It’s a builder’s market
Ingredients for a successful NFT project — April 2022 update on the state of Solana NFTs
Two months ago I published On the state of Solana NFTs, the summary being that liquidity flows from one hyped project to the next, instead of teams that are consistently building. Partly, this is due to the non-existent gas fees, but as the supply of new projects increases, ones with proven track records are slowly, but surely rising to the top.
I ended the post with:
For now, I’m still having a lot of fun in Solana and have high hopes for the future. My plays will most likely involve accumulating more Famous Fox Federation and Solgods which both fit the community/project building throughout this whole cycle.
In hindsight, this was the obvious play and I should have accumulated more.
Famous Fox Federation
Solgods
The sentiment for crypto in February was negative, so the fact the floor price for these two projects continuing to rise during this period was insanely bullish. These two projects have a few similarities, and I think all successful projects share some semblance of these traits:
Individuals from the project team who have myth-like qualities
Passionate (sometimes cult-like) communities
Active development and updates
The first dot point you can see in the broader crypto ecosystem, individuals who can easily generate a large amount of capital from the public. Vitalik and Ethereum, Sam and Alameda/FTX, Elon and Doge/Tesla.
Back to Solana NFTs, I missed the rise of Degods (100 floor) and Taiyo Robotics (170 floor) which tick all 3 of the above. Both have myth-like qualities individuals who are revered by their respective communities which I believe is a large driving force behind the price movement.
Degods and Frank
Taiyo and SolportTom
What’s up next? All the above mentioned projects are now outside my accumulation range and I think the better risk/reward ratio is in smaller projects that are in the process of trying to capture lightning in a bottle while encompassing those 3 dot points.
The only project that I’ve come across, and I’m sure there are others, is Cat Cartel (~4 sol floor). I think they likely have a shot at this, but it’s also a project that feels like a house of cards (more so than the NFT space in general) because of how quickly they’ve delivered on all the buzz words: staking, baby and mutant derivatives. Because they’ve expanded so quickly, it dilutes their project a bit before they could gain long-term holders. Additional risk here is that their art is incredibly similar to a popular Eth project, Gutter Cat Gang, and there could be a lack of mainstream appeal due to cartel/drug lore.
Profile picture projects are starting to get a bit boring for me and usually converge on similar roadmaps. For now, I’ll be trying to focus and read more on gamefi, inspired by Defi kingdoms. The ones that have caught my eye on Solana are Catchking Explorers and Guild Saga Heroes.