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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 />
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<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 />
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<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 />
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<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 />
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<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 />
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<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 />
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<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