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SHILL Issue 77

Solana ecosystem magazine.

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SOLANA NFT/DEFI/TWITTER ECOSYSTEM<br />

the bit you<br />

came for<br />

part 1<br />

tokenomics<br />

guicookie explains<br />

uptober<br />

linkzzyy digs deep<br />

ISSUE #<strong>77</strong><br />

◎0.25<br />

still<br />

early<br />

zenin - eyes open<br />

the<br />

academy<br />

degen apes - history<br />

& MUCH more


ISSUE<br />

<strong>77</strong>


4 10<br />

16<br />

18 86<br />

140 141<br />

142<br />

143 144<br />

146<br />

148<br />

150<br />

152<br />

168<br />

FROM THE EDITOR<br />

UPTOBER insights<br />

Linkkzyy looks at what is coming up #alpha<br />

Still Early<br />

NFTNEWB216 on why Zenin is worth your time #alpha<br />

The ACADEMY<br />

Bardstocks.sol - the history of Degen Apes<br />

The Bit You Came For<br />

Linkzzyy analyses what to look for ina<br />

project. Part 1 #alpha<br />

Critters Cult<br />

SubaruImpreza09 rates the project #alpha<br />

888 Anon Club<br />

Block_Degen deep dive #alpha<br />

142 CrowdSurf<br />

ThesisInvestor deep dive<br />

Golden protocol<br />

ThesisInvestor deep dive #alpha<br />

Whale investors jump on board #alpha<br />

Great Bazaar<br />

Weekly wrap up<br />

146 SCRIBE<br />

Weekly review by the Novus team<br />

MORE MONKES<br />

NFThinks interviews the project #alpha<br />

150 BeverlyKILLS<br />

L0SxS0L analyses BeverlyKills #alpha<br />

MUSHROOM Party<br />

168 GOOEY<br />

LIVE gaming on Solana #alpha<br />

Guicookie talks tokenomics & value<br />

distribution #alpha<br />

micalnoelson


<strong>Issue</strong> <strong>77</strong> - 1 year on from when #<strong>SHILL</strong> fist launched back in Oct 2021. <strong>77</strong> magazines archiving the Solana<br />

ecosystem, the NFT scene and stories from Tweeps across the world.<br />

Has #<strong>SHILL</strong> zine achieved much in this time?<br />

Still independent<br />

<strong>77</strong> magazines<br />

Average 8000 views per week<br />

467,708 views across all magazines<br />

<strong>Issue</strong> 25, 40, 52, 55, 56, 57, 61, and 62 each have 10k+ views<br />

Special Edition printed for Sydney event<br />

Still grinding after 52 weeks!<br />

And we are still forging ahead. #<strong>SHILL</strong> zine is still delivering content, nfts, and alpha as we enter our 2nd year<br />

of publication. You along for the ride anon?<br />

A couple of pieces locked away in the #<strong>SHILL</strong> vault this week, including Cool Cat 2, Random Freak #3 and 2 mini<br />

mini pieces.<br />

#<strong>SHILL</strong> has its own NFTs up for auction on Exchange.art, proceeds go to helping this magazine grow and<br />

become better. All the World's a Stage is live now https://exchange.art/pixeltoy/<br />

A whole lot of content in this issue. NFTs to tickle your senses. Alpha to contemplate. Stories you may have<br />

missed. It's good to know that at the end of the week you can rely on #<strong>SHILL</strong> zine to package it all up in one<br />

convenient magazine that you can access when you are ready.<br />

Ready to dive in?<br />

Enough said. You know the drill.<br />

@Pixeltoy<br />

mini mini 14 & 18 @NingcakeNekoMeaw


Random Freak #3 @RaulVongal<br />

Cool Cat 2 @Mr_KJ09


PROBABLY<br />

@sp00n1cus<br />

42.8k followers<br />

Had a bullish call with<br />

@Simpl3r_BH the other day. The<br />

amount of shit they have in the<br />

pipeline will make your head<br />

spin.


Keep your eyes on...<br />

ALPHA LIONS<br />

PixelPenguinDAO<br />

Secret Sphinx Society


Linkkzyy<br />

Retro Glider<br />

Introductory Information:<br />

This is one of the projects previously mentioned where there’s a lot of ambiguity on the website surrounding its<br />

intentions and goals. However, without an announcement of mint price / date I’m assuming there can be more<br />

to expect here as they gear up to launch while planning a more fleshed-out idea.<br />

The thing I find most bullish here is the art, I think it adds a twist to that bored-ape-esque art style.<br />

Marketing graphics and websites are also clean.<br />

Pros:<br />

Cons:<br />

• Relatively active discord which looks to have been grown naturally.<br />

o Bonus points for active staff pre-mint.<br />

• Meta-style but unique art.<br />

• Offering some form of animation service.<br />

• Solid marketing department.<br />

• Roadmap exists; inbuilt con, it’s confusing.<br />

• Totally ambiguous, more clarity needed.<br />

• No idea who the team members are / experience in the space.<br />

• Like con one: there’s very little voice behind this project from the team.<br />

• Lack of meat to it imo, needs something more fleshed out.<br />

Conclusion:<br />

Feels very speculative and still very early. Would love to see the team get into Spaces, market heavier, and


eally put a voice and a figure behind the project itself.<br />

If things begin to flesh out towards a mint date, I see this to be a very promising project in terms of the PFPable<br />

quality. Being early never hurts, but don’t find yourself slaving for it just yet!<br />

Skull Vibe<br />

Introductory Information:<br />

Core goal of this project is to really tap into the importance of community in this space. I like this a lot. In a<br />

TLDR format, #1 Learn high-income skillets through Vibe DAO via video documentaries of creating profitable<br />

income streams from scratch. #2 ‘Billionaire Bits’: a holder exclusive daily newsletter which will document all<br />

the important and less important news in the space to keep you updated in a concise manner. Goal of this<br />

VibeDAO is to get the community active, thinking and building together. They’ll also have some other interesting<br />

steps involved such as direct consulting, stock standard WL and alpha stuff. But they do offer something<br />

interesting: PFP 2 Earn. Not exactly sure how this will work, but it could. I don’t like pixel art a great deal, but I<br />

would say this sits in the higher threshold and the more intricate roadmap images are nice.<br />

Pros:<br />

Cons:<br />

• Marketing: specifically, the roadmap has been cool, I expect them to keep experimenting.<br />

• A learning opportunity for some new to the space.<br />

• Very community focused which I favour.<br />

• Somewhat unique ideas.<br />

• Good art.<br />

• Mint is free (I think)<br />

• Twitter followers could be botted; unsure.<br />

• Lack of discord activity, still very early.<br />

• No website.<br />

• Lack of voice from the team.<br />

• Concern with securities law surrounding passive income streams being built and shared with holders.<br />

Conclusion:<br />

If the mint is free as one of their tweets suggests then I see no reason not to get in this discord and just learn,<br />

take the opportunity to join a community and meet people, there’s 0 downside realistically. If you want to dump<br />

for 0.5 SOL sure, but I think if this succeeds with the goals of such a strong community, this could go nuts, who<br />

knows.


_zinnea_


_zinnea_


austin_visual


@nftnewb216<br />

I have written many times about @InfectedMob and @BountyHunterNFT, but I rarely discuss nother<br />

@XLabsNFT project - @ZeninNFT. That ends today.<br />

Right now @ZeninNFT I the cheapest entry into @XLabsNFT. That alone should put them on your radar. With the upcoming<br />

$X and XHub, all @XLabsNFT projects are on the precipice of greatness. With @TheGentlemonke and @I0Hal at the<br />

helm, you can truly trust the builders.<br />

While every one of @XLabsNFT projects has their unique benefits, @ZeninNFT brings you @BoltByZenin. This bridges<br />

the gap between discord and twitter allowing unique ways of communicating and collaboration between communities.


@ZeninNFT is also starting their #Zenlife program where they are offering $1000 to a member each month. There is an<br />

application process showing that @ZeninNFT is truly giving back to the community.<br />

@MetaCrypto1000x @solanodegen @2foot_dragon and the whole team embody that spirit<br />

The bottom line is, all @XLabsNFT projects - @BountyHunterNFT @ZeninNFT @XinDragons and<br />

@InfectedMob share a common goal - bettering the #Solana ecosystem. If you are looking to jump in, @ZeninNFT is a<br />

good entry point! #SolanaNFTs.<br />

magiceden.io Zenin


THE<br />

Bardstocks.sol<br />

The first rendition of the Degenerate Ape Academy, created by artist “Minweee”<br />

It was just another Friday…<br />

It was August 13th, 2021, 7:28pm. The smell of pizza and a freshly opened Guiness permeated my humble Austin<br />

apartment as I sat at my computer and very intently watched the SOL/USD chart; I had opened a long position equal to<br />

around half my net worth just a week before in Solana, a cryptocurrency.<br />

“You can’t lose what you don’t put in the middle, but you can’t win much either.” — Mike McDermott, Rounders (1998)<br />

Yeah, I’m a huge degenerate. The truth is, I had a ton of confidence in Solana as a relatively new layer 1 blockchain. At<br />

the time, Solana was flipping the script on smart contracts platforms; the successful creation of Serum (an on-chain DEX<br />

which serves as the backbone of Solana) as well as other decentralized applications such as “Mango Markets” and “Raydium”<br />

made Solana a very obvious bet when considering its high transactions per second and extremely low fees. Given


the problems every other smart contracts platform was<br />

having with either setting up infrastructure, high fees,<br />

and/or low TPS, Solana was a huge breath of fresh air in<br />

the race to successfully scale smart contracts platforms<br />

for worldwide adoption.<br />

So there I was, sitting in a big long position in Solana,<br />

chowing down on a nice slice of pepperoni and bacon<br />

pizza. I finally decided to take a break from watching the<br />

charts and turned to check Twitter, and that’s when I saw<br />

this tweet:<br />

Anyway, it was all anyone was talking about on the timeline,<br />

so I went ahead and joined the official Degenerate Ape<br />

Academy discord. The mint had been postponed until August<br />

14th, so I figured I would stick around and try my hand at<br />

minting the next day.<br />

August 14th came around 24 hours later, and it was finally<br />

time for the mint to happen. Almost immediately, the site<br />

ended up crashing because of a massive influx of users trying<br />

to access it. This massive influx of site traffic served as an<br />

inadvertent DDoS, and the mint was postponed once more.<br />

Then, around 2 hours later, in a surprise twist, the mint went<br />

live.<br />

@rajgokal<br />

your twitter feed is about to get filled with either angry or<br />

euphoric apes you’re welcome<br />

To be honest, I had no idea what Raj Gokal, co-founder of<br />

Solana Labs, was talking about at the time.<br />

“A bunch of angry apes?”<br />

About an hour later, a ton of furious Crypto Twitter influencers<br />

I was following began simultaneously voicing their<br />

frustration regarding a Solana NFT project called “Degenerate<br />

Ape Academy.” Apparently the mint (the process of<br />

paying a fee in order to generate an NFT within an NFT<br />

collection for the first time) had been delayed again. Let<br />

me tell you, hell knoweth no fury like Crypto Twitter after<br />

an NFT mint gets delayed.<br />

To mint a Degen Ape, you needed to enter a password into this computer on<br />

their website.<br />

An announcement was made on the official Discord that the<br />

mint was live, and fortunately I had Discord notifications on,<br />

so I was able to react quickly enough and was lucky to have<br />

minted 8 apes.<br />

Degenerate Ape Academy’s brand logo<br />

I had heard about NFTs in passing earlier in the year but<br />

didn’t think too much of them at the time. I would later<br />

learn that NFTs are interesting and have all sorts of use<br />

cases, but the most common one involves using them to<br />

create unique tokens on-chain with an assigned picture<br />

accompanied by metadata to serve as a collectible within<br />

a collection. Think of them as like unique trading cards,<br />

or like a set of rare paintings with a limited number, but<br />

instead of being physical things you can hold in-person,<br />

they’re on the blockchain and exist in your crypto wallet.


The 8 apes I minted<br />

It was not the most fantastic minting experience for<br />

many due to all the delays and mishaps. However, for<br />

those that stuck around for the mint, many of their lives<br />

would be changed forever; several apes that were minted<br />

ended up selling for well over $100,000 USD, one of<br />

which sold for $1.1 million USD at the peak of the Solana<br />

NFT bull run.<br />

The highest USD sale ever for a Degen Ape the first-ever<br />

$1 million dollar sale as well for a Solana NFT<br />

On the surface it may have seemed like Degen Ape Academy<br />

was just another NFT mint, and let’s face it, these<br />

apes looked pretty goofy; the apes have this juxtaposition<br />

of being both very serious and very silly at the same<br />

time. For example, you’ll often see them chugging glue<br />

or eating crayons with very serious expressions, it’s very<br />

contradictory. However, what many of us didn’t realize<br />

at the time is that DAA was causing a massive paradigm<br />

shift for the Solana ecosystem in numerous ways. Some<br />

have equated DAA’s mint and the era that followed it as<br />

the “Cambrian Explosion” of Solana NFTs, and really, for<br />

the entire ecosystem.<br />

Brand logo for Solana<br />

Let’s dial this back a bit and talk about everything that<br />

was happening beyond the average user’s knowledge at<br />

that time before the Degenerate Ape Academy mint completed,<br />

then we can tie it into why it ended up being such an<br />

important mint.<br />

Before the DAA mint happened, Solana had created its fair<br />

share of decentralized applications, most notably the Serum<br />

on-chain DEX that we talked about earlier. Raydium (which<br />

we also talked about earlier), which facilitated AMM swaps<br />

and DeFi staking had also just been established on Solana.<br />

So, in short, Solana was getting places with its dApps and<br />

DeFi, but it was still having trouble organically generating<br />

user interest and high volume.<br />

Let’s face it, if you’re creating a new layer 1 blockchain, you<br />

have a lot to prove with a lot of competition, people aren’t<br />

just going to come to you because you ask them to. You must<br />

be able to offer a compelling reason as to why people should<br />

use your new layer 1 blockchain to begin with. DeFi and an<br />

on-chain DEX were a great start, but by themselves they<br />

weren’t generating quite as much volume and interest as one<br />

would hope.<br />

Transaction volume on Solana at a low point during Summer 2021<br />

Anyway, as this was all going on and Solana was still trying to<br />

find its footing, NFTs were taking off like a rocket ship on the<br />

Ethereum blockchain with total USD volume reaching high 8<br />

figures daily. NFTs had suddenly become interesting due to<br />

becoming a somewhat new killer use case for blockchains. I<br />

say “somewhat new killer use case for blockchains” because<br />

NFTs have existed as far back as 2014 according to data<br />

provided by NFTTimeline. It’s weird in hindsight that NFTs<br />

had only really explosively made their way into the limelight<br />

in 2021 (heck, even Crypto Punks came out in 2017, four full<br />

years prior to becoming a massive success), but it is what it<br />

is.<br />

To illustrate the sudden prominence of NFT hysteria during<br />

2021, here’s some sources that showcase the NFT boom that<br />

was happening on Ethereum during this time:<br />

The highest<br />

USD sale<br />

ever for a<br />

Degen Ape<br />

$1 million


Naturally, because Solana is a competing blockchain, it makes sense from the point of view of Solana Labs (the creators<br />

of the Solana blockchain) to capitalize on NFTs as a popular trend to acquire more users and volume. Thus, Metaplex studio<br />

was born with the goal of essentially setting up NFT infrastructure on Solana. Specifically, it was to help “facilitate<br />

self-hosted storefronts for independent artists that were publishing open editions and limited editions of their art [on<br />

Solana],” according to Stephen Hess, CEO of Metaplex.<br />

A slide presented at Breakpoint 2021 by Jordan Prince, known on Twitter as “Redacted_j” who was also a part of the “OG Metaplex crew.”<br />

“The mission for Metaplex in the beginning was to elevate independent artists and creators above traditional gatekeepers<br />

(still very much our DNA but the scope has increased quite a bit...). We were speaking to creators that wanted to


drop on Solana but had no way to do so, and on Ethereum<br />

[the creators] were subject to launchpads that<br />

would take high fees and make them wait long periods of<br />

time to drop (if ever). It was really a play on accessibility<br />

which is why everything was open sourced and could be<br />

self-hosted.”<br />

The current CEO of Metaplex, sporting an Aurory NFT as<br />

his PFP on LinkedIn<br />

At the time many Solana users didn’t know it, but Metaplex<br />

would end up helping break the Nifty Gateway model<br />

of high fees and long waiting periods because of open<br />

sourcing all their work (including their token contracts as<br />

well as Candy Machine, which we’ll talk about later). It<br />

would take some time before the work of these unsung<br />

heroes would really catch steam, but it absolutely played<br />

a huge role in the imminent “Cambrian Explosion” of the<br />

Solana ecosystem that would ensue soon enough.<br />

Samples from the following collections: 1. Solana Monkey Business, 2.<br />

Solarians, 3. SOL Punks, 4. Kreachures<br />

Finally, along came our protagonist, an NFT project named<br />

Degenerate Ape Academy. Monoliff, who was and still is the<br />

head artist of DAA, along with his band of entrepreneurs,<br />

were fans of the Solana ecosystem and felt that they could<br />

really make a splash as being the first major NFT drop on<br />

Solana with a 10,000 NFT collection.<br />

Metaplex’s current brand logo<br />

Before “the Metaplex standard” for Solana NFT token<br />

contracts was adopted chain-wide, a few attempts at NFT<br />

collections had already been made on the Solana blockchain;<br />

Kreachures, Solarians, Solana Monkey Business,<br />

and even an almost complete copy of Crypto Punks called<br />

“Sol Punks” had risen to the surface, but none of them<br />

had managed to gain much traction at the time. Many of<br />

them also had issues with their token contracts, albeit<br />

fortunately it was possible to update some of their token<br />

contracts later to the Metaplex standard.<br />

Degen Ape #2214, owned by Monoliff<br />

At the time, there was no standardized method of performing<br />

a drop of 10,000 NFTs due to the lack of NFT infrastructure<br />

on Solana, and there also wasn’t really an agreed-upon<br />

consensus for a Solana NFT token contract standard.<br />

Additionally, there was at the time no smart contract for<br />

safely performing a trustless mint; when users mint new<br />

NFTs for an ongoing mint, typically there is a guarantee that<br />

when they send their funds using a smart contract, they<br />

will receive an NFT within the same transaction, otherwise<br />

the transaction should fail. This is done to avoid a situation


where users have to trust the person, they are sending their SOL to and hope that they receive something in return (a<br />

big part of the ethos of Crypto is to remove middlemen, after all).<br />

To be the very first, the DAA team took the Metaplex token contracts (which were open source) and, in a very gung-ho<br />

manner, attempted to create a program that would allow people to mint, at scale, a Metaplex standard NFT within a vast<br />

collection size in exchange for SOL per NFT. This type of minting program was already figured out on Ethereum (as well<br />

as having an established NFT token contract, dubbed “ERC-721”), but it hadn’t quite been figured out yet on Solana since<br />

Solana’s NFT infrastructure was very much bare bones.<br />

So, the DAA team believed they had successfully created an ironclad solution for minting a big drop, and basically most<br />

of the devs in the Solana ecosystem were cheering them on from the sidelines. Finally, August 13th came, but when they<br />

tried to break ground on main net with their minting contract, it went horribly wrong.<br />

Basically, the ironclad solution they believed they had created was not so ironclad. The website got very overloaded from<br />

traffic, and the minting contract they were using ended up not working either as almost all users that were able to access<br />

it experienced several failed transactions. 700 tokens (not just 500 tokens as the team previously believed) of the failed<br />

contract mint did end up getting minted (dubbed “the Exiled Apes”) but with missing images, missing metadata, or both.<br />

These tokens did not have proper update authority either, meaning the original tokens could not be fixed at that point in<br />

time, so the team ultimately decided to treat the 700~ extra tokens as void.<br />

In layman’s terms, it was a colossal disaster.<br />

At this point, the DAA team wasn’t sure what to do to fix their minting contract and were prepared to shut down and<br />

fold up. The truth is that their engineers were out of ideas, and frankly only a handful of devs existed that could successfully<br />

fix and execute such a monumental task on the Solana blockchain in such a short amount of time.<br />

Then, suddenly out of nowhere, their dev team became “fully stacked with legitimate professionals and not crayon eaters.”<br />

What ended up happening behind the scenes is that Raj Gokal, co-founder of Solana Labs, decided to deploy Jordan<br />

Prince (redacted_j) and Bartosz Lipinski (baalazamon), two of the “OG Metaplex crew” devs, to save the DAA mint. Raj<br />

ultimately made this decision for a few reasons, the main one being that if the DAA team gave up during such incredible<br />

demand and interest, people probably wouldn’t take Solana very seriously as a platform for NFTs going forward. The<br />

stakes for this mint had gotten way too high to let it crash and burn.


Terribly captioned clip art by yours truly<br />

According to Raj, the estimated number of users that got onboarded to Solana as a direct result of the Degenerate Ape<br />

Academy mint was around 250,000. Yeah, you read that correctly, that’s a quarter of a million users for exactly one project,<br />

a completely unprecedented level of user interest for Solana at the time. This is predominantly why the DAA mint<br />

and the era that followed it was so incredible for Solana; Solana had finally been able to acquire tons of user interest and<br />

an insane level of transaction volume as a result of the DAA mint.<br />

Raj Gokal speaking on the BanklessHQ podcast about the significance of DAA and Metaplex<br />

So, to save the DAA mint and ensure Solana’s newly acquired users would be satisfied, Jordan and Bartosz needed to create<br />

a minting solution on virtually no sleep, and it had to be done within 12 hours to ensure user retention and interest<br />

in both the project and the Solana ecosystem. Eventually they came up with what would come to be known as the first<br />

version of Candy Machine, a fully off-chain minting solution that would get the job done. With only 12 hours to execute<br />

the mint, they had to resort to using this method as opposed to a more reliable and traditional on-chain smart contract.<br />

Jordan Prince talking about the first version of Candy Machine which he often refers to as “Candy Machine V.0”<br />

Thanks to the efforts of Jordan, Bartosz, and Metaplex, the DAA mint was successful, and it completed within 8 minutes<br />

after launch on August 14th, 2021. This was a monumental breakthrough for Solana; a fast mint for a 10k drop with extremely<br />

low fees and no chain slowdown was an impressive start compared to known smart contract platform competitor<br />

Ethereum which tends to suffer from extremely high gas fees and major slowdown during desirable mints. It proved the<br />

viability of Solana as a smart contracts platform in the eyes of the average onlooker as well as institutions who were on<br />

the fence about the relatively new layer 1 blockchain, and almost immediately there were hundreds of thousands more<br />

users piling into Solana. It was no surprise what happened next to the price of Solana as well as transaction volume:


SOL soared from $43 to $216 in the span of 3 weeks immediately after the DAA mint<br />

Solana transaction volume soared to all-time-highs after the DAA mint completed<br />

Yeah, that’s right. These dumb, goofy, crayon-eating apes would end up being a powder keg that would set the entire Solana<br />

ecosystem on a path where there was no looking back. The importance of the Degenerate Academy mint in relation<br />

to Solana cannot be overstated. It was an extremely significant on-chain event. While it’s important to build out infrastructure<br />

(dapps, defi, various smart contracts, etc.) and a working chain, you need users. Users give value and meaning<br />

to the chain as well as its infrastructure. Without users and community, a blockchain is an empty kingdom without<br />

people. DAA brought the people.<br />

DAA also paved the way for all other collections that followed, having popularized Metaplex token contracts and inspired<br />

the creation of a streamlined minting process via Candy Machine. This led to what has been dubbed as “the Solana NFT<br />

bull run,” whereby artists were able to utilize Candy Machine’s open source code to release their own collections quickly<br />

and efficiently with low fees, and users were able to mint these NFT collections at minuscule costs. Billions of dollars<br />

traded hands during this time in the ultimate trading frenzy to capture value from the first generation of Solana NFTs.


Degen Ape #9137, Rank 15, owned by 0xDutch<br />

To me, Degenerate Ape Academy is one of the most important NFT collections (if not -the- most important) on the Solana<br />

blockchain. Incredible 3D rendered art that is rich with provenance and technical innovation; DAA deeply impacted<br />

the Solana blockchain forever in an irreplicable way. In the words of Jordan Prince, “people were in doubt about whether<br />

Solana could be a viable NFT chain, but after that day, they were never in doubt again. I think [saving the mint] changed<br />

the future of Solana.”<br />

And that, my friends, is the story of the Degenerate Ape Academy mint.<br />

In my next article, I’m going to talk more about what Degenerate Ape Academy is about (as well as the Degeniverse),<br />

what it has been up to since the epic launch, and what its plans are going into the future, so stay tuned.<br />

Oh, and before I forget…<br />

Welcome to the Academy.


austin_visual


avekno


avekno


Adce_new


Adce_new


atrdynn


atrdynn


BlockFramez


BlockFramez


Odyssey


Odyssey


BlockFramez


atovanov


0000million


D00MSDAYnft


D00MSDAYnft


dhanynurhidayat


dhanynurhidayat


alecduma


ZeeWhyEl


ecks_oh_fficial


F4llenD4mieN


F4llenD4mieN


fierzafajri


Vanta


wetikos


GhoulWAPE


GhoulWAPE


ecks_oh_fficial


KertzRodia


KertzRodia


hellofaten


hellofaten


ImNotWordy


ImNotWordy


izam_BKB


izam_BKB


JuliaOct


JuliaOct


micalnoelson


micalnoelson


MarcaCollier


kiramotosan


RaulVongal


Saintsuffers_


Saintsuffers_


Linkkzyy<br />

The bit you came for, not inspiring speech about thinking<br />

independently.<br />

Below I will try to encompass the areas I believe to be<br />

truly important to have when looking to succeed with<br />

trading NFTs both pre-mint and on the market, followed<br />

by tools to use and ways to find things early.<br />

Social Sentiment.<br />

To me, this is THE MOST IMPORTANT factor when researching<br />

any NFT and is something I admittedly have<br />

lost gains on from fading. NFTs are driven by their communities,<br />

although devs can do tremendous things, ultimately<br />

the community’s dedication and the sentiment<br />

that follows in social hubs will make or break a project.<br />

How do we observe this?<br />

On a basic level, look at the activity in discord, look at<br />

the activity on twitter. Are there influencers with eyes<br />

on them, is there a large flood of tweets about them?<br />

Do the masses receive them well?<br />

On a deeper level, tools like NFT Inspect allow you to<br />

track more specific numbers, engagement on profiles<br />

repping a community, global reach of a community,<br />

number of people repping a community.<br />

But we can see it on a more personal level. What are the<br />

individual community members like?<br />

Are they going crazy? Did some dude just jump out of<br />

a plane in honour of the collection, is someone making<br />

custom shoes, custom sweaters, a coffee brand, an NFT<br />

project or platform that supports the initial project?<br />

Another valuable way to directly view community<br />

sentiment is through the twitter specific search options<br />

which I will highlight later in this piece.<br />

Here’s the important part: connect it. If the research you<br />

do suggests the current position of the project is solid,<br />

begin to look for the reasons it can keep moving.<br />

Is the project following a market trend, does it blend<br />

to the broader sentiment of the ecosystem? Are there<br />

strong figureheads that echo and enrich the positive<br />

sentiment in the community? Do metrics keep increasing?<br />

Are more influencers talking about it? What about<br />

the emotions of community members, do they appear<br />

riddled with conviction, are they in wars on the timeline<br />

defending it? Question. Question. Question. You must<br />

always be inquisitive to reliably succeed.<br />

Note; Social Sentiment only works for you if you’re looking<br />

at it in the right way for the given context.<br />

Let’s examine $DUST as a recent example, an amazing<br />

team with true ambitions. However, the play seemed to<br />

be flipping at ATH around the y00ts mint, which never<br />

came. Why though?<br />

In this space you need to assume if you intend to make a play<br />

and see a large group of other people intending to make the<br />

same play, someone, likely a bigger fish, has already figured<br />

out how to extract the most value from those making the<br />

same play. This is the nature of the open markets, someone<br />

must win, someone must “lose.”<br />

Learn to contextualize sentiment to the research you wish to<br />

do, rather than the belief you wish to reenforce. You might<br />

want the project to be bullish; but look for the things that<br />

suggest otherwise, try to tear down your own position and<br />

discuss how things look.<br />

Friends, Information Hubs, Group Chats.<br />

I cannot state the value of this enough, find a group of people<br />

you gel with and believe you can trust. Learn from them,<br />

discuss with them, and ultimately bond with them.<br />

For me this is just a groupchat of 11 raging degenerates.<br />

Not only will this make you money from the plays, projects,<br />

and research you will have capability to share, but it provides<br />

MORE if done right.<br />

From my group chats I’ve learned things about:<br />

• Coding, Rust, SOL Programming, Security, Botting.<br />

• Community Management, Time management in doing<br />

so.<br />

• ETH Projects, Communities, Climate.<br />

• Mental health, raw life advice.<br />

You can only research and learn so much through trial and<br />

error as a singular individual. However, surrounding yourself<br />

with the right people will tenfold the capacity of knowledge<br />

and research you can consume in a much more time efficient<br />

manner.<br />

On top of this, you will always be more grounded and less biased<br />

in your trading when you can seek external counsel you<br />

trust, value and can listen to.<br />

Make sure you pick people you do truly get along with and<br />

trust, it’s a generally anonymous space; so, trust is the only<br />

social currency to run on.<br />

Analysing A Team.<br />

There are some very basic factors always worth dissecting if<br />

you’re looking to speed through research:<br />

• Past experience?


• Do the team members have a reputation in the<br />

space?<br />

• How do they sound? Are they motivated, dedicated<br />

etc?<br />

• What values does each member bring, does it<br />

balance well?<br />

• How big is the team? Do they have the funds to<br />

manage such a team?<br />

Building your own credit/rating system.<br />

This can help condense research very quickly; I’ve made my<br />

own in the past, but I feel as if it’s out of touch with the current<br />

sentiment. If I had thrown you a filler one to use for your<br />

own modification it would be something like<br />

Social Sentiment - x /5 stars<br />

The Team - x / 5 stars.<br />

Art - x / 5 Stars<br />

People may say doxxing, but from my experience it rarely<br />

adds any true value except less chance of an immediate<br />

rug.<br />

I think the biggest IT factor of sought when looking at<br />

a team is identifying if they have a vocal leader which<br />

generates some sort of rallying effect. Acts as a voice that<br />

really explains the thoughts of not only the community<br />

but the brand itself in an active matter.<br />

To name a few of the best examples, check out Liberty<br />

Square, Frank, Peblo, and Solport Tom.<br />

In this space it’s also important to inspect the marketing<br />

side of the team and ask some questions about it. Marketing<br />

dominates in this space so don’t fade the team<br />

members leading it.<br />

Importance of exit strategies;<br />

Don’t see influencers talking about this enough, if you<br />

buy let’s say 10 NFT’s for 2 SOL. The FP pumps to 2 SOL<br />

/ NFT. You’ve got profit now, but don’t know what to do.<br />

There’s a basic way to go about this.<br />

• Sell one NFT to cover your entry, IMO if you have<br />

more than 2 NFT’s you should ALWAYS sell one to<br />

cover entry if it’s possible.<br />

• You’ve covered your entry, so now it’s time to<br />

extract value. NEVER just slap 10-20 NFTs on the<br />

floor, this adds unwanted resistance and may<br />

reduce potential buyers. Instead, consider listing<br />

1-3.<br />

• Now you’ve got a neat profit on your trade, you<br />

must make the decision as to how further you<br />

think it can go. Assuming you have 10 NFT’s<br />

you’ve sold 4 so far, with the remaining 6 you<br />

can choose to leave 2 of them as moon bags and<br />

slowly offload the other 4 across days, weeks,<br />

months, etc.<br />

Exit strategies are very reliant on the price action of<br />

whatever you’re selling; but they are important to keep<br />

in mind to extract the most potential value on the trades<br />

you’re making.<br />

Note regarding entry strategies: Everyone has their own<br />

buying strategies and it’s entirely dependent on their<br />

available liquidity, but also try to be critical of the price<br />

you’re trying to enter at; “They are 13.5 SOL rn, I may<br />

wait on a pull back to 12 to enter.” It’s always worthwhile<br />

to try and maximize potential gains in this space.<br />

Original Qualities (Website design, marketing stuff, Idea’s,<br />

Art, etc) - x /5 Stars<br />

Core Goals/Roadmap - x / 5 Stars.<br />

I think teams being Doxxed & Roadmaps are unnecessary,<br />

which is an absolutely 180 from the opinion I used to hold.<br />

Roadmaps constrict a project’s ability to pivot with market<br />

trends or set them. Doxxed devs is nice, but it’s not needed<br />

or shouldn’t be demanded imo, let em build.<br />

This is an on-the-fly filler system, feel free to optimize and<br />

evolve this!<br />

Security<br />

For those of you very new to the space, you want two things.<br />

A burner wallet & a cold wallet.<br />

Your cold wallet should never interact with anything at any<br />

point. It should only be used to store NFTs. Hardware wallets<br />

are optimal for this, such as Ledgers.<br />

Your burner wallet should only ever have enough funds in it<br />

for minting or an NFT you’re selling.<br />

The wallet is essentially used to minimize the monetary<br />

damage of malicious minting protocols and so on. Prioritize<br />

getting a Ledger the bigger your portfolio gets!<br />

Analyzing A Project’s Merit’s Post-Mint.<br />

The Fun Bit.<br />

Social Sentiment<br />

To avoid rewriting the whole bit, apply this stuff here. Who’s<br />

looking at the project, what’s got people excited about it,<br />

how many people and so on.<br />

Under this I would also keep my eye out for expansive projects,<br />

by this I mean things like DeStables. Community ran<br />

projects which add onto the expansion of the brand/project<br />

itself. Additionally look for things like custom items/collectibles<br />

being made; custom versions of NFTs, custom shoes,<br />

clothes and so on.<br />

Numbers & Metrics<br />

Prefacing this by saying, personally I hate TA for NFTs. I don’t<br />

think charting NFTs is a valuable way to trade specifically<br />

when they generally cycle around news rather than anything<br />

else.<br />

If TA still fancies you, the one value I find is figuring out<br />

which price barriers have the largest number of listings (aka,<br />

resistance). I would recommend doing this regardless as it<br />

offers you an opportunity to sell at the resistance and rebuy<br />

on a potential drawback for cheaper and netting a neat profit


already.<br />

One thing to note when looking at resistance is the speed<br />

of liquidity. If you hit some form of resistance in FP and liquidity<br />

flowing in begins to slow its worth listing. It is very<br />

likely that trading bots and people will see the halt and<br />

begin listing/dropping the floor. However, if liquidity is<br />

high; you may just get steam rolled out of your position.<br />

NFT Inspect: This can be a very valuable tool for reasons<br />

beyond influencers swinging their willies in a battle of<br />

who’s more narcissistic. Observe the community rankings<br />

category. It gives you access to how many unique individuals<br />

are rocking a PFP under this collection but also the<br />

reach.<br />

If you have a collection of, say 10,000 and 60% of the<br />

collection is uniquely rocking their PFP with a community<br />

reach of 30% but their floor price is 2 SOL it would be a<br />

buying indicator alone.<br />

However, if the project has a large community reach but a<br />

lacklustre amount of unique PFPs; this is not particularly<br />

a buying indicator, it’s more likely that an influencer or<br />

person with a large platform is rocking it, which can be<br />

nice, but it is nowhere near as useful as 2-6,000 people<br />

on the timeline marketing the project with each tweet,<br />

reply, Twitter space, etc.<br />

HelloMoon Smart Money<br />

This one is a given nowadays, so I won’t go into depth,<br />

but it has its strengths. Make sure you don’t get caught<br />

in a short-term play that will dump on your head. Be<br />

proactive.<br />

Liquidity<br />

This is the most important thing with NFTs because it<br />

dictates the value of literally everything. Your floor can be<br />

any price but if there’s no liquidity purchasing at that set<br />

price, it’s not really the floor price. Always keep track of<br />

liquidity flowing into the things you are interested in buying<br />

and if you see slow trends or a gradual daily increase,<br />

it’s a good sign that there might be more coming soon.<br />

Ask Questions: Try to talk with the team, talk to influencers,<br />

talk to people on the timeline, try to perceive what<br />

the mood is towards the collection. Why are people buying,<br />

why are they bullish and talking about it?<br />

Buy the Rumor, Sell the News<br />

This is a common trading style and is usually successful.<br />

I would not advise following it word for word, but the<br />

general premise is useful in this space.<br />

If you see a project that might be under the radar or<br />

slowly creeping up in terms of volume, NFT Inspect or discussion,<br />

it’s a great opportunity to investigate the project<br />

and figure out what’s coming next. Almost every bit of<br />

big news/announcements for projects results in a positive<br />

price action even if it’s 10-20%. Taking advantage means<br />

you’ve just made a neat 10-20% for simply being aware<br />

and selling to the latecomers.<br />

Quality Assurance<br />

I talked about this briefly in pre-mint analysis, but it’s<br />

always good to look for quality insurance on the things you<br />

buy into;<br />

- Are the marketing graphics dated?<br />

- How does the website look?<br />

- Discord ugly as shit and hard to navigate?<br />

- Is the staking platform well made?<br />

Tokenomics/Coins<br />

This is something I don’t see talked about enough with<br />

projects implementing staking and native tokens. Why. The.<br />

F*ck do you think tokenomics made from anything less than<br />

a professional athletics gamer is worth betting on?<br />

It is such a core and key component of their ecosystem, and<br />

it requires INTENSE math and thorough design to make not<br />

only a unique but sound tokenomics structure.<br />

Don’t have faith in some monkeys releasing a coin without<br />

proper design. If they are cutting corners, being lazy, or<br />

overtly stingy with their funding, none of these are good<br />

signs.<br />

Overlap w/ Pre-Mint<br />

There’s some themes which obviously overlap which are as<br />

follows<br />

• Is the art good?<br />

• Is the team experienced?<br />

• Are their plans worth buying into?<br />

• Is there a vocal leader?<br />

• Socials? (Discord, Twitter etc)<br />

Long Hauls<br />

If you have conviction on a project, then I wouldn’t concern<br />

yourself with trying to get a bottomed price. Make the<br />

market come to you. Bid, wait for drops and so on, but don’t<br />

keep yourself waiting on something you wanna vault, it can<br />

burn you.<br />

Quickfire/Basic Advice.<br />

• Don’t fade metas and market trends. If you see it<br />

forming, follow it. E.g., the early 2022 Branding<br />

hype. Late 2021 Utility hype. Going against the grain<br />

won’t necessarily burn you, but it will restrict your<br />

ability to make money.<br />

• Don’t fade 1/1 Art. This is a subjective thing, but<br />

check it out, it may be worth it down the line.<br />

• Organization is key.<br />

• If you hate reading, use Chrome extensions such as<br />

Swift Read to speed up the process.<br />

• If you can code, I’m sure you can build programs to<br />

speed run processes and organize better.<br />

• Always try to ask the team questions. Put the gas<br />

on them a little bit. You may not like their answer<br />

but if their response feels controlled and calculated,


assume they’ve got a good pulse on what they’re doing or will present it as such.<br />

• Always think in the mindset of the general population. It’s not truly about whether you really like the art, the<br />

ideas, or the team. It’s about if they are consumable on a broader scale.<br />

• Don’t avoid placing bids, there’s always an opportunity to snag an NFT cheaper by slapping a bid on.<br />

• You’re not bound to sell the top; you’re supposed to sell for profit. If you hit the top great, if you sell before the<br />

top, you’ve still profited, don’t be harsh on yourself.<br />

• Have clear goals in mind when trading. What $ Value or $SOL value do you aim to hit? Work towards it. If you hit<br />

it, celebrate it, and set a new goal. I found myself constantly moving goalposts and felt an endless cycle of “I’m<br />

not doing good enough”. Avoid this.<br />

• Security is paramount in this space.<br />

• Don’t click random links. Ignore any NFT you receive that you didn’t buy or trade for. Legitimate projects do NOT<br />

randomly drop NFTs. Always check with the project before interacting. Generally, avoid 2FA linked to a phone,<br />

opt for email. Use a hardware wallet if possible.<br />

OG Solana Alpha Hunter Turned Builder.<br />

Work w/ @TrippyBunny_NFT @TheAlphaDAO @SolApeFinance


DAM ZINE


DAM ZINE


yobaninja


yobaninja


yg4h_


yg4h_


Valenci_Club


Valenci_Club


Trippsoul_NFT


Trippsoul_NFT


kingjeymsu<br />

StudioCaptain1


StudioCaptain1


osenhainarte


osenhainarte


ezaafsharr


vwisnup


RaulVongal


Official_JamesJ


Pozer___


Pozer___


netrainbow96


netrainbow96


Mr_KJ09


Mr_KJ09


husaensadam


thejomshoots


24Kenva


ArteOVNI


CultureHacker - Odyssey suit - xZD1


CultureHacker - Odyssey armor - exoskeleton #1


CultureHacker - Odyssey suit - xBD1


CultureHacker - Odyssey weapon - Sonic #1


CultureHacker - Odyssey pet #1


artformation_39


dimes_lab


destroyxstairs


destroyxstairs


endolgasm


LeoIsidro92


lutttine


ginnraff


SimonKimArt


BarbolinArt


GricioAriel


HelenNFTart


HelenNFTart


@subaruimpreza09<br />

Critters Cult took CT by storm as soon as it minted. Despite a rough mint experience, sentiment held relatively<br />

strong; the community seemed to have faith things would turn out positive. A quick pivot and expanded supply<br />

got the project back on its feet. The unique art and limitless world building and storytelling potential make this<br />

an extremely promising project.<br />

Team/Devs:<br />

as far as I know, the artist is the only core team member. This is mildly concerning, especially since the lack of<br />

tech support led to a rough mint experience.<br />

However, the artist was able to pivot quickly, listen to the community, expand supply, and continue. In the future,<br />

if the project intends to add any additional features that require devs, I would hope that the artist uses mint<br />

funds or royalties to hire someone trustworthy.<br />

Additionally, the artist is well-connected and respected, and this could serve very useful in the future if the project<br />

aims to utilize collaborations.<br />

Community:<br />

this project is young, but its community is not. Solsunsets, previously released by the same artist, is an art-based<br />

project that has formed a strong community who is interested in art for art’s sake.<br />

The Solsunsets floor price was not particularly high until Critters Cult was announced, but this means that former<br />

holders are members of the community for more than just a flex or the potential to get rich quick. Shortly after<br />

reveal, critters flooded Twitter, and many holders were using their critters as pfps, showing that the community is<br />

proud to hold.<br />

The top-tier art creates a dynamic where buyers shop for aesthetics. This is a great sign that the community is<br />

looking to relate to the art and find their “forever” critter. It strengthens the bond between the holder and their<br />

NFT, making it harder for them to part ways with the project.<br />

Innovation/Utility:<br />

this is not a utility-focused project in the tech or finance realms. However, uniting holders through art and lore is<br />

a sophisticated and simple way to build a strong community. Additionally, “storytelling NFTs” are all the rage right<br />

now; it is the first project to boldly commit to this as its only facet since this idea grew in popularity in the prior<br />

months leading up to launch. Additionally, the art is innovative in and of itself.<br />

Art:<br />

the art is the biggest draw to this project. The artist is experienced and clearly very talented, and his range is<br />

displayed through the different works he has created.<br />

There are many traits in the critters collection, many of which Solana has not seen before. Despite the novelty of<br />

the art, it also is reminiscent and comfortable,<br />

including the fact that the art<br />

is pixel-style, which pays homage to the<br />

history of NFTs.<br />

Achievements/Potential:<br />

though this project is young, it feels<br />

like the sky is the limit. Many important<br />

voices in the NFT space are<br />

on board, which is necessary for a<br />

project to get full traction. The rel- a-<br />

tively uncharted space of world building<br />

and storytelling lends<br />

a<br />

wide-open field for Critters Cult<br />

to<br />

explore and shine.<br />

140<br />

<strong>SHILL</strong> <strong>Issue</strong> #<strong>77</strong>


@block_degen<br />

TLDR - exclusive small collection of 888 Anons with a large focus on blockchain privacy. Big brain holders that<br />

could benefit from more active marketing by the team<br />

TEAM<br />

This one is difficult as I don’t know much about the team as individuals normally that would be a bad thing but<br />

for the case of 888 Anons it fits into the theme of anonymity.<br />

A stumbling block the project has is in its public reach as the effort on marketing could be increased to create<br />

larger awareness of the project<br />

COMMUNITY<br />

There are no influencers rocking an Anon Club PFP but I feel a sense of trust in a community members opinion<br />

when I see them rocking their anon club which is huge in my eyes and something I look for when considering<br />

investing in a project. Again, more exposure would be good but any exposure the community has is high class<br />

UTILITY / INNOVATION<br />

The main purpose of Anon Club is the utility they create, and it is all focused around anonymity which ideally is<br />

why many of us got into crypto in the first place<br />

They have built the following protocols all that are powered by the $dark token that Anon holders get for staking<br />

Dark Bank - The Dark Bank is designed to provide a simple method for Depositing and Withdrawing Solana or any<br />

other SPL token into the Light Protocol Shielded Pool<br />

Dark Swap - Dark Swap is built on top of the Jupiter Aggregator’s API Framework to provide users with the closest<br />

possible swaps for liquid pairs across many exchanges!<br />

Dark Markets - The Dark Markets is a simple solution for collecting wallet addresses when building an allow list<br />

which is like BlockSmith Labs Mercury<br />

Project Blackhole - Still a secret for now<br />

They also have a direct connection for holders to Yami Finance which is a purely permission-less solution for<br />

point-of-sales, token swaps and private transactions that is launchable in only 10 seconds. Yami is building the<br />

future of in-person digital payments leveraging privacy for realistic user experience. Yami is designed to act as<br />

an all-rewarding alternative to traditional gated financial systems. Yami could be huge as a protocol once more<br />

business start running their sales using crypto and decentralised<br />

ACHIEVEMENTS / POTENTIAL<br />

One thing to note for a project that has had very little to almost no marketing it has held its floor price surprisingly<br />

well during this current bear market which tells me that the current holders are super confident in what the<br />

founders are building and happy to hold long term (or know something we don’t).<br />

Where I see the most potential in this<br />

project is if the governments start to really<br />

crack down on Crypto taxes and transactions<br />

and more members feel the need to<br />

keep their movements private.<br />

Also, not aware of any other project that<br />

is based on Solana that is building something<br />

along these lines which means first<br />

mover advantage and little competition<br />

ART<br />

As always art is subjective. Absolutely<br />

nothing excites me about this artwork.<br />

It works and is original but is very boring<br />

and hard to differentiate between pfps.<br />

<strong>SHILL</strong> <strong>Issue</strong> #<strong>77</strong><br />

141


@ThesisInvestor<br />

Team/Devs:<br />

They have built three novel market viable products<br />

pre-mint that could reshape the NFT buying landscape.<br />

The first is an NFT pledging system that allows users to<br />

commit to holding an NFT for 10 or 30 days. If successful,<br />

the user increases their Investor Scoring rating and can<br />

pledge more NFTs. This scoring mechanism could be<br />

used by upcoming projects to provide whitelist access<br />

to proven holders. They have also created “pledging as a<br />

service” that other projects can leverage to incorporate<br />

time-based staking. Third, they created a pre-pay minting<br />

feature that they used for their own upcoming mint and<br />

can allow other projects to utilize. The products each<br />

look and function well on desktop and mobile. The team<br />

has also been excellent with communication outlining<br />

next steps and engaging the community. Checking all the<br />

boxes so far.<br />

Community:<br />

It’s too soon to tell since we are pre-mint, but so far,<br />

the community has been very active and authentically<br />

engaged in what Crowdsurf is building. The team<br />

deserves credit here as well for leveraging the community<br />

to test their various products and they have also<br />

frequently created incentives for the community to buy<br />

on secondary to access raffle prizes. Since Crowdsurf is<br />

building out a product that could yield lucrative whitelist<br />

access I see some strong potential for the community to<br />

stay active and engaged discussing upcoming mints and<br />

continuing to be early and rewarded for product testing<br />

future features.<br />

Innovation/Utility:<br />

Only time will tell, but I think Crowdsurf’s tools could be<br />

massively successful. Everyone in NFTs knows that the<br />

current whitelist allocation model is broken. Allocating<br />

WL to a bunch of other NFT projects doesn’t create any<br />

loyalty to the NFT. Allocating WL via pre-sale can lead<br />

to huge pumps and dumps without proper<br />

vesting rules. Allocating via scholarships or<br />

other proof-of-work methods is extremely<br />

time consuming. Crowdsurf’s pledge portal<br />

theoretically helps streamline this process<br />

by creating a data collection scheme to<br />

determine which buyers are more likely to<br />

HODL their NFTs. And the more people and<br />

projects that use Crowdsurf, the better the<br />

data will get, incentivizing future projects<br />

to allocate significant WL spots to proven<br />

diamond handers. The expansion into<br />

time-based staking as a service through<br />

their pledge portal and pre-pay features<br />

are also sneakily killer products. Timebased<br />

staking could be the new meta<br />

with y00ts going in that direction and pre-pay adds<br />

convenience for buyers and may even incentivize buyers<br />

to accumulate a mint at a discounted price while also<br />

providing valuable data to projects in determining how<br />

to price their final mint and conduct outreach (rather<br />

than waiting until mint day to see if enough people will<br />

buy into the project). And utility? If they pull this off this<br />

could be a great source of whitelist access which we<br />

know is lucrative based on the success of Blocksmith<br />

Labs and Bot Head. And Crowdsurf claims they will share<br />

50% of all revenue streams with holders. It’s not entirely<br />

clear to me how this will work - is this direct revenue<br />

share or revenue share tied to their utility token $SURF<br />

that they plan to introduce post-launch?<br />

Art:<br />

The art is solid. It’s simple yet distinctive and full of<br />

personality. I like that they split the mint into two<br />

sections: Deadsurfers as the OGs and Crowdsurfers as<br />

the bulk collection. If this project takes off it could really<br />

be desirable to hold a Deadsurfer as a flex. I appreciate<br />

that they did a PFP rather than an access card, as the<br />

market has clearly indicated that a PFP is far more<br />

desirable for building brand and community.<br />

Achievements/Potential:<br />

This project has already accomplished more than most<br />

NFTs pre-mint. They have built market viable products<br />

and appear to have product market fit helping address<br />

several very relevant pain points in NFTs, namely whitelist<br />

allocation, time-based staking, and tools like pre-pay to<br />

help upcoming projects mint out. Since they are utilizing<br />

a SaaS model and have proven an ability to build useful<br />

stuff, there’s no reason to believe they won’t continue to<br />

layer on new functionality and tools down the road. I’m<br />

very excited to watch this project grow and think it could<br />

be an A-tier utility play in the same vein as Blocksmith<br />

Labs, Famous Fox Federation, Atadia, or Bot Head.<br />

142<br />

<strong>SHILL</strong> <strong>Issue</strong> #<strong>77</strong>


a16z leads $40 million raise<br />

for crypto protocol - Golden<br />

The Block • by Catarina Moura<br />

Quick Take<br />

• Golden has raised $40 million in a series led by a16z crypto.<br />

• The Series B round included high-profile investors such as Solana co-founder Raj Gokal and Matt Bellamy,<br />

the lead-singer of Muse.<br />

Golden, a crypto firm building a data protocol with web3 tools, raised $40<br />

million in a Series B funding round led by a16z crypto, bringing the total<br />

amount raised to date to $60 million.<br />

Other participants in the round include Solana co-founder Raj Gokal, Dropbox<br />

co-founder Arash Ferdowsi and Postmates founder Bastian Lehmann,<br />

the company announced Monday. Also among the investors was Matt<br />

Bellamy, the lead singer of rock band Muse and a partner at Helium-3<br />

Ventures.<br />

Ali Yahya, a general partner at a16z, will also be joining the board and sitting<br />

alongside current board member and a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen,<br />

the company said.<br />

The funding will help the company’s efforts to build a platform that it says<br />

centralizes data using technologies and mechanics from Web3. The protocol<br />

financially rewards correct data and disincentives incorrect data, with<br />

the use of tokens.<br />

It’s now in a testnet phase, with 35,000 individuals submitting facts and<br />

validating information, via the Discord community, a live decentralized<br />

app, APIs and early governance in action. The protocol is expected to go<br />

live on the mainnet in the second quarter of 2023.<br />

“This is not simply a ‘web3 Wikipedia,’” the company said. “Having accurate<br />

data in a deeply-linked knowledge graph allows for the creation of<br />

new applications and insights that are not currently possible.”<br />

“Having<br />

accurate data in<br />

a deeply-linked<br />

knowledge<br />

graph allows<br />

for the creation<br />

of new<br />

applications<br />

and insights<br />

that are not<br />

currently<br />

possible.”<br />

<strong>SHILL</strong> <strong>Issue</strong> #<strong>77</strong><br />

143


@GreatBazaarNFT<br />

@GMersNFT<br />

— GMers BREAKS OVER $1M in Secondary Sales! —<br />

What’s going on with Solana NFTs? Let’s find out!<br />

GMers is a 50.000 free mint NFT collection that was<br />

minted on Sept 13th founded by @Ace0fTrades, full<br />

of fun colorful stick figures and vibrant art! GMers<br />

reached a floor price of around 0.49-0.60+ SOL, on<br />

Sept 14th.<br />

According to @SolanaFloor Solana NFTs have made<br />

$4.39M in volume during the last 24 hours, and $43M<br />

in the last 7 days<br />

GMers has made around 31.8k SOL in secondary<br />

market sales volume according to Magic Eden, around<br />

1.090.864,48 USD<br />

Sol Sniper<br />

GMers is a fun collection with an active social media<br />

presence that took a risk: launching 50k NFTs. Solana<br />

has never seen a collection that big, and so far the<br />

sentiment on social media has been great! GMers main<br />

goal is to become the World’s largest DAO!<br />

GMers listing count went from 7k+ peak on Sept 15th,<br />

to around just 3.7k+ at time of writing. Just around<br />

7.6% of the collection is listed, which is a nice % for<br />

such a big collection.<br />

144<br />

<strong>SHILL</strong> <strong>Issue</strong> #<strong>77</strong>


Sol Sniper<br />

At time of writing, GMers are at a 0.345 floor price. Awesome charts by @solsniperxyz: https://solsniper.xyz/collection/gmers…<br />

<strong>SHILL</strong> <strong>Issue</strong> #<strong>77</strong><br />

145


@Scribe_novus<br />

Coral Cube join the 0% royalties club<br />

Coral Cube has also hinted that more exciting news is<br />

on the way, fighting its way back into relevance as a<br />

Solana NFT marketplace and aggregator.<br />

Froots release staking after long-awaited roadmap<br />

dropped<br />

Ever Since Yawww launched their “Your NFT, Your<br />

Choice” campaign, introducing the Solana NFT ecosystem<br />

to a marketplace that bypasses creator royalties,<br />

various NFT marketplaces on Solana have followed<br />

suit, in a bid to steal market share from the dominant<br />

Magic Eden.<br />

Coral Cube announced today that they would be following<br />

the trend, allowing sellers to choose to list their<br />

NFTs with 0% creator royalties.<br />

“Since day 1 we have been here for Solana traders,<br />

enabling them with the fastest and most reliable NFT<br />

marketplace aggregator with the best offers. As other<br />

marketplaces are introducing the same functionality,<br />

we want to ensure we are ready to serve our users the<br />

best we can.”<br />

This comes after Coral Cube partnered up with Magic<br />

Eden to create the hugely unpopular Metashield, a<br />

protocol that made it easier for NFT projects to punish<br />

those who sold their NFTs on marketplaces that allow<br />

sellers to bypass creator royalties. Coral Cube acknowledges<br />

that the community has not liked the product<br />

and will be working closely with creators and traders to<br />

set a new standard for the space.<br />

Coral Cube used to be the second most popular place<br />

for sellers to sell their NFTs. In recent times, the competition<br />

has heated up, with marketplaces not only<br />

offering sellers all the functionality they need. This has<br />

led to Coral Cube slipping in terms of volume.<br />

After delivering a new and improved roadmap 2 days<br />

ago, staking of Froots is now live, allowing NFTs to earn<br />

$PULP, the utility token of the Froots project.<br />

The Food and Beverages-based NFT project released<br />

a roadmap just 2 days ago, in which they outlined<br />

their plans going forward, such as transitioning into a<br />

DAO-controlled project, and a potential art upgrade<br />

around the corner too.<br />

The team also released their tokenomics today, outlining<br />

how $PULP will work. $PULP will purely be a utility<br />

token. Froots is going with a gamified staking system<br />

for $PULP, where holding a full set (Tomato + Orange +<br />

Lemon + Apple) grants them bonus $PULP. Holders can<br />

get an even bigger bonus if they include a rare body<br />

trait in their staking set. The staking will take place in<br />

the Arena once that’s released. Sneak peeks for the<br />

Arena should be available later today.<br />

SoDead NFT plans to increase royalties for NFTs to<br />

66.6% for Purification Event<br />

146<br />

<strong>SHILL</strong> <strong>Issue</strong> #<strong>77</strong>


Earlier today, Sodead NFT made the announcement<br />

that on Full Moon, royalties for all NFTs would increase<br />

to 66.6%. The announcement follows Ghost’s disclosure<br />

of details regarding $HEM, SoDead’s native coin.<br />

SoDead holders will also be able to purify their NFTs<br />

on the full moon. Holders will be able to receive an<br />

increase in the staking multiplier through the purification<br />

process. On October 9th, the increased royalties<br />

for NFTs will take effect.<br />

On Twitter, the announcement received a mixed<br />

response. Some users praised the ingenuity, while<br />

others noted how many previous attempts had ended<br />

in failure.<br />

PEEPL: Team behind Stoned Ape Crew announce a new<br />

venture<br />

“We want to have fun with the most interesting of traits in<br />

humankind — curiosity & passion — in an NFT to build a<br />

global community of Peepl finding their own way in life.”<br />

More information regarding this new venture should be<br />

revealed in the coming weeks.<br />

Handsy owners to get whitelist spot for new Divine<br />

Dogs collection<br />

A new Twitter account, PeeplNft posted its first post<br />

today; a thread explaining what its project is about and<br />

its links to Stoned Ape Crew (SAC).<br />

Stoned Ape Crew is an NFT project that has done<br />

well since it was minted. Though it has come down a<br />

lot from its highs, the project had a successful event<br />

recently, with $puff week and PayLeaf catapulting their<br />

name back into the talk of the town.<br />

It appears that the team from SAC will be starting a<br />

separate venture. PEEPL is a new NFT project focused<br />

on culture, curiosity, and passion, as they seek to forge<br />

a global community.<br />

Though not directly linked, SAC holders will be glad to<br />

know that the mint will be in $puff, the native utility<br />

token of the SAC ecosystem that can be earned from<br />

staking your SAC. The tentative price is 1950 $puff,<br />

which translates to $78 or 2.5 Sol. Holders of the Apes,<br />

with certain configurations as shown in the image<br />

below, will get a whitelist for the project automatically<br />

as well.<br />

Hyblinxx has announced today that holders of her first<br />

edition piece, Handsy, will receive whitelist spots for<br />

Divine Dog’s upcoming NFT launch: Transcendents.<br />

“Dear Handsy Edition Holders, I want to thank you<br />

for your patience and offer you a DivineDogsNFT WL<br />

spot for holding my edition and believing in the hyblinxx<br />

brand. I’m so grateful for all your support!<br />

All of my love,Hyblinxx”<br />

Transcendents is a collection of highly customisable<br />

dogs that are hand-drawn by Hyblinxx herself. Traits for<br />

the dogs will be made by 1/1 artists around the space,<br />

allowing holders to dress their dogs up however they<br />

want.<br />

<strong>SHILL</strong> <strong>Issue</strong> #<strong>77</strong><br />

147


@NFThinks<br />

Q: Can you provide a brief overview of the project?<br />

A: More Monkes is a unique project in its own right. It<br />

was spawned from a generative collection that Purple<br />

made to test his abilities. The massive community<br />

support and speculation of his 1/1 skills provided a lot<br />

of different paths to choose from, and now to continue<br />

forward we have hired a developer to create a verification<br />

tool and build future experiences for the Monke<br />

holders to gain exposure to 1/1 artists. Being a holder<br />

of More Monkes will unlock these experiences.<br />

Currently we have enough collaborations for a full<br />

“Season 1” of airdrops and are starting to structure our<br />

“Season 2” for artists that are currently too busy.<br />

Q: What made you decide to start MM?<br />

A: Purple wanted to test his generative capabilities as<br />

an artist. Over the past year we have seen collections<br />

come out incomplete or unrecognizable due to how<br />

hard layer generation can be for some artists. Coming<br />

from a 1/1 background he wanted to see if he could<br />

generate this and gauge the difficulty himself. Under-<br />

148<br />

<strong>SHILL</strong> <strong>Issue</strong> #<strong>77</strong>


standing the lack of funding for “art” based projects we priced ourselves accordingly. What followed afterwards<br />

was completely unexpected, and now we pivot into providing more to our holders. Where it was simply 1 airdrop,<br />

now it’s more. Where it was 1 artist, now it’s more.<br />

Q: What was the inspiration for the art?<br />

A: What’s most recognizable in the ecosystem at this point? Monkes. More Monkes everywhere. Ours though<br />

are unique. SMBs are pixel, DAA is 3D, SAC are more realism - so Purple decided to do his own style that was<br />

native to him.<br />

<strong>SHILL</strong> <strong>Issue</strong> #<strong>77</strong><br />

149


@L0SxS0L<br />

Art that is clean, iconic, and thought-provoking, with<br />

anti-authoritarian tones that are confronting, witty and<br />

sophisticated all in the same stroke.<br />

@beverlykillsnft is a quickly rising star in this space,<br />

and this is a quick on what I love about this particular<br />

style of art<br />

It’s instantly recognisable. The use of a pink background<br />

in most pieces adds to the subversion by<br />

creating an innocent feel to the art, but it also makes it<br />

iconic af. Anyone who has come across @beverlykillsnft<br />

once will forever be able to spot his work in a sea of<br />

NFTs.<br />

It’s deceptively simple. But each piece will take you on<br />

a journey. The commentary on darker aspects of our<br />

society cut deep, though often hidden in plain sight.<br />

Pulling this off with such bold subversion is a skill that<br />

@beverlykillsnft has mastered beautifully.<br />

It’s not afraid to go there @beverlykillsnft is arguably<br />

at its best when the art is blatantly controversial. Being<br />

clean, iconic, and thought-provoking is one thing, but if<br />

you can get people talking then communities can form,<br />

and real change can happen. It only takes a spark<br />

150<br />

<strong>SHILL</strong> <strong>Issue</strong> #<strong>77</strong>


There’s so much more to this story, but these are the things I believe form the core of @beverlykillsnft iconic art.<br />

Like many others, I’m looking forward to following this journey as it evolves and unfolds. In the meantime, I’ll be<br />

rocking this pfp till it’s no longer relevant!<br />

<strong>SHILL</strong> <strong>Issue</strong> #<strong>77</strong><br />

151


Gaming is for Everyone<br />

Mushroom Party @medium.com<br />

Corey Passarella, Co-Founder<br />

We build the future of online gaming on the common ground between dedicated online gamers and<br />

crypto enthusiasts. Online players have always valued cooperative ownership and decentralization<br />

which is the foundation of Web3. They prove it in the hours spent community building and creating in<br />

their game ecosystem. Cryptocurrency evangelists appreciate data privacy and accessibility as the new<br />

way forward. Gamers practice anonymity, and, in its purest form, a come-as-you-are approach to play.<br />

However, where people gather, high-stakes monetization is never far behind. Online gaming is not an<br />

exception to the rule. Game developers design sticky models to extract attention, money, and data from<br />

players. These practices drive unhealthy social behaviors, more in-game transactions, and intrusive<br />

advertising. In some environments, players fight to navigate the game without spending on expensive<br />

in-game assets and upgrades.<br />

Mushroom Party is our slice of the internet where we develop games differently. Our goal is to lay<br />

the foundation for a gamer-friendly future of online gaming with every game we release. We focus on<br />

values like community-owned development and a consistent, user-centric experience. We want every<br />

player to win based on their skill and understanding of how our games work — not how much money a<br />

player spends.<br />

We lower the slope of the learning curve by developing fun games that put a Web3 twist on familiar<br />

gaming experiences. For example, instead of charging fees to gain an advantage, our games are<br />

played in SOL and allow players to win SOL based on their performance. Our games include the social<br />

sharing elements of culture-shaping games like FarmVille and Wordle. Mushroom Party players have<br />

access to gameplay strategy discussions on Discord instead of endless in-app/in-feed notifications.<br />

MP’ers can also share their successes (and failures) on the social platforms of their choice.<br />

Crypto gaming takes advantage of the unique qualities of digital currency so players can earn crypto<br />

and convert it into cash. Low fees and public transactions allow Web3 game developers like us to eschew<br />

web2 monetization and keep players anonymous. Super users get rewarded for their contribution<br />

to the community.<br />

We are inspired to build these experiences by the 75% of players who repeat play with us after their first<br />

game. And we’re excited to see the space growing: Front Office Sports reports the blockchain gaming<br />

industry grew 2000% in Q1 2022. The investment in this space means soon there will be games for everyone.<br />

Check out our games and become part of our Discord community at the links below. Let’s play!<br />

Links<br />

Mushroom Party Landing Page<br />

Discord<br />

Twitter<br />

152<br />

<strong>SHILL</strong> <strong>Issue</strong> #<strong>77</strong>


<strong>SHILL</strong> <strong>Issue</strong> #<strong>77</strong><br />

153


HanzoTata


Lab4irony


onenone


onenone


0xHoo


Pabalataxxx


artpardini


artpardini


adeniiiz


michel23ortega


Diamond Hands Crew


Pixeltoy


Diamond Hands Crew Gen2.0


Diamond Hands Crew Gen2.0


@guicookie<br />

A crisp outline of what I have learned about the vision, roadmap, tokenomics and value distribution for<br />

SoDeadNFT, @ArsensNation, @blackmagic_gg and @immortalincweb3.<br />

@SoDeadNFT offers a profit share with Holders. 90%<br />

of profits generated by the project are distributed via<br />

staking rewards paid in $HEM.<br />

$HEM pegged at a minimum price of $0.01 USDC.<br />

Fully collateralized by USDC reserves. Reserves will be<br />

seeded by corporate capital and presale buys of HEM<br />

by Holders of assets with specific traits over the next<br />

48 hours at a discount of 10% i.e. buy $HEM presale at<br />

$0.009.<br />

Holders generate $HEM by staking or by hunting.<br />

Staking requires a coffin. Hunting requires participation<br />

in gamified activities that drive awareness or demand<br />

for affiliated assets and projects. Demons and some<br />

other assets with certain traits can hunt on an<br />

automated basis.<br />

$HEM minted at a constant velocity with different<br />

asset stacks generating at different rates. USDC<br />

reserves increase with revenue and underwrites mint<br />

of $HEM staking rewards.<br />

Hunting rewards allocated at a magnitude that reflects<br />

periods of outsized revenue return and through<br />

treasury staking rewards. Hunting will drive bigger<br />

rewards to some participants using a lottery system.<br />

@SoDeadNFTassets are the token printer.<br />

168<br />

<strong>SHILL</strong> <strong>Issue</strong> #<strong>77</strong>


The underlying vision and intent is to build an<br />

ecosystem of projects that address broader web3<br />

infrastructure, entertainment and IRL utility through<br />

internal development, partnerships and incubation.<br />

@blackmagic_gg is the LaunchPad for the native eco.<br />

Projects will be funded and resourced by<br />

@immortalincweb3. Projects will denominate in<br />

$HEM. Velocity of $HEM supply constant, demand for<br />

$HEM increases through consumption of incubated<br />

products and services.<br />

@SoDeadNFT are aggressively building a pipeline<br />

of partner brands and propositions. These are cross<br />

chain, not limited to SOL. Upcoming example in<br />

gambling domain. Services denominated in $HEM.<br />

@immortalincweb3 is building a foundation layer on<br />

top of L1s comprising infrastructure and economy,<br />

allowing builders to bootstrap their development and<br />

GTM. This is inspired by Ethereum’s enablement of its<br />

DeFi eco and the Layer stacks on top.<br />

At a point in the roadmap, @immortalincweb3 will also<br />

invest in a L0 protocol to drive portability of its L2 stack<br />

to enable cross chain propagation of the infrastructure,<br />

servicing and economic activity.<br />

There will be continual demand for $HEM given it<br />

is the denominating asset for transacting on the L2.<br />

The bigger the native eco, the bigger the cross chain<br />

distribution, the bigger the demand for $HEM.<br />

HEMX is a token gated DEX for trading $HEM for<br />

$USDC. Only SD Holders can access. This is the only<br />

mechanism for converting $HEM that is generated<br />

at wholesale prices through staking and hunting into<br />

USDC at the retail rate based on secondary demand.<br />

The bigger the gap between wholesale price and retail<br />

price, the greater the demand for SD assets which<br />

enable generation of wholesale $HEM and access to<br />

HEMX. Projects, marketers and consumers transacting<br />

at high values may prefer staking to secondary buys.<br />

Transacting in $HEM is further incentivized through<br />

gameified mechanics such as airdrops to wallets that<br />

transact in $HEM on any given day and within any<br />

given month. Non-trivial payoffs.<br />

@arsenaharonyan comes from the gaming world. It<br />

shows in his tokenomic and incentive design. There<br />

will be a significant focus in driving $HEM as the<br />

denominating crosschain asset for GameFi broadly.<br />

TLDR:<br />

@SoDeadNFT are the value accrual layer for the eco,<br />

$HEM has the potential to be a broadly distributed<br />

asset for transactions across a range of industries,<br />

@ArsensNation represents and shares in @<br />

arsenaharonyan’s personal revenue streams.<br />

All this fits together to create a significant flywheel.<br />

The BIG IF, is in the execution. This is an extremely big<br />

vision. There is inherent risk and uncertainty. If it lands,<br />

the relationship between supply and demand and the<br />

impact on FP and $HEM retail price is v big.<br />

Ty for listening to my TED talk. Hear it from<br />

Arsen himself here: https://twitter.com/i/<br />

spaces/1DXxyvkDzDYKM?s=20… Or wait for the<br />

Whitepaper to drop later today. It will be better than<br />

my humble attempt at explaining the jigsaw.<br />

<strong>SHILL</strong> <strong>Issue</strong> #<strong>77</strong><br />

169


atrdynn

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