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Invisible Friends The Walk: How the Mint and Burn Work

Natalee

Image source: Invisible Friends on X and OpenSea

Invisible Friends The Walk is a new open edition of the walking character that has served as the face of Invisible Friends since 2021 but was never minted as an NFT until now. It mints on OpenSea for 24 hours starting Wednesday, October 28, 2026, at noon ET (11 a.m. CT), and closes at noon ET on Thursday, October 29. Anyone can mint it for $5, paid in ETH, with no wallet limit. Every Invisible Friends holder gets one free Walk for each Friend they held at the October 26 snapshot, so holders don’t need to mint anything.

The Walk is also the first release under new ownership. A week earlier, coinbilly, who ran the original 2022 launch, announced he had bought the whole project. That deal matters more for collectors than the $5 price tag, because it comes with a contract migration that changes what happens to existing listings. Here is how the mint works, what the burn plans are, and what to check before you sign anything.

How The Walk mint works

Everything below comes from the project’s October 26 announcement on X and the official Invisible Friends Editions page on OpenSea, which is the mint link the project posted.

coinbilly explained the $5 price on X: he “wanted to do it free for everyone but it would’ve just been botted,” and the small fee keeps it for “people who actually want one.”

Why the walking Friend was never minted

Invisible Friends launched on February 23, 2022, as 5,000 animated characters by the animator Markus Magnusson. In coinbilly’s words, they were “5000 invisible characters walking in a loop, and all you see is what they’re wearing or holding.” The figure in the blue tracksuit, yellow belt bag and floating glasses became the image people shared to stand for the whole project, but it was never one of the 5,000 tokens. OpenSea’s drop page puts it simply: “The one everyone recognizes, shared everywhere, never actually minted. Until now.”

That makes The Walk an unusual kind of commemorative edition. It isn’t a new character or a derivative. It is the brand’s signature image finally getting its own token, more than four and a half years after the collection it represented.

The October 20 press release announcing the acquisition. Image source: Invisible Friends on X

New ownership: what coinbilly bought

On October 20, Invisible Friends posted a press release saying coinbilly “has acquired the Invisible Friends intellectual property, brand, and associated assets.” Terms were not disclosed. The release says the collection “has been largely dormant since 2024” and that, for the first time since launch, “the name, the artwork, the social accounts, the contract and the brand sit with one owner.”

In a longer X article titled “I bought Invisible Friends”, coinbilly says he started working on the brand five years ago and tried to buy it for more than two. He describes the original team as himself, James Curran of SlimHoods, and the developer mikker, and recalls the Kith capsule collaboration and a mint-day charity auction he says raised $1.3 million for 13 charities. He also says Markus Magnusson “isn’t involved moving forward,” while crediting him with creating “the art that made people care in the first place.” The old RCC Discord has been renamed the Invisible Friends Discord.

The stated priorities are new character animation, physical goods “made for people whether or not they know what an NFT is,” brand collaborations, and priority access for holders. If that sounds familiar, it is the same move other legacy PFP brands are making: Azuki is pushing its world into manga and a trading card game, and Yuga Labs is pushing Bored Ape Yacht Club into physical-and-digital cards through Mudwater’s BAYC card packs. For more on how these 2021 and 2022 projects are aging, see our Behind the Bluechips guide to legacy NFT artists and projects.

The relaunched invisiblefriends.io, posted October 26. Image source: Invisible Friends on X

Hold or burn: what The Walk unlocks

The Walk is meant to be used, not just held. OpenSea’s drop page says it “can be burned for new things from the brand, including physical collectibles and new art,” and that each burn “is announced when it goes live.” The project’s X thread says the first burn opportunity opens six hours into the mint, which works out to about 6 p.m. ET (5 p.m. CT) on October 28. The relaunched invisiblefriends.io now has a Burn page in its menu next to Digital Collectibles and Shop.

coinbilly says The Walk “will be a way to get access to some of what the brand puts out, digital and physical. not everything,” and ties it to the leftover physical collectibles holders have been asking about. What the first burn offers, and how many Walks it costs, has not been announced. If you’re deciding whether to mint several, keep in mind that the supply is uncapped and each burn reward is still unknown.

The teaser posted alongside the burn announcement. Image source: Invisible Friends on X

The contract migration: why old listings won’t carry over

The detail Invisible Friends holders shouldn’t miss is in the press release, not the mint thread. The collection is “migrating to a new contract with enforced royalties within two weeks.” Holders “receive their Invisible Friends on the new contract by airdrop,” and “live listings will not carry over.” The release is dated October 20, so the stated window runs to about early November. As of October 27, the project had not posted a migration date on its X account.

Here’s what that means in practice:

What this means for collectors

The Walk itself is a small, $5 decision. The bigger story is that a 2022 PFP project that had largely stopped moving now has one owner who controls the art, the contract and the brand, and he is turning the collection toward physical products and burn-to-redeem drops. Moving to a contract with enforced royalties signals a bet on long-term brand building over trading volume. Whether it works will show in the details that haven’t been announced yet: what the burns redeem for, how the new contract handles royalties across marketplaces, and whether the new animation work gives the characters a life beyond the walk cycle.

For now, the practical answer is simple. Holders don’t need to do anything for The Walk. Anyone else who wants one has 24 hours starting at noon ET on October 28, and everyone with a listed Friend should plan to relist after the migration.

Sources

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