GM

Today's recommended soundtrack for this email is Super Mario Kart - Koopa Beach.

Because that's the closest thing I get to feeling like I'm in the sun nowadays.

In today’s edition:

• Mint this NFT and get royalties forever

• The 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.

Mint this NFT and get royalties forever

In the beginning, there was a paid mint meta.

Then there were free NFTs.

Now we’re getting mints that will pay you…forever? A JPEG that you can pass down your family line, with entire generations living off of pixels?

“Thanks abuelo”, you might hear one day decades from now, “for minting virtually every cringe NFT you could find until you accidentally hit one that didn’t go straight to zero. Now we own land.”

But how does this work?

The idea is simple: shared royalties.

You mint an NFT, and then, through a decentralized smart contract, you receive a portion of all secondary royalties for that NFT in perpetuity.

Or, you just hold an NFT and get rewarded with a small percentage of all royalties across the collection.

We saw early examples of this back in 2021 with collections like World of Women sharing royalties with certain holders, but the process was super manual and messy.

You basically relied on two centralized layers. First, Opensea had to collect royalties and distribute them manually to the team, then the team had to give out “dividends” to holders.

But now the idea is coming back in a bigger and more transparent way.

This new wave started with Limit Break’s open source ERC-721C contract in May, which gave developers a variety of ways to share royalties with onchain enforcement (I covered this here).

And now we’re seeing the first example of this in action with:

Overworld: Incarna

This is an upcoming Web3 multiplayer RPG minting soon on Ethereum.

The game is being published by Xteriogames, who just announced a $15m investment from Binance earlier this month.

It’s an interesting project for several reasons, and they still have an ongoing whitelist program.

But today I want to focus on this:

Now I find that these royalty sharing ideas tend to be controversial. Maybe you’re having an emotional reaction to them as we speak (breathe; we’ll get through this).

Personally, I can see pros and cons.

Pros

Make mints less risky for everyone

Lately, we’ve seen a slowdown in new mints. Creators aren’t sure if they can sell out, and collectors aren’t sure if they want to take a chance.

Shared royalties make it more likely a mint will sell, which could mean more activity coming back to the market.

BFFs for life

Why lose supporters just because they sold your NFT (which could happen for a variety of personal reasons). With perpetual royalties, you can now have lifelong incentivized supporters.

At the end of the day, royalty sharing is just a form of marketing spend.

Royalties are cool again

We’re essentially in a 0% royalty world now. But sharing royalties with collectors might be the way to get everyone on board with making them cool again.

Ironically, sharing royalties might be the best way for creators to earn royalties themselves.

Cons

This puts the focus on the wrong thing

We can see the tweets now:

“Here’s how you too can make $500/week in passive income WAGMI 🚀.”

NFTs need to move away from hyper-financialization. Not sure this gets us closer to that.

RIP ERC-721

These contracts, by definition, require some form of whitelist/blacklist feature to make sure traders don’t bypass royalties.

This means moving away from ERC-721, the gold standard for decentralized ownership on Ethereum.

I’ve seen arguments that ERC-721 is already failing because it encourages high-frequency 0% royalty trading, which isn’t great for the space in general.

Still, let’s hope we don’t regret leaving it behind.

What do you think?

Hit me up in the replies if you feel strongly in either direction.

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

GRIPPED by hafftka

Ordinals is now Bitcoin’s indisputable #1 NFT protocol, yet a sect in the Bitcoin NFT community, the Rare Pepe apostles, still show affection for Counterparty (XCP) collections. Among them is PepePawnShop, a Rare Pepe social hub co-founded by respected collector Vincent Van Dough.

Today at 3 PM ET, the shop is dropping GRIPPED, a 69-supply art edition by renowned artist Michael Hafftka. The work is based on a 1983 painting the artist had previously created.

This is the first XCP drop I’ve ever highlighted here because they seem less relevant as Ordinals gain dominance.

Sum by Duane King

The great NFT art pivot has been underway for about a year, with many platforms and projects refocusing their efforts on art drops.

Among these is Highlight.xyz, funded in 2022, which originally positioned itself as a no-code web3 community-building platform for creators to launch tokens easily for their fans.

However, they’ve rebranded as an open generative art platform, which will launch their first drop tomorrow at 12 PM ET: Sum by Duane King.

Duane is a team member at Highlight, and although Sum is his first generative project, he does present some interesting mechanics. For example, the art will be dynamically generated on-chain during mint, considering variables like gas price and the minter’s wallet address.

Starbucks Odyssey: Going Places Journey

Another week, another Starbucks stamp. Granted, this one was actually announced last week, a day before the separate Limited Edition drop announcement.

This new Going Places journey (for non-Starbucks maxis, journeys = in-app missions) starts tomorrow.

While we don’t know exactly what it will entail (you’ll probably have to buy coffee at some point), we do know that there is a free NFT stamp at the end of it all, which will probably come with benefits for the Odyssey program.

As usual, it’s only available for residents of the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, U-S-A.

Songcamp Sessions Vol. 1

Songcamp, a music NFT project founded by Matthew Chaim in 2021, could be described as a home for decentralized musical experiments with a focus on artist collaborations. For example, this June 2022 drop saw 77 artists form a headless band releasing music packs.

They’ve recently unveiled Sessions, a new series of artist collaborations that will begin with the first song of Volume 1, Heavy Calm. A total of 50 NFTs will drop on sound.xyz this Thursday, with further song releases for Volume 1 expected from August to October.

The Mint List

1. Taproot Wizards. OG Bitcoin meme inscribed as ordinals

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

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

4. 10KTF PFP. Drop from a team that includes Yuga and Beeple

5. Symbiogenesis. Square Enix's upcoming gaming NFT

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

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

8. Reddit Gen 4 Avatars. Fourth collection from the social media giant

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

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