Chibi Dinos is a collection of 10,000 unique, non-fungible tokens that dinosaurs or NFTs theme. Chibis – a phrase that describes the Japanese slang word for small – was used by many artists to depict large, short-headed caricatures.

The Chibis are unique in their design and coincidentally in their rarity, a typical feature of such NFT collections. Everyone wears the costumes of one of ten fictional basketball teams: Extinct Eaters and Jurassic Jumpers, among others.

Chibi Dinos started on August 20th on the top NFT marketplace OpenSea with an individual mining price of 0.06 Ether (ETH). The entire collection was sold out in just 18 minutes after drawing attention to itself through the group’s dedicated social media campaign.

Overall, the Chibi Dinos project had initial sales of $ 2 million, with an additional $ 3.5 million generated in secondary markets.

For a deeper look into this story and its impact on the broader NFT sector, Cointelegraph spoke to Sean Kelly, Las Vegas entrepreneur and chief architect of Chibi Dinos.

Sean is a formidable entrepreneur who has founded several multi-million dollar companies, including a basketball jersey manufacturing company and a pandemic PPE company. Chibi Dinos is his newest project.

Cointelegraph: What was the original inspiration for the Chibi cartoon? 

Sean Kelly: I always knew I wanted to make a shirt; my girlfriend thought to sew an animal into the shirt. I thought of a tiger at first, but she said dinosaurs were very different from many projects at the time.

My design team then came up with the idea for the Chibi, and after doing some research, I knew it could be a winner given the popularity of chibis in Asia.

Cointelegraph: What attracted you to the OpenSea marketplace as a hub for your project?

Sean Kelly: They are the largest NFT marketplace with the most users. The more eyeballs, the better for us.

Cointelegraph: After reflecting on the last few weeks since launch, what do you think made the difference in sales?

Sean Kelly: Our design is unique because no one has ever done NFT Chibi. We also have several professional basketball player captains for our project, Kendrick Perkins, Shareef O’Neal, & Kendrick Nunn.

Related: OpenSea Trading Volume Up 76.240% YTD Amid NFT Boom

Cointelegraph: How will Chibi Dinos develop in the coming years? Are you envisioning the transition to virtual reality or gaming? 

Sean Kelly: Yes, we are planning to release a game and integrate it into the metaverse. We also look at the transition to 3D and Solana networks.

Cointelegraph: How do you think the NFT landscape will be different in a year? And what do you find most appealing about this prospect?

Sean Kelly: The NFT landscape changes a lot. It’s pretty hard to tell. Until then, I would say that most 2D imaging projects will be irrelevant to Evidence and Profile Photos (PFPs), and only projects with solid communities and benefits will survive. I enjoy the challenge of staying relevant in a competitive environment as everything in this area changes so quickly that we are always thinking of what might be the next big thing for Chibi.