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Welcome to our 9 new subscribers.

It takes a special kind of person to sub to an NFT newsletter in the middle of a summer weekend during a slow market.

They are truly the holiest among us.

In today’s edition:

• I’m addicted to this new NFT game (help)

• Two new additions to the Lists

• Four fresh drops

Links for the Mint/Watch list 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 ☝️ ?

I’m addicted to this new NFT game (help)

Last week I spoke about this new Parallel Starter Deck (still minting on Base) that came with access to the game’s beta.

Well, Dear Readers, I bought it. And I played the beta. All weekend.

It might be the best Web3 game I’ve played yet.

First, for those that haven’t been following, what even is Parallel?

Here are the basics

1. Parallel is a trading card game where the cards are NFTs

2. Founders have industry XP, including working at Blizzard/Riot

3. It has slowly built a cult following since first selling pre-launch NFTs in 2021

4. Now one of the most traded collections ever with $150M volume

5. Still outperforms during a bear market. Sold $1.3M worth of NFT avatars back in July

6. Parallel has a token called $PRIME which will be used throughout the ecosystem

7. Beta launched on July 31st

The Beta

As the lore goes, future humans went a step too far with their technological experiments and brought catastrophic ruin to Earth. This led to humanity branching off into five factions across space.

The starter decks let you choose which faction to play as, but the decision isn’t permanent and you can create more than one deck, so don’t lose brain cells overthinking it.

Regardless, each deck gives you 40 NFT cards that come with everything you need to start playing immediately.

I won’t get too deep into the actual mechanics but just know that each deck is composed of four types of cards: effects (one-time spells), units (creatures), upgrades (unit enhancements) and relics (more permanent effects).

Games come in the form of traditional 1 v 1, player vs player duels that take 5-20 minutes to play out.

The core of the beta is broken into four parts: Rookie mode, AI mode, Unranked, and Ranked.

Ranked is not only the most exciting and sweatiest mode, but also the only way to earn $PRIME. Currently, you receive $PRIME whenever you win a ranked match while having NFT cards in your deck. Then you can sell the token or spend it on Glints (the in-game currency).

In my experience, you don’t actually earn a ton of $PRIME unless you invest heavily into the game (after around 50-60 matches, ~1/3rd of those with a full NFT deck, I only earned 0.2 Prime which is about 50 cents). But rewards will probably increase after the beta.

Finally, if you’re like me, at some point you may feel the desire to upgrade your deck after taking an abnormally long string of Ls in competition.

Parallel isn’t selling NFT packs directly at the moment, but you can buy virtually any existing card from other players on secondary markets like Opensea (which I did).

Our Take

Let me get right into it: Parallel is legitimately fun to play.

Forget the NFTs, or play-to-earn, or anything related to crypto or wagmi culture. This is something that I could honestly see myself downloading from Steam and playing just for pure enjoyment.

This is an important point.

It’s easy to say that it looks better than most (or all) of the garbage-tier onchain games that get promoted on crypto Twitter.

But so what? Being the best-of-the-worst isn’t a great selling point if you’re trying to attract real gamers that have access to an infinite library of AAA titles.

In this case, however, I think Parallel is showing signs that they can actually compete with the best.

This is true both in the gameplay, but also in the presentation (which you can see here). The menus are slick, the sound and animations are crisp, and they do a great job of creating an immersive experience that doesn’t feel far off from top games in the genre.

So, you have something that can hang even without NFTs.

But of course, there are NFTs. And if Parallel ever makes it into the mainstream, it’ll be because so much is made better when players have real ownership: pack openings are more intense, trading with players is actually a thing (unlike web2 TCGs), and earning $PRIME with victories is an addictive bonus.

Bottom Line

It’s extremely early, and much can still go wrong whenever you mix a real-money economy with a genre that is already notoriously difficult to balance.

But this is now going to be my go-to example whenever a local tourist asks me about the virtues of onchain gaming (this never happens).

Btw, Parallel will be free-to-play when it launches, so you don’t have to actually buy any NFTs to try it out.

If you want to get in now, you can still buy one of the starter decks on Base for 0.05 ETH. They're available for the next 2 weeks.

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

Onchain Masterpieces: Coca-Cola's Collection of Iconic Art

Coca-Cola collaborates with Coinbase for day 5 of Onchain Summer, featuring a mint for 8 different art pieces that remix the brand’s iconic glass bottle with several art pieces.

Onchain Summer has already had some hits since starting last week – like Deekay’s open edition mint that moved almost $1.3M. But this drop is making me feel the 2021 wagmi top shivers.

Dost thou feel 'em too, Dear Reader?

SAI by IZUMO #2

Following the sale of 10,000 free SBTs for SAI’s inaugural edition, Japanese project Izumo continues their inclusive art program with SBT mint #2, featuring art from voice actress Aoi Yuki.

I’ll be getting in on this free mint action myself, even though it’s currently unclear whether collecting all 6 of SAI’s weekly mints leads to some kind of deeper access or if we’re just in it for the art.

For me, this project remains one of the more interesting ones in anime.

Meme Card #133 by mpkoz

Another week, another trio of 6529 Meme Cards.

Friday’s looks especially appealing as American artist Michael Kozlowski, a.k.a. mpkoz, drops that day, adding to his list of partnerships with name brands like Art Blocks, Bright Moments and PROOF.

Most of mpkoz’s recent work has been onchain generative art, but the 6529 platform doesn’t yet have the technical capability to host this kind of mint, which makes me wonder if we’ll see a different style from the artist.

As usual, the release follows the 6529 allowlist model determined by collector holdings.

sevensed

Alright, this is a weird one.

You’ve got artist Kevin Abosch, known for his AI work, at the wheel of an AI-powered MMORPG called sevensed. And if we take the project’s Twitter following list as gospel, it looks to be a collaboration with Animoca.

The game will onboard players via an NFT drop happening soon. Hopefully, we get a gameplay roadmap reveal before then so we know what we’re looking at here.

The Mint List

1. Taproot Wizards. OG Bitcoin meme inscribed as ordinals

2. 10KTF PFP. Drop from a team that includes Yuga and Beeple

3. Genesis SFT Pass. Digital anime collectibles from a notable team

4. Shadow Hats. Ordinals drop from the creators of Forgotten Runes

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

6. LUCI: Chapter 5. Follow-up from artist with esteemed collector base

7. Symbiogenesis. Square Enix's upcoming gaming NFT

8. Quasi Dragons. Innovative drop from an Art Blocks veteran

9. Memeland [TBC]. High-value treasure MVPs minting on BTC

10. 923 Empty Rooms. Influential artist + Art Blocks + Bright Moments