Down, But Not Out

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.

Happy Friday kings. Apologies for deviating from my normal Thursday cadence. I spent about 9 hours moving out of my apartment yesterday and have reclaimed what is rightfully mine - my mother’s basement.

Things haven’t changed much from last week. Shitcoin season seems to still be in our midst, jaredfromsubway continues to take our lunch money and unnamed actors are still attempting to pump AVAX shitcoins. The result ends up being that there is not much attention left for our precious pictures.

Is this entirely a bad thing? Not necessarily. If you’re looking to roll some Ferdy Flip profits into projects at a cheaper price, now is a great time when relatively few eyes are on AVAX NFTs. If you recently took out a business loan to ape into OOPAs, well…

In any event, there’s a few exciting projects on the horizon. Let’s get right to it.

Sausagers

Brought to you by K-pop international superstar Will Patterson, Sausagers are finally minting tomorrow.

I’ll resist the urge to fud since I spent zero effort trying to get on the meatlist, but I can’t help but get some incredibly strong and memeable vibes from this one.

The art is pretty unique. It’s impressive how Sausagers manages to show off a wide range of traits that are very aesthetically pleasing while being repulsive at the same time.

Let’s talk about the memes.

There are 100 different things someone can say to badmouth the AVAX ecosystem. Memes is definitively not one of them. At the risk of Momind coming to my house accompanied by armed men with bats, Sausagers looks like another project poised to become a meme powerhouse within the ecosystem.

While I was not given an honorary yet again, I will continue to shitpost in the hopes of finally receiving one for a relevant project in the future. I won’t hold this one against them and look forward to stacking Sausagers.

And remember - NO BUNS!

It’s All One Big Casino

Our friends at Ferdy Flip just dropped their newest money printer, Plinko.

While I haven’t went HAM in gambling since the dawn of shitcoin season, Plinko seems to be calling out to me. What I do find slightly sad is that I still rule the leaderboards since taking my hiatus a couple of weeks ago.

As Ferdy Flip approaches 70k AVAX volume, holders of Fish are the beneficiaries of an airdrop equivalent to 1% of all fees. The people seem to be waking up to this.

While I’m not a paid influencer for Ferdy Fish, I really do want exposure to them. I’ve talked about them a ton previously and for good reason. Between the degen gambling, memes, and overall community that they bring to the table, it’s almost impossible to fade them. Catch me in the Ferdybox sometime this weekend, I may have to make my return for the culture.

Bones Bet has also emerged as another contender for capturing the gambling economy. While they’re in early access, they offer a roulette-style game where you can bet on red, black or green. It looks like they’ll be coming out with more games soon as well. Personally, I’d really like them to add the functionality of betting on the board (individual numbers) vs. just colors, which I believe is coming down the pipeline soon. That would be a HUGE draw for me.

Bones Bet also has a collection called Tiny Bones that gives holders a 2% fee on all withdrawals. I’ve gone back and forth on the concept of GambleFi generally, but I think rewarding holders with a small % of fees that games generate is a very smart and intuitive way to incentivize more unique holders to enter the picture. Both Ferdy and Bones are leaning into this concept which is a smart move.

Shrapnel

Shrapnel has been flying under the radar for a while. As someone who has been overall giga bearish on web3 gaming, this is one of the first projects I’ve ever come across that looks to have a lot of potential.

As a lifelong gamer, I feel like I have some credibility when it comes to evaluating gamers holistically. Shrapnel reminds me a lot of Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 (both extraction shooters) and based on some of the gameplay seen at Consensus 2023, this is shaping up to be a fun one.

Shrapnel has a very strong following in the gamer community and I think their emergence will be a big step for AVAX NFTs in carving out their own niche in web3 gaming. In my view, on-chain gaming that is specifically not P2E will emerge in a big way during the next crypto bull run. Lots of whitespace opportunity here which is very exciting.

What’s also interesting is that for the first time (that I’ve seen at least), most of Shrapnel’s NFT volume has been on Opensea instead of Joepegs. Really interesting dynamic there which shows that many outside of our small sphere of influence are aware of Shrapnel.

Based on the following tweet, it might be smart to grab an operator NFT before the imminent snapshot.

I may need to get in on the action here while I wait for Zelda to drop in a couple of weeks. Definitely worth a punt.

Conclusion

While we all pray that attention starts to return to NFTs relatively soon, we can’t do much about the constant game of attention hot potato that this space is incredibly prone towards. Despite this, there’s still plenty of opportunity for both new and existing projects out there and the best time to find value is when nobody is looking.

With the AVAX Summit on the horizon, I’m hopeful that we’ll get compelling updates for legacy projects and emerge stronger as a community. Really, really, bummed I can’t make it this year. If I’m not in a refrigerator box on the side of the road in 12 months, you can count on me pulling up next time around.

I’m gonna go back to fiat mining and unpacking my apartment, but hope you guys have a great weekend.

Cheers,
Chuck