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Mint or Skip. Your One True Guide to all things onchain (since 2023).

In today’s edition:

• The friend.tech bull case explained

• The Top 25

• 3 new drops

Links for the Top 25 drops are HERE.

Did you know?

We have a premium pass that gives you access to a directory of every drop we cover, complete with detailed information on how to get on every whitelist (including those underrated ones that aren’t already full).

And for those curatooors out there, you can get free NFTs just by finding drops that end up on the Mint or Watch list.

Lastly, hang with me and the MoS team in a private discord with weekly voice chats. The vibes are great.

Would you like to be featured in Mint or Skip like the above ☝️ ?

The friend.tech bull case explained 👀

friend.tech did more volume than the entire NFT secondary market on ethereum this weekend.

On one hand, that’s incredible for a social app that’s only been around for a month (it’s also a testament to how down bad NFTs are – but I digress).

On the other hand…you’ve seen this before right?

Spend enough time in crypto and you’ll get accustomed to “flavors of the month” that show similar hockey stick growth, generate euphoria on the timeline, only to collapse and be forgotten weeks later.

And I do think there’s a high probability that friend.tech falls into the same category. You might even say there’s a 95% chance that it does.

But today, I want to have some fun.

So let’s talk about the other 5% – aka the bull case for friend.tech.

friend.tech 101

This is an app that sells one thing: access to people.

Here’s how it works (from our last post):

1. People make accounts by linking a wallet and Twitter profile

2. This creates a token in their name that anyone can buy and sell

3. Buying tokens also grants access to a private chat with the person

4. Creators make royalties when people buy/sell their tokens (some are making a killing)

5. An airdrop is coming and transactions earn “points” that will apply (holding and engaging also earn points)

In other words, it’s an app filled with a bunch of token-gated DM rooms.

These groups are designed to be small. Every time someone buys a “key” to a room, the price goes up (and vice versa). At about 150 keys, the price reaches roughly 1.5 ETH, or ~$2,400.

So it’s made for tiny groups of superfans, as opposed to a mass-market subscription product like Patreon or OnlyFans.

The bull case explained

There are three main reasons why people might be attracted to this app.

Dopamine

friend.tech is a dopamine factory. I mean, all social media networks are to some degree.

But I’m here to tell you that the euphoria of someone buying your key is 10x greater than anything currently on offer in web2 social.

Likewise, the desire to forge a lifelong vendetta against sellers is an interesting development I was not prepared for.

It’s the good and bad of social media, on steroids.

Money

There are multiple ways to make money in friend.tech:

1. Buy a creator key that ends up appreciating in value

2. Earn fees as people buy and sell your own keys

3. Earn points to receive a part of the upcoming friend.tech airdrop

There’s no avoiding speculation in friend.tech (in fact they lean into it).

Which means this isn’t for everyone, but you can still have enormous upside without convincing every normie to join in.

Network

Getting access to your favorite people is real utility. We all have a list of people we’d pay some amount of money to interact with.

And as always, the more people on the app, the more FOMO pressuring outsiders to join.

Some upcoming features that could drive network effects:

• Affiliate links with rev share (confirmed)

• Letting people sign up with other platforms (Reddit is next)

Bottom line

The bull case is basically:

To date, there are still only 140,000 cumulative users, though probably much fewer when removing bots farming the airdrop.

It’s impossible to predict if this can ever get hundreds of millions of users in the long run, but it doesn’t need to in order to be successful.

Can it get to 1M users? I think that’s likely.

How about 10M users? Maybe.

The easiest path is increasing adoption within crypto (it’s still tiny).

After that, the next wave would likely consist of adjacent niches that don’t have some fundamental aversion to speculation.

That means Wallstreetbets, sports bettors, poker players, maybe some Kick streamers, and the broader tech/startup community – which btw were the main crowd pushing Bitclout (a similar app) when it launched in 2021.

There’s still a long way to go

First, the app is still very limited and glitchy. One issue in particular that seems game-breaking is the lack of an exit plan for creators: how do they stop using the app if they lose interest without it feeling like a rug?

It’s also difficult to understand how much current engagement is tied to airdrop farming (probably a lot), which makes the data super noisy.

And finally, we’re already starting to see competitors, any of which could come and steal users with a better formula.

Hence there’s still a high probability this doesn’t work long term.

However, Dear Reader, I think it’s worth checking out and experimenting with because this genre is likely here to stay.

NOTE: These drops are lightly curated. Our only requirement is that they have recognizable founders. As usual, DYOR. To learn more go here.

WAWA

eBoy, some of web3’s most historied pixel artists, is collaborating with onchain identity platform Phi to launch Wawa, a collection of onchain animal avatars whose colorful appearance is determined by your wallet activity.

This collab builds on their previous work together, including eBoy's creation of quest objects for the platform.

Like the quest objects, Wawas should integrate with Phi Land, one of the platform’s core features.

sat packs by Billy Rester

NFT card packs keep gaining popularity, with the latest being Billy Restey’s sat packs on Bitcoin.

The collection includes 141 packs containing sats of various rarities, which are randomly distributed to minters.

Minmaxers be advised – price isn’t known yet.

Museum of Mahomes II

More than 2 years after selling $3.7 million in NFT art (god bless the 2021 wagmi era), NFL superstar Patrick Mahomes is back with a sequel, Museum of Mahomes II, which includes holder raffles, collectible cards and physical redemptions for each NFT.

Details are lacking. We don’t know price, supply (previously they said 15k) or even what chain it’ll be on (the recent Azuki collab points to ETH).