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Welcome to the 51 people who joined yesterday. You’re all beautiful people and we won’t ever let anyone hurt you.

In today’s edition:

• Bonkler hurts my brain in a good way

• Our latest mint rankings

• Drops we found in the last 24 hours

More info on Mint/Watch lists HERE.

Bonkler hurts my brain in a good way

Context

Bonkler is the latest project from the Milady Maker team comprising of two new collections.

The main collection is being sold through 400 auctions happening almost daily – today Bonkler #2 was sold for 25 eth.

Our Take

There’s a saying you might hear whispered in the courtyards throughout the internet: you can’t keep a good meme down.

It means ideas are often strengthened when they’re attacked. Trying to shut something down often has the opposite effect — it brings even more awareness and usually causes that group to double down in defiance.

In other words, if you come at the king you best not miss.

This has been the story of Milady Maker so far. It originally started as an avant-garde PFP collection with an aura of ironic, dark humor. They call it network spirituality, and tbh I could go on but maybe you should just visit their website and see for yourself.

Btw, this was not an instant hit; the Miladies mint actually didn’t fully sell out for months.

But it soon started to gain momentum, often being used by well-known DeFi influencers and crypto Twitter shitposters as a way to poke fun at mainstream collections like Bored Apes. Eventually, it rose to a floor of about 2 eth.

Then the controversy hit. The original founders were accused of being linked to online groups known for bigotry, offensive trolling and even grooming.

These accusations were denied as either being outright false or misunderstood performance art. I don’t think there’s enough conclusive evidence to weigh in on either side, so we won’t be making that judgment here.

But it does seem like more people are coming back around to Miladies. We’re seeing large accounts once again start using them as PFPs, and the floor is back to its all-time high.

The end result after all this drama is a hardened cult. You won’t find many PFPs that are as aligned around a shared ethos and vibe as Miladies are.

Now we have Bonkler, the next major project from the Milady Maker team.  

What is Bonkler?

Bonkler is a set of auctions comprising two new collections.

Collection #1 is Bonkler. How it works:

1. A new Bonkler is generated and auctioned for 23 hours.

2. There will only be a max of 400 Bonklers, all auctioned daily throughout the next several months.

3. Each Bonkler can later be burned to redeem 70% of the final sale - making them deflationary.

4. Rarity for Bonklers are slowly revealed over time. Buyers won’t immediately know how rare their NFT is.

Collection #2 is Auctioncore. How it works:

1. Every bid on a Bonkler also acts as a claim on an “Auctioncore NFT”.

2. These NFTs will later be airdropped to the bidding wallets.

3. Rarity is determined by your bid placement – the higher your bid in the final order, the more rare your NFT will be.

Let’s break down some of the most interesting ideas here:

Sub-collection auctions

We’ve recently seen companies like Yuga Labs and DeLabs auction off rarer sub-collections. In both cases – Twelvefold for Yuga and BTC DeGods for DeLabs – the mints were wildly successful and generated millions for the founding teams.

What I like about these is that they can create value without the massive dilution we’ve seen from earlier sub-collections like Cool Pets and Veefriends 2.

Limited auctions target whales and give them something that doesn’t need a ton of utility besides the fact that they’re elevated flex-assets inside of your ecosystem.

The team makes money, which is harder to find these days, and the genesis collection doesn’t have to worry about splitting liquidity with another set of low-price NFTs.

Bonkler takes this to a new level by forking the Nouns “one nft per day” model, which has the added benefit of stretching the attention cycle for a long period of time.

Delayed rarity

The problem with auctions is that the excitement usually ends right after the purchase is made. You know what you got, you know that you paid fair market value for it, so thanks for coming and have a nice day.

With Bonkler, rarity continues to shift and evolve over the course of the auctions, giving people a reason to keep trading and talking about the changing pecking order of the different NFTs.

Burn-to-claim reserves

As we said, 70% of every sale goes into a reserve that can later be claimed by burning that same Bonkler.

Why would you burn it? It’s possible that you’re left with a common Bonkler after all the rarities are rolled, and maybe these are barely trading above the 70% reserve anyways. So you burn.

All the potential game theory here makes my head hurt, and this is why they’re calling it a Grand New Experimental Financial Adventure (their words not mine).

Very curious to see how this plays out.

NFTs for bidders

We’ve seen experiments before where auctions reward losing bidders with a percentage of the final eth sale. In the case of Bonkler, you get an NFT and the rarity depends on where your bid is ranked.

This seems like a more fun way of gamifying an auction, and we can see it gaining popularity, which could make auctions even more common.

Final Thoughts

All in, Bonker is one of the most interesting drops we’ve seen in a while. Outside of the mechanics and gamification, we also think the art is refreshing and nostalgic in all the right ways, and given current auction prices it’s clearly resonating with others.

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

Degen Civilization

A pepe-themed PFP collection by long-running art project AlphaDoggg. It’s launching 2 days from now with a 4,269 total supply and a public mint price of 0.069 ETH (nice). Holders of DOGGG Tags and Bidder Beps get access to free mints and a discounted presale phase.

If we’re honest, the PFP art is mid at best. But the real interesting story here is seeing what kinds of artists end up collaborating with Degen Civilization, as Alpha Dogg has previously worked with notable ones.

Escher Exclusive - Arsonic

Another week, another exclusive edition launching on Escher.

This week Arsonic (one half of Zeblocks) is launching a yet-unnamed piece. The 420 supply will be sold on a first-come-first-served basis for $69 each (0.032 ETH at the time of writing this).

Zeeverse - Legend of Soulkeeper

Zeeverse is an Arbitrum-based F2P MMORPG developed by Latvian studio Beetroot Lab. Their genesis collection drops next week.

There will be 2 types of NFTs available during the open edition mint:

1. Soul Shard SBTs priced at 0.047 ETH, which give lifetime access to the game’s battle pass

2. Loot Pods priced at 0.017 ETH, which can contain various items, including in-game cosmetics and allocations to the game’s upcoming token.

Swoops SSN1

Swoops is a strategy-focused basketball simulation game where players can build their own team to compete against others for cash prizes.

Their beta started back in January and now the project is making its first official release this May: Season 1 NFT sale will include 1,500 Swoopsters (in-game characters) sold for 0.05 ETH each.

The project received $3.5m in funding one year ago from notable investors Gary Vaynerchuk and DraftKings CEO, Jason Robins. Manish Sinha founded the project.

THE MINT LIST

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

2. FewoWorld. New PFP by Fewocious, a rising star in the art world.

3. Symbiogenesis. Square Enix's upcoming gaming NFT.

4. Ether. Anime PFP collection by viii, an artist with a cult following.

5. ZOGZ by Matt Furie. Open Editions from the creator of Pepe.

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

7. Starbucks First Store Collection. Next drop from the big brand.

8. Wildcard Genesis. Gaming drop from an experienced team.

9. Nike Our Force 1. Digital shoe drop from the global consumer brand.

10. Proof Diamond. Curated drop with art from Beeple and other artists.