Morning Drop - Issue #13
Your weekly issue of what’s minting, popping and dropping - straight to your inbox, every Saturday morning.
🥩 NFTs leak into meat-world.
Google’s Dapper
Google storms into Web 3.0 with a new partnership with Dapper Labs, makers of the NBA Top Shot Marketplace and CryptoKitties
Dapper Labs will be utilizing Google Cloud to help scale its blockchain, FLOW, which promises a “foundation for a new generation of games, apps, and the digital assets that power them.”
The partnership signals a huge leap forward in rising mainstream awareness of everything that’s been happening during NFT Summer. Players like Google recognizing NFTs as not just technically but strategically important means the rest of the corporate world is posed to listen.
OpenSea Pirate Walks the Plank
Every week, NFT Twitter has a main character - and you always have to hope it isn’t you. This week, Nate Chastain of OpenSea starred in an investigative drama conducted by @ZuwuTV, which culminated in his resignation.
The news broke after a Twitter-breaking sleuth thread uncovering Chastain’s scheme of front-running by using secret wallets to buy up collectables before they hit the OpenSea homepage, only to flip them during the price spike that follows.
Perhaps the real surprise here is that Chastain wasn’t in violation of existing formal policy: as a result of the incident, OpenSea expanded its code of conduct to explicitly prohibit the use of non-public information by OpenSea employees.
BAYC dropped a mind-melting puzzle for community members to solve that turned Ape World into a merry band of aspiring cryptographers. For those curious, here’s the rundown about how the puzzle was solved. We’re still confused tbh.
There was a bit of a stir as the solution was found by a team of professional puzzle-solvers that pooled together to buy an ape specifically for the challenge, leading some to vent about the team not being proper ape fam.
The group was rewarded with a King Kong-worthy prize of 10 ETH, BAYC #10, BAKC #10, an M2 Serum, and a yet-to-be-seen “special surprise”. The Morning Drop team is seriously considering switching career paths.
Speaking of "new projects"...
T.O.E.S (The One Eyed Smiley)
It pays, big time, to be early on new projects. Getting whitelisted for pre-sale and having the ability to help shape the culture of a community are two major pluses that can be difficult to gain. That’s why we’re peeping T.O.E.S, a budding generative collectable project with charming and idiosyncratic artwork created by a 16-year old artist from Laos who goes by the name of M.ssMylestix.
In the Weeds
It’s always tough to judge projects THIS early (the website is due to launch next week), but dope art, a team that can execute, and a high meme factor are all you need for a project that executes.
The T.O.E.S team is dedicated to transparency (@joso8181 has a vendetta against anon teams, stemming from his experience with Camels when he was just getting into NFTs), philantropy, IRL connections, virtual shows, and lifetime utility.
A percentage of the minting proceeds will be donated to charities supporting art / tech for kids in developing countries.
Bird’s Eye View
Teams coming out of the forest of anonymity is a sign the space is maturing. The team behind T.O.E.S has experience, a network they’re not afraid to pull on, and the guts to tell people exactly who they are.
Narrative is a key aspect of what makes art “good”, and T.O.E.S is a story about perseverance, getting past the Downs, and bringing people together. Much like the Creatures, there really aren’t any “floor” T.O.E.S - each is special in its own way.
The meme potential is strong with this one. Check out the T.O.E.S twitter for the best in this-isn’t-a-foot-joke memes - one of the few project pages that brings us joy to see on the feed.
While VCs are hailing Solana as the future of blockchain, ETH maxis across twitter are having some serious chuckles over the platform’s offerings of knock-off collectables.
In the Weeds
The knock-off projects (so far) feature names like Degen Ape Academy and SolPunks. The copycatting of bluechip projects reeks of VCs repackaging what they think the crypto community demands more of.
Even generative projects are being ripped, with a Solana developer recently admitting to pirating Tyler Hobbs Fidenza code to produce their own “Solblocks”, even leading to Hobbs pleading for them to just not do it.
For all the buzz in some circles about Solana being an “Ethereum Killer”, Sol’s NFT community so far seems more interested in romping around in big brother’s shadow
Bird’s Eye View
It’s safe to say the innovation race among crypto networks is growing hotter by the day. Competing platforms like Solana, Cardano, Polkadot, and Binance Smart Chain are in all out sprints to scale and scoop market share before Ethereum transitions to Proof-of-Stake, and NFTs are becoming the battle ground for a real application of blockchain that may see the main-stream light of day.
Perhaps the true starting gun in this race that corporations are waiting is the looming U.S. regulatory wave, with questions remaining about how deeply those regulations will cut through the industry, and which networks are best positioned to withstand such blows.
SolBlocks is the latest in a series of experiments that proves that scale is not the primary value in art. A knock-off Ape, Fidenza or Punk elicits disgust more than any other feeling; we want better art, not the same art on a different chain.
Since it matters...
By now you’ve probably had friends and family get a little curious about what all the fuss is about with NFTs. “why would someone buy a JPEG?” they ask. Well, once they buy their first, they’ll understand.
First and foremost, with any crypto-newbie it’s important to teach them what blockchain is and just why it’s primed to revolutionize the internet as we know it. There are several explanatory videos like this one that do a great job in breaking it all down.
Next they need a little crypto. While you help them get set up with Coinbase, give them a demo on browser wallets and send them a little Eth of your own to show them how transactions work.
Slide on over to OpenSea and share a few low-entry collectable projects they might like. You can introduce them to things like rarity traits and utility as they peruse cartoon PFPs that will tug at their inner child. Of course it doesn’t hurt to show them some charts that track the valuation of projects over time, and you can throw in a little advice on what to look for when considering an investment.
Safety first. Once they buy and get hooked (and they will be!) stop the bus and give them a good, solid lecture about safe practices in dealing with crypto, including advice on avoiding scams, how to safely store crypto, and the good old (and important!) spiel about not investing more that they can afford to lose
Finally, introduce them to this absolute A+ Spotify playlist of NFT Podcasts, and get them to follow some of the greatest on NFT Twitter.
And of course, make sure they sub to Morning Drop for more great content like this. It’s every space cadet’s first stop on Saturday mornings.
Feature: Robotos
Robotos are a collection of droids that beep, blink, pulsate, and otherwise make general robot noises and motions. We think they’re pretty rad, and people were quite into them around the launch August 3rd.
Now that the post-mint hype train is cooling off, we’re looking at the project again as a long term generator of value. Here’s a bit about what we’re seeing.
Floor: 0.25 ETH Highest sale: 37 ETH Value Traded: 3300 ETH
Issues: 10,000 Unique Wallets: 4200 Average Owned: 2.38
Designed by acclaimed artist/designer Pablo Stanley (Blush illustrations; peep his portfolio), the art has a lot of life to it. It’s a fantastic touch that breathes life into the PFP game. We can nearly hear their little “beeps” and “boops,” and it’s fantastic.
The roadmap for the project includes a plethora of rad ideas that is sure to keep its community buzzing. Most recently, the team opened a merch shop that features the more generic Robotos brand (with eyes on personalization in the future), but there’s still lots in store.
On the radar:
a “workshop” that allows holders to create new characters, and make upgrades to their bots.
Free Robopets
Robotown Under Attack: a Robotos video game to defend the town from the evil Skytorn
A metaverse called Robotoland which will be starting small and getting bigger.
The encouraging part of the project is that the team is clearly building. Language around beta launch, lean product principles, and a highly transparent development process position the project as led by a team of competent professionals. It’s an ambitious roadmap that appears to be pulling out all the stops, and we’re eager to watch the execution play out in real time. This is a team that’s likely to deliver.
The composition of the projects: a professionalized team with strong commercial backgrounds and art that is more cool than cute (but still very cute) is very reminiscent of Cool Cats, so we think this is a project to keep an eye on.
Technically Speaking
Robotos burst into the NFT world in adorable fashion back on August 3rd, and have demonstrated resilience in the steady growth of its community, now 8k strong on Discord with weekly updates from the team. Statistics around peak online activity (1.42K on an 8k subscriber base, at time of writing) are encouraging, and the vibes are good.
Average sale price peaked around 0.5 ETH the week of launch, but seem to be climbing back in that direction in spite of ETH’s upward growth. The floor has likewise been steadily trending up from a bottom of 0.08 ETH to about 3X that in the last month, and new holders seem to be picking up. Overall, the technicals are looking encouraging given the team’s sights on taking Robotos to more mainstream social platforms.
This project has got some serious vibes and we’re all for it.
OpenSea goes mobile
With all the excitement (and none of the good kind) around OpenSea this week, we all blinked and missed the launch of their mobile app Friday.
Check out the official app on the App Store or Google Play.
Our verdict: It’s about time.
Also brewing...
Blazed Cats and Dizzy Dragons are doing a collaboration. Check it out here.
Ghxsts is working on a graphic novel. The No Utility Muse was dropped to owners of the Pxin Gxng collection.
Cool Cats creatures are coming. Watch that Discord carefully.
Royal Society of Players launched their Metaverse Casino yesterday. There were POAPs.
We’re trying to wrap our heads around 888s, which seems to be a mint pass for up and coming projects and emerging artists among other things.
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We’ll feature the most interesting entries in our release next week, and send you something for the trouble. We heard it’s rare.
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