It is Mach 18, 2024 and the deadline for participation of the Decentralized Distribution of the Blue Umbrella Token finished last night.
It was my goal to mint the image on March 17, 2024, both because the date has personal significance and it was the final day for participation so it seemed like a great day to get it done. The intention is for the image to be used for the $BUT token listings is now permanently on the block chain.
We chose to use XRP.CAFE and I was surprised when only 1 was minted with no options to make multiple copies. It was quite confusing and so as my research starts going on I figured I should probably start a BLOG on this subject to help others that follow.
So we will start from the beginning and I will specifically make a post about the minting of the NFT series and what I have discovered through the process. Once it's complete you will be able to click here to view it.
OK.... so lets start at the beginning.
How did the Blue Umbrella Token come into being?
If you are here you know I have been working on the Wandering Footprint vision for iver 4 years now, I created the OM coin on stellar and have had that listed on the Stellar ledger since July 2021. I should probably make posts about that whole process too but alas it has been an arduous journey.
Fast forward to this year and finding Chad Smith aka Phoenix Unchained. Phoenix made the Blue Collar Dollar ($BCD)on XRPL a few years back and doesnt advertise much but has big plans, ironically he wants to use the BCD for shipping and transportation, exactly what the Wandering Footprint farm infrastructure will need. Through his constant research and perticipation as a a member of the Wandering Footprint he has brough a lot of insight and imperative information to our quest for Sovereignty, both digitally and commercially.
This lead to him pursuing his Post Master, of which I am also pursuing but have been slow in my pursuit, thank God we have another member, Toosee, that is staying on top of that front and can help me with the process as I catch up. But again thats all for another day. If you would like to know more about the resources we have found around sovereignty there is a category on the Wandering hOMe Directory, of which we encourage you to add more for free, or you can visit our Wandering Sovereign page on telegram at t.me/wanderingsovereigntopics.
This pursuit lead us into conversations about digital sovereignty and the use of the XRPL in this pursuit. As far as we have hypothesized all the big banks and instuitutions will be using Ripple for cross boarder payments and as such we have chosen this blockchain to continue our research.
It was through this course of action that I was inspired to recreate the OM coin on the XRPL, of which I should do another blog post. With Pheonix's help I created the $XOM token on the XRPL on November 11, 2023. We chose to add the X as we found out that in country codes for currency X represents International. We have no idea where this will all lead but my heart said this was a smart strategy... so it was done.
It has sat there for 6 months as I have no idea how to partner it with the OM, what its use is and because regulation is coming in I want to do it properly so that it is effective in the desired utility, of which hasnt been completely finalized yet anyways... and so the next question was HOW DO I LEARN ABOUT THE XRPL WITHOUT THE RESPONSIBILITY OF UTILITY?
So while that has been on my mind I ended up purchasing land in the XSpectar verse. This lead me to being inspired at the expansion of the Wandering hOMe Directory into the metaverse.... thus creating a way OUT.
As soon as I bought the land on the beach I had this vision of a giant tree calling people home, back to nature back to Mother Earth and their connection to source energy, God, YHWH, the breath of life.
The image I saw was between a Banyon Tree and a Bodhi Tree. The Banyon tree in my mind was the one in Lahaina at the center of town. A safe haven that is left to the test of time now.
This lead to the idea of creating an actual tree in the XSpectarverse with links to our fututre farms offering workshops and live participation in projects alongside the original idea of the Wandering Footprint game where people can build out their dream tiny home and farms and dream big. Again a post for another day.
We decided on calling it the Blue Umbrella Tree house.
With AI expanding I realized I would be able to get an image creator to try and depict the visual I had in my head.... and so Blue Umbrella Tree and Blue Umbrella Tree house became my muse and I asked a variety of AI to construct different visuals of this idea.
Here are some examples of what I saw.
So then the next question again was how do I learn about the XRPL without the stress of having to 'get it right' while I was learning.
And so the idea of a MEME token was born.
But WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE?
A blue Umbrella seemed to be the most obvious idea... so I ventured into the AI graphics again and started asking it to create various images with blue umbrellas.
But it wasnt quite right. It didnt represent what I actually wanted.
At the same time as all this going on should let you know that I received a new lap top from a follower on tik tok after hearing about my vision and about my computer crashing in December. This is what allowed me to actually start creating these ideas and pursuing them. I will forever be greatful to her for doing this for me so I can start pursuing these things,
I had created the Blue Umbrella for our merch shop back in December with the words 'the New Tin Foil Hat on the side as a nod to the truthers questioning certain Blue Umbrellas. Within a couple of weeks after posting them to the Optimystic Market the print on Demand company we use for the Umbrellas HUGE POD, cancelled their production of them and my kids broke mine.
So, in January when I got the laptop I recreated the umbrella on the new print on demand shop we found called YOYCOL. (probably a future post about that too).
I just got distracted with the idea that I need to replicate this blog somewhere else too just incase I get censored so I went to look at wordpress and started the process of transferring www.optimysticprime.com to that site so I can build a replica of this blog there. Interesting enough wordpress can host TOML files, unlike WIX so if I can figure out wordpress I may be able to speed along the process with regards to the next steps for the token... but I digress.
Where was I? oh yes... the image of the Blue Umbrella Token.
So the Blue umbrella just didnt represent all of what I wanted to and at the same time I was creating merch with some of the new images I had created and so the next possible conclusion was to create an image for a shirt and then turn it into a meme token... so I asked myself who would be holding the blue umbrella and the obvious answer was Guy Fawkes or a man in a guy fawkes mask. ... I had always loved the move V for Vendetta.. on November 5th every year I post the monologue of V from that movie and my favorite part is whenn Evey comes out of her prison to stand in the rain and says 'God is in the rain'.
And so a man with a guy fawkes mask holding a blue umbrella was born and I told the AI to put IYKYK on the image... turns out AI is not very good at lettering ... but here is the evolution of the search parameters I used.
Then I thought I should try one as a women, considering I am a woman,this time prompting the image to have flames in the background.
the results seemed weird and so I reverted back to a man, but I had concluded I liked him in a trench coat. Here is the evolution of those prompts
Then I tried bowties
then I tried top hats
But in the end the hoodie and trenchcoat won out. With input from my crew specifically Shae and Beccie we concluded the hoodie gave the character more relateability. We could all be the guy in the hoodie in a rain coat.
As you can see there were a lot of issues with the AI, with the umbrella going through the characters head, with the handle being weird, double arms and hands... it was quite the task. Some of the prompts ended in the coat being hooded but no hoodie etc.
From this point I realized that by haning the character have a hoodie we would be able to add a picture to the hoodie itself... which could possibly be a logo from the Wandering Footprint projects to give a throw back to where this all started from and maybe create conversation around that project too, so I asked the Ai to put a logo on the shirt an the obvious choice was the OM Metatron cube that is on the main logo for the Wandering Footprint. Apparently Ai is also not good with symmetry and sacred geometry this is what was produced out of those prompts.
As you can see some of the prompts returned as sweater vests. I have to be honest I did really like the tie and so I played around with that imagery for a while.
So now we were at a place that I liked the basic image we had... the question now was HOW CAN I PUT THIS IMAGE ON A TOKEN?
I'll be honest I really liked the image of the man holding the illuminated 'metatrons cube' but I had no idea to edit to actually look like a real metatrons cube so that was out. In the end we decided on 3 designs.