Buckle Up Buttercups
Buckle Up Buttercups
Government Forces Are Inbound
(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 lads. What a freakin’ whirlwind of a week.
If you’re still here, thanks for sticking around. There’s about 10 of us left so we’ll need to band together, maybe learn each other’s names and play some cards, because we’re gonna be here for a while - wherever that is.
Did I mention that I’m verified?
That aside, I’m still itching to provide a level-headed view on where we are in Avalanche NFTs and what to keep an eye out for in the near future, so I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. Let’s jump in.
Market Update
Source: @21shares
As we started to see towards the end of last week, Joepegs volume has been trending down hovering around $20-25k, a far cry from the middle of October where people were carefree and slinging red coins at just about every project there was to buy.
It’s difficult to pinpoint the reason why, but I chalk it up to the large macro overhang infiltrating our cool kid’s club. Between the US elections, CPI report coming out this morning, along with FTX imploding (remember when that was a meme?), it’s hard to block out the noise.
Source: @0xManny
Another good way to slice up this volume is to examine exactly how the volume is being generated. A big contributor to our October festivities and bag pumping was due to people actually buying listed NFTs (highlighted in orange). I’m generally not surprised that offers accepted make up a large portion of Joepegs’ volume, but it looks like we’re trending back in that direction.
But how are projects actually holding up?
Source: Avalytics
By and large, most projects are depressed across the board from a couple of weeks ago. Not surprising given the data we examined. Biggest pullbacks here for more frequently traded collections include Peons at ~7 AVAX (from ~13) and Wolfiland (3.69, was >15 post-reveal - yikes).
More exclusive and illiquid projects like Beeg Rock are down from 169.42 AVAX to 110, with one holder puking his at 70 AVAX yesterday. Morfs are down as well, from 135 AVAX to ~95.
While these don’t feel great for our bags, if you’ve managed to stay liquid, I think it’s a great time to start stink bidding on some floors of your favorite projects. More likely than not, you’ll probably get a bite. That’s definitely something I’ll be looking to do over the next week.
Last Week’s Mints - A Post Mortem
Let’s start with the big one - Nox Beyond was a hugely anticipated project that dropped last Friday. One of the key differentiators here was that Nox was using their own site to mint vs. Joepegs which Wiz touched on a bit last week in our interview. Unfortunately, demand was so strong that issues arose quickly after the mint window opened. The site almost immediately froze and whitelisted wallets were only able to mint 1 token vs. 2. In classic fashion, this led to a lot of FUD and the mint started to slow down meaningfully.
All the while, I was incredibly impressed with Wiz’s poise throughout the day. Despite the mint clearly not going according to plan, Wiz was in the Nox server offering reassurance while simultaneously fudding his own project (very based) and ultimately responded quickly. Nox cut their supply from 2,777 (excluding the 1,000 allocated to the DAO) to 1,111 which I think was 100% the right move.
Not only that, but the DAO is currently going through their first vote - the team wants to onboard our down horrendous Solana friends by offering them free mints of Nox Beyond. I personally think this is an awesome move and really resonates with my personal belief in bringing folks over from another chain. Last I checked, the DAO was 85% in favor of the move, which tells me that Nox has a really great group of holders who believe the same.
Assethas’ broader collection minted last week as well. Compared to Nox, Assetha’s had the opposite problem - they minted out too quickly - I think it only took 10 seconds to completely sell out.
I saw a lot of complaining and FUD in the server shortly after. Many whitelisted people were annoyed and disappointed that they weren’t able to mint, which is totally understandable. Blame was cast upon Morfs (yes we did mint) once again, which I think is largely misplaced.
I could write a lot about the Bot debate, but I think it’s pretty simple: the old ways of handing out WL to a ton of wallets + allowing those wallets to mint a ton of NFTs no longer aligns with the amount of demand we’re seeing for new mints. The easiest way to mitigate botted mints is to structure the WLs in a way that allows for more unique holders and is not significantly overallocated. I understand the urge to play it safe and wanting to mint out successfully and it’s up to each project to figure out their philosophy on bringing in community members, but don’t blame the Morf cartel for that.
That said, I do like the new “Premint” approach that Joepegs is taking and I think it’s a good one.
Upcoming Projects
Another project under the Red Chip Studio umbrella, Happy Ducks is minting at 11am ET today. Their previous projects include Warriors of Freya, Beeg Macs on Tour, Chuggers, and Immortal Witches with Hobo Cats on the horizon. I’m a fan of growing out an ecosystem and I like the variety of themes across the projects. My question here is: how do you tie these all together? Are they entirely separate or is there an underlying theme between them? This is something we’ve discussed internally at Mint Media a LOT (alpha?). I don’t think there’s a right answer and it feels like it really comes down to how you execute.
In any case, I’m looking forward to nabbing one on secondary. I’ve subscribed to Wilson’s investment thesis of just buying everything that looks cute.
I highlighted this project last week, but as things develop on the marketing side I think it’s important to keep everyone apprised of updates as we get closer to mint (obligatory WEN???).
This already looks very ponzinomic. A 21k AVAX pot split amongst 10 winners is very intriguing and I like the redistribution approach here. I’m sure DevilK will share more when the time is right, but I’d like to know what happens after that. I’m sure they have more up their sleeve, but pls gib alpha.
Honorable mentions include Crabeanies and Chippers - more on those next week, but encourage you guys to DYOR and check them out - I’ll be doing the same.
Musings
I’ve acknowledged on numerous occasions that I think AVAX NFTs are moving in the right direction for many reasons. In light of recent events, I also know that pretty much everyone is down horrendous and frankly, it’s hard to even think about NFTs right now.
The official Avalanche Twitter dropped a great thread which I’m sure allayed many fears:
Red chain? I think you mean Chad chain.
It’s gotta feel good to know that the stewards of this chain are acting responsibly while the world is crumbling around us.
For those who aren’t so lucky (especially those who have .sol at the end of their Twitter handle), I believe now is a better time than ever to engage with people outside of AVAX and approach them from a place of empathy and openness. Finding common ground with other chain natives is one of the best ways to convince them to give AVAX a spin and now presents a great opportunity to onboard new users who are frustrated with other ecosystems. Take a deep breath, give yourself a pep talk in the mirror, do 10 push-ups, then hit reply to the guy who has “SOL MAXI” in his bio and start a conversation.
Conclusion
While it’s been a slow week for AVAX jpegs, it’s a great opportunity to start crafting your Christmas list and start adding things to the shopping cart. Steady lads and keep grinding.
Cheers,
Chuck