Roger

Roger

(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 kings and queens. Still recovering from the New Year? I certainly am. Hope it was a good break though. In the world of NFTs, New Years already feels like a century ago. That said, it seems like we’re moving on up volume-wise over the past couple of weeks. Much like other fake internet money follows BTC, I think NFT altchain markets tend to follow ETH NFT trends at a decently correlated rate. We’ve seen a ton of upward momentum over there, and I think we’re starting to see the same for AVAX.

Market Update

As of this morning, my favorite dashboard for examining AVAX NFT volume is currently down, so this week will be more project-focused. That said, I think it’s pretty easy to see how we’ve trended based on the below.

Lots of activity across really good projects, let’s look at a few. 

Ferdy Fish

Ferdy Fish is the clear standout here. Going from what was effectively a free mint to a ~40 AVAX ATH, they’ve had a great run over the last couple of weeks. I don’t really care so much for the art as I do for the memes. The memes have been nothing short of spectacular.

From hard truths…

Trolling anons…

And fortune telling…

They’ve really knocking the cover off the ball here. For such a small holder count, their stylized, memetic approach has been resonating with a lot of people in AVAX.

I’m still waiting for someone to accept my very, very stinky WAVAX bid. I’m on the verge of begging at this point because my life is actually being threatened in my own discord server.

Rich Peon Poor Peon

While they’ve been grinding slowly higher, RPPP (that acronym kinda sucks, won’t use it again sorry) has been regaining traction. Though they’re far off from their 13 AVAX ATH, you have to start somewhere. Most of the action came over the last couple of days and really accelerated with the hype machine himself, DevilK.

Given that I recently was kicked off the Beeg Rock Board (rest assured I will be returning soon), I don’t have much insight into what’s coming down the pipeline, but similar to Ferdy Fish, the community is quite strong.

Sausage Fest

I’m actually incredibly salty about this one. A free mint, I had the rank #2 Sausage and paperhanded for maybe .15 AVAX back in the summer. In any case, this is clearly a psyops by CHD so I won’t be touching on them much further.

Plague Game

What is dead may never die. 

Plague Game, which was dismissed by many after they fell out of contention for the mint pool prize, is also gaining momentum after a brief trailer showcasing what appears to be a 3D playable game.

That’s pretty sick. If this is fully baked, it would definitely explain the lack of love shown by Joe Studios towards its other projects. I have a lot of opinions on web3 / NFT gaming in general, but I’ll hold those for now while we wait to see what comes next. Speaking of Joe Studios…

Smol Joes

Not one, but two (2!) Smol Joe sales this week. Unbelievable. Sitting back at a 365 AVAX floor and despite a clear dearth of volume for a project in general, Smol Joes doesn’t quit and continues to show that it’s a highly-sought after project. Their twitter account also dropped a sneak peak into their new stained glass venture.

No idea what this is, but I’d classify this as medium-term alpha. Whatever is coming next, Smol Joes are first in line. Their holders continue to reap rewards while I wallow in the fact that I sold my Smol Tree Joe at 115 AVAX.

Chad Doge

Even with all the buzz around other projects recently, there’s only one project that’s been splashed across the top of Joepegs for the last week.

With Chad Doge Supers minting a week from today, there’s a lot to be excited about. If you don’t have WL, consider seeking therapy in advance of the cope you may experience from trying to buy these on secondary. As I’ve said before, I think Chad Doge has easily done the best job of cultivating an engaged community on AVAX over the last several months - their ubiquity and floor price certainly reflects that.

Party Animals

Another great example of a project with a loyal and engaged community.

Almost at 6 AVAX, APA’s burn mechanism for their upcoming OOPA launch is starting to heat up (side note: that website is insanely good. Definitely check it out). If that weren’t the case, I don’t think we’d see the level of burning that we have. Chef Goose and Giraffe deserve credit here - I think we’ll start to learn a lot more over the next few weeks for what’s to come, and I’ll have the scoop to fill you all in. Very excited for this ecosystem.

Musings / Unsolicited Opinions

Before I jump in, I’d like to offer NoBS a warm welcome back from the dead. As covered in my brief obituary two weeks ago, he was sorely missed for about 24 hours. Good to have you back.

Anyway, one thing I’d like to focus on in lieu of the project updates above is the topic of community. What exactly is a community and why is it so critical to a project’s success?

Here’s a great take from Dom, Ecosystem Lead for NFTs and Art for Avalabs, with whom I’ve had many great and intellectually stimulating conversations on how to drive adoption for NFTs, particularly on AVAX.

(Dropping a screenshot since I’m redacted and don’t know how to post a Twitter thread in beehiiv yet [here’s the thread]). 

I won’t shill Pudgy Penguins here, but their meteoric rise on ETH over the last month has been impossible to ignore. Their community is one of the strongest out there and has been buoyed by great marketing via gifs / other channels along with very active engagement from their team. 

Based on what I’ve seen from some of the AVAX projects I mentioned above, it’s clear that they are taking the same formula and applying it successfully as well - which is awesome.

NFT valuation is a fickle mistress. As someone who works in tradfi full-time in business valuation rooted in very quantifiable methodologies, it’s hard for me sometimes to reconcile that with the fact that NFT pricing is almost entirely arbitrary. My partner Paul and I had a great conversation around this topic, and we agree that NFT trading is similar to venture capital / angel investing.

I have some experience angel investing on the side through SPVs, and it dawned on me that NFT trading and giving money to start-ups share a significant overlap. At such an early stage in a business’s lifecycle, it comes down to two things:

Pattern recognition and people.

Pattern recognition = are you seeing a previously successful formula being deployed (e.g., memetic marketing, strong community, etc.)?

People = who’s running the show? Who is actually executing on the vision?

It’s actually scary how similar two very different asset classes are when it comes to evaluating them. That said, there’s obviously a ton of nuance to this conversation and I’m glossing over other key elements like chain adoption, but hopefully my thought process makes sense. 

Based on that, I think looking at the quality of projects on AVAX (and on other chains) becomes very simple. And - it feels like we’re in pretty good shape.

No conclusion for you mfs today, I’m gonna go make some coffee.

Cheers,

Chuck