26 Sep 2023/length unknown/Psych DF (Deadfellaz)
MLow X Psych DF (Deadfellaz)
Deadfellaz co-founder and lead artist Psych explains the DFZ Labs restructure, the trading card game, the creator program, and why royalties are an artist's absolute right.
The archive's only proper PFP founder operations interview, recorded from Australia and never published. Psych, co-founder and lead artist of Deadfellaz alongside Betty, traces the arc: the two ran interactive agencies together, started Deadfellaz as a digital identity first company (Betty inspired by punk4156 building an identity around his ape), and have now restructured into DFZ Labs, a company built to operate internationally and hold three IPs under one roof: Deadfellaz, Deadfrenz, and a new trading card game set in the same universe with original characters. Ten months of closed door work on mechanics and storylines precedes a Unity dev team starting in October.
The operational detail is unusually candid. The TCG deliberately refuses the tabletop simulator nostalgia of the genre and will use its own IP endpoint to inject brand collabs and creator characters as card packs, piloted by a grassroots stream team of 15 recruited from the Discord rather than paid FaZe Clan stars (though FaZe's former CSO and general counsel advise). Psych explains the mascot design logic of the green palette, the degrade system that replaces trait rarity (all traits ship at flat percentages, only fresh versus rotten combinations are statistically rare, and the community sets value, as when Odell Beckham Jr's circle organically adopted the purple coats), and how integrity (including refunding everyone hit in a Discord hack) opened doors to DraftKings, Wrangler, UTA, Ledger, and the NFLPA.
The last third is the argument the space was having in late 2023. Psych dismantles Rolling Stone's 95 percent of NFTs are worthless story (the 95 percent was worthless, he agrees, and mostly malicious; the sin is ignoring the 5 percent, especially individual musicians and artists it makes life harder for). He mounts the fiercest royalty defense in the archive: royalties are an absolute right, part of the purchase contract like a voiceover actor's residuals or a stock photo license, and DFC survived their collapse only because licensing deals, not royalties, kept the business profitable. He closes on Culture Unchained, the MetaMask sponsored creator series piloted in Korea with Ed Balloon and Latasha, and his own 1/1 practice: the midnight shift, EDM on, working as Psych.
What this episode teaches
- Distill into your lane
Early projects went broad; the survivors narrowed. DFZ Labs picked content creation and gaming as its flywheel and spent ten quiet months on game mechanics before hiring a Unity team, choosing the nimble seasonal live ops model over a six year monolith launch.
- Let the community price the traits
Deadfellaz shipped every trait at identical percentages: the same number of fur coats as t-shirts. Only the degrade combinations (nine full rotten pieces exist) are statistically rare. Value formed socially instead, as when Odell Beckham Jr and his sports and music friends adopted purple coats with zero promotion from the team.
- Integrity is the partnership moat
When their Discord was hacked, they refunded everyone. Psych argues traditional brands cannot risk collaborating with projects that treat people like trash, so handling yourself well is what actually unlocked DraftKings, Wrangler, the NFLPA, and UTA.
- An agency buys back legitimacy
By 2022 every brand's door had been kicked in by NFT pitch emails and calls were refused on the word NFT alone. UTA's value was converting DFC from one of 300 spam senders into a proven team with a track record, and positioning deals differently because a community sits behind the brand.
- Own the endpoint for your IP
Metaverse wearables fail because nobody is there to see them. The TCG exists partly so DFC controls its own endpoint: creators and brands get injected as card packs on DFC's platform, on DFC's terms, instead of renting reach from someone else's dying world.
- Your most active collectors are your most exposed
DFC lost hundreds of collectors to hot wallet scams in year one, disproportionately the lifeblood members most active in DMs and metaverse experiments. The Ledger partnership came from treating collector security as a retention problem, not an individual failing.
- Royalties are a term of sale, not a tip
Psych's analogy: a voiceover actor keeps residuals when the cartoon hits Netflix, and a stock photo licensed for one campaign costs 13 dollars, not 13,000. Work bought under a royalty contract carries that premise forever; marketplaces stripping royalties was a back step dressed as revolution.
- Do not depend on royalties anyway
DFC saw the collapse coming and pivoted so licensing deals, not royalties, carried profitability. Accessible pricing (0.025 ETH mint, Deadfrenz 85 percent free, TCG vaults around 13 dollars) built the audience; business revenue funded the building.
- Safe events are engineered upstream
Their Art Basel and New York parties felt different because community norms of respect were enforced long before the doors opened. Psych notes bluntly that anonymity's safety does not translate to live spaces, especially for women and gender diverse attendees, so safety has to be intentional.
- Test with grassroots before paying stars
Rather than throwing startup money at FaZe members, DFC built a 15 person stream team from its own collectors as a pilot: measuring IP crossover, VTube versus hybrid streaming, and Web3 appetite for Twitch content before any paid creator deals.
The conversation, topic by topic
From agencies to DFZ Labs
Psych and Betty ran interactive agencies in Australia; Deadfellaz looped them back to their illustrator roots, with Psych as lead artist. They began as a digital identity first company, Betty inspired by punk4156's ape identity, and connections from the early Punks community seeded the project. DFZ Labs now holds Deadfellaz, Deadfrenz, and the TCG IP (same universe, original characters).
The TCG that is not a TCG
A lifelong gamer with esports Counter-Strike roots, Psych loves trading card games but thinks nostalgia traps them as tabletop simulators. Citing indie titles like Slay the Spire, he describes a card game without the virtual table, built over seasonal live ops, with a Unity dev team starting around October after ten months of mechanics and storyline work.
Streaming, FaZe, and the stream team
Two advisors come from FaZe Clan (its former chief strategy officer and its general counsel) plus a PR team that works with FaZe, but DFC will not throw money at star streamers. Instead a grassroots team of 15 collectors streams on Twitch as a pilot for how the IP crosses over, including the unsolved design question of streamers who switch between VTubing as their Deadfella and appearing as themselves.
Why Deadfellaz is green
The palette came from Japanese mascot design thinking: distill shapes, lock line widths, and tie identity to a color the way Mickey Mouse and Pikachu own theirs. The undead niche was open, horror is a pop culture perennial, and the team offset the collection's carbon emissions early, an expensive undertaking MLow says inspired his own environmental NFT project.
The degrade system and social value
Traits carry no rarity; only the fresh, damaged, and rotten grades differ statistically, with nine full rotten glorious Deadfellaz and number 1054 the rarest. Clean fresh pieces attracted LinkedIn professionals while gore fans chased rotten ones. Collector Chanel amasses space buns; MLow compares the subgroups to the hoodie CryptoPunks.
The Rolling Stone 95 percent story
Psych agrees 95 percent of the space was worthless and probably malicious, but faults Rolling Stone for ignoring the 5 percent still building, especially individual musicians and artists who now face galleries and bookers quoting the headline back at them. He calls it hypocritical from a magazine that sold its own Bored Ape cover as an NFT, and unpunk from the home of rock and roll.
UTA representation
UTA restored access when NFT emails were auto refused, positioning DFC as proven operators rather than pitch spam, and understanding Discord and Twitter dynamics other agencies lacked. MLow shares that UTA's team helped launch his own career by introducing him to Danny Cole for his first curated collection.
DraftKings and Wrangler
A DraftKings founder owned the rarest Deadfella, which started conversations; the collab arrived as a Halloween fantasy pack turning 13 NFL players undead through the NFLPA, with player and manager relationships that went well. The Wrangler partnership produced a jacket Psych designed plus comic book style storytelling across socials, and he drops alpha: that story has a continuation coming.
Events and safety
Their Art Basel Miami party (with The Hundreds and Bobby) and New York event succeeded, Psych argues, because inclusivity was engineered: a diverse community that feels safe shows up. He is frank that NFT live events can feel unsafe for women and gender diverse attendees. This Halloween will likely be a digital activation, with Infected Fellas season 3 curating around 13 artists in an art trade format: each artist interprets Deadfellaz, and Psych turns each artist into a Deadfella.
Ledger and the scam wars
Hundreds of collectors were lost to hot wallet scams in year one, concentrated among the most active community members as attack vectors shifted weekly (including verified account ads served into DMs). The Ledger partnership, via its pro team, made cold wallet security a project priority rather than an afterthought.
The art itself
Psych describes the essence as an intersection of punk, horror, and cute mascot design, fed by anime, manga, and Murakami, drawn entirely in vector for that clean consistency of stroke and shape, with metal and EDM energy underneath.
The royalty fight
With OpenSea and Blur stripping royalties, DFC pivoted to licensing revenue it had built deliberately. Psych argues royalties are an absolute artist right embedded in the original sale, like voiceover residuals or stock photography license terms, and describes work with development partner Props on incentive alignment: acknowledgment frameworks like Twitch style recognition for royalty payers, gated chats, and the painful scraping away of benefits from those who never paid.
Culture Unchained with MetaMask
Betty led the pilot: a MetaMask sponsored series filmed in Korea capturing blockchain events, artist pop-ups, and street culture, designed to counter the crypto is evil narrative amplified by bad actors. The creator roster mixed Korean and Western artists (Ed Balloon and Latasha, both past performers at DFC events, among photographers, filmmakers, and musicians), with future editions planned at global events.
Psych the 1/1 artist
Beyond the collections he released an open edition this year and is building a 1/1 series in the same style for release by year end, made on the midnight shift with EDM playing. The name descends from Psych Street Fight, riffing on psychological fights and the psych genre's gradients, adopted because his illustration style clashed with a corporate identity building data visualizations, including DNA sequencing interactives.
In their words
“We started as a digital identity first company.”
Psych DF“95 percent of the space, in my opinion, was worthless and was actually probably malicious.”
Psych DF“We were maybe still the only collection where our traits have no rarity. The community themselves set the values of those.”
Psych DF“There's no industry in existence, apart from right now here, where a voiceover actor isn't getting royalties.”
Psych DF“At the end of the day, change is painful.”
Psych DF“Most of my art time is the midnight shift, with some EDM on in the early hours of the morning.”
Psych DFCite this conversation
Psych DF (Deadfellaz) in conversation with MLow, "MLow X Psych DF (Deadfellaz)," The MLow Show, unaired recording, 26 Sep 2023. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2023-09-26-mlow-x-psych-df-deadfellas.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.