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In today’s edition:

• Two NFTs pushing a new trend

• The updated NFT rankings

• New drops found this weekend

More info on Mint/Watch lists HERE.

Two NFTs pushing a new trend

There are many forms of NFT Utility: discounted fanny packs, choreographed cosplay shows, access to a never-ending series of smaller and increasingly less-valuable NFT airdrops like some kind of weird Matryoshka doll.

And then, there’s community.

You see, many of Web 3’s denizens are what we might call the Terminally Online. The upside is they tend to be ahead of the curve on new trends – crypto, AI, V-Tubing, etc.– and this can prove to be profitable.

But everything has a cost, and being part of the Never AFK Club often comes at the expense of having a normal and healthy social life.

In comes NFTs offering a magical solution:

Friends as a Service (FaaS)

“Join us”, you might hear an NFT founder say, and watch as hundreds of people start following your socials and start liking your bad tweets. Link up and start an indie rock band and tour the countryside, if that’s what you’re into. Teleport into popularity today!

It’s easy to poke fun at, but everyone wants to be part of a community. And here at Mint or Skip HQ we do believe tokenized communities are, in many ways, an improvement over the subreddits and message boards of Web 2.

We’re not quite there yet, but over the last few days we saw clues of what the next community meta might look like.

Specifically, two projects added some new twists worth highlighting:

FF6000

What it is

The infamous ben.eth, who raised over $20 million in the span of a month by releasing a series of meme coins, launched his first NFT collection last week called FF6000.

Well, actually he “acquired” an NFT collection pre-mint, and then launched it under his own brand.

Honestly, the lore behind the project is irrelevant. The reason it’s interesting is because of a small but crucial innovation that the original team cooked up.

What you get

All FF6000 holders receive an orange Twitter badge next to their handle.

They also get added to a directory of holders listed as Affiliates under the official @thisisorange Twitter profile and can easily follow each other.

As far as I know, this is the first project to set up this sort of badge registry.

Why it could be cool

People used to love Twitter checkmarks. 

They’d wait and patiently build up their online presence to earn one, or they’d buy one outright, often spending upwards of $10,000.

But now anyone can get a checkmark as long as they’re willing to spend $8/month for Twitter Blue. As a result, they’ve dropped in the pecking order of Web 2 digital cosmetic items.

Nowadays, if you really want to show off you’ll get either

1. a gold checkmark, which requires spending at least $1,000 on Twitter ads,

2. or an affiliate badge, which says you’re part of a legit organization and that they value you enough to buy you a badge.

Projects like FF6000 give you access to one of those badges, and for many people this is already more useful than 90% of projects.

The problem is that it’s not sustainable. Badges cost $50/month per affiliate, which for a 9k collection like FF6000 would come out to roughly $5.4 million a year at the high end.

In fact, their terms of service already admit that they may need to start charging holders to keep this feature going.

I doubt holders will be willing to pay $600/year for an FF6000 badge, but we could see this working with a more limited luxury brand.

De.xyz by DeGods

What it is

De.xyz is a new website marking the merger of the DeGods and the Y00ts discords.

More importantly, it introduced the deID, a new system that verifies every holder’s Twitter and discord accounts.

What you get

Verify your Twitter/discord to earn a follow from the official y00ts and DeGods Twitter pages.

Also, get added to a Twitter directory of other holders that anyone can mass-follow with one click.

Why it could be cool

Anyone who saw the Ape-Follows-Ape Twitter trend in 2021 knows it had a huge impact on converting several BAYC holders into notable NFT influencers.

The speed with which they took over even earned the trend a mention in a New Yorker piece in June 2021:

Call it corny, call it cheating, but it works. Adding several thousand follows overnight and promoting each other’s content is growth hacking on steroids.

DeGods are taking the same concept and automating it. It’s a small UX improvement but makes a big difference, and we’re likely to see many other projects copy it.

Final thoughts

We can imagine a world soon where “joining an NFT community” is commonly understood as “jumpstarting your online profile” – which is an extremely useful thing.

Some will do it better than others, of course. Certain groups will try to farm inorganic engagement, and you’ll get a whole bunch of weird followers that you probably wouldn’t want in the first place. And some will nail it and create the next Web 3 Illuminati.

Plus it’s not just the holders who win here. Any brand would benefit hugely from having a roster of collectors with significant reach. Ask BAYC, Azuki, Cryptopunks etc.

Expect more projects to jump on this.

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

Al Surrealism

NFT gallery Superchief and artist collective Exquisite Workers have partnered for this massive drop of AI artwork featuring 100 different artists, which constitutes the largest AI art Foundation World to date.

Please excuse my tardiness on this one, Dearest Reader, the mint started on June 2nd. However, as of the time of writing this, there are still 60+ 1/1 auctions available at prices upward of 0.2 ETH, as well as 60 open editions that are open until this Friday at 0.02 ETH each.

In addition to the online exhibition, there’s an IRL showcase happening in the heart of New York, establishing itself as the largest AI art show of its kind.

Axis Mundi - Energies

French creative studio UVL (co-founded by Alexis Focault) is debuting its first project Axis Mundi, a dynamic NFT experience within a gamified narrative that the founder likens to Black Mirror's Bandersnatch.

Tomorrow marks the launch of the first mint, a 72-hour open edition for Energies, audiovisual artworks by Art Blocks artist Jason Ting. Priced at 0.009 ETH, Energies will fuel the project's centerpiece, Beings, 3D AI-generated avatars that evolve based on user interaction and the burning of Energies. Beings mints this September.

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

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

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

7. Dimensionals - EVE. Free gaming PFP from doxxed studio

8. Tony Babel x Typical Friends. Limited edition from the popular artist

9. Interwoven by Emily Xie. LACMA x Cactoid Labs x the lauded Xie

10. Glacier Dreams by Refik Anadol. AI art from the MoMA exhibitor