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Today's newsletter is to be translated back into Latin and chanted out loud under a Great Oak Tree.

We'll wait until you're ready.

In today’s edition:

• Scammers might actually win

• The Top 25

• 4 new drops

Links for the Top 25 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 ☝️ ?

Scammers might actually win

O Dearly Beloved, the war against scammers has been a constant since I joined this space.

My DMs are filled with slow rugs, wallet drainers, fake copycat collections and a million other tricksters trying to part me from my precious coins.

And look – I think I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting these, although no one is perfect.

Unfortunately, things are about to get a lot harder (as you’ll see in a minute).

But first I figured it would be good to share our current checklist when looking at new drops since I think it could be helpful to some of you.

Our checklist

As you may know, the very first thing we look at is the team. It’s by far the most important factor with any project, and we put a huge amount of weight on it.

Here’s how we would rank teams based on, I guess, Likelihood to Rob Us Blind.

From least to most likely:

1. Doxxed teams with track records

2. Anon teams with track records (e.g. Punk 6529)

3. Doxxed teams (no track record)

4. Anon teams with social proof (someone credible vets them)

5. Fully Anon teams (no social proof or track record)

This isn’t perfect by any means (SBF, for example, would’ve gone into bucket #1), but it helps probabilistically. Almost all the drops you’ll find in this newsletter are in buckets 1-3.

Another major data point is social media traction. Theoretically, lots of engagement = hype.

But unfortunately, this is also the area where scammers focus the most to prey on people’s FOMO.

Here’s our tier ranking for Twitter engagement:

1. S tier – likes/reposts from verified users (much less likely to be bots)

2. A tier – total credible mutual follows

3. B tier – total views, likes, and reposts

I’m guessing we’ll soon have metrics like Verified Followers and Verified Views – all of which would go in the S tier bucket as well.

With this checklist, it’s easier to find accounts that are botting their engagement or using giveaways to gain followers (and then deleting those giveaways).

But it’s a limited approach, and it’s about to become a lot less effective.

Verified accounts are still maybe less than 1% of total users, and soon AI will be used to create a billion fake accounts for every human, and a billion fake collections for every legitimate one.

Focusing on only verified followers could work to some extent, but you’d be relying on just a small sample and would probably miss out on many legitimate projects.

Plus, we’re starting to see how people might game even the verified system.

Getreach is a perfect example

This is a new crypto app where creators deposit ETH into a smart contract, set up an engagement campaign for likes or comments, and then split the ETH with all the promoters who participate in the campaign.

Their tagline is

So you can imagine a world where people spend $8 for a verified check and still make a profit by joining these decentralized engagement farms. Then we’re back at square one.

For now, none of this is a huge deal because scammers are mostly focusing elsewhere due to the sleepy market.

But our defenses are creaky. I feel like an old commander inspecting the barricades with a lantern and noticing flaws everywhere. Not a huge deal during peace times but potentially catastrophic once the show begins.

People lost hundreds of millions of dollars to scammers during the 2021 bull run. If we get another in 2024 or 2025 could it be even worse?

Help is on the way…sort of?

There are multiple proposed crypto solutions to the identity problem.

Worldcoin is hitting the streets convincing people to scan their eyeballs. But sometimes the medicine is worse than the disease.

ENS can also be used to jumpstart onchain identity. It’s certainly better than paying $100/month to verify across every web2 app.

And now people are saying that friend.tech could be the backbone of a new reputation system. I guess maybe that’s possible, and if I squint hard enough I can see it happening.

But these will all take time to scale and aren’t guaranteed to work.

In the meantime, our checklist (along with using burner wallets and other safeguards) should help keep you safe.

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

Bit Rot by Nahiko

Pseudonymous onchain tinkerer Nahiko just announced their next art project, Bit Rot, a collaboration with renowned collector DAO Fingerprints, who recently sold out another artist’s collection.

I’m keeping an eye on this one given the artist’s track record. Since starting in 2021, they’ve released interesting work, including September 2022’s Entropy, a fully onchain collection that visualized Ethereum blocks through a time-based mechanic (and we know how time gets me going).

BurnGhost Bounty Boxes

Filthy casual gamers, this one’s for you.

Burn Ghost, a platform that raised $3.1M late last year on the idea that Web3 adoption would happen via easy-to-play games, just announced an upcoming collection of 1,000 Bounty Boxes.

What’s in the box? Nobody knows yet, but it’s free, and I’d expect some form of platform benefit.

✨ Added to Top 25 ✨

Citizens of Mantle

An Ethereum Layer 2 chain releasing an official PFP? And it’s free?

Citizens of Mantle is the inaugural NFT collection from Mantle, an Ethereum L2 that launched in July.

It’s dropping on the new Mintle marketplace, itself a collaboration with Rarible. It’ll feature evolving art by renowned artist Chen Man, which changes over time based on your activity on the Mantle network.

The whitelist seems closed now, but a free official PFP encouraging onchain interaction is interesting.

✨ Added to Top 25 ✨

Everyday Satoshis

A free piece of Bitcoin history for everyone.

Digital artist Degen Alfie has gained a following since early 2022 thanks to his vibrant pieces (some of which have sold for outrageous amounts) depicting the main characters of crypto.

He’s now entering the Ordinals arena for the first time with Everyday Satoshis, a free mint of 5,000 avatars based on Bitcoin’s daily price since its inception.

Anyone who ever minted or purchased 1/1 art on Foundation or SuperRare during the last 5 years is whitelisted. Peculiar distribution model, but I like it?