July NFT Market Watch: Free Mint's 'mini-cycle'

Write: Cookie, rhythm Blockbeats

The NFT market in July conjures up scenes like this:

"In winter, after the persistent wind and snow, the bright sunshine suddenly appears, and people are eager for warmth and gushing out..."

In terms of volume, the NFT market has remained sluggish since July.

But in this cold downturn, there are still some projects that stand out. They can't reverse the bearish trend, but they break the market's dullness and start a little "Free Mint" thread, like winter sunshine shining but not warm enough:

Rhythmic BlockBeats has previously conducted a detailed analysis on God Hates NFTees and WZRDS, and interested friends can review the following articles:

God Hates NFTs by "plagiarizing" for 4 days

25 times in 3 hours, WZRDS is starting a "civil war"

One of the most popular NFTS of all time, CryptoPunks, was launched in June 2017 in the form of "Free Mint," which gives the recent popularity of "Free Mint" a sense of "coming back to life." If CryptoPunks were born in the early "ice age" of NFTS, they are now in the "modern winter" -- a low-confidence bear market where it's really hard to succeed without a "Free Mint".

"Long-cycle" projects are cold

The market slump has put many investors in a state of inactivity, and the rest are no longer willing to spend money beyond Gas fees to bet on "long-term" NFTS -- "Sell your dreams? Show us what you can do fast, or we won't pay for Gas at all."

"Brand development" and "meta-cosmic infrastructure" these two "pie", now it is difficult to sell.

The "Brand Building" category of PFP items presented in The present study Possessed a number of excellent recent results. By overwhitelisting, they managed to sell all 10,000 NFTS in the 0.25-0.35 ETH price range. However, the floor price only reached 0.6 ETH at the highest level, and only stabilized for about a week, before falling all the way down to now.

Another example of PFP in the "brand building" category is IsekaiMeta. The project was also overwhitelisted and reduced from 10,000 to 7,777, eventually selling out in the 0.15-0.25 ETH price range. After a brief break, IsekaiMeta resumed its rally, with floor prices as high as 0.5 ETH and currently trading around 0.45 ETH.

Both The "The Possessed" and "IsekaiMeta" models took The first steps to being sold out after months of operation before their release. Similarly, NFT players have lost interest in long-period "metaverse infrastructure".

NFT Worlds suddenly had a major negative impact, which did not cause money to move to other "land" projects

The high market value of "long term" projects depends heavily on "value expectations", the "possibilities" presented in the roadmap. It is true that a large amount of capital is needed to realize these grand narratives, but the speed of "value expectation" digestion is still too slow. In a bear market, investors are not willing to pay 0.1 ETH of real money to "choke on their dreams." This partly reflects the relative dependence of the NFT market on ETH liquidity spillovers, which has yet to demonstrate a convincing value independence as a "cultural brand" or "meta-cosmic infrastructure".

Not only are "long-run" projects falling out of favour, their holders are losing patience. For example, some owners of the 2D meta-universe integration platform World Wide Webb began to mock the official Twitter's daily "GM (Good morning)" tweets as a sign of the lack of new progress. They also claim that the three most annoying words in the Web3 world are "Soon", "long-term vision" and "Value".

The key to the success of Free Mint

In a bad market environment, investors lack confidence and patience, and the strategy is dominated by "quick in and quick out". Even for Free Mint's projects, success is not easy. The outstanding ones, in the "project positioning" to meet the appetite of investors, in the "project operation" on the pace of compact.

"Project Positioning"

A "Free Mint" project that takes the traditional PFP route has a smoother start-up phase than a paid Mint project, but it's very easy to get into a "death spiral." After they sell out, it's hard to come up with something that can be delivered quickly enough to survive the "app vacuum," and investors sell quickly. Once the floor price is hit low, the accumulated popularity of the early stage of the project will quickly disappear, lose liquidity. The disappearance of liquidity, and cut off the subsequent royalty income to support the narrative of "brand development", thus completely lost investors, leading to the death of the project.

In contrast, the "DeFi play" route of "pledge mining" and "synthetic upgrade" can be quickly launched, and the "plot play" gradually becomes the mainstream, which can create more suspense to attract new investors and help maintain liquidity. After all, NFTS have always been an "attention economy" where no heat means death, especially now.

"Project Operation"

If expectations management is not done properly, the patience of the players may disappear before delivery. Good "expectations management" should not only let players know that there is a "DeFi doll", but also not be too clear. In the message to the player, the initial delivery time should be clear, preferably within a week, and the delivery should be visually suspenseful.

WAGMI ARMY may not be doing well in the market, but this chart is a good example of expectations management

Once the project is sold out, it is necessary to quickly launch the DeFi doll (DeFi gameplay) with real materials. God Hates NFTees by launching a "synth upgrade" in almost a week, and WZRDS by deploying nine contracts in less than a month to update gameplay to fit the storyline. God Hates NFTees and even launches offline meme campaigns to stay hot during the "application vacuum".

This is so much fun. "Synth Upgrade." Eat a banana first, folks

Build suspense, deliver suspense quickly, build the next suspense... Compared with the past, when even opening a plan after selling out had to wait several days, the current project operators must "play fast and furious" in the "project operation", first to convince investors that they can at least "fast in and out", and step by step to strengthen their fragile confidence.

How far can Free Mint go?

The narrative is limited

For the ordinary "DeFi gameplay", the narrative is usually unable to continue until the "synthesis upgrade" goes online. In contrast, "drama dolls" have more potential for long-term development. In addition to the main project that you must purchase to participate in the game, you can have multiple sub-projects to generate revenue. The story line itself, and the gameplay that constantly updates the story line, can create constant buzz. But the question is, is the story really good enough? Comparable to QQ home times word game interaction in the end how much charm? When the story is finished, will the project have new values?

Some of the more niche "story doll" projects have given us something other than "gamification" -- "novelization." Owning an NFT continuously unlocks new episodes of the novel, allows player interaction only at certain key story points, allows players to influence the course of the story, and there are certain course effects that can only be caused by the holder of certain NFT attributes. Make it more immersive with 8-bit style GIFs and music via Twitter Space. NFT holders not only "subscribe" to the novel, but also enjoy some "author" rights.

An unstable source of income

The Free Mint program does not generate any initial revenue. After a successful sellout, whether seeking to generate royalties by guaranteeing sufficient turnover, or getting investors to pay for new projects under various names (for example, if you want to send an adventurer on an expedition, you'll need to pay for a sword), the project needs to maintain sufficient "buzz" at all times. But in the current market environment, investors are generally inclined to take profits quickly and never look back.

"Dolls" (DeFi play), of course, can also more and more interesting, but if you can't from the court game sublimation to change of this kind of project is only suitable for short-term arbitrage investors to stereotypes, so sustainable development required large probability of income will be interrupted by the "heat dissipation, it cannot make itself and the whole market still stronger.

conclusion

None of the recent Free Mint projects may have a long life span, but it's comforting to know that in a cold bear market, someone is still creating something interesting to inject some energy into the market. The "Free Mint" craze is slowly fading, and the NFT market seems to be entering another period of chaos without a main line. We are waiting for the NFT market to bring us new surprises.

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia