GM

Welcome to the new 75 subscribers who joined yesterday.

We recently set up notifications to alert us whenever we get a new sub. Terrible for productivity, but it makes us feel alive.

In today’s edition:

• Goblintown made some people angry

• Deekay teams up with 6529

• New drops we found yesterday

More info on Mint/Watch lists HERE.

Where did all the Goblins go??

Context

Truth Labs – the team behind Goblintown, Secret Society, The 187, and Grumples – made a surprise change to the metadata across all their tokens earlier this week.

As a result, anyone holding one of these tokens woke up to find their art changed to this:

Why is this happening? As many NFT participants have discovered over the last 6 months, secondary royalties were never enforceable on-chain. Instead they were typically processed manually by Opensea, and for a while this was enough given Opensea’s dominance in the market.

Nowadays, thanks to competition from other marketplaces causing a race to 0 fees, royalties have become optional. And as you would expect, when given the option, most traders are choosing to not pay.

Some creators are fighting back by migrating their tokens to updated standards that help with enforcement, and this stunt by Goblintown is just the latest example.

Market Takes

There are many ways to look at something like this. Here are a few perspectives we’ve come across:

Decentralization maxi: This is ridiculous. There are many definitions of what web3 is about, but we can all agree that “surprise metadata upgrades across thousands of tokens to coerce holders into minting another token” ain’t it.

If we don’t respect the immutability of what we’re buying, then we might as well go back to Fortnite skins.

Goblintown NFT “investor”: Look, all my bags are already down 80%. I’m just trying to keep Goblintown from going to zero, and I think our prospects are better if the team actually has resources to cook with.

Letting traders get away with 0% royalties over and over does nothing for me or for this project. The faster we move to this new token, the better.

Royalties maxi: Creators were promised royalties. That’s why many of us came here in the first place. Now it turns out they were never enforceable with current standards, but we can change those standards to make enforcement easier.

Does this sacrifice a bit of decentralization? Maybe – but the alternative is fewer creators being able to take risks on innovative ideas, which is a net negative for the space. You’d rather they go back to pitching VCs?

Our Take

As usual, there’s a bit of truth to each argument.

Our belief is that, in the coming years, we’re going to see an endless variety of different token standards gain popularity.

Basically anything that can be built will be built. You’ll find tokens across the entire ownership/decentralization spectrum: Fortnite skins on one end, immutable on-chain artifacts on the other.

And for certain tokens, upgradeable contracts with more centralized features could be beneficial. Think dynamic content that changes based on storylines created by the founders.

In other cases, like with pure art, you may prefer immutable data to ensure you won’t walk into your bedroom one night and see a completely different piece of digital art hanging on the wall over your bed.

This variety is the beauty of a permissionless network. And anyone trying to ban new standards from emerging, for the sake of decentralization, is ironically doing the opposite.

But of course, holders need to know what it is that they’re buying into.

In the case of Goblintown, a bit of due diligence would’ve pointed out that you were buying into a contract with upgradeable metadata. So I don’t know if you can really act that surprised.

Was their method a bit crude? Yeah, that’s fair. Check out Otherdeed Expanded for an example of how a team can use utility to smoothly nudge people into a new contract with royalty enforcement.

But generally, this is the risk you take with these types of NFTs. If the market really doesn’t like it, then we should start seeing a premium for NFTs with immutable data.

And if you’re reading this and thinking to yourself either:

1. You’re wrong, this is a slippery slope and not what crypto is about.

2. You’re right, but I don’t have the time to do research on every jpeg I buy.

Then, I don’t know, maybe you should be looking at Bitcoin Ordinals – they’re always immutable, which means users never have to worry about these kinds of things.

Personally, we’ll keep buying everything under the sun if we like the story.

6529 Memes S3 – DeeKay

A new season of the popular 6529 Memes is coming Monday with art from the prolific South-Korean animator DeeKay. This is just a couple of weeks after season 2’s last card minted out.

Minting will be done through a strict allow list process like past 6529 Memes. Deekay collectors had their snapshot yesterday, and current 6529 collectors will see another snapshot on Sunday.

The market has generally reacted positively to all things Deekay: the Let’s Walk series is becoming a blueprint for various other animation NFTs down the line, and whales have been more than willing to spend outrageous amounts on his 1/1s in the past.

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

Imaginary Rides by Imaginary Ones

A companion drop for Imaginary Ones. It features 3D cars drawn in the same style as the original collection and an online racing minigame called “Bubble Rider”, which gives players rewards for the upcoming mint if they rank among the top spots before May 3rd.

Part of the collection will also be airdropped to people who stake tokens from the original collection or the HUGO collaboration before the May 3rd deadline.

One to watch given the project’s potential to keep growing and collaborating with other big brands in the future.

The ARTFT Mint Pass by CASETiFY

A genesis mint pass by the popular phone case company Casetify. It’ll give holders exclusive access to physical & digital drops, a lifetime supply of phone cases and early access to Casetify collab collections.

We’re curious whether Casetify’s ongoing collaboration with Memeland fits into this pass’s plans in any way.

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. Moonbirds Mythics. The fourth collection in the Proof ecosystem.

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

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

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

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

10. Seaport Subject by Botto. 1st editioned work from an AI artist.