The Atlas Lyons Club — An Origin Story

Author: Von Frontin
Snitch and I have worked together in corporate America for 15+ years. When we were younger, the thought of climbing the corporate ladder motivated us. Hell, it even excited us. We put in 80 hour work weeks and relished in the idea of one day adding our names to the long string of faceless corporate executives.

Then COVID came, and the world got thrown on its head. Now I’ll be the first to say that there are very few positive things to say about the COVID pandemic, but one thing it did provide was perspective. After awhile, the corporate ladder didn’t seem as exciting. Snitch and I started talking about other alternatives. What if we left our jobs? What if we left our industry?

We had always been aware of BTC and other crypto but never took it seriously beyond a small investment. Then finally in late 2020, we took the plunge and made our first significant crypto investments, buying Bitcoin back when it was trading at $23k. Well you probably know how the next 30 days went during the bull run of January 2021. We were hooked.

It wasn’t long after that we found our way into NFTs, starting as so many of us did with getting in line for drops at NBA Top Shot. I think between the two of us we probably grabbed a couple dozen moments. Never selling or realizing the thrill of flipping NFTs, but just excited to be on this new adventure.

Then we found Zed, and boy did we get the NFT bug hard. We set up a stable. Jumped in Discord. Sniped on OpenSea. Frantically refreshed during drops. We had a whole plan to become full time horse trainers….but then we started to have another idea:

What if we started our own NFT project?

Admittedly, we were NOT successful at first. We started with a project called Seinfeld on the Block. I was the artist (and a poor one at that). We made 20 pieces based off of scenes from the show and started a collection. It didn’t go well…..at all. To date I think we’re at 0.22 ETH traded. We were defeated. We were burnt out from our corporate jobs (on top of a year+ of pandemic, eLearning for kids, etc). We threw around idea for other projects and had a few that we thought could lead to something, but nothing ever solidified.

Then on July 4, 2021, I got an idea (again, with my very basic digital art skills):

The idea was simple: If there are other people who feel trapped the same way we do, why not build a project to help us all escape.

I sent the idea to Snitch, who was on vacation with his family. 5 minutes later my phone rang with him on the other side. We had something. We would eventually find a real artist and a theme that we hope would make it fun for everyone involved. Now it was time to get to work…