Page One #25
Too Many Free Mints. June 2 - June 7
Last week was amongst the most unoriginal stretches I have seen in the NFT market. Dozens of goblin derivatives, a handful of goblin-style adaptations and a multitude of other free mints left the market feeling scattered and largely unable to focus its collective attention for more than a few hours. Volume remained low and established collections saw little action.
The summer lull will likely see a bit of energy when NFT NYC rolls around in a few weeks and projects start making announcements, but the ever-shaking economy and a new cryptocurrency bill debuting in Congress could mean more boredom ahead. As always, thanks for subscribing (#25 lfg) and hit the button below to join The One.
TLDR:
Adidas Originals Meta Capsule airdropped to ITM Phase 2 holders
Alethea iNFT Personality Pods move closer to intelligence
Aswang Tribe finds inspiration in Filipino mythology
Degenz and Re-Genz receive revamped branding, Access Passes
EY3K0N launches with aim to create an immersive sci-fi universe
Floor, portfolio tracking app for iOS, sells out their Gen 3 token
For The Culture takes free mints a step further, paying minters 0.01Ξ
Free mints, free mints and more free mints
goblintown celebrates grand opening of first McGoblinBurger
mfers await June 9 announcement of… something
Murakami.Flowers plan airdrop snapshot for June 12
The Possessed creates a unique style through animation
Vivid Limited brings Acky Bright’s artistic universe to life
wassieverse perseveres through technical difficulties sometime soon
We Are All Going to Die brings fantasy to the free mint meta
News and Notes:
Adidas Originals Meta Capsule airdropped to ITM Phase 2 holders
Those who burned Adidas’ Into the Metaverse and received the Phase 2 token received a surprise in their wallet last week: the Adidas Meta Capsule, a mysterious capsule that appears to hold a jacket. They offered little about what might be inside or when holders will find out.
Alethea iNFT Personality Pods move closer to intelligence
Alethea AI is making progress in their vision to bring NFTs to life using AI and are taking the next step by opening the Fusion beta on June 6. Fusion will allow holders to “fuse” their personality pods with their NFTs from eligible collections - the first of which being Fame Lady Squad - to create an iNFT that, once trained, can perform various tasks ranging from copywriting to creating generative art to interacting with other iNFTs inside a metaverse. Alethea has a variety of assets in their ecosystem - read the whitepaper here for a full breakdown and watch out for intelligent Bored Apes coming to a metaverse near you sometime soonish.
Degenz and Re-Genz receive revamped branding, Access Passes
Degenz and companion collection Re-Genz, the pfp collections from OSF and Mando, are receiving a facelift. Created initially as an avatar collection with plans for some comics, Degenz wrapped up 2021 with a floor price of 0Ξ - literally. As OSF describes in this Mirror post, the duo was motivated to deliver value to holders and have since turned Degenz into an access token of sorts, providing the Degenz with market analysis and insight, among other tools. They’ve now unveiled their plans, including a new website, redesigned branding and the new Degenz Access Pass, which will become the ecosystem’s main utility token. A snapshot of holders will be taken on June 14th and DAPs will be airdropped soon after - read the full details here.
Floor, portfolio tracking app for iOS, sells out their Gen3 token
Founded by experienced app-maker Chris Maddern (founder of Button and former mobile engineering lead at Venmo), Floor launched their Gen 1 token in October of 2021, with Gen 2 and Gen 3 following in November and January, respectively. Following some not-so-subtle encouragement from friend and colleague Mike Dudas, the Gen 3 token minted out on the 6th. Chris and Mike both hint at some more news from Floor coming this week. While there are many portfolio trackers available already, few are focused on the mobile arena in which Maddern has made his name. The Floor iOS app is live in TestFlight and available to holders.
goblintown celebrates grand opening of first McGoblinBurger
Just two weeks after their initial mint, goblintown holders ventured into McGoblinBurger to design a burger of their own. Opened late Friday night, the new site featured the quality and repulsiveness that is to be expected by now but also provided a somewhat unique experience, allowing users to create their own burger at the time of their choosing (there is “no rush” to make yours). In other goblin news, Beeple and Yuga Labs co-founder Gordon Goner stirred up some speculation after Goner posted this tweet mentioning goblins late Saturday night and Beeple added #IAMTHEFOUNDER to his June 4 One A Day. Debate about whether they were serious lasted all of six hours before Yuga co-founder Garga shut down any rumors of Yuga-Goblin affiliations.
5.5Ξ floor | 10,000 supply | free mint | minted 5-20-22
mcgoblin: 1.35Ξ floor | ~5,900 current supply | free claim | minted 6-4-22
Gem | Twitter | Website | McGoblin Site
mfers await June 9 announcement of… something
After hinting at something coming in June last week, Sartoshi has provided the mfers with a date and time for their “next era.” Yesterday he posted a sketch announcing that something is coming at 12PM EST on June 9. While there are still no details on what to expect, excited mfers have pushed the floor up nearly 1Ξ over the past week.
2.65Ξ floor | 10,000 supply | 0.069Ξ mint | minted 11-30-21
Murakami.Flowers plan airdrop snapshot for June 12
Yesterday the Murakami.Flowers team announced an upcoming airdrop snapshot for Flower holders, though those who have not revealed their Seeds will not qualify for the airdrop. Volume spiked immediately, seeing the floor increase from ~2.5Ξ to nearly 5Ξ in the span of hours before sinking a bit. Murakami’s announcement doesn’t feature any hints of what the airdrop could be or when it is coming, but paired with his upcoming collaboration with watchmaker Hublot, it demonstrates his commitment to the NFT space.
3.6Ξ floor | ~7,300/11,664 supply | 0.108Ξ mint | first minted 3-29-22
Recent Launches:
EY3K0N launches with aim to create an immersive sci-fi universe
Armed with an array of detailed and diverse character art and a team full of industry veterans, EY3K0N began their mint on Monday night and will continue minting for whitelisters through the 7th with any remaining supply available to waitlisters on the 8th. While their roadmap is rather opaque, their stated focus is “immersive storytelling” portrayed through various types of media. The team includes a number of creatives with experience at Disney, Nike, and Xbox as well as artists, game designers, and concept designers with impressive experience. The mint has progressed slowly so far, but something to keep an eye on.
Free mints, free mints and more free mints
Following the release and success of goblintown, the past few weeks have seen a relentless barrage of free mints hitting the market - some good, some not. According to Compass, over 3,000 new NFT contracts were launched in the past week. Few are worth their weight in gwei, but many manage to capture a bit of momentary attention. They are also all likely going to zero. While two of the more successful ones are listed below, here’s a few more that add some color to our current of the market meta:
Binkies, Goblin Grlz, hobotown, ill poop it (which turned into ShitBeast…) Psychonautz, rektfolio, Tower of the Occult, troll-town
For The Culture takes free mints a step further, paying minters 0.01Ξ
In a time where seemingly every new NFT is free to mint, For The Culture attracted loads of attention with a simple plan (that started as a joke): pay minters 0.01Ξ. While it’s really more of a gas subsidy, the marketing plan worked like a charm: with only 73 tweets (and some help from friends), For The Culture has garnered ~150,000 followers and came out of the gate with a 0.3Ξ floor. They’ve got no roadmap and a simple, sketched art style but seem to have tapped the market’s attention vein. The reveal time has not yet been announced, but their whitelist mint ends at 11AM EST on the 8th, so reveal will likely come shortly after.
Vivid Limited brings Acky Bright’s artistic universe to life
Showcasing six unique black-and-white anime characters, Vivid attracts the eye by juxtaposing their highly-detailed figures against colorful backgrounds. The project is the creation of Acky Bright, an experienced visual artist whose portfolio includes cover art for DC Comics, a collaboration with BMW and full mangas. The website showcases a range of clothing pieces as well, implying some merchandise is likely in the plans. Given Acky’s experience in the industry, Vivid seems like a potentially strong entrant to an increasingly crowded anime NFT niche.
We Are All Going to Die brings fantasy to the free mint meta
This obscure fantasy-themed project sold out its mint in about half an hour on Friday evening and rose quickly as intrigued holders began to investigate its origins. Poof, co-founder of EtherOrcs, said the project was created by a friend of his and some of the devs have since talked in the project’s lore-oriented Twitter Spaces, which got interesting on Monday night when the team purchased a Mutant Ape and proceeded to send it to a burn address. Some holders have burned their WAGDIEs as well, anticipating some form of reward for doing so.
Upcoming Launches:
Aswang Tribe finds inspiration in Filipino mythology
Preceded by a genesis collection of hand-drawn illustrations by artist and founder Aswang, Aswang Tribe is an avatar collection that will include staking and breeding at launch. The collection is being developed by Augminted Labs, the team behind Kaiju Kingz, allowing Aswang to leverage their experience with staking mechanics. Holders of the 1/1 collection can mint on the 9th, the mintlist mints on the 10th and 11th and any remaining supply goes to those on the waitlist on the 12th before heading to a public sale. Reveal is planned for the 16th.
The Possessed creates a unique style through animation
Although their current roadmap pursues little differentiation in a crowded cartoon avatar category, a boisterous double-sided style has brought plenty of attention to The Possessed. Started in January by artist Joe and developer Tom, The Possessed have built there following through collaboration and storytelling, slowly building out their universe with different bits of info about the “Test Subjects” who alternate between their human and possessed forms in animated avatars. While mint information has not yet been released, they plan to mint sometime in June.
wassieverse perseveres through technical difficulties sometime soon
Due to some difficulties with the generation engine and porting to Canvas, their customizable photo booth, wassieverse delayed their mint to fix the issues. They plan to mint sometime next week.
NFT Market Overview:
Over the past week, I noticed that most of the garbage I was buying wasn’t listed on OpenSea nor LooksRare, but X2Y2. Given such, I figured checking the figures on LR vs. X2Y2 might be interesting.
Launched in mid-February, about a month after LR, X2Y2 has made a habit of giving traders fee discounts like the one going on right now - for the month of June, they’ve lowered their royalties to 0% on all collections. This discount pairs well with the ongoing prevalence of free mints, as many of these collections head straight to zero and traders try to scratch every fractional percentage out of each jpeg.
The promotion is working so far: last week, X2Y2 (the bottom graphs) saw a huge increase in both users and transactions at ~20K and ~45K respectively. Both marketplaces saw about 10,000Ξ in volume despite LooksRare posting less than 20% of X2Y2’s total transactions. While these marketplaces may not become the default option for the majority of traders, they are both carving out a valuable niche - LooksRare in high-value sales and X2Y2 in low-value sales - that give traders more options.
Other Stuff Happened/ing
NFTs:
Bored Ape Discord hack, 200Ξ+ of NFTs stolen
Illuvium completes land sale, raising over $72M
Moonbirds announce Tame Impala, David Blane will perform at NFT NYC party
NFT Worlds teases updated game client
RTFKT Space Drip NFTs can now be redeemed for physical Air Force 1s
Trove Alpha launching June 13
Worldwide Webb V2 early access is live
General News:
English Premier League files Crypto and NFT Trademarks
Epic Games Store will launch its first NFT game in partnership with Gala Games
Former OpenSea employee Nate Chastain charged with insider trading
Snoop Dogg to open Bored Ape dessert restaurant
#25 already - killing it with every p1