Doodles is a 10,000-piece NFT collection on Ethereum launched in October 2021, featuring colorful hand-drawn characters in a distinctive pastel aesthetic. Created by artists Burnt Toast (Scott Martin), Poopie, and Tulip, Doodles distinguished itself through a community-governed treasury and a strategic push toward becoming a mainstream entertainment IP — culminating in a high-profile partnership with Pharrell Williams.
The Collection
Doodles characters feature pastel-colored humanoid figures with various traits — different facial expressions, backgrounds, hats, clothing, and other attributes. The art style is deliberately warm and approachable compared to the grittier or more aggressive aesthetics of other NFT collections. Each doodle is hand-drawn rather than algorithmically assembled from photograph-quality components.
The collection sold out at 0.123 ETH per token. Floor prices rose substantially in the 2021–2022 NFT bull run, with some rare tokens selling for hundreds of ETH.
Community Treasury (Doodlebank)
A portion of secondary sale royalties flowed into the Doodlebank, a community-controlled treasury. Holders voted on how to allocate these funds — for community events, merchandise, brand partnerships, and other initiatives. This governance model gave holders a meaningful stake in the project’s trajectory and differentiated Doodles from collections where all decisions were made by the founding team.
Entertainment Expansion
Doodles took a more mainstream ambition than most NFT projects. In 2022 and 2023, the team raised significant capital from investors including Accel Partners and announced plans to develop Doodles into a multi-platform entertainment brand — targeting animation, music, and consumer products.
The most high-profile move was partnering with Pharrell Williams, the musician and producer behind hits like “Happy” and “Get Lucky,” who took on the Chief Brand Officer role and released a music project connected to Doodles. The partnership brought genuinely mainstream press attention and positioned Doodles as one of the few NFT projects with a credible path to mainstream IP.
Doodles also collaborated with McDonald’s (a holiday campaign), released a Doodles 2 companion collection with dynamic traits, and expanded to platforms beyond Ethereum’s base layer.
Market Performance and Challenges
Like all major NFT collections, Doodles experienced significant floor price declines from its 2022 peaks. The NFT market contraction hit collections across the board. The entertainment strategy — designed partly to give Doodles value beyond speculative floor price dynamics — was slow to show returns.
The push into entertainment also created some tension with the original NFT collector community, who sometimes felt the brand was moving away from its crypto-native roots toward mainstream audiences. This is a tension many “blue chip” NFT projects navigated in the 2023–2024 period.
Significance
Doodles represented an attempt to answer a persistent question in NFTs: can a collection successfully transition from a speculative asset to genuine IP? While the results were mixed by 2024 standards, the experiment — combining community governance, serious capital, and mainstream brand deals — remained one of the more ambitious attempts to build lasting value in the NFT space.
Related Terms
- NFT — Non-fungible tokens
- Bored Ape Yacht Club — Contemporary blue-chip NFT collection
- Mfers — Contrasting counterculture NFT collection
- CryptoPunks — Earlier landmark NFT collection
- PFP — Profile picture NFT collections