(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 all. To call out the elephant in the room upfront this week – the Otherside mint was certainly quite the anomaly. We’re excited to dive deeper on our thoughts below. This should be a massive week for NFTs (good and bad) as we expect new mints to test their luck and mid-to-upper tier projects to drop announcements after likely refraining last week to avoid getting lost in the shuffle. A lot to cover so we’ll dive right in.
We’ve partnered with Million Dollar Token Page as an initial pilot partner for their new product, Frames (or Profile Frames, PFFs), which like PFPs, are a way for people to show off they belong to an NFT community online. If you’re in our discord and don’t have an MC frame yet, @ us and we’ll help you out.
MC Pass – If you’re interested in joining our community:
Another great career section at the bottom of the newsletter. If you are looking for an opportunity to break into the burgeoning blockchain industry, there’s nobody curating better job listings than TheChild!
Due to the positive response we received, we’re bringing Angelo back to dive deeper on music NFTs.
Macro Update
A lot of sub-plots unfolded this week, so we’ll break this up into several mini macro updates.
Rough Week For Mid-Caps
What a horrific week for mid-caps. Practically every mid-cap project got absolutely hosed as many hoarded liquidity in preparation for the Otherside mint. It’s wild to see some solid projects that have been slowly grinding up just get sent back to older lower ranges in under 2 weeks. That being said, this may have provided some great buying opportunities if you move quickly. We’re starting to see anons liquidating apes, with MAYC going from 40 ETH to 29 ETH practically overnight. Projects like Azuki, Moonbirds, and Doodles are all rebounding very well in this case.
This upcoming week should be one of the busiest for NFTs. Post liquidity-suck, we’re expecting a lot of the Ape community to continue liquidating some of their yuga assets, and we anticipate that ETH will trickle back into mid-caps and other blue-chips, along with some new mints. We already see this happening, as today (May 1st) BAYC has the highest volume and # of individual sales since March 18th and we already are starting to see the floor price of mid-caps come back (albeit not as strongly as we’d like). Finally, expecting lots of news to be released this week or next, as last week was a dud if you weren’t in the Yuga ecosystem.
TLDR – Cheap ETH + liquid degens = 🚀 (knock on wood).
TradFi and ETH Price
We’re not experts, but it’s pretty clear that equities look terrible. Historically, crypto prices are strongly correlated with the Nasdaq, and we’ve seen this play out as ETH hit the $2700 range, which is the lowest it’s been since March 16th. We must all be forgetting the mint mania back in Jan/Feb when ETH was $2200-$2500 – we still believe that lower ETH prices are simply good for NFTs, as people tend to price in USD (especially new entrants). Now at $2800, as long as volatility isn’t insane, we think this lower range can sustain the NFT bull running for at least the next month+.
Bad Mints & New Trends
The NFT space is unforgiving. We were bullish on Crayzillas, and a delayed mint along with an error related to OpenSea spurred a massive wave of FUD and sent this project to Goblin Town. In the blink of an eye, projects can go from hyped and beloved, to an entire discord trolling the team, posting clown emojis, and abandoning the project. We’ve even seen a lot of deep hatred toward Yuga Labs for the mishaps they caused via the Otherside mint, despite their overwhelming sustained success and positive track record.
On the bright side projects like Ragnarok sold out 3900 mints at a .77 ETH price dutch auction in 40 seconds, with no gas war. This also made us notice something quite unique – a project doing their public sale the day before WL sale. We think this is quite smart, as during a WL sale many are watching the mint speed before minting, while during public there is much more FOMO. This also washes out the fugazi people who beg for WL in discord and also shows conviction from the founders that they have a great project. Won’t be surprised if we see this trend continue, most likely from experienced teams.
Speaking of Ragnarok, we’re disappointed in ourselves for missing this last week, since we think this is going to be the next big project, already at a 3x+ mint price. Transparently, we ape’d in earlier in the week and own an unhealthy amount of this project at an average cost of 1.8 ETH. The volume and resilience of dip buyers on the project is absolutely insane. With 4.5k ETH vol in its first 24 hours, under 5% of supply listed, whales like dingaling constantly sweeping, the strength of this project during a week where practically everything else was being slaughtered is mind blowing.
Ragnarok also shined a light on another trend we’ve been starting to see, and that is projects building out their roadmap prior to mint. They have a live demo where you can check out what the Ragnarok metaverse looks like and the “genesis ronins” will be available to play as your avatar from practically day one. When you see teams building out their game, roadmap, or whatever promises they made months ahead of mint, this is usually a good signal to take notice of.
Thoughts on Otherside and Yuga
A lot of thoughts here on what happened (purely opinion). The Otherside mint was an absolute disaster and the biggest loser was Ethereum, with the network being practically unusable for 2 hours. Many people got absolutely rekt losing 2 ETH+ on failed transactions and post-mortem NFT drama was a lot to handle.
Yuga is the clear winner here, making out like absolute bandits. Their response to the situation was a bit tone-deaf, but they will be reimbursing those who lost ETH on the failed transaction which is the least they could do. We’re not suggesting Yuga was acting malicious or selfish here, but rather failed to execute on something most expected them to be much more prepared for. At the end of the day, they’re running a venture-backed business with new and growing profit expectations from outsiders with a stake in Yuga. While we’re unsure if this specific situation will cause a sustained bullish or bearish view on the BAYC ecosystem, it’s not a good look and clearly turned a lot of people off.
Luckily, if you were able to mint your otherdeed, you are certainly in the money, because love it or hate it, BAYC will BAYC.
Will end this section with some commentary around the allure of “nft whales” in this space. Everyone treats anonymous whales as larger than life beings, following wallets, and thinking every decision they make will be correct, without knowing how they originally generated their ETH to become a whale in the first place. While wallet tracking can work at times, it’s never a good idea to put blind faith into anyone (even us!), which is what people did here. All week long ”Don’t fade Yuga” was the chorus of NFT twitter. Yuga surely is an incredible business, but nobody is perfect. For the first time, we saw this unbeatable entity show some vulnerabilities.
More Rapid Fire New Mints
A lot to cover. We’ll express some quick thoughts on notable new mints below. We understand it’s tough to keep track of everything, and the overviews below are simply a handful of projects we’re currently following that *have not* minted yet.
Nothing below is recommended as financial advice, these are simply our high-level opinions. Due to current market conditions, we are most likely planning on minting the projects below when the time comes, but not *guaranteed*. In times like these where many new mints struggle to sell out, we recommend observing the volume closely and making the decision for yourself.
Chain Runners XR
Mint - May 16th | Twitter | Discord
Chain Runners is a solid project that’s been part of the mid-tiers which have gotten beat down lately (most likely due to Otherside mint and general stagnation). A lot of big NFT players flex Chain Runner PFPs and many other projects are being built out by the CR community. Chain Runners XR is a fully-realized 3D model character with CC0 primitives and is “metaverse-ready” having a partnership in place with Nifty Island. The artwork is stellar and Chain Runners XR is a nice way for new members to be onboarded into the community without dropping 0.8–1.2 ETH. We’ve personally worked with a lot of members of the CR community and are confident they’ll continue to execute. Ultimately XR is an inexpensive bet on a great team that will continue to build.
Vivid
Got to chat with a few members on this team earlier in the week. They’re still in the early stages but things look extremely promising. Another project following the trend of building out their product/roadmap prior to mint, which so far has been a recipe for success. Their artist is Acky Bright who’s work speaks for itself (check out his twitter which has over 130k followers). Big players on the team are looking to create a narrative around a unique futuristic world – “Picture Inception meets Super Mario Galaxy – a giant city, with different segments all with distinct aesthetics and gravity”. Not much info we can share with the public yet, would recommend following along on their twitter and hanging around in their discord if interested.
Fear City
Grand Theft Auto artist Stephen Bliss. Art is great, provides a lot of nostalgia from those who played Rockstar games as a kid, and a lot of our trusted connections in the space have been eyeing this one. This project may be able to perform well in the short/medium-term due to the art and hype they’ve built. They also have some solid partnerships in place like their collab with Stapleverse, and have a WL giveaway in collaboration with Creepz.
Our biggest takeaway on what we don’t like is the ambiguous roadmap. While the project is looking to create a limited edition comic with the characters and there certainly is a lot that could be done with IP, we’re not sure how well this will be received by the NFT world. We’ve seen projects that don’t have a pre-established plan are struggling lately, so keep this in mind. Overall, there seems to be some solid interest in this project and may be worth it if you’re looking to *degen* into new mints.
Bad Influence
Website is simply beautiful. Highly recommended spending a few minutes on the site and skimming through to see what we mean. Art is similar to CyberBrokers which currently has a 3.5 ETH floor. A mint gives you the PFP and a full animated body which they have previews of, and it definitely doesn't look cheesy. We do admit “metaverse-ready” is a buzz word thrown around loosely, but will let it slide here 😂. By providing videos of what the full animated bodies look like, we’re a bit more at ease with this term being utilized. They’re also building out an application prior to mint that your Bad Influence avatar will give you access to.
We’ve had a lot of interaction in their discord and with the team – it’s another one of those projects with proper funding that is building out their plans/roadmap pre-mint, which we like.
There’s not much detail yet on mint price, which remains our primary concern here. Overall, looks extremely promising from a *high-level* and still hasn’t gained the hype we think it deserves. If they can execute on marketing (we think they will) then this may turn out to be a lucrative win.
Fury Bandits
Supply: 5,555 | Mint Date: 5/10
We’ve been speaking with the bandits team for quite some time and they’ve come a long way. If there’s one thing for sure it’s that the team is smart and understands the space. They’ve built a niche, tight-knit community and have partnered with a gaming studio to build their play-to-win studio.
The main pitch is that your bandit gives you the ability to play various mini-games to win XP (in-game token) which in-turn can enter you into a raffle to win blue-chip NFTs. The more XP you earn, the more tickets you get to the heist (raffle). After mint, they’ll be raffling off projects such as doodles and clone x to winners.
As we way the bull and bear cases, the bear case here is that while we think the concept of P2W gaming is great, the marketing here has certainly struggled as some find the concept to be complex. The team does a ton of twitter spaces where the public can ask questions - highly recommend checking them out if you’re interested. Overall, we haven’t seen a project build itself around a game to win blue chip NFTs. Looking forward to seeing how this all unfolds.
Psssd
The hype train continues. While practically everyone in the NFT space knows about this project, we just want to touch on a few things. A lot of comparisons have been made to other over-hyped projects but we think there’s something a bit different here. First, everything they have released is well thought out and different (stylistically and mechanically) from anything we’ve seen in the space. Founders Tom and Joe have built up some real grassroots support and die hard fans. While some may be WL farmers / bots, we’ve never seen so many accounts with bios saying “Possessed Fanboy”, “Working to become a Possessed Test Subject”, and “Test Subject”. They even have to have a waiting room where you apply for a time slot to enter their discord, since it’s so crowded.
These true die-hard fans give us a different vibe than the IF mint, which was mainly promoted by Apes/Punks and big name accounts. With 230K+ followers at this point, and over 2000+ in attendance on their spaces this week, we still have seen almost 0 big name accounts and NFT influencers discuss the Possessed. This will be fascinating to see post-mint, because die-hard fans who practically worship this project are less inclined to dump after mint. Beyond excited for this, but don’t expect this to mint until mid to late June. Confidently stand by our original statement that this will be one of the biggest projects of 2022.
Music NFTs – Macro Commentary
Hey guys - Angelo here, back for another week of MC Music. Happy to hear such positive feedback from the last article, and look forward to writing more for you rockstars 🎸. We’ll keep it short and sweet this week – a lot to go over.
This week has been insane in NFT land, with many blue chip projects down muuuucho beanage ($$$). In Music NFT land, Snoop Dogg dropped some tunes with a few other artists on Sound.XYZ, and immediately sold out 1000 NFT’s netting 100 ETH. Last week we took a shallow dive into the broader benefits of Music NFT’s - this article highlights some of the perks artists have been recognizing when releasing these projects, compared with publishing music the old fashioned way (streaming). As the music nft space matures, more and more decentralized protocols will be built to empower the artists leading the way. This week we’re going to dive deep on one of those potentially transformational protocols, the GET Protocol (Twitter | Website | Discord).
We recently stumbled across GET Protocol (GET), which could possibly be THE blockchain solution to cure a modern day atrocity known as event ticketing. Anybody who has ever bought concert tickets knows that it's an absolute rip off for a lot of reasons. Even if you’re lucky enough to buy popular concert tickets at face value, you’ll still have to pay an extra 40-ish% on top of the ticket price in nonsense fees. If you’re buying off a resale site like StubHub or Vivid seats, prices usually sit at two times that of the original ticket for popular shows. That’s some serious beanage! Consistently bots come out the winners on initial releases and scalpers make a killing on secondary, leaving fans having to pay out the ass for live experiences. Scalped tickets more often than not, turn out to be fraudulent. GET was designed to prevent this.
GET is an Amsterdam based Blockchain organization specializing in live event ticketing. Already has relatively solid traction in Europe, with 1.7m tickets sold to date - it’s just a matter of time before it’s more adopted in the U.S. The protocol is built on Polygon and has super low transaction fees - high gas in Ethereum based transactions would essentially mimic the fees users currently see. Users can only buy and sell tickets through the app, so there’s no transfer issues from let’s say, buying on Ticketmaster and selling on StubHub. Their technology is so cutting edge that they are also providing the backend for other traditional ticketing companies to build on. This furthers GET’s dominance in blockchain ticketing, and demonstrates a strong a bull case for their governance token $GET, which they use to fuel transactions. We don’t expect this ticketing issue to be solved overnight, as Live Nation - the massive live entertainment conglomerate - owns most popular venues (far too many) in the United States - as well as the ticketing resources (Ticketmaster). It will no doubt pose a challenge for GET to break into the US market, but for independently owned venues who want a modern day ticketing solution that doesn’t screw over your fans, GET Protocol may be your new go-to.
That’s all for this week, thanks for tuning in. Be sure to share your thoughts or keep the conversation going in #music on MC Discord! - adios, Angelo
Conclusion:
Another heart racing week in the books. In times like these, we feel the urge to over-emphasize the need to DYOR. New mint success is more uncertain than ever, elite blue chips are fumbling the bag, celebrities continue to pursue cash grabs at a rapid clip, but beneath all of the shams, there are diamonds to be mined – you just have to know where and how to look. As the bags under our eyes continue to grow heavier, may our MetaMask wallets continue to grow fatter. Until next time anons.
Love,
Wilson & Paul
Web3 Careers:
GM all! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – building and creating forms of income (not flipping) from Web3 is going to be the most reliable way to survive poor market conditions. Don’t wait until there are no new mints or liquidity or even new job postings to start building and gaining experience. If you’re reading this I *know* that you’re qualified for a job somewhere in Web3 so get applying, anon.
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 hello@mintcalendar.com.
Community/Social Media
Community Manager (WAX, Remote)
Solana Community Manager (Rarible, Remote)
Marketing:
Visual Content Creator (Gnosis, Lisbon/Berlin or Remote)
SEO Lead (Opensea, San Francisco/New York or Remote)
Lead Marketing Manager (Cere Network, Remote Europe)
Growth Hacker (Redstone, Remote, 60-80K)
Product/Miscellaneous:
Product Manager (Phantom, Remote US)
Intern, Content Researcher (Nansen, Remote)
Software Development:
Backend Engineer, Indexer (LooksRare, Remote Global)