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SOLANA NFT/DEFI/TWITTER ECOSYSTEM
the bit you
came for
part 1
tokenomics
guicookie explains
uptober
linkzzyy digs deep
ISSUE #77
◎0.25
still
early
zenin - eyes open
the
academy
degen apes - history
& MUCH more
ISSUE
77
4 10
16
18 86
140 141
142
143 144
146
148
150
152
168
FROM THE EDITOR
UPTOBER insights
Linkkzyy looks at what is coming up #alpha
Still Early
NFTNEWB216 on why Zenin is worth your time #alpha
The ACADEMY
Bardstocks.sol - the history of Degen Apes
The Bit You Came For
Linkzzyy analyses what to look for ina
project. Part 1 #alpha
Critters Cult
SubaruImpreza09 rates the project #alpha
888 Anon Club
Block_Degen deep dive #alpha
142 CrowdSurf
ThesisInvestor deep dive
Golden protocol
ThesisInvestor deep dive #alpha
Whale investors jump on board #alpha
Great Bazaar
Weekly wrap up
146 SCRIBE
Weekly review by the Novus team
MORE MONKES
NFThinks interviews the project #alpha
150 BeverlyKILLS
L0SxS0L analyses BeverlyKills #alpha
MUSHROOM Party
168 GOOEY
LIVE gaming on Solana #alpha
Guicookie talks tokenomics & value
distribution #alpha
micalnoelson
Issue 77 - 1 year on from when #SHILL fist launched back in Oct 2021. 77 magazines archiving the Solana
ecosystem, the NFT scene and stories from Tweeps across the world.
Has #SHILL zine achieved much in this time?
Still independent
77 magazines
Average 8000 views per week
467,708 views across all magazines
Issue 25, 40, 52, 55, 56, 57, 61, and 62 each have 10k+ views
Special Edition printed for Sydney event
Still grinding after 52 weeks!
And we are still forging ahead. #SHILL zine is still delivering content, nfts, and alpha as we enter our 2nd year
of publication. You along for the ride anon?
A couple of pieces locked away in the #SHILL vault this week, including Cool Cat 2, Random Freak #3 and 2 mini
mini pieces.
#SHILL has its own NFTs up for auction on Exchange.art, proceeds go to helping this magazine grow and
become better. All the World's a Stage is live now https://exchange.art/pixeltoy/
A whole lot of content in this issue. NFTs to tickle your senses. Alpha to contemplate. Stories you may have
missed. It's good to know that at the end of the week you can rely on #SHILL zine to package it all up in one
convenient magazine that you can access when you are ready.
Ready to dive in?
Enough said. You know the drill.
@Pixeltoy
mini mini 14 & 18 @NingcakeNekoMeaw
Random Freak #3 @RaulVongal
Cool Cat 2 @Mr_KJ09
PROBABLY
@sp00n1cus
42.8k followers
Had a bullish call with
@Simpl3r_BH the other day. The
amount of shit they have in the
pipeline will make your head
spin.
Keep your eyes on...
ALPHA LIONS
PixelPenguinDAO
Secret Sphinx Society
Linkkzyy
Retro Glider
Introductory Information:
This is one of the projects previously mentioned where there’s a lot of ambiguity on the website surrounding its
intentions and goals. However, without an announcement of mint price / date I’m assuming there can be more
to expect here as they gear up to launch while planning a more fleshed-out idea.
The thing I find most bullish here is the art, I think it adds a twist to that bored-ape-esque art style.
Marketing graphics and websites are also clean.
Pros:
Cons:
• Relatively active discord which looks to have been grown naturally.
o Bonus points for active staff pre-mint.
• Meta-style but unique art.
• Offering some form of animation service.
• Solid marketing department.
• Roadmap exists; inbuilt con, it’s confusing.
• Totally ambiguous, more clarity needed.
• No idea who the team members are / experience in the space.
• Like con one: there’s very little voice behind this project from the team.
• Lack of meat to it imo, needs something more fleshed out.
Conclusion:
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.
If things begin to flesh out towards a mint date, I see this to be a very promising project in terms of the PFPable
quality. Being early never hurts, but don’t find yourself slaving for it just yet!
Skull Vibe
Introductory Information:
Core goal of this project is to really tap into the importance of community in this space. I like this a lot. In a
TLDR format, #1 Learn high-income skillets through Vibe DAO via video documentaries of creating profitable
income streams from scratch. #2 ‘Billionaire Bits’: a holder exclusive daily newsletter which will document all
the important and less important news in the space to keep you updated in a concise manner. Goal of this
VibeDAO is to get the community active, thinking and building together. They’ll also have some other interesting
steps involved such as direct consulting, stock standard WL and alpha stuff. But they do offer something
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
would say this sits in the higher threshold and the more intricate roadmap images are nice.
Pros:
Cons:
• Marketing: specifically, the roadmap has been cool, I expect them to keep experimenting.
• A learning opportunity for some new to the space.
• Very community focused which I favour.
• Somewhat unique ideas.
• Good art.
• Mint is free (I think)
• Twitter followers could be botted; unsure.
• Lack of discord activity, still very early.
• No website.
• Lack of voice from the team.
• Concern with securities law surrounding passive income streams being built and shared with holders.
Conclusion:
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,
take the opportunity to join a community and meet people, there’s 0 downside realistically. If you want to dump
for 0.5 SOL sure, but I think if this succeeds with the goals of such a strong community, this could go nuts, who
knows.
_zinnea_
_zinnea_
austin_visual
@nftnewb216
I have written many times about @InfectedMob and @BountyHunterNFT, but I rarely discuss nother
@XLabsNFT project - @ZeninNFT. That ends today.
Right now @ZeninNFT I the cheapest entry into @XLabsNFT. That alone should put them on your radar. With the upcoming
$X and XHub, all @XLabsNFT projects are on the precipice of greatness. With @TheGentlemonke and @I0Hal at the
helm, you can truly trust the builders.
While every one of @XLabsNFT projects has their unique benefits, @ZeninNFT brings you @BoltByZenin. This bridges
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
application process showing that @ZeninNFT is truly giving back to the community.
@MetaCrypto1000x @solanodegen @2foot_dragon and the whole team embody that spirit
The bottom line is, all @XLabsNFT projects - @BountyHunterNFT @ZeninNFT @XinDragons and
@InfectedMob share a common goal - bettering the #Solana ecosystem. If you are looking to jump in, @ZeninNFT is a
good entry point! #SolanaNFTs.
magiceden.io Zenin
THE
Bardstocks.sol
The first rendition of the Degenerate Ape Academy, created by artist “Minweee”
It was just another Friday…
It was August 13th, 2021, 7:28pm. The smell of pizza and a freshly opened Guiness permeated my humble Austin
apartment as I sat at my computer and very intently watched the SOL/USD chart; I had opened a long position equal to
around half my net worth just a week before in Solana, a cryptocurrency.
“You can’t lose what you don’t put in the middle, but you can’t win much either.” — Mike McDermott, Rounders (1998)
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
the time, Solana was flipping the script on smart contracts platforms; the successful creation of Serum (an on-chain DEX
which serves as the backbone of Solana) as well as other decentralized applications such as “Mango Markets” and “Raydium”
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
having with either setting up infrastructure, high fees,
and/or low TPS, Solana was a huge breath of fresh air in
the race to successfully scale smart contracts platforms
for worldwide adoption.
So there I was, sitting in a big long position in Solana,
chowing down on a nice slice of pepperoni and bacon
pizza. I finally decided to take a break from watching the
charts and turned to check Twitter, and that’s when I saw
this tweet:
Anyway, it was all anyone was talking about on the timeline,
so I went ahead and joined the official Degenerate Ape
Academy discord. The mint had been postponed until August
14th, so I figured I would stick around and try my hand at
minting the next day.
August 14th came around 24 hours later, and it was finally
time for the mint to happen. Almost immediately, the site
ended up crashing because of a massive influx of users trying
to access it. This massive influx of site traffic served as an
inadvertent DDoS, and the mint was postponed once more.
Then, around 2 hours later, in a surprise twist, the mint went
live.
@rajgokal
your twitter feed is about to get filled with either angry or
euphoric apes you’re welcome
To be honest, I had no idea what Raj Gokal, co-founder of
Solana Labs, was talking about at the time.
“A bunch of angry apes?”
About an hour later, a ton of furious Crypto Twitter influencers
I was following began simultaneously voicing their
frustration regarding a Solana NFT project called “Degenerate
Ape Academy.” Apparently the mint (the process of
paying a fee in order to generate an NFT within an NFT
collection for the first time) had been delayed again. Let
me tell you, hell knoweth no fury like Crypto Twitter after
an NFT mint gets delayed.
To mint a Degen Ape, you needed to enter a password into this computer on
their website.
An announcement was made on the official Discord that the
mint was live, and fortunately I had Discord notifications on,
so I was able to react quickly enough and was lucky to have
minted 8 apes.
Degenerate Ape Academy’s brand logo
I had heard about NFTs in passing earlier in the year but
didn’t think too much of them at the time. I would later
learn that NFTs are interesting and have all sorts of use
cases, but the most common one involves using them to
create unique tokens on-chain with an assigned picture
accompanied by metadata to serve as a collectible within
a collection. Think of them as like unique trading cards,
or like a set of rare paintings with a limited number, but
instead of being physical things you can hold in-person,
they’re on the blockchain and exist in your crypto wallet.
The 8 apes I minted
It was not the most fantastic minting experience for
many due to all the delays and mishaps. However, for
those that stuck around for the mint, many of their lives
would be changed forever; several apes that were minted
ended up selling for well over $100,000 USD, one of
which sold for $1.1 million USD at the peak of the Solana
NFT bull run.
The highest USD sale ever for a Degen Ape the first-ever
$1 million dollar sale as well for a Solana NFT
On the surface it may have seemed like Degen Ape Academy
was just another NFT mint, and let’s face it, these
apes looked pretty goofy; the apes have this juxtaposition
of being both very serious and very silly at the same
time. For example, you’ll often see them chugging glue
or eating crayons with very serious expressions, it’s very
contradictory. However, what many of us didn’t realize
at the time is that DAA was causing a massive paradigm
shift for the Solana ecosystem in numerous ways. Some
have equated DAA’s mint and the era that followed it as
the “Cambrian Explosion” of Solana NFTs, and really, for
the entire ecosystem.
Brand logo for Solana
Let’s dial this back a bit and talk about everything that
was happening beyond the average user’s knowledge at
that time before the Degenerate Ape Academy mint completed,
then we can tie it into why it ended up being such an
important mint.
Before the DAA mint happened, Solana had created its fair
share of decentralized applications, most notably the Serum
on-chain DEX that we talked about earlier. Raydium (which
we also talked about earlier), which facilitated AMM swaps
and DeFi staking had also just been established on Solana.
So, in short, Solana was getting places with its dApps and
DeFi, but it was still having trouble organically generating
user interest and high volume.
Let’s face it, if you’re creating a new layer 1 blockchain, you
have a lot to prove with a lot of competition, people aren’t
just going to come to you because you ask them to. You must
be able to offer a compelling reason as to why people should
use your new layer 1 blockchain to begin with. DeFi and an
on-chain DEX were a great start, but by themselves they
weren’t generating quite as much volume and interest as one
would hope.
Transaction volume on Solana at a low point during Summer 2021
Anyway, as this was all going on and Solana was still trying to
find its footing, NFTs were taking off like a rocket ship on the
Ethereum blockchain with total USD volume reaching high 8
figures daily. NFTs had suddenly become interesting due to
becoming a somewhat new killer use case for blockchains. I
say “somewhat new killer use case for blockchains” because
NFTs have existed as far back as 2014 according to data
provided by NFTTimeline. It’s weird in hindsight that NFTs
had only really explosively made their way into the limelight
in 2021 (heck, even Crypto Punks came out in 2017, four full
years prior to becoming a massive success), but it is what it
is.
To illustrate the sudden prominence of NFT hysteria during
2021, here’s some sources that showcase the NFT boom that
was happening on Ethereum during this time:
The highest
USD sale
ever for a
Degen Ape
$1 million
Naturally, because Solana is a competing blockchain, it makes sense from the point of view of Solana Labs (the creators
of the Solana blockchain) to capitalize on NFTs as a popular trend to acquire more users and volume. Thus, Metaplex studio
was born with the goal of essentially setting up NFT infrastructure on Solana. Specifically, it was to help “facilitate
self-hosted storefronts for independent artists that were publishing open editions and limited editions of their art [on
Solana],” according to Stephen Hess, CEO of Metaplex.
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.”
“The mission for Metaplex in the beginning was to elevate independent artists and creators above traditional gatekeepers
(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
[the creators] were subject to launchpads that
would take high fees and make them wait long periods of
time to drop (if ever). It was really a play on accessibility
which is why everything was open sourced and could be
self-hosted.”
The current CEO of Metaplex, sporting an Aurory NFT as
his PFP on LinkedIn
At the time many Solana users didn’t know it, but Metaplex
would end up helping break the Nifty Gateway model
of high fees and long waiting periods because of open
sourcing all their work (including their token contracts as
well as Candy Machine, which we’ll talk about later). It
would take some time before the work of these unsung
heroes would really catch steam, but it absolutely played
a huge role in the imminent “Cambrian Explosion” of the
Solana ecosystem that would ensue soon enough.
Samples from the following collections: 1. Solana Monkey Business, 2.
Solarians, 3. SOL Punks, 4. Kreachures
Finally, along came our protagonist, an NFT project named
Degenerate Ape Academy. Monoliff, who was and still is the
head artist of DAA, along with his band of entrepreneurs,
were fans of the Solana ecosystem and felt that they could
really make a splash as being the first major NFT drop on
Solana with a 10,000 NFT collection.
Metaplex’s current brand logo
Before “the Metaplex standard” for Solana NFT token
contracts was adopted chain-wide, a few attempts at NFT
collections had already been made on the Solana blockchain;
Kreachures, Solarians, Solana Monkey Business,
and even an almost complete copy of Crypto Punks called
“Sol Punks” had risen to the surface, but none of them
had managed to gain much traction at the time. Many of
them also had issues with their token contracts, albeit
fortunately it was possible to update some of their token
contracts later to the Metaplex standard.
Degen Ape #2214, owned by Monoliff
At the time, there was no standardized method of performing
a drop of 10,000 NFTs due to the lack of NFT infrastructure
on Solana, and there also wasn’t really an agreed-upon
consensus for a Solana NFT token contract standard.
Additionally, there was at the time no smart contract for
safely performing a trustless mint; when users mint new
NFTs for an ongoing mint, typically there is a guarantee that
when they send their funds using a smart contract, they
will receive an NFT within the same transaction, otherwise
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
big part of the ethos of Crypto is to remove middlemen, after all).
To be the very first, the DAA team took the Metaplex token contracts (which were open source) and, in a very gung-ho
manner, attempted to create a program that would allow people to mint, at scale, a Metaplex standard NFT within a vast
collection size in exchange for SOL per NFT. This type of minting program was already figured out on Ethereum (as well
as having an established NFT token contract, dubbed “ERC-721”), but it hadn’t quite been figured out yet on Solana since
Solana’s NFT infrastructure was very much bare bones.
So, the DAA team believed they had successfully created an ironclad solution for minting a big drop, and basically most
of the devs in the Solana ecosystem were cheering them on from the sidelines. Finally, August 13th came, but when they
tried to break ground on main net with their minting contract, it went horribly wrong.
Basically, the ironclad solution they believed they had created was not so ironclad. The website got very overloaded from
traffic, and the minting contract they were using ended up not working either as almost all users that were able to access
it experienced several failed transactions. 700 tokens (not just 500 tokens as the team previously believed) of the failed
contract mint did end up getting minted (dubbed “the Exiled Apes”) but with missing images, missing metadata, or both.
These tokens did not have proper update authority either, meaning the original tokens could not be fixed at that point in
time, so the team ultimately decided to treat the 700~ extra tokens as void.
In layman’s terms, it was a colossal disaster.
At this point, the DAA team wasn’t sure what to do to fix their minting contract and were prepared to shut down and
fold up. The truth is that their engineers were out of ideas, and frankly only a handful of devs existed that could successfully
fix and execute such a monumental task on the Solana blockchain in such a short amount of time.
Then, suddenly out of nowhere, their dev team became “fully stacked with legitimate professionals and not crayon eaters.”
What ended up happening behind the scenes is that Raj Gokal, co-founder of Solana Labs, decided to deploy Jordan
Prince (redacted_j) and Bartosz Lipinski (baalazamon), two of the “OG Metaplex crew” devs, to save the DAA mint. Raj
ultimately made this decision for a few reasons, the main one being that if the DAA team gave up during such incredible
demand and interest, people probably wouldn’t take Solana very seriously as a platform for NFTs going forward. The
stakes for this mint had gotten way too high to let it crash and burn.
Terribly captioned clip art by yours truly
According to Raj, the estimated number of users that got onboarded to Solana as a direct result of the Degenerate Ape
Academy mint was around 250,000. Yeah, you read that correctly, that’s a quarter of a million users for exactly one project,
a completely unprecedented level of user interest for Solana at the time. This is predominantly why the DAA mint
and the era that followed it was so incredible for Solana; Solana had finally been able to acquire tons of user interest and
an insane level of transaction volume as a result of the DAA mint.
Raj Gokal speaking on the BanklessHQ podcast about the significance of DAA and Metaplex
So, to save the DAA mint and ensure Solana’s newly acquired users would be satisfied, Jordan and Bartosz needed to create
a minting solution on virtually no sleep, and it had to be done within 12 hours to ensure user retention and interest
in both the project and the Solana ecosystem. Eventually they came up with what would come to be known as the first
version of Candy Machine, a fully off-chain minting solution that would get the job done. With only 12 hours to execute
the mint, they had to resort to using this method as opposed to a more reliable and traditional on-chain smart contract.
Jordan Prince talking about the first version of Candy Machine which he often refers to as “Candy Machine V.0”
Thanks to the efforts of Jordan, Bartosz, and Metaplex, the DAA mint was successful, and it completed within 8 minutes
after launch on August 14th, 2021. This was a monumental breakthrough for Solana; a fast mint for a 10k drop with extremely
low fees and no chain slowdown was an impressive start compared to known smart contract platform competitor
Ethereum which tends to suffer from extremely high gas fees and major slowdown during desirable mints. It proved the
viability of Solana as a smart contracts platform in the eyes of the average onlooker as well as institutions who were on
the fence about the relatively new layer 1 blockchain, and almost immediately there were hundreds of thousands more
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
Solana transaction volume soared to all-time-highs after the DAA mint completed
Yeah, that’s right. These dumb, goofy, crayon-eating apes would end up being a powder keg that would set the entire Solana
ecosystem on a path where there was no looking back. The importance of the Degenerate Academy mint in relation
to Solana cannot be overstated. It was an extremely significant on-chain event. While it’s important to build out infrastructure
(dapps, defi, various smart contracts, etc.) and a working chain, you need users. Users give value and meaning
to the chain as well as its infrastructure. Without users and community, a blockchain is an empty kingdom without
people. DAA brought the people.
DAA also paved the way for all other collections that followed, having popularized Metaplex token contracts and inspired
the creation of a streamlined minting process via Candy Machine. This led to what has been dubbed as “the Solana NFT
bull run,” whereby artists were able to utilize Candy Machine’s open source code to release their own collections quickly
and efficiently with low fees, and users were able to mint these NFT collections at minuscule costs. Billions of dollars
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
To me, Degenerate Ape Academy is one of the most important NFT collections (if not -the- most important) on the Solana
blockchain. Incredible 3D rendered art that is rich with provenance and technical innovation; DAA deeply impacted
the Solana blockchain forever in an irreplicable way. In the words of Jordan Prince, “people were in doubt about whether
Solana could be a viable NFT chain, but after that day, they were never in doubt again. I think [saving the mint] changed
the future of Solana.”
And that, my friends, is the story of the Degenerate Ape Academy mint.
In my next article, I’m going to talk more about what Degenerate Ape Academy is about (as well as the Degeniverse),
what it has been up to since the epic launch, and what its plans are going into the future, so stay tuned.
Oh, and before I forget…
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
The bit you came for, not inspiring speech about thinking
independently.
Below I will try to encompass the areas I believe to be
truly important to have when looking to succeed with
trading NFTs both pre-mint and on the market, followed
by tools to use and ways to find things early.
Social Sentiment.
To me, this is THE MOST IMPORTANT factor when researching
any NFT and is something I admittedly have
lost gains on from fading. NFTs are driven by their communities,
although devs can do tremendous things, ultimately
the community’s dedication and the sentiment
that follows in social hubs will make or break a project.
How do we observe this?
On a basic level, look at the activity in discord, look at
the activity on twitter. Are there influencers with eyes
on them, is there a large flood of tweets about them?
Do the masses receive them well?
On a deeper level, tools like NFT Inspect allow you to
track more specific numbers, engagement on profiles
repping a community, global reach of a community,
number of people repping a community.
But we can see it on a more personal level. What are the
individual community members like?
Are they going crazy? Did some dude just jump out of
a plane in honour of the collection, is someone making
custom shoes, custom sweaters, a coffee brand, an NFT
project or platform that supports the initial project?
Another valuable way to directly view community
sentiment is through the twitter specific search options
which I will highlight later in this piece.
Here’s the important part: connect it. If the research you
do suggests the current position of the project is solid,
begin to look for the reasons it can keep moving.
Is the project following a market trend, does it blend
to the broader sentiment of the ecosystem? Are there
strong figureheads that echo and enrich the positive
sentiment in the community? Do metrics keep increasing?
Are more influencers talking about it? What about
the emotions of community members, do they appear
riddled with conviction, are they in wars on the timeline
defending it? Question. Question. Question. You must
always be inquisitive to reliably succeed.
Note; Social Sentiment only works for you if you’re looking
at it in the right way for the given context.
Let’s examine $DUST as a recent example, an amazing
team with true ambitions. However, the play seemed to
be flipping at ATH around the y00ts mint, which never
came. Why though?
In this space you need to assume if you intend to make a play
and see a large group of other people intending to make the
same play, someone, likely a bigger fish, has already figured
out how to extract the most value from those making the
same play. This is the nature of the open markets, someone
must win, someone must “lose.”
Learn to contextualize sentiment to the research you wish to
do, rather than the belief you wish to reenforce. You might
want the project to be bullish; but look for the things that
suggest otherwise, try to tear down your own position and
discuss how things look.
Friends, Information Hubs, Group Chats.
I cannot state the value of this enough, find a group of people
you gel with and believe you can trust. Learn from them,
discuss with them, and ultimately bond with them.
For me this is just a groupchat of 11 raging degenerates.
Not only will this make you money from the plays, projects,
and research you will have capability to share, but it provides
MORE if done right.
From my group chats I’ve learned things about:
• Coding, Rust, SOL Programming, Security, Botting.
• Community Management, Time management in doing
so.
• ETH Projects, Communities, Climate.
• Mental health, raw life advice.
You can only research and learn so much through trial and
error as a singular individual. However, surrounding yourself
with the right people will tenfold the capacity of knowledge
and research you can consume in a much more time efficient
manner.
On top of this, you will always be more grounded and less biased
in your trading when you can seek external counsel you
trust, value and can listen to.
Make sure you pick people you do truly get along with and
trust, it’s a generally anonymous space; so, trust is the only
social currency to run on.
Analysing A Team.
There are some very basic factors always worth dissecting if
you’re looking to speed through research:
• Past experience?
• Do the team members have a reputation in the
space?
• How do they sound? Are they motivated, dedicated
etc?
• What values does each member bring, does it
balance well?
• How big is the team? Do they have the funds to
manage such a team?
Building your own credit/rating system.
This can help condense research very quickly; I’ve made my
own in the past, but I feel as if it’s out of touch with the current
sentiment. If I had thrown you a filler one to use for your
own modification it would be something like
Social Sentiment - x /5 stars
The Team - x / 5 stars.
Art - x / 5 Stars
People may say doxxing, but from my experience it rarely
adds any true value except less chance of an immediate
rug.
I think the biggest IT factor of sought when looking at
a team is identifying if they have a vocal leader which
generates some sort of rallying effect. Acts as a voice that
really explains the thoughts of not only the community
but the brand itself in an active matter.
To name a few of the best examples, check out Liberty
Square, Frank, Peblo, and Solport Tom.
In this space it’s also important to inspect the marketing
side of the team and ask some questions about it. Marketing
dominates in this space so don’t fade the team
members leading it.
Importance of exit strategies;
Don’t see influencers talking about this enough, if you
buy let’s say 10 NFT’s for 2 SOL. The FP pumps to 2 SOL
/ NFT. You’ve got profit now, but don’t know what to do.
There’s a basic way to go about this.
• Sell one NFT to cover your entry, IMO if you have
more than 2 NFT’s you should ALWAYS sell one to
cover entry if it’s possible.
• You’ve covered your entry, so now it’s time to
extract value. NEVER just slap 10-20 NFTs on the
floor, this adds unwanted resistance and may
reduce potential buyers. Instead, consider listing
1-3.
• Now you’ve got a neat profit on your trade, you
must make the decision as to how further you
think it can go. Assuming you have 10 NFT’s
you’ve sold 4 so far, with the remaining 6 you
can choose to leave 2 of them as moon bags and
slowly offload the other 4 across days, weeks,
months, etc.
Exit strategies are very reliant on the price action of
whatever you’re selling; but they are important to keep
in mind to extract the most potential value on the trades
you’re making.
Note regarding entry strategies: Everyone has their own
buying strategies and it’s entirely dependent on their
available liquidity, but also try to be critical of the price
you’re trying to enter at; “They are 13.5 SOL rn, I may
wait on a pull back to 12 to enter.” It’s always worthwhile
to try and maximize potential gains in this space.
Original Qualities (Website design, marketing stuff, Idea’s,
Art, etc) - x /5 Stars
Core Goals/Roadmap - x / 5 Stars.
I think teams being Doxxed & Roadmaps are unnecessary,
which is an absolutely 180 from the opinion I used to hold.
Roadmaps constrict a project’s ability to pivot with market
trends or set them. Doxxed devs is nice, but it’s not needed
or shouldn’t be demanded imo, let em build.
This is an on-the-fly filler system, feel free to optimize and
evolve this!
Security
For those of you very new to the space, you want two things.
A burner wallet & a cold wallet.
Your cold wallet should never interact with anything at any
point. It should only be used to store NFTs. Hardware wallets
are optimal for this, such as Ledgers.
Your burner wallet should only ever have enough funds in it
for minting or an NFT you’re selling.
The wallet is essentially used to minimize the monetary
damage of malicious minting protocols and so on. Prioritize
getting a Ledger the bigger your portfolio gets!
Analyzing A Project’s Merit’s Post-Mint.
The Fun Bit.
Social Sentiment
To avoid rewriting the whole bit, apply this stuff here. Who’s
looking at the project, what’s got people excited about it,
how many people and so on.
Under this I would also keep my eye out for expansive projects,
by this I mean things like DeStables. Community ran
projects which add onto the expansion of the brand/project
itself. Additionally look for things like custom items/collectibles
being made; custom versions of NFTs, custom shoes,
clothes and so on.
Numbers & Metrics
Prefacing this by saying, personally I hate TA for NFTs. I don’t
think charting NFTs is a valuable way to trade specifically
when they generally cycle around news rather than anything
else.
If TA still fancies you, the one value I find is figuring out
which price barriers have the largest number of listings (aka,
resistance). I would recommend doing this regardless as it
offers you an opportunity to sell at the resistance and rebuy
on a potential drawback for cheaper and netting a neat profit
already.
One thing to note when looking at resistance is the speed
of liquidity. If you hit some form of resistance in FP and liquidity
flowing in begins to slow its worth listing. It is very
likely that trading bots and people will see the halt and
begin listing/dropping the floor. However, if liquidity is
high; you may just get steam rolled out of your position.
NFT Inspect: This can be a very valuable tool for reasons
beyond influencers swinging their willies in a battle of
who’s more narcissistic. Observe the community rankings
category. It gives you access to how many unique individuals
are rocking a PFP under this collection but also the
reach.
If you have a collection of, say 10,000 and 60% of the
collection is uniquely rocking their PFP with a community
reach of 30% but their floor price is 2 SOL it would be a
buying indicator alone.
However, if the project has a large community reach but a
lacklustre amount of unique PFPs; this is not particularly
a buying indicator, it’s more likely that an influencer or
person with a large platform is rocking it, which can be
nice, but it is nowhere near as useful as 2-6,000 people
on the timeline marketing the project with each tweet,
reply, Twitter space, etc.
HelloMoon Smart Money
This one is a given nowadays, so I won’t go into depth,
but it has its strengths. Make sure you don’t get caught
in a short-term play that will dump on your head. Be
proactive.
Liquidity
This is the most important thing with NFTs because it
dictates the value of literally everything. Your floor can be
any price but if there’s no liquidity purchasing at that set
price, it’s not really the floor price. Always keep track of
liquidity flowing into the things you are interested in buying
and if you see slow trends or a gradual daily increase,
it’s a good sign that there might be more coming soon.
Ask Questions: Try to talk with the team, talk to influencers,
talk to people on the timeline, try to perceive what
the mood is towards the collection. Why are people buying,
why are they bullish and talking about it?
Buy the Rumor, Sell the News
This is a common trading style and is usually successful.
I would not advise following it word for word, but the
general premise is useful in this space.
If you see a project that might be under the radar or
slowly creeping up in terms of volume, NFT Inspect or discussion,
it’s a great opportunity to investigate the project
and figure out what’s coming next. Almost every bit of
big news/announcements for projects results in a positive
price action even if it’s 10-20%. Taking advantage means
you’ve just made a neat 10-20% for simply being aware
and selling to the latecomers.
Quality Assurance
I talked about this briefly in pre-mint analysis, but it’s
always good to look for quality insurance on the things you
buy into;
- Are the marketing graphics dated?
- How does the website look?
- Discord ugly as shit and hard to navigate?
- Is the staking platform well made?
Tokenomics/Coins
This is something I don’t see talked about enough with
projects implementing staking and native tokens. Why. The.
F*ck do you think tokenomics made from anything less than
a professional athletics gamer is worth betting on?
It is such a core and key component of their ecosystem, and
it requires INTENSE math and thorough design to make not
only a unique but sound tokenomics structure.
Don’t have faith in some monkeys releasing a coin without
proper design. If they are cutting corners, being lazy, or
overtly stingy with their funding, none of these are good
signs.
Overlap w/ Pre-Mint
There’s some themes which obviously overlap which are as
follows
• Is the art good?
• Is the team experienced?
• Are their plans worth buying into?
• Is there a vocal leader?
• Socials? (Discord, Twitter etc)
Long Hauls
If you have conviction on a project, then I wouldn’t concern
yourself with trying to get a bottomed price. Make the
market come to you. Bid, wait for drops and so on, but don’t
keep yourself waiting on something you wanna vault, it can
burn you.
Quickfire/Basic Advice.
• Don’t fade metas and market trends. If you see it
forming, follow it. E.g., the early 2022 Branding
hype. Late 2021 Utility hype. Going against the grain
won’t necessarily burn you, but it will restrict your
ability to make money.
• Don’t fade 1/1 Art. This is a subjective thing, but
check it out, it may be worth it down the line.
• Organization is key.
• If you hate reading, use Chrome extensions such as
Swift Read to speed up the process.
• If you can code, I’m sure you can build programs to
speed run processes and organize better.
• Always try to ask the team questions. Put the gas
on them a little bit. You may not like their answer
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.
• Always think in the mindset of the general population. It’s not truly about whether you really like the art, the
ideas, or the team. It’s about if they are consumable on a broader scale.
• Don’t avoid placing bids, there’s always an opportunity to snag an NFT cheaper by slapping a bid on.
• 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
top, you’ve still profited, don’t be harsh on yourself.
• Have clear goals in mind when trading. What $ Value or $SOL value do you aim to hit? Work towards it. If you hit
it, celebrate it, and set a new goal. I found myself constantly moving goalposts and felt an endless cycle of “I’m
not doing good enough”. Avoid this.
• Security is paramount in this space.
• Don’t click random links. Ignore any NFT you receive that you didn’t buy or trade for. Legitimate projects do NOT
randomly drop NFTs. Always check with the project before interacting. Generally, avoid 2FA linked to a phone,
opt for email. Use a hardware wallet if possible.
OG Solana Alpha Hunter Turned Builder.
Work w/ @TrippyBunny_NFT @TheAlphaDAO @SolApeFinance
DAM ZINE
DAM ZINE
yobaninja
yobaninja
yg4h_
yg4h_
Valenci_Club
Valenci_Club
Trippsoul_NFT
Trippsoul_NFT
kingjeymsu
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
Critters Cult took CT by storm as soon as it minted. Despite a rough mint experience, sentiment held relatively
strong; the community seemed to have faith things would turn out positive. A quick pivot and expanded supply
got the project back on its feet. The unique art and limitless world building and storytelling potential make this
an extremely promising project.
Team/Devs:
as far as I know, the artist is the only core team member. This is mildly concerning, especially since the lack of
tech support led to a rough mint experience.
However, the artist was able to pivot quickly, listen to the community, expand supply, and continue. In the future,
if the project intends to add any additional features that require devs, I would hope that the artist uses mint
funds or royalties to hire someone trustworthy.
Additionally, the artist is well-connected and respected, and this could serve very useful in the future if the project
aims to utilize collaborations.
Community:
this project is young, but its community is not. Solsunsets, previously released by the same artist, is an art-based
project that has formed a strong community who is interested in art for art’s sake.
The Solsunsets floor price was not particularly high until Critters Cult was announced, but this means that former
holders are members of the community for more than just a flex or the potential to get rich quick. Shortly after
reveal, critters flooded Twitter, and many holders were using their critters as pfps, showing that the community is
proud to hold.
The top-tier art creates a dynamic where buyers shop for aesthetics. This is a great sign that the community is
looking to relate to the art and find their “forever” critter. It strengthens the bond between the holder and their
NFT, making it harder for them to part ways with the project.
Innovation/Utility:
this is not a utility-focused project in the tech or finance realms. However, uniting holders through art and lore is
a sophisticated and simple way to build a strong community. Additionally, “storytelling NFTs” are all the rage right
now; it is the first project to boldly commit to this as its only facet since this idea grew in popularity in the prior
months leading up to launch. Additionally, the art is innovative in and of itself.
Art:
the art is the biggest draw to this project. The artist is experienced and clearly very talented, and his range is
displayed through the different works he has created.
There are many traits in the critters collection, many of which Solana has not seen before. Despite the novelty of
the art, it also is reminiscent and comfortable,
including the fact that the art
is pixel-style, which pays homage to the
history of NFTs.
Achievements/Potential:
though this project is young, it feels
like the sky is the limit. Many important
voices in the NFT space are
on board, which is necessary for a
project to get full traction. The rel- a-
tively uncharted space of world building
and storytelling lends
a
wide-open field for Critters Cult
to
explore and shine.
140
SHILL Issue #77
@block_degen
TLDR - exclusive small collection of 888 Anons with a large focus on blockchain privacy. Big brain holders that
could benefit from more active marketing by the team
TEAM
This one is difficult as I don’t know much about the team as individuals normally that would be a bad thing but
for the case of 888 Anons it fits into the theme of anonymity.
A stumbling block the project has is in its public reach as the effort on marketing could be increased to create
larger awareness of the project
COMMUNITY
There are no influencers rocking an Anon Club PFP but I feel a sense of trust in a community members opinion
when I see them rocking their anon club which is huge in my eyes and something I look for when considering
investing in a project. Again, more exposure would be good but any exposure the community has is high class
UTILITY / INNOVATION
The main purpose of Anon Club is the utility they create, and it is all focused around anonymity which ideally is
why many of us got into crypto in the first place
They have built the following protocols all that are powered by the $dark token that Anon holders get for staking
Dark Bank - The Dark Bank is designed to provide a simple method for Depositing and Withdrawing Solana or any
other SPL token into the Light Protocol Shielded Pool
Dark Swap - Dark Swap is built on top of the Jupiter Aggregator’s API Framework to provide users with the closest
possible swaps for liquid pairs across many exchanges!
Dark Markets - The Dark Markets is a simple solution for collecting wallet addresses when building an allow list
which is like BlockSmith Labs Mercury
Project Blackhole - Still a secret for now
They also have a direct connection for holders to Yami Finance which is a purely permission-less solution for
point-of-sales, token swaps and private transactions that is launchable in only 10 seconds. Yami is building the
future of in-person digital payments leveraging privacy for realistic user experience. Yami is designed to act as
an all-rewarding alternative to traditional gated financial systems. Yami could be huge as a protocol once more
business start running their sales using crypto and decentralised
ACHIEVEMENTS / POTENTIAL
One thing to note for a project that has had very little to almost no marketing it has held its floor price surprisingly
well during this current bear market which tells me that the current holders are super confident in what the
founders are building and happy to hold long term (or know something we don’t).
Where I see the most potential in this
project is if the governments start to really
crack down on Crypto taxes and transactions
and more members feel the need to
keep their movements private.
Also, not aware of any other project that
is based on Solana that is building something
along these lines which means first
mover advantage and little competition
ART
As always art is subjective. Absolutely
nothing excites me about this artwork.
It works and is original but is very boring
and hard to differentiate between pfps.
SHILL Issue #77
141
@ThesisInvestor
Team/Devs:
They have built three novel market viable products
pre-mint that could reshape the NFT buying landscape.
The first is an NFT pledging system that allows users to
commit to holding an NFT for 10 or 30 days. If successful,
the user increases their Investor Scoring rating and can
pledge more NFTs. This scoring mechanism could be
used by upcoming projects to provide whitelist access
to proven holders. They have also created “pledging as a
service” that other projects can leverage to incorporate
time-based staking. Third, they created a pre-pay minting
feature that they used for their own upcoming mint and
can allow other projects to utilize. The products each
look and function well on desktop and mobile. The team
has also been excellent with communication outlining
next steps and engaging the community. Checking all the
boxes so far.
Community:
It’s too soon to tell since we are pre-mint, but so far,
the community has been very active and authentically
engaged in what Crowdsurf is building. The team
deserves credit here as well for leveraging the community
to test their various products and they have also
frequently created incentives for the community to buy
on secondary to access raffle prizes. Since Crowdsurf is
building out a product that could yield lucrative whitelist
access I see some strong potential for the community to
stay active and engaged discussing upcoming mints and
continuing to be early and rewarded for product testing
future features.
Innovation/Utility:
Only time will tell, but I think Crowdsurf’s tools could be
massively successful. Everyone in NFTs knows that the
current whitelist allocation model is broken. Allocating
WL to a bunch of other NFT projects doesn’t create any
loyalty to the NFT. Allocating WL via pre-sale can lead
to huge pumps and dumps without proper
vesting rules. Allocating via scholarships or
other proof-of-work methods is extremely
time consuming. Crowdsurf’s pledge portal
theoretically helps streamline this process
by creating a data collection scheme to
determine which buyers are more likely to
HODL their NFTs. And the more people and
projects that use Crowdsurf, the better the
data will get, incentivizing future projects
to allocate significant WL spots to proven
diamond handers. The expansion into
time-based staking as a service through
their pledge portal and pre-pay features
are also sneakily killer products. Timebased
staking could be the new meta
with y00ts going in that direction and pre-pay adds
convenience for buyers and may even incentivize buyers
to accumulate a mint at a discounted price while also
providing valuable data to projects in determining how
to price their final mint and conduct outreach (rather
than waiting until mint day to see if enough people will
buy into the project). And utility? If they pull this off this
could be a great source of whitelist access which we
know is lucrative based on the success of Blocksmith
Labs and Bot Head. And Crowdsurf claims they will share
50% of all revenue streams with holders. It’s not entirely
clear to me how this will work - is this direct revenue
share or revenue share tied to their utility token $SURF
that they plan to introduce post-launch?
Art:
The art is solid. It’s simple yet distinctive and full of
personality. I like that they split the mint into two
sections: Deadsurfers as the OGs and Crowdsurfers as
the bulk collection. If this project takes off it could really
be desirable to hold a Deadsurfer as a flex. I appreciate
that they did a PFP rather than an access card, as the
market has clearly indicated that a PFP is far more
desirable for building brand and community.
Achievements/Potential:
This project has already accomplished more than most
NFTs pre-mint. They have built market viable products
and appear to have product market fit helping address
several very relevant pain points in NFTs, namely whitelist
allocation, time-based staking, and tools like pre-pay to
help upcoming projects mint out. Since they are utilizing
a SaaS model and have proven an ability to build useful
stuff, there’s no reason to believe they won’t continue to
layer on new functionality and tools down the road. I’m
very excited to watch this project grow and think it could
be an A-tier utility play in the same vein as Blocksmith
Labs, Famous Fox Federation, Atadia, or Bot Head.
142
SHILL Issue #77
a16z leads $40 million raise
for crypto protocol - Golden
The Block • by Catarina Moura
Quick Take
• Golden has raised $40 million in a series led by a16z crypto.
• The Series B round included high-profile investors such as Solana co-founder Raj Gokal and Matt Bellamy,
the lead-singer of Muse.
Golden, a crypto firm building a data protocol with web3 tools, raised $40
million in a Series B funding round led by a16z crypto, bringing the total
amount raised to date to $60 million.
Other participants in the round include Solana co-founder Raj Gokal, Dropbox
co-founder Arash Ferdowsi and Postmates founder Bastian Lehmann,
the company announced Monday. Also among the investors was Matt
Bellamy, the lead singer of rock band Muse and a partner at Helium-3
Ventures.
Ali Yahya, a general partner at a16z, will also be joining the board and sitting
alongside current board member and a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen,
the company said.
The funding will help the company’s efforts to build a platform that it says
centralizes data using technologies and mechanics from Web3. The protocol
financially rewards correct data and disincentives incorrect data, with
the use of tokens.
It’s now in a testnet phase, with 35,000 individuals submitting facts and
validating information, via the Discord community, a live decentralized
app, APIs and early governance in action. The protocol is expected to go
live on the mainnet in the second quarter of 2023.
“This is not simply a ‘web3 Wikipedia,’” the company said. “Having accurate
data in a deeply-linked knowledge graph allows for the creation of
new applications and insights that are not currently possible.”
“Having
accurate data in
a deeply-linked
knowledge
graph allows
for the creation
of new
applications
and insights
that are not
currently
possible.”
SHILL Issue #77
143
@GreatBazaarNFT
@GMersNFT
— GMers BREAKS OVER $1M in Secondary Sales! —
What’s going on with Solana NFTs? Let’s find out!
GMers is a 50.000 free mint NFT collection that was
minted on Sept 13th founded by @Ace0fTrades, full
of fun colorful stick figures and vibrant art! GMers
reached a floor price of around 0.49-0.60+ SOL, on
Sept 14th.
According to @SolanaFloor Solana NFTs have made
$4.39M in volume during the last 24 hours, and $43M
in the last 7 days
GMers has made around 31.8k SOL in secondary
market sales volume according to Magic Eden, around
1.090.864,48 USD
Sol Sniper
GMers is a fun collection with an active social media
presence that took a risk: launching 50k NFTs. Solana
has never seen a collection that big, and so far the
sentiment on social media has been great! GMers main
goal is to become the World’s largest DAO!
GMers listing count went from 7k+ peak on Sept 15th,
to around just 3.7k+ at time of writing. Just around
7.6% of the collection is listed, which is a nice % for
such a big collection.
144
SHILL Issue #77
Sol Sniper
At time of writing, GMers are at a 0.345 floor price. Awesome charts by @solsniperxyz: https://solsniper.xyz/collection/gmers…
SHILL Issue #77
145
@Scribe_novus
Coral Cube join the 0% royalties club
Coral Cube has also hinted that more exciting news is
on the way, fighting its way back into relevance as a
Solana NFT marketplace and aggregator.
Froots release staking after long-awaited roadmap
dropped
Ever Since Yawww launched their “Your NFT, Your
Choice” campaign, introducing the Solana NFT ecosystem
to a marketplace that bypasses creator royalties,
various NFT marketplaces on Solana have followed
suit, in a bid to steal market share from the dominant
Magic Eden.
Coral Cube announced today that they would be following
the trend, allowing sellers to choose to list their
NFTs with 0% creator royalties.
“Since day 1 we have been here for Solana traders,
enabling them with the fastest and most reliable NFT
marketplace aggregator with the best offers. As other
marketplaces are introducing the same functionality,
we want to ensure we are ready to serve our users the
best we can.”
This comes after Coral Cube partnered up with Magic
Eden to create the hugely unpopular Metashield, a
protocol that made it easier for NFT projects to punish
those who sold their NFTs on marketplaces that allow
sellers to bypass creator royalties. Coral Cube acknowledges
that the community has not liked the product
and will be working closely with creators and traders to
set a new standard for the space.
Coral Cube used to be the second most popular place
for sellers to sell their NFTs. In recent times, the competition
has heated up, with marketplaces not only
offering sellers all the functionality they need. This has
led to Coral Cube slipping in terms of volume.
After delivering a new and improved roadmap 2 days
ago, staking of Froots is now live, allowing NFTs to earn
$PULP, the utility token of the Froots project.
The Food and Beverages-based NFT project released
a roadmap just 2 days ago, in which they outlined
their plans going forward, such as transitioning into a
DAO-controlled project, and a potential art upgrade
around the corner too.
The team also released their tokenomics today, outlining
how $PULP will work. $PULP will purely be a utility
token. Froots is going with a gamified staking system
for $PULP, where holding a full set (Tomato + Orange +
Lemon + Apple) grants them bonus $PULP. Holders can
get an even bigger bonus if they include a rare body
trait in their staking set. The staking will take place in
the Arena once that’s released. Sneak peeks for the
Arena should be available later today.
SoDead NFT plans to increase royalties for NFTs to
66.6% for Purification Event
146
SHILL Issue #77
Earlier today, Sodead NFT made the announcement
that on Full Moon, royalties for all NFTs would increase
to 66.6%. The announcement follows Ghost’s disclosure
of details regarding $HEM, SoDead’s native coin.
SoDead holders will also be able to purify their NFTs
on the full moon. Holders will be able to receive an
increase in the staking multiplier through the purification
process. On October 9th, the increased royalties
for NFTs will take effect.
On Twitter, the announcement received a mixed
response. Some users praised the ingenuity, while
others noted how many previous attempts had ended
in failure.
PEEPL: Team behind Stoned Ape Crew announce a new
venture
“We want to have fun with the most interesting of traits in
humankind — curiosity & passion — in an NFT to build a
global community of Peepl finding their own way in life.”
More information regarding this new venture should be
revealed in the coming weeks.
Handsy owners to get whitelist spot for new Divine
Dogs collection
A new Twitter account, PeeplNft posted its first post
today; a thread explaining what its project is about and
its links to Stoned Ape Crew (SAC).
Stoned Ape Crew is an NFT project that has done
well since it was minted. Though it has come down a
lot from its highs, the project had a successful event
recently, with $puff week and PayLeaf catapulting their
name back into the talk of the town.
It appears that the team from SAC will be starting a
separate venture. PEEPL is a new NFT project focused
on culture, curiosity, and passion, as they seek to forge
a global community.
Though not directly linked, SAC holders will be glad to
know that the mint will be in $puff, the native utility
token of the SAC ecosystem that can be earned from
staking your SAC. The tentative price is 1950 $puff,
which translates to $78 or 2.5 Sol. Holders of the Apes,
with certain configurations as shown in the image
below, will get a whitelist for the project automatically
as well.
Hyblinxx has announced today that holders of her first
edition piece, Handsy, will receive whitelist spots for
Divine Dog’s upcoming NFT launch: Transcendents.
“Dear Handsy Edition Holders, I want to thank you
for your patience and offer you a DivineDogsNFT WL
spot for holding my edition and believing in the hyblinxx
brand. I’m so grateful for all your support!
All of my love,Hyblinxx”
Transcendents is a collection of highly customisable
dogs that are hand-drawn by Hyblinxx herself. Traits for
the dogs will be made by 1/1 artists around the space,
allowing holders to dress their dogs up however they
want.
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@NFThinks
Q: Can you provide a brief overview of the project?
A: More Monkes is a unique project in its own right. It
was spawned from a generative collection that Purple
made to test his abilities. The massive community
support and speculation of his 1/1 skills provided a lot
of different paths to choose from, and now to continue
forward we have hired a developer to create a verification
tool and build future experiences for the Monke
holders to gain exposure to 1/1 artists. Being a holder
of More Monkes will unlock these experiences.
Currently we have enough collaborations for a full
“Season 1” of airdrops and are starting to structure our
“Season 2” for artists that are currently too busy.
Q: What made you decide to start MM?
A: Purple wanted to test his generative capabilities as
an artist. Over the past year we have seen collections
come out incomplete or unrecognizable due to how
hard layer generation can be for some artists. Coming
from a 1/1 background he wanted to see if he could
generate this and gauge the difficulty himself. Under-
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standing the lack of funding for “art” based projects we priced ourselves accordingly. What followed afterwards
was completely unexpected, and now we pivot into providing more to our holders. Where it was simply 1 airdrop,
now it’s more. Where it was 1 artist, now it’s more.
Q: What was the inspiration for the art?
A: What’s most recognizable in the ecosystem at this point? Monkes. More Monkes everywhere. Ours though
are unique. SMBs are pixel, DAA is 3D, SAC are more realism - so Purple decided to do his own style that was
native to him.
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@L0SxS0L
Art that is clean, iconic, and thought-provoking, with
anti-authoritarian tones that are confronting, witty and
sophisticated all in the same stroke.
@beverlykillsnft is a quickly rising star in this space,
and this is a quick on what I love about this particular
style of art
It’s instantly recognisable. The use of a pink background
in most pieces adds to the subversion by
creating an innocent feel to the art, but it also makes it
iconic af. Anyone who has come across @beverlykillsnft
once will forever be able to spot his work in a sea of
NFTs.
It’s deceptively simple. But each piece will take you on
a journey. The commentary on darker aspects of our
society cut deep, though often hidden in plain sight.
Pulling this off with such bold subversion is a skill that
@beverlykillsnft has mastered beautifully.
It’s not afraid to go there @beverlykillsnft is arguably
at its best when the art is blatantly controversial. Being
clean, iconic, and thought-provoking is one thing, but if
you can get people talking then communities can form,
and real change can happen. It only takes a spark
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There’s so much more to this story, but these are the things I believe form the core of @beverlykillsnft iconic art.
Like many others, I’m looking forward to following this journey as it evolves and unfolds. In the meantime, I’ll be
rocking this pfp till it’s no longer relevant!
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Gaming is for Everyone
Mushroom Party @medium.com
Corey Passarella, Co-Founder
We build the future of online gaming on the common ground between dedicated online gamers and
crypto enthusiasts. Online players have always valued cooperative ownership and decentralization
which is the foundation of Web3. They prove it in the hours spent community building and creating in
their game ecosystem. Cryptocurrency evangelists appreciate data privacy and accessibility as the new
way forward. Gamers practice anonymity, and, in its purest form, a come-as-you-are approach to play.
However, where people gather, high-stakes monetization is never far behind. Online gaming is not an
exception to the rule. Game developers design sticky models to extract attention, money, and data from
players. These practices drive unhealthy social behaviors, more in-game transactions, and intrusive
advertising. In some environments, players fight to navigate the game without spending on expensive
in-game assets and upgrades.
Mushroom Party is our slice of the internet where we develop games differently. Our goal is to lay
the foundation for a gamer-friendly future of online gaming with every game we release. We focus on
values like community-owned development and a consistent, user-centric experience. We want every
player to win based on their skill and understanding of how our games work — not how much money a
player spends.
We lower the slope of the learning curve by developing fun games that put a Web3 twist on familiar
gaming experiences. For example, instead of charging fees to gain an advantage, our games are
played in SOL and allow players to win SOL based on their performance. Our games include the social
sharing elements of culture-shaping games like FarmVille and Wordle. Mushroom Party players have
access to gameplay strategy discussions on Discord instead of endless in-app/in-feed notifications.
MP’ers can also share their successes (and failures) on the social platforms of their choice.
Crypto gaming takes advantage of the unique qualities of digital currency so players can earn crypto
and convert it into cash. Low fees and public transactions allow Web3 game developers like us to eschew
web2 monetization and keep players anonymous. Super users get rewarded for their contribution
to the community.
We are inspired to build these experiences by the 75% of players who repeat play with us after their first
game. And we’re excited to see the space growing: Front Office Sports reports the blockchain gaming
industry grew 2000% in Q1 2022. The investment in this space means soon there will be games for everyone.
Check out our games and become part of our Discord community at the links below. Let’s play!
Links
Mushroom Party Landing Page
Discord
Twitter
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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
A crisp outline of what I have learned about the vision, roadmap, tokenomics and value distribution for
SoDeadNFT, @ArsensNation, @blackmagic_gg and @immortalincweb3.
@SoDeadNFT offers a profit share with Holders. 90%
of profits generated by the project are distributed via
staking rewards paid in $HEM.
$HEM pegged at a minimum price of $0.01 USDC.
Fully collateralized by USDC reserves. Reserves will be
seeded by corporate capital and presale buys of HEM
by Holders of assets with specific traits over the next
48 hours at a discount of 10% i.e. buy $HEM presale at
$0.009.
Holders generate $HEM by staking or by hunting.
Staking requires a coffin. Hunting requires participation
in gamified activities that drive awareness or demand
for affiliated assets and projects. Demons and some
other assets with certain traits can hunt on an
automated basis.
$HEM minted at a constant velocity with different
asset stacks generating at different rates. USDC
reserves increase with revenue and underwrites mint
of $HEM staking rewards.
Hunting rewards allocated at a magnitude that reflects
periods of outsized revenue return and through
treasury staking rewards. Hunting will drive bigger
rewards to some participants using a lottery system.
@SoDeadNFTassets are the token printer.
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The underlying vision and intent is to build an
ecosystem of projects that address broader web3
infrastructure, entertainment and IRL utility through
internal development, partnerships and incubation.
@blackmagic_gg is the LaunchPad for the native eco.
Projects will be funded and resourced by
@immortalincweb3. Projects will denominate in
$HEM. Velocity of $HEM supply constant, demand for
$HEM increases through consumption of incubated
products and services.
@SoDeadNFT are aggressively building a pipeline
of partner brands and propositions. These are cross
chain, not limited to SOL. Upcoming example in
gambling domain. Services denominated in $HEM.
@immortalincweb3 is building a foundation layer on
top of L1s comprising infrastructure and economy,
allowing builders to bootstrap their development and
GTM. This is inspired by Ethereum’s enablement of its
DeFi eco and the Layer stacks on top.
At a point in the roadmap, @immortalincweb3 will also
invest in a L0 protocol to drive portability of its L2 stack
to enable cross chain propagation of the infrastructure,
servicing and economic activity.
There will be continual demand for $HEM given it
is the denominating asset for transacting on the L2.
The bigger the native eco, the bigger the cross chain
distribution, the bigger the demand for $HEM.
HEMX is a token gated DEX for trading $HEM for
$USDC. Only SD Holders can access. This is the only
mechanism for converting $HEM that is generated
at wholesale prices through staking and hunting into
USDC at the retail rate based on secondary demand.
The bigger the gap between wholesale price and retail
price, the greater the demand for SD assets which
enable generation of wholesale $HEM and access to
HEMX. Projects, marketers and consumers transacting
at high values may prefer staking to secondary buys.
Transacting in $HEM is further incentivized through
gameified mechanics such as airdrops to wallets that
transact in $HEM on any given day and within any
given month. Non-trivial payoffs.
@arsenaharonyan comes from the gaming world. It
shows in his tokenomic and incentive design. There
will be a significant focus in driving $HEM as the
denominating crosschain asset for GameFi broadly.
TLDR:
@SoDeadNFT are the value accrual layer for the eco,
$HEM has the potential to be a broadly distributed
asset for transactions across a range of industries,
@ArsensNation represents and shares in @
arsenaharonyan’s personal revenue streams.
All this fits together to create a significant flywheel.
The BIG IF, is in the execution. This is an extremely big
vision. There is inherent risk and uncertainty. If it lands,
the relationship between supply and demand and the
impact on FP and $HEM retail price is v big.
Ty for listening to my TED talk. Hear it from
Arsen himself here: https://twitter.com/i/
spaces/1DXxyvkDzDYKM?s=20… Or wait for the
Whitepaper to drop later today. It will be better than
my humble attempt at explaining the jigsaw.
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atrdynn