Crank Up the Diesel

(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 my loyal cabal of red chain NFT enthusiasts. After yet another week of ETH nothing burgers, BLUR farming fatigue and overall bearish market sentiment in the world of JPEGS, I’m starting to sense a lot of exhaustion amongst fellow picture traders and collectors. It seems that Ferdy Flip is the only source of generational wealth as of late.

It would really be a shame if another chain came in to spice things up…

Dom has really been grinding behind the scenes lately, I think he had about 100 calls with various people regarding AVAX NFTs.

Even if it’s simply copypasta (unless…?), this penguin is feeling pretty good about AVAX NFTs. I’ll cover more on that below in my musings for this week. First, let’s get to our weekly recap and a special carveout for the upcoming OOPA mint tomorrow.

Market Update

Once again, Dune is down for me this week, so we turn to our friendly neighborhood Spongebob for a weekly volume update.

If we adjust for the abnormal spikes in volume last week which included several Smol Joe sales, I’d say that we’re a little less down week over week, but down nonetheless. Additionally, a decent amount of volume can be attributed to people puking their NFTs at a 20-30% discount for immediate liquidity. As this penguin has said before, you can get a VERY nice spread on AVAX bids vs. asks. You’d be surprised at how often people bite, even on higher-priced collections.

If we exclude the Chikn ecosystem, most of the top collections that I gravitate toward have seen a pretty sizable uptick in volume. Interestingly, this hasn’t correlated with a real move upward in floor price. At a glance, a lot of volume seems to be generated from bids being accepted, which would make sense considering that floors continue to stay at the floor. What’s also interesting is that on AVAX in particular, there still seems to be an appetite for rare tokens in certain collections that are 10-20x floor price. This may be whales / collectors accumulating exposure, so we may have to put that aside, but an observation nonetheless.

So, volume is down, floor prices are largely flat, and people are puking their NFTs. Why should you feel good at all about what’s going on in the AVAX NFT ecosystem right now, especially while standing in the shadow of ETH where many are burning out from BLUR point farming fatigue and market manipulation?

Keep reading.

Sounds Like a Lot of OOPA

After months of anticipation, hype, misinformation, FUD, Chef Goose arguing with people who couldn’t possibly exist in real life on Twitter Spaces, and OOPA alpha leaks - the OOPA mint is finally upon us.

If you recall, Chef Goose was gracious enough to give us a taste for what was coming in his Mint Avalanche guest post a couple months back, I’d encourage you to revisit his feature if you want to brush up on everything that Party Mansion has been up to behind the scenes. He was even nice enough to give me, a lowly penguin, permission to publish an unrevealed fur pattern that will be a part of the collection.

It’s clear that the team is creating not just a new collection, but an entirely new minting experience. I strongly encourage you to read through the below thread to better understand what tomorrow will look like.

In the past, we at Mint Media have had lukewarm reception to AVAX whitelist giveaways between our MC Pass and Cacio e Pepe holders. On average, we’d probably fill out between 10-15 spots. This time, we received 50(!) requests for whitelist spots and secured all of them. Personally, I’ve been blown away by the anticipation for this mint between discussion in our discord and beyond. We’re not the only ones who are excited either.

Similar to how they did with Peons, Morfs created and gave away an OOPA Morf to promote the mint.

Did I mention that OOPA is only the second AVAX NFT project ever to be featured in a Spaces with the official Avalanche Twitter?

The hype is real and I’m drinking all of the Kool-Aid.

I also think many people just want to see Giraffe’s nipples. Is that just me?

Don’t fret - if you don’t have a whitelist spot, there should be time to scoop up tokens in the public sale. I don’t anticipate them staying for very long, as public is unlimited with 10 mints per transaction. Rest assured that whales will be moving in quickly at a chance for a Beach token.

Market Musings and Intrusive Thoughts

If you were around back in October, you may remember the Wolfiland mint (either fondly or bitterly). That mint effectively kicked off a 3-week mini-bull run in AVAX NFTS, with Wolfi reaching almost a 20 AVAX floor from a 1.5 AVAX mint price alongside many Epic and Mythic Wolfi sales north of 100 AVAX.

I fully anticipate similar market dynamics coming into play here. Tomorrow’s mint is going to be a catalyst that kicks off an insane amount of AVAX NFT activity over the next few weeks. We’ll probably see money move around into other projects as people take some AVAX off the table and a rising tide will lift all boats.

More importantly, I’m incredibly bullish on OOPA establishing a new standard for AVAX NFT projects. Minting on its own website and creating a new experience is a very understated move that I hope future projects will strive to achieve in the future. I think the actual tokens (artwork, dynamic traits, etc.) speak for themselves. We need more creators and builders on AVAX who want to achieve this level of quality in their collections.

“But Chuck, why should we have to wait months for one good project to come along to incentivize liquidity coming into the ecosystem?”

The short answer is: you won’t. All will become clear soon, anon.

Talk soon,

Chuck