The long road home

How AltoCity survived every cycle.

From a €150,000 bug fix to a legacy brand with working royalties and a live product line.

Return to collection Review owner docs

Documented for anyone who thought we were gone.

Five years, zero cash-outs, every promise delivered.

This is the unvarnished journey from a misconfigured smart contract to a full product ecosystem.

2021 — The Spark

We minted cities instead of flipping animals.

City maps with real-world royalties predated every 'phygital' headline by years.

4,200 NFTs released as the first wave of a 15,900 city blueprint.
Each map tied to royalties on physical goods from day one.
Community told us we were early. They were right.
Physical goods were always part of the plan — NFTs were the key, not the end.
We chose cities because they outlive trends and communities.
We committed publicly: royalties or nothing.

Artifacts

2020 shop demo 2021 roadmap 2022 roadmap Royalties docs

What changed

Royalties model planned from day one
Collection positioned as legacy brand with no new mints
Built for long-term ownership, not short-term flips
Royalties and compliance treated as first-class engineering
Brand direction locked early: cities, scarcity, and craft
Production roadmap drafted alongside smart contracts

We minted cities instead of flipping animals.

Archive artwork

2021 — The Error

The €150K mistake we fixed overnight.

A miswired OpenSea proxy forced a full redeploy and minted the collection twice.

We refunded, re-minted, and covered fees for every holder within 24 hours.
No treasury diversions, no excuses — just a fix.
Lesson learned: self-reliance over hype.
We chose the costly option: make every holder whole.
The redeploy hardened our security and release process.
Trust became a product requirement, not a slogan.

Artifacts

Initial contract Redeployed contract OpenSea history

What changed

All holders re-minted with costs covered
Process discipline: public postmortems and audits
Switched to stricter deployment and audit discipline
Holders treated as stakeholders with guaranteed remediation
Documented everything publicly to avoid rewriting history
Built internal tooling to prevent repeat incidents

Contract redeploy logs

2022–2024 — The Odyssey

When hype died, we built.

While the market evaporated, we finished the metaverse, the products, and the tooling.

Metaverse city builder reached a live private alpha.
Nine physical product lines launched with royalty tracking.
Compliance dashboards shipped so payouts can run transparently for everyone.
Factory-grade tooling replaced one-off experiments.
We optimized for reliability: jobs, retries, logs, and audits.
The product became the proof.

Artifacts

Metaverse preview NFT collection Royalties dashboard Swap docs Vote docs Auction page

What changed

Altoverse alpha ready for holder access
Physical product pipeline built to fund the next phase
Compliance tooling shipped so royalties can run with receipts
UX and ops hardened for real customers, not testnets
Infrastructure scaled for future public access
Focus shifted from hype cycles to shipping cadence

Metaverse in progress

2025 — The Return

The circle closes with a working brand.

Legacy positioning, clean books, and a metaverse waiting in the wings.

Royalties disbursed directly to holders with statements.
Factory partners producing on schedule for full collection.
No new mints planned — scarcity is the story.
Storefronts and funnels rebuilt with real conversion data.
The brand matured without abandoning its origin.
The roadmap moved from speculative to inevitable.

Artifacts

Royalties dashboard E-commerce store Collection docs Monthly bonus page Vote page Auction page

What changed

Royalties disbursed with statements
E‑commerce markets online
Operations turned into a repeatable system
Legacy positioning made explicit: no new mints
Public documentation expanded for holders and press
The metaverse became a funded next step, not a promise

Legacy brand collateral

The circle, step by step

A quick reference for collectors and press.

2020

City collection is created

Initially planned as an e-commerce selling silk scarves. Each of 1060 cities was manually processed by founder artist.

Born in a small city myself, I wanted to create something beautiful that would cover every city in the world. So anyone could carry a piece of their hometown in a classy way.

2021

NFT mint, boom… and a redeploy

Launched, minted more than 1000 NFTs within 1 hour, hit a smart contract proxy mistake, had to stop the mint, redeployed overnight, and doubled holders’ NFTs while covering ~€150K in fixes.

We paid the bill and kept building. The initial momentum was killed though as my initial marketing investment of ~50k EUR in launch didn't carry onto the new contract.

2022

Community vote picks metaverse

Revealed the metaverse early. Holders voted to pursue the digital path over physicals and we went all‑in on world‑building.

Initially metaverse was planned as a bonus project to reveal when 100% of collection is minted. Web3 wanted digital first, not physical. Adjusted.

2023

Metaverse POC finalized

Core city‑builder, tools, and environments reached a playable private alpha alongside compliance tooling for royalties.

The main feedback? ‘Didn’t think you’d ship.’ So we shipped.

2024

Altoverse finished and ready to scale

Polished the metaverse and scaled the architecture for millions of users and shops. Couldn’t launch properly without a marketing budget.

Technically launch‑ready, financially not. Code was handled; reach wasn't. Besides I was one of the main devs for the metaverse part due tu budget restrictions, so all coms died slowly as I had to pick only one thing to focus on.

2025

Return to physicals; e‑commerce live

Left the day job to build a cash‑flow positive business selling products — to fund the metaverse launch the right way.

It was our initial commitment to deliver anyway and it is a straight forward business model.

What staying power looks like

We didn’t pivot. The world rotated.

We built without treasury drains or VC bailouts.
Every roadmap slide from 2021 has a corresponding product or feature today.
Royalties are live, auditable, and paid.
The Altoverse is waiting for holders, no hypotheticals.
We stayed transparent: timelines, receipts, and public docs.
We kept shipping in silence until the work spoke.

Audit board highlights

Hard numbers that verify the journey.

4 200

NFTs minted

€150K

Bug fix spend

Years building

Product lines

Royalties paid

Cash-outs

We’re still here. That’s the rarest utility.

Own a map, own the receipts.

Browse the collection Review collection stats

Before phygital had a hashtag, we had a factory and a world.

The long road home

How AltoCity survived every cycle.

From a €150,000 bug fix to a legacy brand with working royalties and a live product line.

Return to collection Review owner docs

Documented for anyone who thought we were gone.

Five years, zero cash-outs, every promise delivered.

This is the unvarnished journey from a misconfigured smart contract to a full product ecosystem.

2021 — The Spark

We minted cities instead of flipping animals.

City maps with real-world royalties predated every 'phygital' headline by years.

4,200 NFTs released as the first wave of a 15,900 city blueprint.
Each map tied to royalties on physical goods from day one.
Community told us we were early. They were right.
Physical goods were always part of the plan — NFTs were the key, not the end.
We chose cities because they outlive trends and communities.
We committed publicly: royalties or nothing.

Artifacts

2020 shop demo 2021 roadmap 2022 roadmap Royalties docs

What changed

Royalties model planned from day one
Collection positioned as legacy brand with no new mints
Built for long-term ownership, not short-term flips
Royalties and compliance treated as first-class engineering
Brand direction locked early: cities, scarcity, and craft
Production roadmap drafted alongside smart contracts

Archive artwork

2021 — The Error

The €150K mistake we fixed overnight.

A miswired OpenSea proxy forced a full redeploy and minted the collection twice.

We refunded, re-minted, and covered fees for every holder within 24 hours.
No treasury diversions, no excuses — just a fix.
Lesson learned: self-reliance over hype.
We chose the costly option: make every holder whole.
The redeploy hardened our security and release process.
Trust became a product requirement, not a slogan.

Artifacts

Initial contract Redeployed contract OpenSea history

What changed

All holders re-minted with costs covered
Process discipline: public postmortems and audits
Switched to stricter deployment and audit discipline
Holders treated as stakeholders with guaranteed remediation
Documented everything publicly to avoid rewriting history
Built internal tooling to prevent repeat incidents

Contract redeploy logs

2022–2024 — The Odyssey

When hype died, we built.

While the market evaporated, we finished the metaverse, the products, and the tooling.

Metaverse city builder reached a live private alpha.
Nine physical product lines launched with royalty tracking.
Compliance dashboards shipped so payouts can run transparently for everyone.
Factory-grade tooling replaced one-off experiments.
We optimized for reliability: jobs, retries, logs, and audits.
The product became the proof.

Artifacts

Metaverse preview NFT collection Royalties dashboard Swap docs Vote docs Auction page

What changed

Altoverse alpha ready for holder access
Physical product pipeline built to fund the next phase
Compliance tooling shipped so royalties can run with receipts
UX and ops hardened for real customers, not testnets
Infrastructure scaled for future public access
Focus shifted from hype cycles to shipping cadence

Metaverse in progress

2025 — The Return

The circle closes with a working brand.

Legacy positioning, clean books, and a metaverse waiting in the wings.

Royalties disbursed directly to holders with statements.
Factory partners producing on schedule for full collection.
No new mints planned — scarcity is the story.
Storefronts and funnels rebuilt with real conversion data.
The brand matured without abandoning its origin.
The roadmap moved from speculative to inevitable.

Artifacts

Royalties dashboard E-commerce store Collection docs Monthly bonus page Vote page Auction page

What changed

Royalties disbursed with statements
E‑commerce markets online
Operations turned into a repeatable system
Legacy positioning made explicit: no new mints
Public documentation expanded for holders and press
The metaverse became a funded next step, not a promise

Legacy brand collateral

The circle, step by step

A quick reference for collectors and press.

2020

City collection is created

Initially planned as an e-commerce selling silk scarves. Each of 1060 cities was manually processed by founder artist.

Born in a small city myself, I wanted to create something beautiful that would cover every city in the world. So anyone could carry a piece of their hometown in a classy way.

2021

NFT mint, boom… and a redeploy

Launched, minted more than 1000 NFTs within 1 hour, hit a smart contract proxy mistake, had to stop the mint, redeployed overnight, and doubled holders’ NFTs while covering ~€150K in fixes.

We paid the bill and kept building. The initial momentum was killed though as my initial marketing investment of ~50k EUR in launch didn't carry onto the new contract.

2022

Community vote picks metaverse

Revealed the metaverse early. Holders voted to pursue the digital path over physicals and we went all‑in on world‑building.

Initially metaverse was planned as a bonus project to reveal when 100% of collection is minted. Web3 wanted digital first, not physical. Adjusted.

2023

Metaverse POC finalized

Core city‑builder, tools, and environments reached a playable private alpha alongside compliance tooling for royalties.

The main feedback? ‘Didn’t think you’d ship.’ So we shipped.

2024

Altoverse finished and ready to scale

Polished the metaverse and scaled the architecture for millions of users and shops. Couldn’t launch properly without a marketing budget.

2025

Return to physicals; e‑commerce live

Left the day job to build a cash‑flow positive business selling products — to fund the metaverse launch the right way.

It was our initial commitment to deliver anyway and it is a straight forward business model.

What staying power looks like

We didn’t pivot. The world rotated.

We built without treasury drains or VC bailouts.
Every roadmap slide from 2021 has a corresponding product or feature today.
Royalties are live, auditable, and paid.
The Altoverse is waiting for holders, no hypotheticals.
We stayed transparent: timelines, receipts, and public docs.
We kept shipping in silence until the work spoke.

Audit board highlights

Hard numbers that verify the journey.

4 200

NFTs minted

€150K

Bug fix spend

Years building

Product lines

Royalties paid

Cash-outs

We’re still here. That’s the rarest utility.

Own a map, own the receipts.

Browse the collection Review collection stats

Before phygital had a hashtag, we had a factory and a world.