All Aboard

(Any views expressed in the below are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions.)

Gm to the fellas. Despite landing in the future city of Atlantis last week, I think today is really the first day I’m back to 100% from Art Basel. 

Let’s check on my Plague Game Doctors to describe my recover from Sunday - Wednesday of this week:

Despite cutting some time off my expected life span, I have to say - meeting internet personalities IRL was a stellar experience and only reaffirmed my position that connecting in-person cannot be replicated over the internet. Met a lot of folks that I’ve been talking to anonymously over the last few months along with some fresh faces and I’m already looking forward to the next NFT event. 

That said, it was pretty hilarious to watch general NFT volume nosedive last weekend given that all the wallets were out partying in Miami. Just goes to show you how small this space really is. Can’t wait to find out that one of you is secretly my mom in disguise.

Market Update

It seems like we’re starting to move back in the right direction with regards to weekly AVAX NFT volume. 

Remember when I said that NFT traders have the attention span of goldfish, which is roughly 3 seconds? It’s probably slightly longer than that but between an uptick in volume week over week and general AVAX sentiment on my timeline, the pendulum seems to be swinging back in the right direction.

We haven’t seen the color green on here in a while, but it’s refreshing to see. With Plague Game underway and 70% of my doctors dead within 24 hours, I’ll likely be contributing to the >1400% week over week volume on Potions soon enough. 

Smol Joes volume is also great to see - I like to use them as a proxy for general AVAX NFT sentiment overall as they are a debatable blue chip in my mind. When people are feeling good, they’re gonna buy a Smol Joe. That’s just how it works, I don’t make the rules.

Chad Doge Super vials drop today as well, which contributes in large part to the bounce back from 3 AVAX that we saw last week. Linsanity and team continue to crush it:

Market Musings

I kept my project recap brief because I wanted to talk more generally about the state of the AVAX union / ecosystem. If there’s anything I’ve learned since being involved in web3, it’s that persistence pays off in spades. The builders, project founders, and market participants who have all stuck around have really dug in their heels to focus on building out unique, differentiated and engaging projects.

Through my own personal experience, I’ve found that when you establish a strong work ethic, are receptive to feedback and focus inwards on improvement, you tend to create your own luck. I think we’re starting to see that happen across the chain. I spoke to multiple people last weekend about AVAX and piqued their interest while touching on a few things. 

One of the biggest differentiators I see is that success for AVAX NFTs is truly project-agnostic. There’s very little tribalism with respect to certain projects, and ultimately everyone who is trading AVAX NFTs wants to see everyone win and be successful. This turns into a flywheel of cross-project collaboration, promotion, and leveraging the strength of the entire community to build upon an already solid foundation. I’m a big believer in network effects - we’ve already seen how having a highly fragmented on-chain community doesn’t facilitate success, only rotational liquidity (e.g., pump and dumps on ETH and SOL).

The other differentiator to me is the quality of talent that currently exists and in turn is attracting new human and intellectual capital. Look at Chad Doge for example:

For a $170k market cap project, Chad Doge is such a disproportionately quality project. We’ve seen so many ETH pump and dumps generate millions of dollars only to fade from existence in 24 hours. This is accentuated by Stupifff, who I’m glad to see is being recognized as a high-quality community manager.

Tons of credit to their team - I can go on and on about other projects, their teams, and the level of quality being produced for next to naught in return (at the moment). In short, I think this can only be ignored for so long, and will pay dividends once we start to turn a corner in the broader market.

Conclusion

With all of that in mind, I’m feeling really good about where we are right now. Despite trading crypto since 2017, AVAX NFTs are really the first thing I’ve felt “early” to in web3. I’m stoked to see how this ecosystem continues to build, innovate and grow as we navigate the next few months. Up only soon.

Cheers,

Chuck