GM

Welcome to the 26 people who joined yesterday. I’m picturing all of you arriving in something like this:

Ready to improve. Ready to make friends. Ready to make your parents proud.

None of those things will happen here of course, but you may still be mildly entertained.

In today’s edition:

• NFTs are in free fall

• Nakamigos: the sequel??

• Our latest rankings

• New drops we found yesterday

More info on Mint/Watch lists HERE.

NFTs are in free fall

Last night I came across an interesting chart. This is looking at unique NFT users — so wallets that are buying or selling NFTs — across all major Ethereum platforms. And it looks bad.

Basically, users have been in free fall this week. We now have less than 10k daily wallets across all platforms. That’s the lowest it's been since early 2021.

Keep in mind this is daily wallets, so it’s not saying that there are less than 10k people in the NFT space.

The monthly number would definitely be higher, although probably not more than 5x higher if I had to guess, and there’s a lot of people who are sitting on the sidelines (still here, just not trading).

Still though, not great.

Now why are we seeing such a drop-off? People rushed to my tweet with a bunch of possible stories for why their bags are healthier than they might appear.

Here are a few:

• Gas has been way too expensive

• Memecoins are splitting attention with NFTs

• End of Blur farming incentives

• NFT NYC drawing people away

• Tax season = more conservative

• Ordinals taking market share (it’s an eth chart)

Sure – I buy some of these. And it’s not like all NFTs are down bad this week, in fact some collections like Azuki, Miladies and Pixelmon (yes, that Pixelmon) have all done fairly well.

But still, some people are asking whether this is the end of the road for most of these NFTs, many of which are not just running out of attention, but money too.

Well let’s see, you can think of three scenarios: 

1. NFTs go straight to zero. No rebound. F’s in the chat.

2. A New NFT narrative brings attention, but collectors skip over prior NFTs and just buy whatever the new meta is. Not great for your bags.

3. A New NFT narrative brings attention, and collectors buy a small number of current NFTs best positioned for this wave.

That last one is the most optimistic. The NFT space is so small that a single unexpected event could 5-10x the audience overnight.

Mr. Beast launches some project, Dr. Disrespect’s game does better than expected, Reddit’s marketplace knocks it out of the park, it can come from anywhere.

The upside is that there’s less competition for new drops. It’s never been easier to get in on hype mints. The days of being asked to solve sudoku puzzles and repeatedly say GM in some discord server alongside thousands of bots are thankfully behind us.

Our take: One thing we’ve learned is that it’s never as good as it seems, and equally it’s never as bad as it seems.

Times like these encourage experimentation, and as is usually the case, it’s likely that somewhere someone is already working on The Next Big Thing.

And rest assured, O Dearly Beloved, that we’ll be here to cover it.

Well this was a surprise. I guess you either die a vibes-only PFP, or you live long enough to become a utility pass.

Or maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise. Nakamigos was almost definitely more successful than the team expected, so a sequel of some kind makes sense, both artistically and financially.

Jokes aside, we’re not sure what this is. Could be an NFT, could be merch, could be a shock cameo in James Cameron’s Avatar 3.

Stay tuned to find out.

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

Shadow Wolves

Cool Cats just launched Shadow Wolves, a side collection with a focus on new narrative content. Like Cool Pets it’s in the “Super Cool” member tier, and it comes as a follow-up to the Fractures airdrop that happened in late February.

The collection can only be minted by burning a Fracture by May 19th. Fractures not burned by this date will be useless according to the project page.

DRAUP #00: SEEN ON SCREEN

Digital fashion house DRAUP recently announced its first drop, SEEN ON SCREEN. It’s a 648-piece collection by Nicolas Sassoon launching next week with various price points depending on the item.

The platform, founded by Dani Loftus, received $1.5M in pre-seed funding last year from Variant Fund, FLAMINGO DAO, Gmoney and Cozomo de’ Medici.

Sparkadia: Ascended Kana

Sparkadia is an ecosystem of interconnected games made by a doxxed team that includes ex-Riot Games employees.

They describe their first game, Sparkball, as “League of Legends meets Rocket League”.

Their first mint will happen on Magic Eden in May for free. Minting will give access to an in-game character skin and an alpha key for their first Early Access weekend in June.

LALA x The Wolf of Wall Street

LALA, a Polygon-based digital collectibles platform focused on movies and television shows, announced their first drop yesterday, a partnership with the iconic film The Wolf of Wall Street.

Hiram Vazquez founded the platform in 2022 and recently received $3M in funding from Seven Seven Six, Alexis Ohanian’s venture fund.

We’re curious to see if the proposed revenue-sharing model for this type of collectible can work, given the unfortunate performance of similar past models.

MESSANA

Following up on their DGFamily box releases last year, Dolce & Gabanna is partnering with UNXD again for Messana, a mythology-inspired PFP project that involves community co-creation.

We don’t know much about the project yet, but it seems like the mint mechanics are heavily gamified, with “four trials of Messana” being mentioned on the project’s website, as well as benefits for holders of DGFamily boxes (links to those here and here).

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. Wildcard Genesis. Gaming drop from an experienced team.

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

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

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