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Do the right thing: share mint or skip in a local group chat today!

In today’s edition:

• The most important NFT you'll ever own

• Updated Mint and Watch Lists

• Four new drops

More info on Mint/Watch lists 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.

The most important NFT you’ll ever own

O Dearly Beloved, you are all slacking. This morning I realized that I had, for some reason, forgotten to purchase my own name as an ENS.

So I calmly opened up the ENS portal, found that yungcicero.eth was still available, and then smoothly purchased it before breakfast.

Luckily, despite having this name at the top of a newsletter with over 20,000 readers for months (specifically 20,000 NFT enthusiasts), no one had thought to buy it before me.

Two years ago I would’ve had a dozen squatters in my DMs trying to upsell me on my own name plus a million other variations like yungcicero69.eth.

This lack of energy around ENS is a sure sign of a bear market.

But that could change soon.

First some quick context

ENS, or Ethereum Name Service, is a protocol that links Ethereum wallet addresses with shorter name URLs.

So instead of 0x32E0e23adG66be75e3679eD278488cdC06f093A8

You get: readmintorskip.eth

This makes it easier to send assets to and from your wallet, and it can also act as personal branding across different web3 apps.

To date there are over 2.9 million ENS names, making it one of the largest NFT “collections” in crypto.

Now, what caused me to remember to buy my name this morning?

Specifically, it was this story yesterday of Mr. Elon Musk yoinking the @x Twitter handle from a user that had been holding it for years.

This user received no money, no chance to appeal, just a cold hard “what are you going to do about it nerd?” stare.

It’s a great reminder that in Web2 you never own, you’re just tolerated… for now. And this is no foundation to build your online identity on. Hence, why we’ve seen many expensive ENS buys over the years, like

• paradigm.eth for 420 ETH

• sam.eth for 100 ETH

• 000.eth for 300 ETH

But there are other reasons to suspect ENS could get some renewed attention soon.

Twitter is inching toward payments and crypto

• Elon has repeatedly made his payments vision clear

• They’re applying for MTL, which covers crypto

• There’s a Dogecoin symbol in Elon’s bio

• They’re working on letting users send each other digital rewards

• Twitter already has ETH NFT integrations

• Elon started following Vitalik (ok this one’s a stretch)

Of course none of these, by themselves, says that ENS will be added as a form of identity or tipping down the road – but it’s increasingly becoming less far-fetched.

Human verification is a mess

Maybe the biggest issue facing social media today is the coming horde of AI bots that will completely trample over existing verification tools (captcha, etc).

To fight this, Twitter added paid verification, with the idea being that money acts as friction limiting the size of any given bot army.

Meta did the same, and today we’re hearing that Reddit will add this too (they haven’t confirmed it’ll cost money, but I’m guessing it will).

Look, are we really going to be paying $8 on Twitter, $8 on Meta, $8 on Reddit, and Youtube, and Snapchat, and every other social site we visit?

There’s a breaking point coming. This is why Worldcoin is hitting the streets trying to convince people to scan their eyeballs.

ENS is another viable path. Instead of paying $200 a month, we can just let people make a single deposit and then verify that deposit across the many apps that they log into.

I’m sure apps would prefer monthly subscriptions for the pleasure of being labeled a human, but my guess is that this is a stepping stone until we find a more sustainable model.

Social media platforms are opening up

We seem to get a new Twitter competitor every few months now. And one of the ways they differentiate themselves is by allowing more interoperability.

Threads, for example, announced a decision to join the Fediverse, a decentralized protocol that lets users move their data across other social media platforms like Mastodon.

If the (payments + social) wave grows then we could see platforms embrace a portable wallet like ENS.

Just yesterday, on the same day that Elon snatched the @x handle, Farcaster announced that they activated ENS domains on their own social network.

Bottom line

There are enough signs telling us that ENS still might be a bigger deal than people think.

And yet, monthly registrations are near an all-time low.

This could be a great opportunity to score a valuable domain while few people are watching.

But more importantly, it’s a reminder to secure your own identity ASAP.

Signed,

yungcicero.eth

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

Mastercard Artist Accelerator Showcase

Remember when I wrote about that free Mastercard Music Pass about 3 months ago, which provided access to a suite of AI music tools and an inside look into the creative process of the 5 artists chosen for their accelerator program? Yeah, me neither.

However, the fruits of these artists’ labors will be showcased today, as the songs created during the program drop today on billboard’s YouTube channel.

Also, free NFTs of the songs dropped yesterday on the OneOf marketplace and are still available to mint for an indefinite period of time.

Mintify Genesis Key

Mintify, an NFT tools platform launched and funded in 2022, is restructuring their existing membership NFTs and launching a new tier of Genesis Keys next Monday.

The change updates the platform’s reward systems, which will include XP Points that lead to prizes & raffles, a leaderboard, and in the near future, a fungible coin.

One for the agriculturally-inclined trader.

Jarvinart: Bridging Realities

Having sold out the first of its Experiences last month, FVCKRENDER’s platform, LVCIDIA, gears up for its second art release, Bridging Realities by digital artist Jarvinart (who also recently inaugurated Season 4 of 6529’s Memes).

Comprised of two separate editions, Manual Labor and Nightdrive, the work here should appeal to fans of the artist’s signature cyberpunk style and introduces her first AI-assisted piece in Manual Labor.

STAPLEVERSE × Zaid Kirdsey

Jeff Staples’s Stapleverse gears up for a drop with digital artist Zaid Kirdsey, who is known for his colorful, anime-influenced works and previous collaborations with NFT powerhouses like RTFKT.

While details are scant, there looks to be a focus on interactivity and aesthetics, which hints at some integrations with Sapienz, Staplaverse’s flagship PFP, and the first big collection to integrate ERC-6551.

Hopefully a step forward in use cases for Mint or Skip’s favorite token standard.

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

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

5. Symbiogenesis. Square Enix's upcoming gaming NFT

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

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

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

9. SAI by IZUMO. Free art SBTs from a well-connected VTubing project

10. PROOF Grails IV. Proof flexes their art curation abilities for a 4th time