in and linked to the project’s creators.

In the case of BAYC, lore has been a major inspiration for almost all of Yuga Labs’ works. Given that Bored Apes originally represented a fictional yacht club filled with worn-out and bored NFT enthusiasts, the company has proceeded to build on this initial concept and recently released a new plot to go along with its established IP.

Yuga added a new character to the BAYC ecosystem with The Trial of Jimmy the Monkey, recounting his life in the past tense to establish the narrative for an upcoming NFT mint, skill game, and expanding environment. Yuga demonstrated the potential of expanding upon a project’s current narrative to produce fresh and thrilling experiences for collectors by upgrading the lore of the BAYC universe. This kind of lore usage in developing NFT utility projects is becoming more widespread, with many developers utilising “growing lore” as a deliverable.

The end never truly ends.

Lore is anything but static, which is the most important thing to understand when developing a story in the NFT universe. The essential worth of lore is found in the stories that are continuously being contributed to or derived from it, even though we should think of it as the collective knowledge about a project. Mythology has been used to provide the much-desired “utility” that many project roadmaps promise because creating lore and adding to it ultimately effect collectors.

Only time will be able to determine what bigger effects this may have on the NFT ecology, but for the time being, a precipice of doom appears to be in sight. Because low-lift narrative initiatives, similar to those of zines or monthly webcomics, may very well become the only driving factor for projects to come if the bar for utility can be established by just establishing project legend.