Probably Something (Mint Avalanche Premiere)
Probably Something (Mint Avalanche Premiere)
A Challenger Approaches
(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 ladies, gentlemen, and every influencer who got Art Gobblers WL. Welcome to the first edition of Mint Avalanche! For those just joining us, this is Mint Media’s second newsletter solely dedicated to covering the Avalanche NFT ecosystem. We’ve been publishing our core newsletter, Mint Weekly, for well over a year and decided to expand our content to cover what’s shaping up to be a very exciting niche.
If you don’t know me, I’m Chuck Bannister, a Pudgy Penguin who also happens to love Avalanche. You’ve probably seen me shitposting on Twitter, shilling Avalanche on the weekly Pudgy Penguin spaces, or occasionally chopping it up with Coop and Leo on Mint Radio. I assure you I am not a double agent - I simply love both Pudgy Penguins and Avalanche.
By way of background, I got my feet wet exploring Avalanche around 6 months ago. All of my ETH bags were down horrendous (update: still are) and in many ways I was questioning my entire foray into NFTs at the time. Our friendly neighborhood Pasta put me onto AVAX NFTs and since then, I’ve been incredibly impressed with the ecosystem and the chain itself. More on where we were and where we’re going later, but this sums up my initial reaction:
A little later on, Mint Media launched Cacio e Pepe, a collection of Pepe’s roaming the pastaverse. In spirit, this was a fun, lighthearted meme project that we launched to spice things up in an otherwise uneventful / down-only summer. In truth, this was a gut check for us to test the demand of Avalanche NFTs not only from existing AVAX traders, but for many of our ETH native community members. We were blown away by the initial success of the mint, but more importantly, we were able to onboard >50 new AVAX NFT owners from ETH, all of whom have stuck around asking “wen next AVAX mint???”
Through Mint Avalanche, we hope to continue this cross-pollination strategy by creating content that is both educating and engaging with respect to the chain. For the ETH natives who haven’t joined in on the redkoin fun and are still getting dumped on by ETH gigawhales, we hope our coverage of Avalanche encourages you to take the plunge. We linked some helpful resources at the very bottom of the newsletter to help you get started.
Us hitting publish should be all the evidence you need, but why take my word for it? Let’s ask Dreesus:
Case closed. With that preamble aside, let’s get to the good stuff.
Market Update
Note from Chuck: In this first newsletter, I thought it was important to provide a “then vs. now” view on how much the market has changed. We did see some lower volume this past week which I view as a correction for the monstrous run-ups during the earlier days of October. Going forward, I’ll provide a more current, week-to-week update.
If you’ve been in AVAX recently, I think we can all agree that October was a pretty exciting month. If you take away Art Gobblers, ETH NFT volume continues to tank in ETH and USD terms, but AVAX has shown some promising trends. Let’s take a look at a few:
Wilson featured this chart in this week’s Mint Weekly but I think it’s worth highlighting again. Unique users on Joepegs are up >100% since July, sitting around 12.2k as of writing this. In degen terms, I like to think that we are extremely early and AVAX is only beginning to turn heads. From an onboarding perspective, AVAX has an extremely low barrier to entry because you can use it on Metamask. No separate wallets, none of that fugazi nonsense.
October has been a relatively insane month for AVAX from a volume perspective. Over the summer, we were averaging under ~$20k daily volume across marketplaces outside of a handful of days. I think we all remember the absolute dearth of volume back then - a project would mint, get volume for 6 hours, then seemingly die.
We’ve clearly entered a new paradigm. Daily average volume for the month of October is up >3x between ~$60k-$70k. Pretty much every project 24 hours post-mint is doing backflips. Wolfiland was north of 10x after 24 hours from 1.25 → 15 AVAX. Smol Estates was a 5 AVAX mint and quickly settled around 50 AVAX pre-reveal as well.
If that wasn’t enough evidence, there is literally a mint bot available through the Morfs collection (run by tactical_retreat, who by the way won the Joepegs mint bot contest) that currently commands a 110 AVAX floor price. Clearly, there is value to be extracted. In the summer, you were LUCKY to have your project mint out and I can assure you that there was zero demand for a mint bot. This is no longer the case. Combined with a Beeg Rock Investment which guarantees you whitelist to all upcoming Joe Studio projects, it’s a pretty potent 1-2 combo.
As they say, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em - so that’s exactly what I did.
Not only are new mints doing exceedingly well, but those “dead” projects from the summer that have been grinding it out have paid off in spades. A few examples include Rich Peon Poor Peon (.1 → 9.9 AVAX), Chad Doge (1 → 3.7 AVAX) and Pickaxes (.25 → 4.89 AVAX). A rising tide lifts all boats, and that’s exactly what we’ve seen here.
Upcoming Projects
With the market backdrop in mind, I’d like to highlight a few upcoming projects on my radar at a very high level. Warning - After reading about my opinion on your favorite unreleased project, you may become triggered and experience the following symptoms: Nausea, vomiting, dizziness, cope, and / or urge to violently swear at me in my DMs or Twitter replies. Please seek a medical professional if any or all of these symptoms are present - or touch some grass.
One of multiple anime-inspired projects coming up this week, Assethas is minting today on Joepegs at 12pm ET. They minted their Genesis project about a month ago, which currently trades at 19.25 AVAX (mint was 1 AVAX). Genesis holders will be airdropped 100 NFTs from the broader collection while the remainder is minted by whitelisted addresses. They seem to be going the route of brand building in a similar fashion to Azuki while allowing holders to commercially use their tokens. While not entirely original, I’ve always been a fan of this concept and it’ll be interesting to see how they capitalize going forward. Art is gud too. FWIW, I’ve heard this mint is very over-allocated so it may be hard to snag before secondary.
Another anime-inspired project, Ouroboros is an upcoming play-to-earn game minting on November 6th. The studio behind it developed Pizza Game, a play-to-earn game where you stake chefs in a pizzeria to farm $PIZZA. I’ve never played it, but it’s good to see that they have some ponzinomic experience. I don’t like the art as much as Assethas or Nox Beyond (more on that below!), but I think there’s some potential here. Will keep an eye on it.
Not much is known about this project outside of the fact that it’s Joe Studios second NFT collection and that it will be “very ponzinomic”. Speculatoooors are saying that this mints sometime this month. If you don’t have a Beeg Rock or a Smol Joe, get to whitelist grinding ASAP.
Spotlight - Interview with Wiz from Nox Beyond
Last but certainly not least, we interviewed Wiz from Nox Beyond, which is minting this Friday. Without a doubt, Nox Beyond is one of the more ambitious projects coming to Avalanche for many reasons and is also one of the more hyped / anticipated projects to mint recently. Without further delay, enjoy the insights on this exciting new project.
Who are you and what has your NFT journey looked like?
My name is Wiz, I've dived into NFTs since early 2021 - starting my journey in the early days of Axie Infinity. Since then I've invested in and work with some projects in chains like Eth, BSC, Near and Sol. I want to say I've attended around 80% of all big NFT events in the West hemisphere, giving me a good advantage in staying up to date with trends and also making valuable connections.
What made you decide to build on Avalanche instead of on Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, etc.? What about Avalanche stood out to you the most?
For us it was Ava Labs. Honestly, we've worked with a lot of teams in the past and none have been as responsive and committed to help builders do things like Ava Labs. The commitment and support they offer was enough to convince us into building and deploying our utilities in this chain.
What made you decide to mint on your own website vs. a launchpad like Joepegs or Kalao, which has been the meta for the last 6 months?
Decentralization. We feel like the ecosystem is too centered around minting with Launchpads, giving it a weird look from outside of the ecosystem. A lot of projects and individuals have expressed their concerns with how things are, and we feel like we now have the opportunity to prove to projects that you can mint in your own site and still mint out.
You’ve said that securing Nox WL was a guaranteed mint – did bots like Morfs and their recent success factor into how you structured the WL? How did you approach the overall process?
We feel like WLs we're being over subscribed because nobody knew if they could sell out - by doing it this way it was guaranteed that they could. I think bots like Morf have actually provided value into the ecosystem and will keep doing so in Public mints. But by doing guaranteed WL, you allow those who grind and are really interested in being part of the community to get what they deserve.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the artist / artwork for Nox Beyond and the inspiration behind it?
Yeah, the artist is anon but has a history of working with big game studios in the past, one of them being EA games. The artwork is inspired by 2 things, the anime called Record of Ragnarok (PTSD saying Ragnarok now) and the old batman movie called Batman Beyond.
Why did you decide on creating a DAO vs. a more standard NFT collection? What’s something you want to see the DAO accomplish over the next 12 months?
We feel like a collective DAO can help the space grow by both investing in projects inside the space and by throwing money into other spaces and trying to bring in more liquidity to the chain. We can see ourselves becoming one of the biggest NFT projects in the space in the next 12 months.
Who is your favorite shitposter that you’ve followed so far on Avalanche twitter?
Nobs, without a doubt.
You asked everyone who applied for whitelist, now we ask you: what is your favorite anime and why?
I actually have an internal debate between 2 animes - Hajime No Ippo and Cowboy Bebop. Both are very different, but they hit right at home for me. Cowboy bebop has this cool unique style that just attracts attention. Hajime no Ippo just makes me want to fight for things, gives me a good sense of never wanting to give up.
Wrap-up
Wew lad, that was a lot to digest for a first newsletter. If you couldn’t tell, we’re extremely excited about the intellectual capital (and liquidity) that’s making its way over to AVAX. Remember - at the end of the day, these are just pictures that we trade for a lot of real value. Try to touch some grass this weekend if you can.
Cheers,
Chuck
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