Rick and Morty co-creator collaborates with Paradigm on NFT research project

Quick Take

  • Justin Roiland, best known as the co-creator of Rick and Morty, is working with researchers from crypto investment firm Paradigm on a new NFT mechanism called CRISP. 
  • CRISP lets users buy NFTs whenever they want and adjusts the price accordingly. 

Justin Roiland, co-creator of the Rick and Morty animated series, is collaborating with two researchers from crypto investment firm Paradigm on a new mechanism for non-fungible token (NFT) sales.

According to Paradigm's Dave White, the new concept would allow a project to more seamlessly sell large quantities of NFTs over a long period of time at stable prices, depending on demand in the market. 

"When NFTs are being sold too quickly relative to the target rate, we want to be able to adjust prices quickly," according to a white paper. "The higher the sales rate compared to the target rate, the faster we want to raise prices."

Through this mechanism, prices slowly will decline when demand decreases. 

"However, we want to decay prices slowly over time, because we managed to hit the target rate at previous prices and we don’t want to drop prices more than we have to," the white paper added. A Solidity implementation of CRISP can be found on GitHub.

NFTs — the form of which spans artworks, collectible trading cards, in-game items, and more  — have driven significant activity in the past year, with volumes on unicorn OpenSea reaching more than $3 billion this month.

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The motivation for Paradigm's project was inspired by lackluster user experiences during NFT auctions. "Auctions cost gas, and we want users to be able to buy one of these NFTs at any time, without having to wait for an auction to terminate," the researchers wrote in a post that details the project.

For instance, if a project like Parallel wanted to sell 100 Parallel cards every 30 minutes for the next seven days, they could use this mechanism to allow the price to automatically adjust based on the demand so that the goal of 100 sales every day could roughly be achieved. 

The Block reached out to Dave White on Twitter for further insight but did not hear back by press time. 

This isn't Roiland's first foray into the crypto market. As previously reported by Decrypt, Roiland made $1.65 million for an art collection with some of the proceeds being used to "help the homeless people in Los Angeles."


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About Authors

Anushree covers how U.S. businesses and corporations are moving into crypto. She has written about business and tech for Bloomberg, Newsweek, Insider, and others. Reach out on Twitter @anu__dave
Frank Chaparro is Host of The Scoop podcast and Director of Special Projects. He also writes a biweekly newsletter. Chaparro started his career at Business Insider, where he specialized in the intersection of digital assets and Wall Street, market structure, and financial technology. Soon after joining Business Insider out of Fordham University, Chaparro was interviewing top finance and tech executives, including billionaire Mark Cuban, “Flash Boys” star Brad Katsuyama, Cboe Global Markets CEO Ed Tilly, and New York Stock Exchange President Tom Farley. In 2018, he become a sought after reporter in the crypto world, interviewing luminaries such as Tyler Winklevoss, the cofounder of Gemini, Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Circle, and Fundstrat head Tom Lee. For inquiries or tips, email [email protected].