Back in early June, Vandal City was one of the most hyped mints. However, their project got off to a rocky start, with the floor price steadily declining to a low of 1.2 SOL (from a 3 SOL mint) during their first month. The project's art was the subject of criticism on Twitter.
But Vandal City has staged a comeback and currently occupies the top spot in Magic Eden's (7-day) Popular section. Their floor price has been on a tear since the project announced the opening of the "City Gutter" and, at the time of this writing, sits at 8.3 SOL.
Vandals that are in training, which is how the project refers to staking, can enter the gutter by paying a fee of 500 $VAULT tokens (the project's native token). The fee to enter the gutter increases each week until it hits a cap of 777 $VAULT.
A Vandal that enters the gutter becomes a "Gutter Vandal" and will see its art and metadata upgraded in a process that is irreversible. The new art has yet to be revealed, though some close-up detail sneak peaks have been posted on Twitter.
Gutter Vandals will ultimately be able to earn XP (experience points) and "level up" as long as they have entered the gutter before a certain date. The benefits of XP and levels has yet to be revealed by the team, but they have hinted at future airdrops and $VAULT rewards. The project also released a leaderboard to display Gutter Vandals' XP rankings.
Vandal City was founded by brothers SolBerry and Unshackled, who are both OG's in the DeGods community. They previously shared that they learned from the DeGods team about how to deliver to their community. The parallels between the DeadGods artwork upgrade and the Gutter Vandals art rework seems to be proof of DeGods' influence. In a testament to their enthusiasm for DeGods, Vandal City purchased the most DAO allowlist spots of any DAO for the upcoming y00ts mint, a new collection from DeGods.