Zero To Hero's Path From Web3 Playboys to an Ethereum Mainnet Academy

Zero To Hero Academy said its collaborations are "officially live" as of July 6, 2026, with a "limited pre-sale" still to come, the team wrote. The Academy is the newest layer of ZeroToHero, the dynamic-avatar NFT project that spent the spring rebranding from Web3 Playboys — and it is deliberately not staying on ZeroToHero's home chain. "There is only one chain that makes sense for what we're building, and that's ETH Mainnet," Zero To Hero Academy said on June 20, addressing holders who assumed the expansion would stay on Abstract, where the original collection lives.

That split matters for tracking the project accurately: the original ZeroToHero collection is Abstract-native and isn't moving; Zero to Hero Academy is a separate, Ethereum-mainnet-targeted brand extension from the same team. Descout's graph reflects that as two related but chain-distinct entities rather than one multi-chain project.

From Web3 Playboys to an Ethereum expansion

The rebrand was announced March 31, 2026, while the account still posted as @WEB3Playboys: "Yes, everything is evolving. This has been in the works for quite some time. The rebrand positions us for long term growth at a much larger scale... We also have Zero to Hero Academy launching," the team wrote. The handle moved to @zerotohero shortly after; the original collection — a 3,000-item set of gender-swappable, trait-evolving avatars — stayed on Abstract throughout, per its OpenSea listing.

Zero To Hero has leaned hard on off-chain growth since. "We just hit 75,000 followers on TikTok and 4.3 million likes. In April alone, we generated 30 million views on TikTok. Just 75 days ago, we were sitting at around 5,000 followers," the team said on June 27 — a self-reported figure Descout has not independently verified. That sits alongside a quieter secondary market: as of July 10, the original collection's OpenSea floor is 0.015258 ETH across 711 owners of the 3,000-item supply, with roughly $39 traded in the prior 24 hours, per OpenSea.

Free events and monthly drops, funneling into the Academy

The social growth ran alongside a string of free events for holders. Zero to Hero and Moody Mights ran a joint promotion in April offering Web3Playboys holders a "FREE 33 dollar airdrop" — a Battle Pass, an AI assistant, an Energy Pack, and Black/Pink Diamonds — plus an optional "Chad's Truck" mint that fed into a Zero To Hero SBT and raffle entries. Days later, Zero to Hero ran Cannonball Chaos, a five-day spin-to-win event handing out daily traits from April 20 to 24. Underneath both, the Playboys Collectors Pass (PCP) kept shipping monthly value-add traits to subscribers; the July 1 drop introduced a new companion character the team said "will play a major role in the Zero To Hero Academy universe," tying the older collection's subscriber perk directly into the new brand.

That funnel points at the Academy. Its public Discord opened July 6, as promised in the team's June 19 announcement. A Trait Suggestion Contest running June 19–26 asked holders to tag friends, repost, and submit trait ideas for "a chance to influence the future of Zero To Hero Academy and secure GTD (guaranteed), WL (whitelist), or Presale Access," per the Academy's announcement; winners were posted July 8. The Academy also named its first outside collaboration partner, DedGorgez, on July 1, and described its approach to partnerships as building "exclusive collaboration traits" rather than simply trading whitelist spots, per its July 6 collaboration post. On July 9, the Academy asked communities interested in "GTD, WL, FCFS (first-come-first-served), or Presale access" to apply, though the application process itself wasn't fully detailed in the post available to us.

Alongside launch prep, the team revived a mobile game. Zero To Hero Academy said it had "originally been developing" the game "for a full mobile release on the App Store," paused it "to focus on Zero To Hero Academy," then brought it back July 4 "so everyone can play while we continue building toward launch." Cheesy Streets went live behind a password-gated link on July 6, paired with a beginner's guide narrated by Sloppy_Studios; the team called it "still a work in progress."

What's not dated yet

Several pieces of the Academy launch remain open. No presale date has been set — the team has said only it "will be announced soon." The GTD/WL/FCFS application process referenced July 9 hasn't been published in full. Cheesy Streets has no confirmed date for a full App Store release, only an "ETA: Soon." And DedGorgez is the only named collaboration partner so far, against a team promise of "one of the first of many."

Three things would confirm the Academy is on track to mint on Ethereum mainnet this cycle: a dated presale announcement, a second wave of named collaboration partners beyond DedGorgez, and a published set of GTD/WL/FCFS requirements rather than a general call to apply.