Official Blog

Jan 25, 2025: Looking forward to what the future might have in store for another project.

Jan 24, 2024: We have finally closed out the Rookie Squad A collection and more than 400 ADA has been donated to charity! Feels so good and the kids are happy. I made a few changes in transition like moving .io domain to a free domain and everything seems to be working with it. Updated links and revamped the blog section to make it a bit easier to do updates. There is no telling what is in store for the future. We might do another project, but a few takeaways were learned: just keep having fun, don't make too much work, put as little money into this as possible so more can go to charity. I will probably refine how I log donations as well. Just need to keep things simple. Let the Cardano ledger do all the work. 

Oct 1, 2023: It has been a while since last post. Had a few family things come up in the past months but we are getting back on our feet now!

June 18, 2023: Finished up with polishing out the remaining NFTs for Rookie Squad A. They are looking good! Working on the metadata now. 

May 27, 2023: I had an open house today and well, it was a little slow. So I was able to knock out the rest of the remaining 29 NFT assets. Some of these were already created by my son Isaiah (robot spiders!) Really can't wait. It has been about 4 months now since this first release started. So many things have been done and we are just getting started. This paved the way for what is to come. Going to do a lot of things with a blank slate. Looking into things like hand drawn artwork from momma and the kids. Maybe music? Layering definitely. Mixed media, most likely with AI! Vending style release, yup for sure. Most importantly though is that we continue to have fun, keep the energy up, keep the donations flowing and switch gears into creativity. I really want to focus on connecting with people more, not to advertise and pump, but to actually have real interactions and support the community even more. 

May 16, 2023: We were able to cross off coordinated giveaways off the checklist. Moving forward. I did decide to move a couple things back on the roadmap just to give us some breathing room. We are in no rush and I don't want to put out anything less that the best. Really feel like we need to focus on engagement more and get more community involvement and interactions.

May 15, 2023: We are entering a new phase for Fire Animalz. The era of giveaways and more utility. NFT holders that have their wallets verified will now be able to exclusively participate in Discord for giveaways. The first one went live yesterday as a test and another one is up and running right now. This is a step forward in how we can spend/distribute funds from the community wallet as well.

May 11, 2023: Many good personal things going on behind the scenes but things keep moving for Fire Animalz. Just today we got our own channel in the Cardano Art Collective. Looking forward to seeing what happens from there. Many great talented individuals, all creating. Getting some great ideas for future minting as well. Everything is brewing in its time.

May 3, 2023: Updating blog for May. Have been doing some daily consistent Tweets that has been fun. They are quick, easy and engaging. Just have not had a lot of time to devote to further minting lately. We do have some great ideas produced and will just take a day to devote to minting those to life. 

April 24, 2023: Made a most wonderful donation today for Miraculous Love Kids. This was our 2nd donation and it was above the minimum! Very happy about this.

April 17, 2023: I broke my two week long fast last Saturday to prepare for our wedding anniversary! Life has been good. Feeling much better after this fast but going to go back on it right after our anniversary as I continue to get things sorted physically. Project is healthy. Standing firm. Isaiah came up with some new designs for next mint which we will be revealing soon, but first we must do a donation. The mint might be good timing for when we look at doing a raffle. Maybe some way we can automate this on Discord.

April 7, 2023: Today is Good Friday. A time to reflect. I am currently going through a caffeine fast and so far so good. I will continue on from here with juice fast. We will have family time this weekend and bonding. We have some FireAnimalz merch on the way that should be here soon. Interested to see how it turns out! Website and all the other tools have been polished and working well now. Will probably look at an upcoming event where I do some more giveaways, do some price adjustments in the marketplace and do a donation! I always love doing donations and giving. That is a real time to celebrate.

April 4, 2023: Today we are refining the website a bit and refocusing information around family first. We also made a linktr.ee to help people with navigation. A bug was fixed with DNS routing to domain without www. We are working on a submission to Cardano Cube for advertising the project. Quick sprint closed out as we build up next steps.

April 1, 2023: Made a few changes to Discord and Website. A new merchandise shoppe has just been launched and the roadmap has been updated.

Mar 31, 2023: Just added Flipr to the front page and expanded blog section for new month. Getting ready for next gear.

Mar 30, 2023: Did a Twitter NFT promotion/giveaway impromptu. We have also been officially verified on Flipr.io!

Mar 26, 2023: Much happening today. We will be minting some new ones, increasing the price slightly as well as the donation rate. Made some minor updates to the roadmap on Discord. 

Mar 22, 2023: Today we just launched the Fire Animalz YouTube channel and posted the first video! A wonderful testimony from the Judge Fite Charitable Foundation. We have already completed all the items for the roadmap and have moved into Q2. My goal here is to under-promise and over-deliver. Let's do this!

Mar 14, 2023: We now have roadmap and giveaway channels in Discord. We need to create a similar roadmap page for website. Next few days I will be out in the field working so not much time to be able to devote on project. Will be a few days of relative silence.

Mar 11, 2023: Have not posted much in the last few days but we have been busy! What has happened? We have minted some baby penguins. A couple just sold today! We made a huge Twitter announcement on what is going on. We did another announcement on a massive Hosky giveaway. We are also supporting my nephew, Lanny Cordola in his life endeavor called the Miraculous Love Kids which is such an amazing cause! Oh and, we are going to be making a donation today and our very first community wallet distribution goes live today! Life is good.

Mar 6, 2023: I added a links page and also announced that we will be supporting Lanny's project. We just need to make some Twitter announcements but out of time today. A lot to announce like the increase to charity, the addition of a community wallet. We also purchased the $faz_community handle. So much going on. 

Mar 5, 2023: Today is family day so not doing a whole lot. I did identify one wallet to be a community wallet and transferred over $faz_community handle to that wallet.

Mar 4 ,2023: Started a fresh new three week sprint today! I have but one focus that I can't fully disclose just yet publicly. Working on some domain bug as well. Will be doing a fresh mint today as I have some flex time at the moment. We are ready to make a new donation as well (just working on something I can't disclose yet) and working on a community wallet. The community wallet is TBD on what purpose will be. Maybe marketing or giveaways/airdrops. It would be nice to reward current supporters in this fashion.

Mar 1, 2023: The Giving Block won't work for this project since there is no way to set it up beyond case by case basis. Started a new March blog so now we are about a month into project. So much has happened in such a short time! Working on this smarter and not harder. Reminding self to just have fun and not feel pressure about time. Really happy with the direction this has been going.Feb 28, 2023: Getting ready to do another mint with some new animals. I am also working with The Giving Block to see if it might make sense to set up a direct ADA payment channel for charity as well as looking at some local charities. Reminding people that we do not accept donations directly and that it is best to make donations directly to the source. There are many reasons for this: tax implications, the more hops/the more transaction costs/less money gets to destination with every hop, removing possibility of mismanaged funds (send to wrong address/wallet/comingling/conversion).

Feb 25, 2023: I am in real estate class this weekend so probably not too much going on at the moment. We are positioning ourselves to make another donation and increase the charity giving % which has been way more than the minimum anyway.

Feb 24, 2023: Made a new logo and uploading where I can and where it makes sense. Updated some text on website in a few places as well. Discord is slowly growing at a pace of 1-2 people a day now. We are at a little over 300 followers on Twitter now as well.

Feb 22, 2023: Today we released one special Custom Shop NFT and released 8 more other NFTs to the Rookie Squad A collection! We are now over the 1/2 way mark to 99. Fixed some bugs on our Discord server and officially released to the public today! Things are rolling along. We need a special logo for Fire Animalz and I have an idea in my mind, if we can just execute it. 

Feb 20, 2023: Quick update here. We minted some more kittens today and Jared's first NFT creation, complete with his name in metadata. We are still doing QA in Discord server but things are looking clean and good. Inviting a few people in to get a preview before we do the full release. I did make an announcement on Twitter about it and people are taking notice.

Feb 18, 2023: Great progress on Discord server. It is just about ready for QA. 

Feb 17, 2023: Doing more stuff behind the scenes. Definitely need to get a few more minted but all in due time. We are starting to put more focus on building out Discord. Will have a couple admins and a couple mods for great coverage. Will be a lot of fun.

Feb 15, 2023: We have a functional site, Twitter is doing OK and production software is working well. We now need to circle the wagons and focus on Jira project management, work on time management and focus on next steps.

Feb 14, 2023: Happy Valentine's Day! Many great things have happened already and it isn't even 7am here! Firstly, we minted five new beautiful, "love" swans to the Rookie Squad A collection. Then we made a couple charitable donations, one being the second charitable contribution from Fire Animalz! Some more updates were done to the donation spreadsheet as well as main site. We are closing in on minting about 1/2 the total supply. Some enhancements were also made to help make production more efficient. Another big update is that we have increased donation rate from 10% to 12% and broadcasting this on our banner.

Feb 12, 2023: It was a nice family day today and yet, we were still able to mint some NFTs! We did some more centered around media events of today. That is proving to be a lot of fun and quite interesting. It may in a strange way, help to bring people in that are outside of Cardano and blockchain all together. I added a Vision/Mission/Values page as well. It is a work in progress but it seems to be off to a good start. Will be thinking on it more. Also added a picture of our son Jared at the computer. He also came up with some good NFT ideas today. 

Feb 11, 2023: Had a great time on the Cardano Over Coffee show yesterday. Met some new friends and got to talk about Fire project and Fire Animalz. We had almost sold out of all of our NFTs as well! What a surprise. Today, I also minted the first Custom Shop NFT under the same policy ID. This is a much more specific rendering with custom meta data and in this case, was a special tribute for a good friend. Just taking it easy over the weekend. We minted a small amount this morning (mostly kitties).

Feb 10, 2023: Fire Token and myself have a debut on Cardano Over Coffee this morning. We are both looking forward to it. We get to talk about our projects but more of an emphasis on Fire Token and the history. Really excited about this opportunity to spread some awareness. 50% of the current mint supply has been sold at this point for Fire Animalz. Things are moving in a good direction. I have also been looking at Arlington Fire Dept for volunteering. Looks like there are about 17 stations in Arlington alone! Today, I also added to the About Us page to further dox myself and what I have been up to.

Feb 8, 2023: Twitter has been having issues lately. Did not do anything on website today. Overall, it is in pretty good shape. I did put up a links page for donation sites. Trying to warn people to not donate money directly to a wallet, especially from people that literally have not background or motive with disaster assistance. If people want to help, they should assist in pointing people in the right direction. 

Feb 7, 2023: Yesterday we reached out to a few projects that assist with donations using ADA and we found one that will do it in an ad-hoc fashion. Looking into them currently. It might mean that we won't need to convert ADA to fiat on our end. Surprised that there are not more channels already. Just really trying to help out with the Turkey/Syria earthquake. We made some updates to site to help support and made a contribution. Also looked at doing a custom mint giveaway but so far, nobody has claimed it.

Feb 5, 2023: It is family day and will be going on an outing. Probably not too much happening today.

Feb 4, 2023: Today was an epic day! We made our first Fire Animalz charity donation to the Judge Fite Charitable Foundation. It allowed me the opportunity to sit down and put the process through the paces, making sure that everything is captured properly on this website, for upmost transparency. Pretty satisfied with the way it came out. Renamed the Transactions page to Donations and did some organizing. Getting some good interactions off of Twitter as well. Very happy with the way things are going! Next step might be to think about doing some more minting. Meow.

Feb 3, 2023: I am changing date formatting to something less confusing. Starting to play around with Discord server just to get more comfortable with it. Also setting up branded email. Looking at YouTube for Fire Animalz. Today I probably won't be able to do a whole lot on website.

Feb 2, 2023: It is amazing what can get done when you are iced in! Populated the Special Thanks page. Changed banner in a couple places just for fun. Did some overall formatting on site. Played around with blog pages again. Choosing different banner images for different pages and changed anchoring in some places. Restructured and reformatted About Us. Reworked the transactions spreadsheet and added an inventory tab. Also minted a special one-off groundhog to celebrate Groundhog day, with some interesting meta data. It has been a packed day. Today we also saw borrowing/lending go live for Liqwid. Yesterday was stablecoin day. So much happening in the crypto space! Also created a Jira board to start using SCRUM on project.

Feb 1, 2023: Organizing blog section today but that is about it. Cleaned up home page and added more graphics.Jan 31, 2023: Cleaned up Twitter icon. We may have a candidate for an initial charity partner. Looking for one more and then we can work towards doing a first donation, probably in February. Eventually would like to do these quarterly. Tomorrow, I plan on doing some blog organizing and structuring.

Jan 30, 2023: Starting a blog today just to document progress for FireAnimalz. Put in a Transaction page on website that links to a google sheet with transaction details. Put in a Special Thanks page to get that in position. We are still in the process of finding a local, wildfire prevention fund. So far I am looking at a 4-6 here in Texas area. Also started a wallet delegation over to A4G pool because we need to all support each other. Just continuing to have fun. Consistency is undefeated. Little changes over time. Need to have clearly defined Vision, Mission and Values so compass direction is going in the right way.