Mad Lads

Mad Lads is a collection of 10,000 profile picture NFTs on Solana. It was made by the team behind the Backpack wallet and exchange. This page covers the NFT project, not the soul group of the same name.

The collection was minted in April 2023. Most of the characters are Lads, and one in ten is a rarer Lassie. Owning one works like a membership card for the Backpack community. Holders have received free tokens from other Solana projects. They also got a share of Backpack's own BP token when it launched in March 2026. Mad Lads still trades on the main Solana NFT marketplaces, and its price tends to follow Backpack's fortunes.

How Mad Lads NFTs work: xNFTs, staking and the soulbound inventory

Mad Lads launched as the first collection of xNFTs, short for executable NFTs. An xNFT is an NFT with a small app attached, which opens inside the Backpack wallet. Backpack's launch announcement called each Mad Lad "a clickable ticket into the Mad Lads story". In practice, the app was the place where holders staked, checked rewards and received drops.

Staking went live in June 2023, according to the project's Mad News newsletter. You open Backpack, click your Mad Lad, click Stake and approve one transaction. Staking starts a counter that earns coins over time.

Those coins are "soulbound" to the NFT and the wallet that staked it, which means you cannot send or sell them. They sit in an inventory screen designed to look like a RuneScape or World of Warcraft menu. The coins are a loyalty record: proof of how long a Mad Lad has been held and staked, which the team and partner projects can use when they hand out rewards.

Mad Lads mint: price, date and the bot honeypot

Mad Lads minted on 21 April 2023 at 6.9 SOL each, one day later than planned. Bots swamped the first attempt the day before. Coral chief executive Armani Ferrante said he had also received threats demanding payment to call off an attack on the mint, Decrypt reported.

The team's answer became part of the collection's legend. It ran two mint pages. Real users were sent to the real one, and wallets flagged as bots were sent to a decoy. Bots spent about $250,000 on fake NFTs, according to Decrypt's account of the honeypot. More than 8,000 people took part in the real mint, per Backpack's own guide.

The launch came weeks after DeGods and y00ts had left Solana for other chains, and it gave Solana NFTs a lift. Mad Lads trading reached $8.2 million in a single day, Backpack said at the time. That was nearly three times the volume of Bored Ape Yacht Club over the same period.

Within days, a single Mad Lad sold for about 3,420 SOL, per Decrypt.

Mad Lads floor price and value: what moves it

The Mad Lads floor price, the cheapest listed NFT in the collection, has moved with news about Backpack more than with the wider NFT market. It passed 200 SOL for the first time on 5 December 2023, per Magic Eden data cited by Bitget News. It then fell a long way during the NFT downturn that followed.

The most recent example came in September 2026. The floor jumped about 85% in a day to 13.57 SOL on 25 September, TokenPost reported. The report linked the move to a rally in the BP token.

Two days later, one Mad Lad sold for 258.9 SOL on Magic Eden. The official Mad Lads account marked the sale with the words "MAD KING".

Rarity matters too. Backpack's guide says the Lassies sell for well above the Lads. Check a marketplace for the live floor before you rely on any figure quoted here.

Where to buy Mad Lads: Magic Eden, Tensor and OpenSea

You can buy Mad Lads on Magic Eden ME$0.060+1.6% and Tensor TNSR$0.029+0.3%, the two main Solana NFT marketplaces, and since 31 August 2026 on OpenSea as well. OpenSea named Mad Lads among the first collections available when it added Solana NFT trading, which we covered in OpenSea's return to Solana NFTs.

You need a Solana wallet holding SOL. Any major wallet can buy and hold a Mad Lad, but staking was built into Backpack, so plan to use that wallet if you want the inventory features. Prices are quoted in SOL, so the dollar cost moves with both the floor and the SOL price.

Mad Lads airdrops and the Backpack BP token

Airdrops are the main reason people have held Mad Lads. Several Solana projects picked holders as a target group for their token launches. Backpack's guide lists 3,000 PYTH per NFT from Pyth Network PYTH$0.073-1.8%, along with drops from Wormhole W$0.012+21.0%, Dymension and Pike, among others.

Backpack's own token followed. The BP token launched on 23 March 2026. A quarter of the supply was unlocked on day one. Most of that went to people who had earned Backpack Points, and 1% of the total supply was set aside for Mad Lads holders, according to Backpack's token overview.

Some perks have since been cut back. Mad Lads used to bring VIP status on Backpack Exchange. The April 2026 Mad News said Backpack removed "VIP1 distribution for new Mad Lads purchases", so only holders who had VIP status before the snapshot kept it. Past airdrops went to past holders. Buying a Mad Lad today does not entitle you to any of them.

Who Mad Lads is for

Mad Lads suits collectors who already use Backpack and want to be part of its community. The limit is that the benefits are social, and Backpack decides what they are. Nothing is promised.

What holders get in 2026 is mostly community. The June 2026 Mad News describes a poker series against other Solana NFT collections. It also covers a World Cup prediction game with custom trainers as the prize, and Discord events run by a new community manager. Holders have set up their own meetups, and one built a fan site called Mad Lab in October 2026.

A Mad Lad is a weak fit if your goal is something else. The BP token is the direct way to follow Backpack's business, and a Mad Lad is an indirect one. A new purchase no longer brings VIP status on Backpack Exchange either.

Mad Lads risks: what can go wrong

The biggest risk is dependence on one company. Mad Lads has no token, no treasury and no governance of its own. Its perks, its staking and its app features all exist because Backpack chooses to provide them, and Backpack can change them, as the VIP cut in 2026 showed.

Price risk is large. The floor fell by more than 90% in SOL terms between its December 2023 high above 200 SOL and the 13.57 SOL reported after an 85% one-day jump in September 2026. Moves of that size cut both ways and can come within a day.

Liquidity is thin compared with a token. Each NFT needs its own buyer, and rare pieces can take a long time to sell at the price you want.

Scams target holders. The mint itself drew bots and extortion threats, and well-known collections attract fake airdrop links and copycat listings. Check that a listing belongs to the verified collection, and treat any message that asks you to "claim" something for your Mad Lad as suspect.

Staking coins have no market value. They are soulbound and cannot be sold, and no source we read commits Backpack to any future reward for them.

Who created Mad Lads: Coral, Backpack and artist Yann Penno

Mad Lads was created by Coral, the company behind Backpack. Armani Ferrante and Tristan Yver founded it, and both had worked at FTX. The art is by Yann Penno, who led design at the Solana game Aurory before this, according to Backpack's guide. He built the characters around three themes: science, history and pop culture.

The slogans of Mad Lads are "Fock it." and "We Are One". Backpack has grown since the mint. It started as a wallet and now also runs an exchange and a stock trading service. In September 2026 it added Kyle Samani, who co-founded Multicoin Capital, to the Backpack US board. We covered that in our report on the appointment. Mad Lads is still the community badge for that business.