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Whether you're a buyer of JPEGs, PNGs, GIFs, MP4s, or any other bizarre digital media file, you're all welcome to a hot plate and a warm bed at Mint or Skip HQ.

In today’s edition:

• This was a huge L

• Updated rankings

• Four new drops

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This was a huge L

This weekend the unthinkable happened. A highly-anticipated NFT drop failed to live up to the hype – truly a first in a space known for always underpromising and overdelivering.

I’m talking about Ether, the anime PFP lifestyle brand that has been in the works since early 2022.

Ether originally aimed to launch 10,000 NFTs with a public sale at 1 ETH, then later cut that down to a price of 0.65 ETH a few weeks before launch, then further reduced supply to 5,555 NFTs, before finally pausing the mint shortly after launching due to lack of expected demand.

At the time of this writing, only 2,075 NFTs have been minted. Holders are now waiting to hear from the team on next steps.

So why did Ether flop?

Some reasons that come to mind:

• Weird drop mechanics: public sale launched an entire week after the initial WL mint

• Lack of transparency: no one could fully explain what Ether’s vision was

• Bad timing: PFP demand collapsed days before Ether’s mint after the Azuki debacle

Now I don’t want to pile on Ether’s team, who I still think could deliver art that’s better than most PFPs (at least, based on the limited teasers).

Plus, even with all the drama, they did end up raising over $1 million, which makes it one of the largest mints of the year and gives them resources to actually build something (if they still plan to).

But clearly, they misread the current market, which was a major question we raised in our original preview.

However, O Dearly Beloved, we are not gathered here today to cry over What Happened, but instead to pontificate over What Comes Next.

Pray tell, what does a high-profile flop like this mean for our wonderful world of JPEGs?

Here are a few takeaways

Enough with the large supply drops

Unless you’re going the free route, 10k supply for a brand new IP is Dead On Arrival. I’d even try to avoid a 1k supply tbh. There just aren't enough people in the space spending money for that to be a thing anymore.

We kinda knew this months ago, but now it’s beyond doubt.

In fact, change mints altogether

Time to move beyond the BAYC Big Drop meta and choose a better distribution model.

Slow mints, Nouns style auctions, Opepen style trait raffles, Pin The Tail On The Donkey tournaments – I don’t care, be creative.

The Big Drop meta led to Ether developing art for over a year, and spending hundreds of thousands on marketing, before even knowing how much demand existed.

Learn from Kickstarter

Head over to Kickstarter dot com (after finishing this piece of course) and you’ll notice:

1. A level of transparency on the vision unheard of in NFTs

2. An all-or-nothing mechanic where funds are returned if a goal isn’t reached

That second point is especially important if creators insist on using NFTs to bootstrap some new IP, which I think is totally fine when done right.

When done wrong, however, you end up with something like Ether, where they raised far less than they hoped, probably won’t be able to meet the short-term objectives they had, and yet still owe some level of utility to the people who did mint.

Tough situation that other creators should avoid.

PFP 2.0 is coming

I’m not one of those who believes identity projects are forever dead. Yes, we’re moving beyond the 2021 BAYC model, and Ether is probably the last big example of that, but a new meta will take its place shortly.

My personal bet, perhaps based only on hopium for what I’d like to see, is that it’ll have something to do with ERC-6551, which lets NFTs develop their own lore and value beyond what’s provided through initial trait rarity.

I’ll take anything that gets us away from the 10k trait system, where I’m supposed to get excited because my animal PFP revealed a random top hat/eye patch/gold teeth combination that no one else has. That was a shared hallucination that I’m happy to see vaporized.

It’s still all anime? Always has been.

Between the Ether and Azuki flops, anime NFT fans have been getting absolutely rekt lately. But weebs aren’t going anywhere.

Looking at the upcoming pipeline, I see a ton of new anime drops that could make an impact this year, including:

• Project Animus

• 10-KTF

• Symbiogenesis

• JIO

• CyberKongz Genkai

• Overworld Incarna

• Allis by Izumo

• Conviction

This is either heaven or hell, depending on your personal taste.

Ether is a passing of the baton in many ways

It means any creators who still had hopes of a 2021-style Big PFP Drop now have to go back to the drawing board.

That might be bad news for the 12 people who still enjoyed that meta, but it’s great for the rest of us who are looking for innovation.

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

The Exposition by Refik Anadol x Andy Murray x Wimbledon

Arguably the best Scottish export since whiskey, tennis professional Andy Murray surprised his Twitter fans this past Friday with The Exposition, an NFT art drop made in collaboration with museum-renowned artist Refik Anadol.

The work visualizes Murray’s past Wimbledon playing data in Anadol’s characteristic style. It was also meant to dynamically update with live data collected at this year’s tournament, but the drop happened the day after Murray suffered a demoralizing second-round defeat. Bit awkward innit.

Regardless, you’ll struggle to find many Refik editions priced this affordably, and the mint site does tease future art collaborations that this token could unlock, so we’ve….

✨ Added to Watch List ✨

Midnight Muse by Ilan Derech

In last Thursday’s newsletter I wrote about Ilan Derech’s first-ever open edition, Fallen Angel | 堕天使, which ended up being popular enough to receive 861 mints and prompted the artist to follow up with Midnight Muse | 深夜の詩想.

This new piece follows a Burn-to-Claim model, requiring the burning of 4 Fallen Angel NFTs to claim 1 Midnight Muse.

An all too well-known gamification technique for those of us who lived through the open edition frenzy of early 2023, although it seems to be working just fine at the moment. Perhaps a testament to the artist’s collector base?

Starbucks Odyssey: Aku Stamp

The Starbucks Odyssey loyalty program introduces its first stamp collaboration alongside Aku Dreams, a narrative-focused NFT project centered around black empowerment, founded by former baseball pro Micah Johnson.

This coming stamp NFT will be available for eligible users (US-only) who participate in a special in-app journey on the Odyssey app, which I assume as technically a free mint (although you may be required to buy some actual coffee along the way).

Ember Sword Solarwood Alpha Land Sale

Ember Sword, the flagship MMORPG from new gaming studio Bright Star, is entering its alpha phase after being in development for over 4 years, announcing a virtual land sale alongside it (not their first).

The application window for a discounted rate opened today and will be available until Thursday. Although the supply isn’t specified, I can tell from old posts that there should be ~10,000 plots left in this specific game zone.

With land prices ranging from $60 to a whopping $136,000 and a tokenomics model centered around an ERC-20 token, I can’t say I’m holding my breath for this one but do look forward to the release of more gameplay footage.

The Mint List

1. Taproot Wizards. OG Bitcoin meme inscribed as ordinals

2. Project Animus. RTFKT's biggest launch since Clone-X

3. Symbiogenesis. Square Enix's upcoming gaming NFT

4. Themes and Variations. Sotheby’s showcases pioneer gen artist

5. Acceptable Realities. Fellowship’s 2nd AI photography drop

6. 10KTF PFP. Drop from a team that includes Yuga and Beeple

7. Dimensionals - EVE. Free gaming PFP from doxxed studio

8. Garbage Friends. New PFP from the creator of Invisible Friends

9. Parallel Avatars. An all-time best-selling NFT project drops their PFP

10. Tony Babel x Typical Friends. Limited edition from the popular artist