WGMI Weekly Wednesday Newsletter
May 4, 2022
NFT of the Week: Yuga Labs Collections
Yuga Labs is responsible for several of the top blue-chip NFT collections ever created including the likes of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), Bored Ape Chemistry Club, and the Bored Ape Kennel Club NFTs. Their latest drop was the “Otherdeed for Otherside” collection which made history as the biggest and most profitable NFT launch ever before seen.
Yuga Labs doesn’t need much introduction as they are responsible for the most notable NFT collections ever created beginning with the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Their 10,000 illustrated monkey collection on the Ethereum blockchain currently holds a floor price of 121 ETH at the time of writing and quite possibly is the most recognizable NFTs ever created.
Otherdeed for Otherside
Yuga Labs did it again, as their latest project to drop, Otherdeeds for Otherside has become the largest and most profitable drop in NFT history with a current floor price 3.38 ETH and a total collection size of 100,000 land deed NFTs. Today’s NFT of the week will briefly take a look at all of the NFT projects that have been released by Yuga Labs and analyze their overwhelming success.
Otherdeed for Otherside in numbers
100,000
Supply
305 Ape Coins (+gas)
Mint Price
3.64 ETH
Floor Price (May 4, 2022)
210.8k ETH
Volume Traded (May 4, 2022)
Yuga Labs team
The two founders of Yuga Labs “Gargamel” and “Gordon Goner” (both pseudonyms) started as college dropouts.
Gargamel has an MFA in creative writing and Godron dropped out of his MFA due to health reasons. In 2017, the two of them bought some crypto but remained on the outskirts of web3, watching to see what it could develop into.
At the time, Gargamel was a writer and Gordon Goner worked as a day trader. At first, they didn’t know how to go about getting into the crypto space because they weren’t the best traders and weren’t developers either.
When NFTs came to prominence, they made their way into the crypto space by developing characters, a backstory, and an entire world in the web3 space. With the help of two other friends, the founders were able to rake in $2M USD just from their original collection of BAYC not to mention the $96M they made in just under an hour after releasing their Mutant Ape Yacht Club collection just a few months later.
Just this past week, Yuga Labs sold 100k Otherside land deeds profiting ~$720M USD.
Marketing / Community
The success of Bored Ape Yacht Club can be summed up in three key points from Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point”:
The Law of the Few: A small handful of people (connectors, mavens, salesmen) that will spread the word out like fire.
Stickiness: The idea must be somewhat intriguing, memorable, or addictive.
Principle of context: The appropriate situation that makes people care.
The original 10k Bored Ape holders acted as the “salesmen”, who loved the project and community so much that they spread the word to the entire NFT community. One notable example of this is a holder who created a Twitter for his ape “Jenkins” who was a valet that worked at the Yacht Club. This story became its own mini lore project contributing to the fantasy world of BAYC.
When the hype grew big enough to reach celebrities is when the project became quickly known by the rest of the outside world.
The iconic design of Bored Apes contributes to the “stickiness” factor that makes them stand out from every other NFT project. The simple cartoon art style mixed with their distinctive color palette, and their massive variety of unique traits and colors, creates an identifiable brand that is easily recognizable by anyone, regardless of their experience with NFTs.
Roadmap
After raising $450M, Yuga Labs announced their plans to build a media empire around their NFTs starting with a metaverse.
The metaverse they referred to is their “Otherside” project which launched last week.
Yuga Labs described the Otherside as “an MMORPG meant to connect the broader NFT universe”. Their goal is to create an interoperable, gamified world that is completely decentralized.
Yuga Labs has also recently acquired Crypto Punks and Meebits, adding both to their NFT empire.
“People won’t bond from spending time together in a shared virtual space with nothing going on,” says Gargamel. “Instead, people bond from being put in positions where they have to collaborate.” We will see in the coming months what Yuga Labs has in store for hopeful holders who believe that Otherside may become the undisputed king of the metaverse in the future.
WGMI
Recently Launched Projects
The Lunartics
The Lunartics is an NFT collection of cartoon illustrated characters created by FOX Animation legend and lead artist, Julius Preite (Simpsons, Family Guy) together with Writer/Producer, Dan E. Fesman (King of Queens, NCIS).
Each season will launch a new series of animated spoofs of the Lunartics’ most futile and embarrassing adventures to the moon over the past 50 years. Lunartics’ holders will be able to vote on upcoming missions, and even have a voice in the shape of the series. And, if they’re lucky, they may get to see their character pop up in a future episode.
People who were holding Superfarm Genesis NFTs got whitelist spots for this project. It was not surprising that Ellio Trades (SuperFarm) tweeted about the project after the announcement of the collaboration. That along with an Alex Becker tweet gave people hope that this could be a successful investment.
The launch minted out and went well enough, but wasn’t too eventful. Those that minted had an easy chance to secure nearly 2x their investment all the way up to the point of reveal. The floor saw a high of around 0.24 ETH and the collection even had multiple rares sold for over 2 ETH. The hype for this project quickly settled after its reveal phase, and the floor price of commons dropped steadily since then and currently sits near the initial mint price of 0.08 ETH. The community engagement, as well as the volume of sales for this collection, have slowed since then as is the case with many other projects due to the lead-up of the ‘Otherdeed by Otherside’ mint. It is interesting to note that even successful art moguls like Julius Priete (The Lunartics) and Philip Colbert (The Lobstars) who create NFT art projects have a difficult time launching successful NFT projects of their own, especially when it’s their first attempt.
Total Supply: 10,000
Public Mint Price: 0.08 ETH
Current Floor Price: 0.078 ETH
Website: https://thelunartics.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_Lunartics
OpenSea: https://opensea.io/collection/the-lunartics
Ragnarok
Ragnarok is a collection of 7,777 anime style NFT characters. Ragnarok aims to build the first kick-ass web3 MMORPG and so far it appears that they will pull it off stunningly. They already have a multiplayer demo on their website to show the community their capacity to build something amazing and prove their passion for their “build first” philosophy. Most projects released in the web3 space are nothing more than empty promises that will never be fulfilled by their less than qualified founders (e.g. Pixelmon). The team behind Ragnarok aims to change the NFT meta by building first and then minting.
The minted Ronins will act as playable characters in the Ragnarok MMORPG game. The game will support up to 3k players at a time. The game will also involve breeding and a marketplace that will allow you to rent out your NFTs to be bred as well as sell the ronin babies. The gameplay will include battling monsters, quests, looting, and adventuring. At the end of May, the team plans to introduce character experience, skill acquisition, and talent specializing. In June, they will release NFT items that can be bought or crafted by combining loot with orbs, and they will also be releasing a PVP combat feature.
Further down the road, there are plans in place to add guild wars and multiplayer combat. Traders are calling this project “Azuki meets Raid Party” and are rather bullish on Ragnarok overall as long as the team can pull off creating their game and delivering on their promises. Ragnarok’s public mint was a “fair Dutch auction” meaning if the collection sold out at a lower price than people originally minted at, they would be refunded the difference. It is difficult to say how well the fair auction contract worked because the collection minted out at .77 and no one ended up being eligible to claim any refunds. In just a few hours, the floor was already up to 1.6 ETH. This is impressive to see in the current market, especially ahead of the Ape Land. In just under two days, the floor price had climbed to nearly 3 ETH before dipping back down to 2.64 ETH where it currently sits.
Total Supply: 7,777 Public Mint Price: 0.77 ETH (Dutch auction sold out at the starting price of 0.77 ETH)Current Floor Price: 2.64 ETHWebsite: https://ragnarok.xyz/Twitter: https://twitter.com/RagnarokMeta OpenSea: https://opensea.io/collection/ragnarok-meta
Otherdeed for Otherside
This week, Yuga Labs released what quickly became the biggest and most profitable NFT launch in history. The Otherside is a collection of 200,000 land parcels in the Yuga Labs metaverse, and the first 100,000 were sold last weekend during the genesis drop.
The Otherside land parcels are part-galaxy and part-archipelago with islands of several different biomes including Biogenic Swamp, Chemical Goo, Rainbow Atmos, Cosmic Dream, and Infinite Expanse. Minters received an “Otherdeed” which is a key to a unique variety of sediment, environment, and treasures. Some of these contain resources and powerful artefacts. A very small few of them also are home to Kodas. Kodas are primal beings that roam the Otherside. We don’t know what they are, but Yuga Labs has hinted at them being extremely rare. Otherside land can have up to four replenishing resources that holders can claim and use. These resources are: Anima, Ore, Shard, and Root. We don’t know much about these resources yet other than that some are rare and they are all used to shape the Otherside world. Otherside parcels can also contain rare artefacts and allow owners to participate in demos, prototypes, in-person events, test builds, and more.
The Otherside took over the entire Ethereum network for over several hours causing every transaction to cost over 2 ETH in gas fees while gwei spiked as high as 8,000. Many criticized Yuga Labs for the way they handled their launch of Otherside. The whitelist for this project was overallocated which caused minters to FOMO in as soon as the mint opened, which ended up clogging the Ethereum network. This congestion caused over $176 million in gas fees to be wasted and paid off to miners, of which 26,000 ETH was burned. Surprisingly enough, this traffic did not crash the mint website – however, it did cause Etherscan to go down briefly which was unprecedented. When all was said and done, Yuga Labs profited 240,000 ETH or roughly $720M USD from the sale of their latest NFT collection. The floor price on OpenSea started off around 12 ETH, dipped all the way down to 5 ETH, and then popped back up to nearly 8 ETH – since then falling down below the cost of mint (including gas fees). This was hands down the biggest, and most profitable launch to ever take place in the NFT space.
Total Supply: 100,000
Public Mint Price: 305 $APE + gas (2 ETH+)
Current Floor Price: 3.64 ETH
Website: https://otherside.xyz/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OthersideMeta
OpenSea: https://opensea.io/collection/otherdeed
WGMI
Upcoming Projects: Bangers
Dobies
Dobies is a community-driven NFT project which will be free to mint. The Dobies team is focusing on creating an organic community rather than having an over-numbered one. You might be wondering “what makes Dobies different from other projects?” It’s simple: No roadmap, No promises, Just vibes. We’ve seen other free mint projects like Illogics do very well right off the bat. Releasing a collection for free shows the community that the project founders are confident in recouping their investment from secondary sales and focused on building rather than cash grabbing or even worse, rugging. A free mint also eliminates any sort of financial risk from buyers while incentivizing holding, therefore boosting the floor price.
The team told us in an interview that the Dobies team has plenty of experience in the NFT space. They have also secured many notable collaborations with respectable projects and influencers such as Dark Echelon, Karafuru, Kaiju Kingz, Champs Only, and several other high-profile projects. Another point to mention is the rate at which their Twitter base has been growing, going from 0 to 100k followers in just 10 days which is possibly the fastest social media growth ever seen by any project in the NFT space. Being a free-to-mint project, Dobies is definitely a project to keep an eye on considering there is 0 risk for traders that are able to make the whitelist.
Total Supply
8,000
Launch Date
TBA
Mint Price
Free mint for WL only
Phantom Network (Project PXN)
Phantom Network is otherwise known as “Project PXN”, which is an upcoming collection from the creators of NANOPASS. Currently, Project PXN is the most hyped-up NFT project that has yet to launch which garners a cult-like following. PXN hopes to provide a unique web3.0 NFT platform where innovation and social exchange can take place. A lot of the inner details behind the Phantom Network are purposefully left mysterious and many of the specifics behind this project are undisclosed to the public which seems to be an intentional effort and part of their marketing strategy.
Phantom Network has been growing rapidly gaining more than 100,000 new followers in the month of May which is an increased growth rate of more than 50% growth compared to the month before. In addition, both Nanoverse and Project PXN have accomplished an incredible feat by bringing in 100% organic traffic through the use of “zero-cost marketing campaigns” when it comes to promotions and their collaborations.
Often times investors get stuck having to choose between good art or competent teams. Project PXN has everything it needs to have a successful launch; an experienced and competent team, one of the strongest communities, and a lot of hype and momentum thanks to the current ‘anime meta’ we are seeing from projects like Azuki and Ragnarok.
Total Supply
10,000
Launch Date
Public Sale Fair Dutch Auction: May 4th
Whitelist Mint: May 5th
Mint Price
Public Sale Fair Dutch Auction Info: Starting price 2 ETH + gas. Decreases by 0.05 ETH every 15 minutes. Ending Price 0.1 ETH + gas Whitelist Mint: Price will be 50% of the final bid price (capped at 0.35 ETH + gas)
Upcoming Projects: Hidden Gem
Metakami
Metakami is a women-led anime NFT project that aims to provide an inclusive environment for women in the NFT space, as well as help endangered animals by giving royalties and donations to various animal conservation organizations. This collection of 8,888 NFTs combines animal traits and kami (Shintō Deitiy), granting supernatural and god-like abilities. Metakami has managed to land several notable collaborations with projects such as ShikigaiNFT, ArcaneVerse, and Nekomuraclub. Metakami is a community-driven project so they plan on having all of the holders participate by voting on choices to determine the manga’s eventual storyline.
May T, founder of Metakami, was inspired by the empowerment of the NFT space and decided to build an all-artist team with plenty of experience. Those team members had worked and collaborated with huge companies such as Riot Games, Sanrio, Disney, BT21, Ubisoft, Tencent, Nike, Toyota, Samsung, etc. Other than working with large companies, the team members are also well-known for their illustrative work on previous mangas which include: My Chopin, Three Sisters Investigate, and Anime Prompts Gone Wild. With an all artist team, Metakami undoubtedly went all out on this project which is apparent in their amazing short trailer and stunning website.
Total Supply
8,888
Launch Date
TBA
Mint Price
TBA
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