Koalas on a Mission

With all of us feeling the big time burn out on new mints, it was a little surprising to see the Wallas take over twitter and fly to a floor above 1 ETH before the inevitable cool-down.

Although prices topped out quickly and are now in a pull-back, the strategic considerations the team is making in terms of community engagement, setting up as an onboarding point into crypto, and rewarding early adopters while creating a robust secondary market makes us optimistic about the project as a prospective blue chip that will survive the post mint dump.

No Rookies

For anyone who isn’t familiar with the project, Koala Intelligence Agency is a series of 10,000 uniquely generated koalas that are fully trained and prepared to deploy on their secret mission.

“The Wallas” are said to be masters of disguise, sifting their way through the public with no trace - and while they eventually plan on saving the world as we know it, the first step along the way is to save real-world koalas by supporting organizations like the Australian Koala Foundation, and the Currimbin Wildlife Hospital.

Koala Intelligence Agency was brought to life by a team of four anonym-ish developers. J3 is the agency director; Thaaksi produces the art; Lakoz handles marketing; and Momo is the community manager extraordinare.

Morning Drop was in touch with J3 from the early stages of the project’s inception, but what made us really take notice of the KIA was the incredible growth the project had seen in the week since launch. In addition to reaching blue-chip levels of unique ownership, the project enjoys support from the likes of Gary Vee, Logan Paul, Banks, Veefriends, and NBA rookie Tyrese Haliburton.

Community-driven marketing

The degree of community engagement we see in the server make the Wallas quite unique, especially for a project as early as it is. Koalas go on missions together, participate in a fantasy football league, and even maintain a bot that celebrates member birthdays. The community management is a good example of best-in-class execution, from a project that’s quite new on the scene.

If you’re on Twitter and asking about NFTs, it’s highly likely you’ll find yourself ambushed by a colony of Koalas who are thrilled to share the community’s energy with you. The team has done an excellent job of gamifying the marketing funnel, by making outreach a part of the KIA world. Koalas go out on missions to let prolific collectors and vocal influencers know about the project. The effect of this is two-fold:

• For current members, the act of banding together outside the walled garden is a bonding experience: it creates a tighter sense of identity.

• For prospective members (both the high-profile targets and everybody watching), KIA missions serve to demonstrate the energy in the community, generating interest.

This is very reminiscent of #apefollowape, and the warm feelings created when you instantly find yourself with a slew of new internet friends as a result of your participation in a project.

Koalas also go on missions in the real world. More recently, the team has prototyped and launched a series of geo-caching competitions with ETH prizes for the Wallas, making it possible for members (and their real-world friends!) to participate in shared experiences out in meat-world. We especially like projects that are able to tap into niche “normie” activities (geo-caching has a large base of enthusiasts, and the larger base of people who was enthusiastic about Pokemon Go would likely find this extra appealing.) While nobody in the NFT scene has truly figured out how to get penetration into traditional market segments, Koalas are one of the products we see that are likely to have commercial appeal that isn’t based on prestige or social status games.

Long term, KIA is building out Koala Academy, a product which will serve as a first point of contact with NFTs as well as the rest of the crypto scene. Combined with an environment that is friendly and familiar, and a strategic approach to user acquisition in the physical and digital worlds, we believe the KIA has potential to infiltrate the mainstream if they stay on track. We recommend watching the development of the geocaching program and the Academy in particular.

Technically Speaking

After a more or less flat price of 0.08 ETH for the duration of the closed mint, prices climbed into August 25th, at which point the release of the Yahoo Finance article sent volume (and resultantly, price) through the roof, briefly breaking 1.5 ETH.

Within 5 days of going live, the project had 4300 unique owners, which is an incredibly impressive rate of distribution.

This was achieved organically, by opening minting exclusively to early adopters for 48 hours through a contract whitelisting process. Un-revealed Koalas made it to the secondary market well before the public mint was open, creating some velocity in trading volume (and giving early minters an opportunity to take an early exit while supporting distribution).

A major catalyst for the floor the Wallas hit on August 25th is likely to be this article written by Coin Rivet, released in the early morning of August 25th through Yahoo! Finance. Any earned media or major press coverage has a way of driving traffic, and it speaks a lot to the quality of the project that journalists took notice.

The pullback over the last few days is likely a direct consequence of the fast shot up. In combination with the rising value of ETH, owners who are currently a part of the community are likely seeing the possibilities to turn a profit by getting liquid, and get back in the club when ETH cools down to previous levels.

The flat distribution of the project does create some questions around the selling pressure; a flat distribution indicates high unique ownership, which indicates that although participants are highly engaged in the community, the base of collectors (individuals owning one or more Koalas) is relatively small - there isn’t an incentive to hold more than one, and the project lacks members who are easily able to provide liquidity. While distribution is targeted at the mainstream, it’s not clear that this will translate directly to increasing valuations as most mainstream buyers may not understand the (comparatively) steep entry fee.

That said, some of the plans the team shared with us (for subscriber’s eyes only 😏) make it probable that especially Early Agents will be able to play a significant role in taking distribution to the next level.

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