Howdy fellows! Today we are sitting down with Brendan Harris — Full-time web3 developer and Co-founder of Messengers of Eden.

Chris: Solana blockchain is about to witness new metadata standards for music because of your project. What are you bringing in with the OneDropNFTs?

Brendan: Music is a huge part of all our lives at OneDropNFTs. In our experience navigating the web3 space however, we noticed that music NFTs were really underrepresented. We think this is for two reasons:

• 1.  Music NFTs are often created and consumed as mp4s. This makes your favorite tracks difficult to find on albums, and really restricts the way you can store and listen to them.
• 2. Art and music have always gone hand in hand. Think the ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ album cover: Iconic images that lift the music. Playing video files of static text or images overlapped with music isn’t a good way to experience either.

To solve these problems, we created a metadata standard for storing music MP3s inside of image NFTs. This means when you buy an album: you get a completely unique album cover image, which holds the music inside of it. Navigate to our website to play the album directly from your wallet. Choose the track(s) you want to listen to, instead of fumbling around with a scroll bar at the bottom of an MP4.

We are convinced that music album NFTs will be stored and consumed using this standard across all of web3 for many years to come, and we are actively working to make that the case.

Chris: How is the OneDrop token unique? In other words, what sets this NFT collection apart from the other music-based NFTs?

Brendan: Three things set us apart:

1. Industry Partnerships: Our co-founder Owen Murphy has been a professional artist for the past ~10 years, working with a who’s who of the biggest bands: Dead and Company, Foo Fighters, Trey Anastasio, Billy strings, Lumineers, etc etc etc. He has all the connections and partnerships to take this project mainstream and massively scale far beyond the web3 community once we are ready.
2. Technology: Our Generative album covers that hold the music data for a individualized art and portable music listening experience. You will never be able to go back to MP4s for music after experiencing our solution.
3. Music: crypto WAVE radio’s album is DOPE. It’s a retro inspired album that I guarantee will make you smile.

Chris: So, who are these Messengers of Eden? What are the different traits that make each one of the 999 NFTs unique?

Brendan: The Messengers of Eden are these cute little owls that Owen has been drawing in the background of his posters for many years. As generative album covers / posters, the images are extremely detailed line art. This is not a Profile Picture project, these are literal posters that should be printed out at 11×14″ 350DPI resolution, or displayed on large digital photo frames.

Describing all the attributes is too difficult since there are ~100 of them and they are all so unique. That said, they are broken up into faces, bodies, perches, backgrounds, and wings. My favorite asset is called ‘Not a Fish’, it is a 1/1000 owl perch that is a giant wall mounted dildo, haha.

Chris: Interestingly, members of the Messengers of Eden collection can also store music. How does the token allow music storage?

Brendan: We store the mp3 files on IPFS, and link them in the metadata of the generative cover album. Looking closely, you will see ‘track1’, ‘track2’, etc in the metadata of the album cover. A parser looks for these keywords, parses out the data, queries all the music files, and displays them for your listening pleasure.

Chris: Moreover what functionality allows for a wide range of music to enjoy?

Brendan: The key is to scale this standard for other musicians to use, and other websites to create music players to consume music NFTs directly from your wallet. This creates value for owners of the albums, and reduces friction across the entire ecosystem. We want to make the experience so simple that people don’t know they are using Web3 at all.

To opensource the metadata standard: I’ll publish a medium article, and a react component on NPM for others to easily incorporate the player into their websites. This way we can organically scale an album cover music NFT standard on solana (and beyond).

Chris: What is the price of one Messenger of Eden NFT? How many tokens can be minted in a single transaction?

Brendan: The price is 0.77 Sol, only one can be minted at a time. We came up with this when Sol was $100, so people are getting a really great deal by Owen and I taking a pretty big hit. A custom 1:1 poster, and an exclusive limited-release album by crypto WAVE radio is worth $77, but we are selling it for $40 or so because of the price fluctuation of Sol.

Chris: Finally, what are your plans for the future of the Messengers of Eden NFT collection? How do you want to expand the NFT experience for the investors?

Brendan: Owen and I are doxxed, and fucking hate rugs. I’m not going to blow smoke up asses, I’ll let the work speak for itself. That said, we have some huge plans to scale far beyond web3. Follow our project on Twitter and join our Discord to find out what we are up to, and come along for the journey.