(Any views expressed in the below are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions.)
GM everyone. “Another volatile week in the metaverse” as we whisper to ourselves for the 6th consecutive week. We hope you all are staying well as parts of the world seem to be flipped upside down once again. We also hope you are still holding tight on your precious ETH during the last weeks of chop because 2022 is going to be a year of outsized opportunities. A lot of excitement on the horizon and our Discord most likely has over 100 members by the time reading this. As always, we have new Web 3.0 jobs listed below, feel free to reach out to us or The Child if interested.
Some logistical updates:
We will not be publishing an article on Monday 1/3/2022. Next week, we will be dropping a comprehensive post, touching on every single project we’ve covered since inception. We will own our entire track record, giving you our biggest Ls and Ws for 2021. We’ll also cover our most bullish/bearish takes on projects we’ve gone over in the past along with the 2022 outlook. This will most likely go out Dec 27/28.
We’ll be launching some new initiatives in 2022 involving community building, and we’ll also be getting more involved in specific projects. Really exciting stuff – updates to follow.
With that housekeeping out of the way, let’s jump right in. First though, shout out to the Golden Pups team for the cute holiday cartoon below.
Macro Update
Keeping this week’s macro update light, tight, and just right:
One thing we’d like to think we have a good read on is big picture NFT adoption. Anecdotally though, for the first time since late September, we had the largest week-over-week % increase in subscribers as well as twitter followers. Maybe you feel it too but there seems to be a jpeg resurgence in the air.
New mints are selling out once again. We were hesitant to make this proclamation as we’ve seen purchases slowly climb back over the last few weeks, but are now in a place where we’re comfortable making that call. Projects like Nuclear Nerds (nothing special in our opinion) sold out a 9k collection fairly quickly. Also, after a few days the floor hasn’t really dropped off much – this is a good sign for a newer project. With the ETH chop it seems people are looking to move back to jpegs since they’ve gotten beaten up so bad.
Floors of solid projects are starting to pick back up. Projects we’ve covered like Voids, Penguins, Wanderers, Dads, have all seen roughly a 20% increase on the floor. MAYC is basically at a 7 ETH floor and Doodles is solidifying its floor above 3 ETH.
We know a lot of you own Wanderers so figured we should mention that the Wanderers have their “planet pass” snapshot today, 12/20/2021. You will have the ability to claim one free planet and planet pass on the Matic network for every Wanderer in your wallet during the snapshot. Note, hold your Wanderer in a MetaMask wallet for the snapshot to work effectively.
Adidas NFT drop! To underscore at the top, this is certainly a cash grab. Got a question in our discord regarding brands entering the NFT space. Same answer as always – some will succeed but most will fail. A lot will be a crash grab and we’re short term bearish on most individual enterprise projects. However, on a long time horizon this is extremely bullish for not only NFTs but crypto as a whole. Really normalizes this stuff, makes it less intimidating/obscure, and is a healthy evolution for the space overall.
South Park’s new TV movie special speaks on NFTs in a hilarious fashion. Here’s a clip that has been going around which is absolutely hysterical.
Punks have really taken a hit compared to apes, especially since the loss of Punk #4156. Apes remained fairly flat all week but seem to be closing the gap as some punks begin to sell in the high 50s.
We haven’t spent much time on metaverse land projects, which we get a lot of requests for. Think this will be a “winner take most” market and most of these projects will never play out to become successful. Due to this, we don’t think it makes sense for 20-30+ projects to have plots of land selling for 1 ETH and above. Hot area if you can mint for cheap but for now it’s too early to decide a clear winner.
Creepz Update
This is our highest conviction play of the last few months and we strongly believe it will be one of the most successful projects to come out of 2021 (not financial advice). We recognize that we are sticking our necks out here with the amount of support we’ve thrown behind the Creepz but it’s a risk worth taking when you feel so strongly about a project like we do about the Creepz.
We had the opportunity to participate in another twitter spaces this week on Thursday and speak alongside the team, VonDoom, and Josh Ong. Long story short these guys have been building out this project for months now and are closing in on launch. This was probably the 3rd time we’ve seen the founders on twitter spaces, and both of them (Joe and Dom) have a well thought out answers to every single question from the audience. These guys are truly prepared.
The discord has organically reached 6k+ members over the last month and is more active than most with 2-3x the size. We’ve touched on how dope the art is and you’ll have the ability to stake your creep to earn $illuminati, which in turn can be used to mint other collectibles and rewards. Here’s a great quote from Joe in the discord discussing the project’s utility:
“Utility: Floor and utility are intrinsically linked. We have built an ecosystem that recognizes this and ensures that the utility token holders receive from holding is received both; immediately (aka we have already built staking and 3x more collections, so you don't need to wait and "hope" you will get value one day...) and long term with the $illuminati members club which is already being modeled.”
As always we recommend joining the discord to see if you vibe. No set date on mint but seeming like it’ll take place during the last week of December. Be on the lookout.
The Creepz team has given us some White List spots for our community. We’ll be giving these away in our Block Party Discord so feel free to jump in, say what’s up, and win a WL spot.
Pays To Be An Early Adopter
As NFT adoption proliferates and VC dollars pour into the space, we’re noticing a vibrant startup ecosystem emerge, full of bold/unique takes on the traditionally repetitive jpeg sling sesh. Projects like ENS domains and SuperRare have proven that there is immense value in being an early adopting community member. Had you created an ENS domain or been active in SuperRare from the early days, you would've been gifted airdrops with significant monetary value. This is one of the great features of web3 – early adopters are treated like owners and compensated accordingly. With that in mind, a couple newly formed startups worth keeping an eye on right now and getting involved early (if possible), are Sound XYZ and Fractal.
Sound XYZ just recently closed on a ~$5M seed round led by A16Z to empower recording artists to live off of the 1,000 true fans model. As we’ve stated numerous times, we’re incredibly bullish on music NFTs and the doors that NFTs will unlock for the everyday recording artist. Spotify has built a monopoly where only the top 1% of recording artists can earn a living wage, and web3 is changing this for the better. The paradigm shift taking place with web3 is encouraging fans to become part-owners in their favorite artists, turning ordinary fans into evangelists and providing the benefits of a free market system to artists who have never had the opportunity to find out how free markets value their work. Look out for new types of record labels to pop up with a web3 focus (we already noticed the first signs of this with Vertigo Party) and if Sound ever drops a token, you’re going to want to be on the receiving end of that airdrop.
Fractal is founded by Twitch co-founder Justin Kan alongside a stacked team of cofounders (including the founder of BleacherReport and other notable past founders), building essentially OpenSea for in-game nft assets. As a past gaming infrastructure founder, you can't help but be bullish on this team's ability to execute. This addressable market is enormous now that in-game assets can be traded for real world currencies. The gaming world is also always the first to adopt new technologies so expect gamers to welcome these new platforms with relatively open arms. If Fractal ever drops a governance token, you do not want to miss out on the airdrop.
Lil Pudgys
Holy heck. New mints are not dead. Now, as much as we love the penguins here, we weren’t too sure how to feel about this one, especially since there’s a supply of 22,222. But wow, we didn’t even get time to mint during the public sale.
The 13k public supply sold out within 15 minutes of the dutch auction hitting a price of .03 ETH. That is some impressive demand. Also, we’re pleased to note that gas fees have been relatively low recently, adding to a perfect storm for projects minting in the next week or so. Penguin owners also get to mint for free which was definitely a contributing factor to the demand in this drop.
Either way, this shows that there are still plenty of people out there who want to join the penguin community and are looking for reasons to mint new projects. We think you’ll have the ability to pick these up under .03 if you missed the mint like us. While we’re not pumped about the total supply, notable projects like Adam Bomb Squad have a higher total supply and have remained fairly consistent at a .25 ETH floor during this “bear market”. It will be crucial to monitor the floor as these are definitely prone to pump similar to what happened with the penguins back in August. While we missed the chance to mint, we have a few that we’ll claim for free.
*Quick note on whales* - having an outspoken and diamond-handed whale or 2 in your community can be really important. We saw what happened with CryptoPunks after Punk 4156 sold due to copyright issues, the floor has been cratering lower and people are losing faith in the project (yes, punks will be 100% fine). Penguins have 9x9x9, who is the largest Pudgy Penguin whale, constantly sweeping floors and notably owns the 100 ETH Banana Peng. Interestingly, he minted ~4% of the Lil Pudgys (Note this screenshot was taken before he claimed his 100+ free pudgys). 9x9x9 has never sold a single Penguin and is a large player within the community. Will be interesting to watch how he approaches Lil Pudgys. Either way, nothing but respect for the king.
Web3 Careers:
GM — lots of great opportunities for you this week and even more on the horizon! One of the exciting things about covering the NFT and Web3 jobs space is you get to see which companies are trying to get involved. This week CNN and its parent company WarnerMedia (who also owns HBO) are hiring for NFT roles and so is Amazon! These are just a few of the great places to dive into bringing companies to the Web3 space.
There weren’t a ton of project related jobs this week, but as exemplified by the recent Pudgy Penguins announcements, founders are realizing the need to delegate responsibilities as their projects get to insane sales volume. This means more jobs for people like you! The Penguins have said they’ll be hiring for Community, Social Media, and Project Managers and more. As we see those jobs and others like it from different projects we will be flagging them here and on social media!
Let us know if you’re hiring for incredible roles or if there are other types of opportunities you’d like to see in this section! Tweet/DM us @MintCalendar, @TheChild1996, or send an email to officialmintcalendar@gmail.com.
Community Building and Safety:
Senior Manager, CX NFT Content Moderation Ops (Coinbase)
DevRel/Community Manager (Bunzz)
Community Lead (Pocket Network)
Content Creation:
Senior Product Designer, CNN Vault NFTs (CNN Digital)
Strategy/Marketing/Miscellaneous:
Business Operations Associate (Magic Eden)
Lead Marketing Designer/Solidity Devs/Community Management and more! (Parcel)
Executive Assistant (OpenSea)
Growth and Innovation Insights Analyst (WarnerMedia)
Tax Senior Manager, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (Deloitte)
Software Development:
Senior Backend Engineer (NFT.com)
Senior Software Development Manager (Amazon Managed Blockchain)
Senior Software Engineer (Chestr Labs)
That’s all folks! Hope you all enjoyed this week's addition. Feel free to shoot us a DM on Twitter or email us with what you’d like to see more of! We’re super active on twitter so also feel free to tag us in anything interesting.
If you’re feeling friendly feel free to share this with anyone who you feel might otherwise fall into the NGMI category.
Most of all, have a wonderful week!
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Disclaimer about sponsorships: We’ve been getting A LOT of dms about sponsorships and upcoming drops. Many are NGMI but a few projects stood out and have teams that we’ve taken the time to speak with and are excited to share info on in the near future. If you're launching a new project and are looking to work with us on promotion and/or consultation on how to plan a successful drop, feel free to slide in the DMs in Twitter.