Why Illuvium? Part 1 of 4: The Team

April 29, 2022

4 minute read

The answer to that question is simple and so I’ll lead with it: Illuvium is better than every other NFT project. It simply is. While everyone else was rushing to put out bad games with graphics stuck in the 80s, Illuvium was quietly building. And the result is epic. In this article I’ll go over the first of 4 main topics to get you up to speed on the project and why there isn’t a close second. Those topics are Team, Concept, Tokenomics and Current State.

Team

Illuvium was started in late 2020 by 4 brothers Kieran, Grant, Aaron and Kain. The Warwick brothers grew up playing video games and are ultra competitive probably to a fault. Many controllers were smashed and TVs broken in the Warwick household over the years. Fast forward to today and not much has changed. However, that fierce competition has led to a AAA build out in a fraction of the time that it takes a normal studio. So how did we get here?

Let’s start with Kieran, he is the master marketer amongst the brothers and has grown the Illuvium following to 200k in Discord. Kieran is a gambler. He’ll go all in and is not afraid to lose. A classic story that he’s told over and over in YouTube interviews is how he somehow lost all his money trading Ethereum when it was under $10. That result is hilarious, but also important here. It exemplifies the attitude Kieran brings to the project. When he goes for something it’s all in or not at all. Kieran Warwick is all in with Illuvium.

The next piece of the puzzle is Grant. This whole project could not be possible without Grant’s digital art expertise. The dude is a beast no other way to put it. I mean look at the graphics!

There’s not even a close second in the NFT space. Grant is just as competitive as Kieran and the two fight constantly, but it’s all brotherly love. Ultimately they push each other to be better. Grant has spent more hours than anyone on the design of Illuvium and it shows. The level of detail and strive for perfection that Grant demands can’t be understated. In a world where everyone asks “Wen” Grant Warwick says shut up and keeps working.

Next up we have Aaron. Without Aaron the project would be way behind and Grant would probably have spent entirely too long perfecting one plant. Aaron keeps the project and team moving forward. The dude is a freak with organization. He is the reason they have been able to scale up to a team of around 250 people in a year and a half. While every other project is trying to partner with a gaming studio, Aaron has built one himself. He’s also in charge of game mechanics and lore. It’s still early, but the TFT style survival mode has lived up to the hype. There is much more to come and I am particularly excited for the storyline. The project is in the right hands with Aaron Warwick steering the ship.

Lastly we have Kain. Kain has been in the Web 3 world much longer than the other brothers. When Kieran was losing all his money with Ethereum, Kain was building. He has successful DeFi projects in the space and is the mastermind behind Illuvium’s tokenomics. Kain insisted that all revenue go back to ILV token holders and that is exactly what will happen. Imagine Pokémon giving every piece of revenue back to the community? It’s insane, but here we are. More to come on tokenomics in Part 3 of this series. Kain is not as active as the other 3 brothers. He has his own successful project to run, but make no mistake he is the brains behind the tokenomics and we haven’t seen the last of Kain Warwick.

So here we are. Four brothers all wildly talented in their own way. Come together and build the next Pokémon. It all sounds too good to be true, but that’s Web 3. The coolest part is that these guys interact in discord every day. I learned about them just by watching YouTube interviews and hanging in discord. The level of transparency that Illuvium grants us with is unheard of from this space. They don’t have to be cryptic because they can deliver. Everyone else is scrambling to figure out how to give their community what was promised. Meanwhile, Illuvium has been delivering every day for the last year and a half and only getting stronger. They hope to have a fully grown studio of 1000 people one day and I believe they can get there. The future is bright and we have only just begun.