Fidenza creator's new NFT project QQL Mint Pass earns $17 million upon launch

Quick Take

  • QQL Mint Pass, a new NFT project co-created by Fidenza’s Tyler Hobbs, earned $16.7 million upon launch. 
  • Interestingly, code in the QQL Mint Pass smart contract blacklists royalty-free NFT platform X2Y2. 

QQL Mint Pass, a new project co-created by Fidenza creator Tyler Hobbs, earned around $17 million upon its launch on Sept. 28, 2022.

QQL is a generative art algorithm that Hobbs and co-creator Dandelion Wist will publicly release. Owning a QQL Mint Pass token allows the holder to mint official art from that algorithm. The project has 999 total NFTs, with 99 of those reserved by the creators for “special purposes,” according to the QQL site

Interestingly, code in QQL Mint Pass blacklists the wallet address for X2Y2, negating any attempted transaction with the marketplace. The move appears to be a response to last month’s debate over whether NFT platforms should enforce artist royalties, in which some protocols such as X2Y2 as well as SudoAMM, opted not to. 

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Wist is a “long-time, all-purpose crypto enthusiast,” according to a video about the QQL project. Hobbs is known for creating the algorithm for the computer-generated NFT project Fidenza, which at its height sold for up to 1,000 ETH ($3.5 million at the time) on secondary markets, The Block previously reported. 

Hobbs and Wist did not respond to The Block’s request for comment.


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About Author

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.