GM

It's Free Mint Friday again, but on a Monday.

they can't keep getting away with this

Links for the Top 25 drops are HERE.

They turned down $5 million for this

Context

NodeMonkes is an upcoming PFP collection on Bitcoin. 

Here’s what we know: 

• Mint date: by December 13th 

• Supply: 10,000 

• Price: free 

• Whitelist: still not open

Our take

Would you reject $5 million for this? 

That’s exactly what happened here, according to the creators behind NodeMonkes. 

The number looks plausible with a little napkin math. It’s not hard to see how the team could raise at least a few million at mint given the current market and price levels for other similar 10k Bitcoin PFPs like Bitcoin Frogs.

And yet…NodeMonkes will be a free mint instead. And since it’s on Bitcoin, it won’t even have enforceable royalties. 

The only way the team can make a penny is by holding back a portion of the collection for themselves (this seems likely but hasn’t been confirmed). 

That’s pretty wild! 

This begs the question…

Why would NodeMonkes be worth $5 million in the first place? 

I mean, isn’t it obvious? Scroll back up to that JPEG.

Look at the elegant pixel work, the blockiness, the attitude. It speaks to the soul and forces the viewer to wrestle with some thought-provoking questions, such as:

and

On top of the Da Vinci-tier art, NodeMonkes also makes a bold claim.

According to them, this is the first 10k PFP on Bitcoin.

But is that true? I’ve heard at least 2 other collections make similar claims, and they’re all correct to some degree. 

Bitcoin Punks were technically the first 10k PFP to begin inscribing (their earliest inscription # is 89). But they were a copy-paste of ETH cryptopunks and not original. 

OnChainMonkeys were the first to completely inscribe all 10k PFPs, because they brought their entire collection onchain before the last Bitcoin Punk was inscribed. 

But OCM was inscribed on a single sat, instead of thousands of individual ones, which some believe makes it a different kind of thing altogether. Also, it was originally an ETH project.

Then there’s NodeMonkes, which came after both Bitcoin Punks and OCM but is technically the first 10k PFP with Bitcoin Native IP instead of being a copy/paste or derivative from another chain. 

This claim is like a bag of coffee beans having “100 Single Origin Bitcoin Meme” on the label, which I suppose matters to some collectors. 

Btw, it’s not even clear why future collectors would assign significant meaning to the “10k” collection size over any other, given that it’s really just a slight nod to the OG Punks and nothing more, but I digress… 

Bottom line 

There’s something magical about a free, fully onchain, no royalties, no roadmap, vibes only PFP.

It’s just a meme, with no strings attached, skating on the surface of the Bitcoin protocol, existing forever whether you like it or not. 

There’s some purity in that, even without the historical claim. 

Plus, assuming the founders don’t keep an unreasonable percentage of the supply, this kind of “fair mint” is always a great foundation for a future meme community.

They haven't started taking applications for the whitelist yet, but I’m expecting this to be competitive.

Disclaimer: NodeMonkes is made by anons, so be extra careful when clicking any shared links or mint pages. 

✨ Added to Top 25 ✨

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

Midamerican Fever Dream by Summer Wagner

Just as PROOF is about to release the compelling ZENTRUM tomorrow, they unveil the next exhibition in their 5-part Fall/Winter series, Midamerican Fever Dream, a project two years in the making by popular photographer Summer Wagner

While details are still limited, it looks like the collection will have a heavy narrative focus supported by the artist’s recognizable ethereal style.

Renowned collectors have flocked to Wagner’s work through the bear market, and I myself am quite the fan of her work, so I’ve tentatively…

✨ Added to Top 25 ✨

Alternate by Kim Asendorf

German artist Kim Asendorf has become a standout name in the generative space this year mainly thanks to his Cargo collection – one of the most talked about and best-performing Art Blocks in recent market memory.

Now, he’s releasing Alternate, a 200-supply fully onchain collection as part of the AGH 1 exhibition with GrailersDAO, FingerprintsDAO and Highlight.

We don’t know much yet, but I gather that the market’s (and my) appetite for Asendorf’s onchain artifacts has not yet been satisfied.

✨ Added to Top 25 ✨

Untitled sovrn.art drop by Bard Ionson

Following their sellout of MLO’s Noctilucent Mementi in October, Pindar Van Arman’s drop studio, sovrn.art, is back with a new release by crypto artist Bard Ionson.

Ionson is an OG artist with a long track record. He dropped his first NFT in 2018 and followed that up with various releases at the crossroads of AI and generative art on platforms like SuperRare and Art Blocks.

Mint info is still sparse, but it looks like this upcoming release will use GAN, leaning more into the AI side of things.