GM

Welcome to the 15 people who joined yesterday.

That’s the equivalent of a Rugby team, so that’s who I’m picturing: just a group of scary looking, jacked, meme collectors.

If that’s not accurate then just play along — do not ruin this for me.

In today’s edition:

• Get your free golden ticket

• Updated NFT rankings

• Newly found drops

More info on Mint/Watch lists HERE.

GET YOUR FREE GOLDEN TICKET

Context

Adidas revealed a free raffle for 34 Golden Ticket NFTs on their Confirmed mobile app. Winners will receive an airdrop on May 5th.

The ticket is fully tradable and can be redeemed to get access to any limited-edition Adidas drop for 12 months.

To enter: download the app and head to “events”. Then register and enter an ethereum address. You must be in the US or Canada to apply.

Our Take

There’s an old phrase that has served me well in the past, it goes like this:

One is an anecdote, two is a coincidence, and three's a pattern.

This comes to mind when observing the following:

• (April 24) Nike – RTFKT X Air Force 1 forge mint

• (April 26) Adidas – Token-gated Indigo Herz merch drop

• (April 27) Puma – Grailed Puma NFT mint (more info below)

• (May 5) Adidas – Golden Ticket NFT raffle

• (May 8) Nike – Swoosh mint with 106k Our Force 1 NFTs

Welcome to the year of fashion NFTs

In a span of two weeks, you have three of the largest sneaker brands diving head-first into the world of on-chain drops.

By the way, these are mainstream events, not some afterthought side-quest campaigns.

For example, Nike consistently tweets about their Our Force 1 collection from their main account with 9.7 million followers, while putting serious budget behind NFT trailers and interactive billboards.

And Adidas placed their token-gated merch drop front-and-center on their main Confirmed App, which has millions of users.

In the end, Sneakers and NFTs are a perfect match

They check all the right boxes for what might be a future bull run:

✔️ Scale. Millions of sneakerheads bought 1.2 billion sneakers in 2021. Even a low conversion rate would be a huge deal given how small NFTs are currently.

✔️Customer fit. Collecting is already a core part of the sneaker world. A survey found 70% of enthusiasts buy 1-4 pairs monthly.

✔️Utility. NFTs could be the main way to access hyped sneaker drops in the near future, and they double as loyalty reward cards.

Plus – brands know they can make bank. You just know some junior brand analyst stood up at a meeting not too long ago and said something like:

“Hey, instead of doing free web2 raffles for hyped drops, why don’t we sell NFT access cards that people can trade, and we take royalties off of that?

And then what if minting one of these access cards also gets you some fancy digital sneakers, which basically costs us nothing to make??”

And they were right, this is going to be big. GG and congrats on the promotion whoever you are.

Added to watchlist ✨

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

Capture the Moment by COLORS STUDIOS

Indie music platform COLORS recently announced “the beginning of their onchain journey” with web3 minting platform ZORA, starting with Capture the Moment, a free 30-day open edition.

This will be COLORS' second mint with ZORA, following the 7-day open edition they did with Vietnamese artist Thái Linh in early April. However, this mint seems to mark the beginning of a bigger collectibles program, which makes it more interesting.

Given COLORS' high-quality content on YouTube, we'll be keeping an eye on this one.

Grailed PUMA Slipstreams

Wagmi-san has partnered with PUMA for a limited-edition drop of 2,000 Slipstream sneakers, which will be minting later today for 200 $APE (0.42 ETH at the time of this writing).

The drop takes place on 10ktf.shop and is fully-allowlisted, requiring participants to own specific 10KTF items (10KTF Genesis, Crafted, Combat Gear, or Gucci Grail) or a PUMA Nitro NFT. 1,475 AL spots for the former, 500 spots for the latter.

Raffle winners can get a mint pass NFT today, which they can then use from May 2nd to May 9th to redeem the physical sneakers. Redeemers also get a SuperPUMA aidropped to them.

One complaint: the overly complex mint mechanics do make us feel like we’ve just walked in halfway through a movie and don’t know wtf is going on.

POL by Harto

French artist Harto has been teasing POL, a free interactive art collection that will be part of his The Paradox series.

The 4,000 supply collection was originally scheduled to come out on April 21st, but it looks to have been postponed to an undetermined date. It comes as a follow-up to the series’s first collection Blocks.

For more information on the concept behind the art, check out this thread from the artist.

Remembrance of Things Future by 0xDEAFBEEF

Cactoid Labs x LACMA are coming out with their Vol. 3 release featuring generative artist 0xDEAFBEEF.

We should be hearing more details on this today, but we’re already putting this on our watchlist given Deafbeef’s reputation in the NFT art scene, exemplified by how much collectors still pay for his audiovisual work.

THE MINT LIST

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

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

3. FewoWorld. New PFP by Fewocious, a rising star in the art world.

4. Symbiogenesis. Square Enix's upcoming gaming NFT.

5. Ether. Anime PFP collection by viii, an artist with a cult following.

6. 10KFT PFP. Drop from a team that includes Yuga and Beeple.

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

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

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

10. Life in Japan 2 by Grant Yun. New drop from the minimalist artist.