Proposal: Resurrection of Pawn Bots NFT Project
Summary
Resurrect Pawn Bots NFT collection with full IP rights granted to original holders under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) license. Hollywood41 will facilitate the revival with the intention to establish community governance.
Background
Pawn Bots created strong community engagement. HiFi Labs has offered consideration to provide all existing assets if DAO approves w/ a vote of support.
Problem
The discontinued NFT project removed a valued community asset that fostered connection among members.
Solution
- Return all Pawn Bots to addresses that exchanged them for Sheetheads
- Grant full IP rights to each individual holder under CC BY-NC license
- Deploy on Base network to minimize gas fees
- Create dedicated Discord server for continued community engagement
- Establish community fund for hosting costs (~$300/year)
- No creator fees will be implemented to ensure alignment with the CC BY-NC license principles
- Hollywood41 will maintain initial administrative authority to establish the project but intends to develop a community governance structure
Creative Commons License Implementation
All Pawn Bots will be licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 which:
- Allows holders to share, remix, adapt and build upon the NFT artwork
- Requires appropriate credit to original creators
- Restricts commercial usage without additional permission
- Ensures proper attribution when Pawn Bots are incorporated in derivative works
Implementation of this license requires:
- Clear attribution statement on all Pawn Bots distributions
- Documentation of license terms in project metadata and smart contracts
- Mechanisms for tracking attribution without imposing fees
Conclusion
This proposal creates a decentralized revival of Pawn Bots with IP ownership transferred to holders under CC BY-NC licensing. Hollywood41 will maintain necessary administrative authority to properly establish the project but has no financial interest. Initial hosting costs will be covered by Hollywood41 with intention to co-create a sustainable community funding model to follow. This is explicitly not a cash grab - all future governance decisions will be determined collectively.
The governance proposal is expected to be tbd; 2025.
Please comment here for thoughts/ideas/support. This will be the beginning of bringing back the project in a way that respects original creators while empowering the community.
1 Like
I don’t really expect them to be worth anything (from a monetary standpoint), but I just think as a novelty it will be cool. Wasn’t that a fun time in hifi? People took so much pride in their respective collections. We vested so much time into it. 
Fingers crossed for a vote and approval.
fwiw, i’d suggest to make the following suggestions.
- Have some wording that this proposal only applies if Hifi Labs does not raise the intended amount of $. This way Labs is still the steward if the project survives and if it doesnt, then this becomes active.
- Personally im not a fan of the CC BY-NC license, as if this comes into our hands, its essentially a dead project being reborn, and as such, if the community is going to put work into bringing something back from the dead, they should be able to reap any rewards from doing so. I’d recommend looking at the Cant Be Evil licenses by A16Z. The Can’t Be Evil NFT Licenses - a16z crypto with a recommendation to focus on CBE-Exclusive or CBE-Commerical.
my concern would be “Can’t Be Evil” license would
not work because we’d need permission from all original creators (HiFi, Nintendo, Apple, etc.), which we’ll never get. I personally feel that the CC BY-NC approach works better because it acknowledges these are adaptations, removes commercial elements that caused OpenSea problems, and provides a clear framework for community use without claiming ownership of the original IP. Getting permissions from big companies like Nintendo would be nearly impossible, while Creative Commons gives us a legitimate way forward without those permissions.
what do other people think?
PS - That’s the beauty of giving each person their own Creative Commons rights - everyone can do with their specific NFTs as they please. I’m just proposing the quickest way to get the entire collection operational. Once holders have CC BY-NC rights to their NFTs, anyone is free to pursue additional permissions and upgrade to Can’t Be Evil for their specific pieces if they want more rights. The Creative Commons approach gives everyone a legal starting point, while empowering individual holders to pursue whatever additional arrangements they can secure.
re: point # 1
Addendum: Conditional Activation
Thanks to MainBrain for this valuable suggestion.
Conditional Implementation
This proposal will only activate if HiFi Labs does not raise their intended funding amount. This ensures HiFi Labs remains the rightful steward if the project survives under their guidance. Our community revival plan serves as a safety net to preserve the Pawn Bots collection only if HiFi Labs is unable to continue!?
The only weird thing about this is that Hifi is presently not supporting PawnBots, but yeah, the only way this occurs is w/ Hifi’s & Hifi Dao’s blessing.
Re: Point #2
Community Empowerment Note
The Creative Commons BY-NC license would provide a legal starting point for the entire collection while empowering individual holders. Once holders receive their CC BY-NC rights, anyone who wishes to pursue additional permissions (including Can’t Be Evil licensing) for their specific NFTs is free to do so. The Community Commons approach simply offers the quickest path to making the collection operational again while respecting original IP.
we had talked about it a bit briefly before this proposal was created. Since a large part of the NFTs were burned for sheetheads, we would need to make a new token and re-mint all the NFTs and redistribute them back to holders from the point in time before the first NFT was burned for sheetheads. As you mentioned, the NES screen was too similar to the real thing and opensea had an issue with it and blocked the collection. So, i suggest that we replace all the NES screens with something else.
Suggestions
- the 1 of 1 bot that was animated and changed frames, using one of the frames from that screen could work.
- having the screen be replaced with a sheethead as if predicting the future
- if labs provides any dropped attributes/traits, that could be pretty cool to have some of them shown in the screen.
You will have to get rid of any and all troublesome traits, if you want the collection to live and be tradable on opensea.
2 Likes
Fixing the collection to make it Opesea Friendly? That sounds great to me.
Also, OS2 (New Opensea) is currently beta. There could be an opportunity to re-launch PawnBots there to gather attention.
Also would support deploying on Base for sure.
yeah, I mean first thing first we’d have to get autonomy to move ahead and see if we could get the images, I think the distinction is that with hifi you know they had creator earning set up and you know there was also the borrowing against them and like there, you know, and then at first there was the burn buyback and Burn like there were a lot of variables that I think led to it I think with the license that I’m proposing it doesn’t matter if we have the copyrighted adaptation so and especially if it says 0% for creator earnings, I mean, I am like all about going back to the thing that we lost and not modifying anything you know I guess my only thing would be, if we start modifying the God an NFT I think it changes the whole feel of it. I wanna leave it exactly as it was, but whoever owns it if they own the IP rights and they own it, would that give them the right to go ahead and modify it? I don’t know. Maybe it could be put up for a vote once the project is Created. I don’t know there’s a lot of interesting things that. I suppose it would just be a vote we can do just like on everything.
oh, I also had this idea. What are you guys think of this? I know I just said don’t change anything but in an effort to start fresh; what about changing them to be named: “Guardians,” because in essence, that’s what it’s doing. It is guarding and preserving the community and we are no longer wanting them as collateral.
I don’t know just an idea because the thing is we wanna make a delineating line between the old project and the new project. Keep the same stuff but just be clear like the mechanics and the project are totally different and so by having a new name that could help send us off in that direction
what are the thoughts on that?
for sure, turn on creator earnings. All the money earned from trade volume will help to pay for hosting costs - if it exceeds costs, you’ve done something right and its a future good problem to have!
I think the hifi labs team had bought a bunch of pawnbots to give away and as such, had a bunch of sheetheads under their control. Also need to find that address, ditto to see if pooledNFT existed back then with a $PAWN token and if so, make sure those erc20 token holders also qualify and get airdropped the NFTs.
not suggesting changing the 1 of 1 NFT’s at all. I think that one unique 1 of 1 that changed into a different pawnbot every frame had a unique feature where every frame that bot had a unique image that was displayed on their screen, so there was 20? unique images that were on the screen. Im just saying copy one of those displayed screens and replace the NES image with that.
Guardians is a good name
i remember nawaf went through all the frames of the 1 of 1 and found a secret and redeemed that secret for more pawnbots. Maybe that secret screen could be replace the NES. its something that most people presumably have never seen, so it feels ‘new’ to the majority of holders. Doing something like this could change rarity, etc. Lots of things to think about on how to handle every situation that can arise when rebuilding a collection like this.
Selling individual NFTs is allowed under CC BY-NC, but enabling creator royalties on OpenSea would violate the license as commercial use. I’d lobby to disable royalties to stay compliant.
Not sure what to do w/ the hifi extras, maybe we could hold them on reserve to sell and even if it’s one of us buying them, we could put that $ towards the hosting annually.
Pretty sure everyone involved will lose time and potentially money by being involved; but if ten people contribute $30 each, we should be able to cover hosting for the year.
If we want to maintain a discord, how much does that cost? that’s where i would propose delegating existing “guardians” w/ permissions, similar to what we have now.
making a discord channel is free as far as i know, though i think if your account is new, you’ll need to pay for discord nitro.
for the image hosting aspect, you can use Arweave. 1 gig of image hosting is $10. And theres no way it will exceed 1 gig. Pricing - ArDrive. Heres a guide on setting it up. How to use ArDrive with OpenSea - ArDrive Of course, i’d recommend testing this out with a test collection on base mainnet (or testnet). Testnet is cheaper but hoops to jump through to get testnet ETH. Mainnet will probably cost you $2 in ETH for deploying a 10 image test collection and you
how about dmca? i got this from grok.
The DMCA applies to OpenSea by requiring the platform to delist NFTs upon receiving valid copyright infringement takedown notices, protecting OpenSea from liability under safe harbor provisions. Copyright holders can request removal of infringing content, while creators can file counter-notices to dispute wrongful takedowns, though delisted NFTs remain on the blockchain with reduced visibility. OpenSea’s process aligns with DMCA rules but faces criticism for quick delistings and complex IP disputes, as noted in its policies and X discussions.
I was thinking that the creative commons license would suffice, but I’m reading this. Maybe it doesn’t.
Subject: Stepping Back from Reviving Pawn Bots
HIFI Team & Guardians,
cc: et al
After reflection, I’m declining the Pawn Bot IP due to copyright issues. The risks outweigh any potential benefits.
Guardians - I’m sorry. While I genuinely love the Pawn Bots, even a non-commercial license won’t protect against potential legal issues. Given the previous OpenSea takedown, returning to this project would be unwise.
Best for me to walk away.Sorry fellas 
Hollywood