Write in front:

The reason I started writing this article was when I first heard my friends around me frowning and scratching their heads, thinking: Should I buy a monkey (BAYC) at this time? Monkey is still too expensive, or should I buy Azuki?

And this just aroused my curiosity and thirst for knowledge, so I started the idea of ​​​​understanding the ins and outs of NFT in the massive information and drawing a conclusion.

As a crypto novice, a literally Neww Fresher, during this process, I forced myself to quickly learn and refine the key points, summarize and filter, and then come up with some ideas based on my second understanding​.

It can be said that this content may be boring and not that interesting to read, but by tracing back the entire path, you can clearly see where I started picking up mushrooms after falling into the rabbit hole, and which wild flowers I touched and picked along the way. pine cones, and finally went home with a basket full of things.

Do you think they are useful? This is not an assignment ordered by others, but it is the learning result that I want to test my own staged research. The Feynman learning method will never go out of style.

There may not be a single thing that can be eaten out of a basket, but many things may not be so utilitarian and can be judged based on their usefulness. It at least satisfied my original intention of seeking knowledge, and my curiosity was fed little by little by myself. It also let me know that in the future, I should not take up such a big theme again, but find smaller points to write smoothly. That would be worth it. .

The Web 3 world is a dense black forest based on the soil of Block chain Infra, and NFT is like a Pass card for beginners. If you are interested, follow this article and fall into the forest together with the first class called PFP. Take a trip down the NFT rabbit hole~

Text begins

Looking back on the past year, although NFT projects are still emerging one after another, the splash is no longer what it used to be, and more and more people are disenchanted with it.

It is true that in the bear market, in addition to looking at new opportunities for new projects and refreshing Twitter, there is another question that is most frequently mentioned and discussed: “Should I buy NFTs during this time?”

NFT actually has many different subcategories, and the most widely discussed and controversial one in the market is PFP. PFP (Profile Picture) NFT refers to the NFT used as a personal avatar. It is also the most easily identifiable and understandable form of NFT by people outside the Web3 circle.

However, since the Federal Reserve raised interest rates in 2022, the arrival of the bear market in the crypto market has not only accelerated the decline in currency prices, but also accelerated the emergence of bubbles in the NFT market.

NFT market transaction volume hits new low in Q3 2023

When the floor prices of those blue-chip PFP NFT projects that were popular in the past, such as Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Azuki, CryptoPunks, and Doodles, gradually dropped. In the face of the current oversupply market, is it time to enter the market or enter the market in time? Continuing to wait and see has become a point of conflict for everyone.

1. Should I buy NFTs at this time?

The doubts hidden behind it can be summarized in the following aspects:

1. Is the current NFT price already the floor price? Will there be a lower price?

2. If I buy NFT at the bottom now, will it rush back to historical highs when the next bull market comes, so that I can sell it and gain wealth?

3. Will narratives about small pictures become outdated? Can NFT still ride the growth train of the next cycle of the market?

4. In addition to the intuitive avatar attributes, will PFP-type NFTs derive other values? Is it still worth spending several E to get it?

Then we summarize the important keywords of the above questions, and after clarifying the ideas, we can find that in the final analysis, everyone’s doubts about NFT lie in these two points——

1. Practical/application value

2. Future market premium space

When the discussion around NFT begins to be strongly bound to “value”, it also means that current users can no longer easily buy into the narrative logic of the past bull market. If there is no more tangible effect, if there is no more practical application scenario, , which can all be regarded as waves of bubbles.

The bull market can easily bring you hundreds of times profit. As long as you buy NFT when the market is booming, there is a high probability that you will not return without profit. Any small picture can be sold for a good price, so it is difficult for people who are driven by the FOMO mentality to listen too much. Conservative and fair statement;

The bear market is not a good opportunity. It is in a less noisy environment that we can calm down and review and think: What is your original intention to get involved in NFT? Looking back at the popular NFT projects in the past with current eyes, are they perfect enough to withstand scrutiny? Are those holders really calm diamond owners or are they self-preserving?

This article will briefly review the important project situations of the PFP NFT market and the possible future trends.

2. The value of PFP NFT

Looking back to the earliest NFTs, the first NFT ⌈ Quantum ⌋ in 2014 was chosen because the author wanted to digitally auction his works of art, which valued the immutability of sources and the disclosure of ownership in blockchain technology.

Quantum

To understand the value of PFP NFT, you can learn from history and see how the leading NFT projects in the past positioned their value when they were first launched.

2.1 Four Blue Chip PFP NFT Background & Value Definition

2.1.1 CryptoPunks

In the summer of 2017, the two founders of Larva Labs created a series of 10,000 different 24x24 pixel avatars**⌈CryptoPunks⌋, inspired by London’s early 1970s punk art.

Later, as Ethereum skyrocketed, the founder boldly tried to upload it to the Ethereum blockchain, pioneering the exploration of non-fungible tokens.

It can be said that at that time, they followed the bull market and the currency prices soared and smelled the signs of speculation. Thanks to being the “first crab-eating” NFT project on the Ethereum smart contract, this epoch-making classic NFT was gradually given “Coin Circle OG Identity” label and narrative.

Later, CryptoPunk #5822 became the most expensive NFT collectible certified by Guinness, selling for a high price of US$23.7 million (worth 8,000 ETH at the time), setting a new price for PFP NFT transactions.

2.1.2 BAYC

Come April 30, 2021, 10,000 ⌈ Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) ⌋Bored Ape NFTs were launched.

Different from the narrative gene of CryptoPunks, each unique ape in BAYC is not only a status symbol in the virtual world, but the holder can also obtain the qualifications to join the “Yacht Club” as the name suggests, and enjoy the benefits of the BAYC Club. If you hold the complete commercial use rights of BAYC NFT under your name, you can sell its peripheral products, use its image to conduct physical commercial transactions, etc.

It can be seen from this that the BAYC team has taken another step closer to exploring the value of NFT. With the rights of “giving individual IP commercialization rights”, it has found an anchor point that can tightly bind to community members.

2.1.3 Doodles

Half a year later, on October 17, 2021, 10,000 colorful ⌈ Doodles ⌋ NFTs created by three Canadian artists went online.

Among them, Burnt Toast, who is responsible for animation design, has previously had many commercial cooperation with many leading companies such as Google, WhatsApp, and Snapchat, and his personal works have received widespread praise from fans.

Knowing his audience’s preferences well, he continues to incorporate bold silhouettes, marshmallow-like colorful colors and childlike simple drawings into the Doodles image design.

Different from the previous personalized and unsmiling NFT image in the NFT market, this extremely colorful and friendly appearance quickly gained market recognition.

Just like BAYC has its own club, Doodles also focuses on Discord community operations: announcing the official development roadmap to NFT holders, setting up a community treasury “Doodlebank” for brand promotion, and also giving Holders the ability to vote on project proposals. rights, etc.

From this stage, it can be found that Doodles benefits from the perfect cooperation between the three founders’ design and marketing, and the team’s careful operation of the community. This NFT project has great openness and inclusiveness, and has also done many active and innovative projects. Exploration is more ambitious to build the brand into a global entertainment media group and lay the foundation for the development of more cross-border entertainment projects (such as comics, TV shows, music, etc.) in the future.

2.1.4 Azuki

On January 12, 2022, the Chiru Labs team (a group of artists and development engineers from Los Angeles with strong capabilities in encryption, technology, and games) launched 10,000 ⌈ Azuki⌋ NFT inspired by Japanese anime.

Azuki comes from Japanese and means “red bean”.

The main creative team’s style of play is also very different from the directions of the above NFTs. Azuki has attracted many collectors who like East Asian culture due to its exquisite painting style design and its own blend of Eastern and Western cultures. Its artistic level The aesthetic value was also directly attracted, with sales reaching US$300 million within one month after its release, and the total sales even exceeded CryptoPunks and BAYC for a time.

In addition to its refreshing style of painting, AZUKI has also taken the innovation of community operations to the extreme and created a virtual world called The Garden. Holders will have priority in receiving physical airdrops and event tickets for future projects.

Not only that, AZUKI’s marketing strategy has also extended to the activation of ERC-721A contract, the establishment of the virtual world “The Ruins”, the launch of the virtual city “Hilumia” concept, cross-industry cooperation with Web2 fashion brands, and the fragmentation of IP #Bobu Generate $Bobu tokens, launch Beanz series NFTs, and more.

Just like what Azuki wrote on the official post on the eve of the launch of the project:

“We rise together.

We build together.

We grow together.”

What is different from the above projects is that the AZUKI team is more bold in innovation and has a very high promotion efficiency. It plays a combination of punches at the right time during the hot cycle and constantly surprises shareholders.

They are really like maintaining their own back garden. They use innovative marketing, community cohesion, and immersive metaverse narratives to carve out a fertile land. They water every piece of greenery carefully and put the community first in everything. Build a highly decentralized brand.

Seeing the project team enthusiastically and methodically achieving the milestones on the roadmap, Azuki’s holders seem to have found their original intention to join the game here.

Under the premise of a community of community interests, every tiny move of community members is closely linked to the value of NFT with luxury attributes in their wallets.

The owner consciousness of each holder is also nourished to an infinite extent. He is proud of this unique sense of community identity and actively works in various ways to build momentum for the project. The thriving atmosphere presented in the positive cycle is exactly the decentralization Azuki wants to create. Transform wonderland.

2.2 Summary:

Summarizing the above typical PFP-type blue-chip NFT projects in the past, we can find that when project parties issue NFTs, they fill the content that their respective projects can carry with more and more abundant, and the vision they promise becomes more and more complex and grand.

Not only did he work hard on the image design that he used to display to the outside world, he also made bold breakthroughs in technological innovation and innovative marketing.

We hope to create a closed-loop narrative that can transcend cycles and occupy the market stably for a long time. We also hope that IP can be endless and continuous.

Returning to the discussion of the “application value” of PFP-type NFTs, we can see that project parties have gradually accepted that “by holding our NFTs, you can get more than just an avatar” as a consensus.

2.3 In addition to the value of the avatar, what other value does PFP NFT have?

2.3.1 Commercial value of linked entities

In BAYC, by holding NFT, you enter the club door and have the right to apply IP in offline commercial scenarios.

As Yuga Labs commented, “Many boring holders have an entrepreneurial spirit and use PFP to create independent entity businesses.” Ordinary people can use the PFP image as the iconic icon for offline stores to attract business, and big brands such as Li Ning and Adidas have also sold BAYC co-branded clothing.

Use BAYC to radiate global popularity and build publicity for your own entity operations, so that holding NFT can give you a sense of accomplishment both online and offline. This may be a concrete practice that can maximize Holder’s satisfaction. .

2.3.2 Derivative Token Airdrop Benefits

Many project parties will release the second-generation NFT immediately after the first-generation NFT is released, and give it back as an early bird reward, airdropping it to the first-generation holders.

For example, half a year after Doodles went online, the project team launched the Dooplicator airdrop plan for Doodles OG holders.

Dooplicator NFT is defined as a functional doodle machine that can be used to incubate a variety of wearable devices, allowing Doodles OG holders to customize their NFT images in various ways. Allowing users to freely construct their favorite digital avatars, allowing them to break through the circle and attract a wider audience for a better interactive experience, which also paved the way for the official launch of the Doodles 2 project later.

After the launch of Dooplicator, the base price in the secondary market was 0.66 ETH, and when it was most popular, it even reached an average price of 3.89 ETH.

The same is true for AZUKI mentioned above. Two months after the release of red beans, Chiru Labs struck while the iron was hot and launched 20,000 Beanz series NFTs. Beanz is defined as a small follower of AZUKI. 10,000 free airdrops are given to AZUKI holders, and the remaining half are publicly sold. Beanz was once speculated to the highest average price of 6.4 ETH on Opensea.

• To some extent, the airdrop benefits of derivative tokens can also be regarded as investment value chips for additional benefits from buying NFTs.
• A new “buy one, get one free” initiative like Beanz will not dilute the NFT value of old users, but can also lower the threshold for new entrants and improve liquidity. The more exposure and popularity the project attracts can also feed back into the NFT price. The rise is a good thing that many parties like to see and win.

2.3.3 Obtain a pass to the project’s future potential functions

Just as many project parties plan many future big moves in their grand roadmaps, each milestone to be achieved is a conspicuous guidepost.

Just like Doodles intended to build the company into a global entertainment media group, a series of subsequent initiatives were closely centered around this theme to make various integrations and attempts. For example, Julian Holguin, the former president of Billboard, was appointed as CEO; he also acquired the Emmy-nominated animation studio “Golden Wolf”, which can expand the Doodles franchise; and even cooperated with Columbia Records to release doodles records. .

When a world-renowned and extremely professional person in the audio and video field is invited to join the helm, you will feel that it is serious about building a ship.

Three months after the release of Doodles NFT, officials stated that Doodles 2 will be released on the Flow blockchain.

Compared with a single NFT, Doodles2 is more like a brand-new game map. It is characterized by that each graffiti avatar is customized and dynamic by players. The vision is to get out of the Ethereum ecosystem and lower the threshold so that everyone can Have your own digital identity.

So the official immediately launched a new project Space Doodles, calling it “non-dilutive extended content of Doodles”.

It is different from the ordinary small avatar picture that is issued, but a new image based on the original NFT of Doodles. In other words, only the holders of Doodles can obtain it.

Holders can package their own Doodle NFT through the Doodle Bot smart contract, and the randomly generated spaceship will be synthesized with the original Doodle into a Space Doodle NFT.

It can be understood as replacing the image of the first-generation Doodles with the astronaut animated version of Doodles. The dynamic effects and cosmic scenes make the visual presentation appear richer. This is also an important upgrade that closely follows the narrative of Doodles2. In this way, holders can have a brief experience of Doodles2. Basic gameplay and world view.

This is a small step for each little doodle to explore space, and a giant step for the entire Doodles spaceship to fly across the Web3 galaxy.

Although the road ahead depicted in the blueprint is not yet clear, it has unlimited potential and is full of imagination. Holders who enter the game early can own these invisible “Passports” and enjoy early access to explore the world of the Metaverse to take a look at what the so-called “future” will be like.

3. PFP NFT’s future market premium space

The development of most projects in the Web3 ecosystem depends on the economic environment of the cryptocurrency market, and NFT is no exception.

In addition, the royalty income of various NFTs is plummeting in the current environment, so it is still too early and immature to discuss the future market premium space of NFTs. However, we can infer some capabilities from the current market status of blue-chip projects mentioned above. The possibility of obtaining a premium price in the future.

3.1 Current status of blue chip NFT

For the four classic blue-chip NFTs listed above, the average transaction volume on Opensea in the past year was selected for horizontal comparison. It can be found that in the bear market of the past year, the unit prices of these projects have also declined by half:

The overall NFT market trading volume has shrunk significantly, showing a state of “stock consumption”.

As of now, according to OpenSea’s 30-day NFT circulation transaction volume ranking, we can see that among the blue-chip projects mentioned above, BAYC, CryptoPunks, and AZUKI are still in the top 10 of the list, and Doodles’ ranking has dropped to 22nd.

The quality of liquidity is the most obvious feedback from the market on the value judgment of this NFT investment.

And extending the timeline to the entire Q3 of this year, it can be seen from the top 5 NFT series that BAYC and MAYC owned by Yuga Labs still rank first, and their dominant position in the NFT field is self-evident.

In addition, the above-mentioned AZUKI and CryptoPunks also ranked 3 and 4 respectively.

It can be seen that even in a deep bear market, the decline in floor prices of these iconic blue-chip projects will still stimulate the buying intention of a small number of investors.

So have these project parties made any new attempts in this year’s deep bear situation?

3.1.1 CryptoPunks

2023Key Points：

-Sit firmly on the OG throne of NFT and take the digital art route

CryptoPunks, since Larva Labs sold the IP of CryptoPunks to Yuga Labs, the developer of BAYC, last year, Yuga has provided the long-controversial NFT commercial rights to its holders, which means that holders can finally use their holdings small images for marketing, services and other commercial activities.

In addition, Yuga has also gradually moved closer to the art field for this “OG” plan, which was once regarded as the “Bitcoin” in NFT.

For example, CryptoPunk #110 was exhibited at Center Pompidou, the French Museum of Modern Art, and the “10,000 On-Chain” series of RWA physical print collections were jointly launched with Avant Arte (it is reported that the unframed version is priced at US$639, with the frame Edition price is $1,073)

Yuga Labs also announced that it plans to donate more Punks to leading art institutions around the world in the future.

Btw, independent filmmaker Sherone Rabinovitz has been working on it for 5 years, and the first episode of the documentary series “Punks As Told By CryptoPunks” launched in cooperation with Zak Group was finally aired on October 10. Anyone who is interested can go to YouTube to watch it Look~01_Punks As Told By CryptoPunks: Matt & John

Perhaps from a time perspective, PFP NFTs can be simply and roughly divided into CryptoPunks and other NFTs in the NFT world.

Cryptopunk, which opened the first year of NFT and has a cornerstone status, seems to have found the most worry-free and effortless way to maintain its high status.

The identity of a leading and inspiring leader has given it enough chips, and the future premium space will probably focus on CryptoPunks’ exclusive historical value and scarcity artistic value.

3.1.2 BAYC

2023Key Points：

-Using the Metaverse game platform Otherside as the soil to derive a series of chain game projects

Since the sell-off of BAYC by Franklin the Giant Whale and Huang Licheng in 2023 triggered market panic, the price of BAYC has also been declining after violent fluctuations. How to stabilize the hearts of community members and deliver innovative and good answers one after another?

To mention some of BAYC’s trends in 2023, we cannot excerpt the parent company Yuga Labs’ overall content layout for the entire group.

In May 2022, the metaverse project “Otherside” was launched, which became the general foundation for Yuga to lay out many projects, and also pointed the future direction more clearly towards the gaming field.

According to DappRadar data, the top 5 NFTs ranked by quarterly sales volume all belong to the gaming field.

The label of gamers is often closely linked to “faith recharge”. From this perspective, the intersection between games and NFTs is really not small. NFT can provide a good connection to the game world and implement each functional concept of the metaverse into tokens. It can be said to be the most practical application scenario this year. It is not surprising that Yuga is developing in this field.

On January 18, BAYC launched a new game “Dookey Dash”. It is a web-based parkour game similar to Temple Escape. Players must hold a “BAYC Sewer Pass”, with a total of only 30,000. The way to obtain it is that BAYC/MAYC holders can receive it for free, or purchase it separately in the secondary market (in the second month after the game was launched, the highest average price was around 6.13 ETH).

In order to attract Web2 traditional e-sports players to participate, the game also set up high bonuses. As the popularity soared, it also increased the value of BAYC and related tokens.

Returning to Yuga Labs itself, whether it is developing the virtual land Otherdeed NFT, or launching the 2D strategy game Legends of the Mara (LotM), or even reaching a cooperation between MAYC and Web2’s traditional and famous game IP “Dungeons and Dragons”. ..Yuga is working hard to draw his own blueprint in the gaming field.

It is not difficult to speculate that Yuga Labs will also focus on betting on its metaverse game platform Otherside in the future, focusing on the future IP market premium space in the gaming field, and actively seeking cooperation with third-party partners, including BAYC, MAYC, Meebits, CryptoPunks and other public Popular IP projects are integrated to develop more immersive entertainment experiences around the combination of NFT and chain games, forming a huge original universe game matrix.

3.1.3 Doodles

2023 Key Points：

-Doodles 2 will be moved to Flow chain

-The co-founder sticks to himself and makes excuses with the community

Doodles, on the other hand, announced in January this year that it would soon release Doodles 2 on the Flow chain after completing $54 million in financing at a valuation of $704 million in September last year.

They say they want to build Doodles into a global entertainment media company in order to lower the threshold and gain access to a wider audience. However, in addition to issuing a press release and hiring a number of celebrity management, and jointly producing Crocs shoes, It seems like there are no new moves anymore.

The decision to move the new project to the new blockchain made community members very dissatisfied and triggered a lot of FUD emotions. Co-founder @poopie even gave his own highly personalized answer to the community’s thirteen questions on Twitter. Finally, At the end of the argument, “Don’t expect us to follow the crowd,” there is quite a sense of self-confidence (negative) that is not understood but is unique.

The community’s opinions on operations are too important to the PFP NFT project. When you respond to your supporters so bluntly and block their mouths with no actual deliverables, it seems that the floor price keeps falling again and again, and the drop exceeds -80% is reasonable.

Based on this information, the future market premium space of Doodles seems to be very vague at present, unless the founding team appeases the emotions of community members and actually delivers some effective results, and then Doodles2 really attracts more new people after cross-chain. Only by paying attention and participating in the game can the “Coloring the world with joy” that was often mentioned at the beginning be evoked, and only then can the colorful graffiti characters once again roam in a sky full of joy and imagination.

3.1.4 Azuki

2023 Key Points：

-The rough Elementals project diluted the value of the Azuki generation and lost popular support.

For the Azuki project team, 2023 can be said to be a year that will be recorded in history.

The AzukiElementals NFT series launched in June lacked innovative image duplication, and the Mint process encountered obstacles and poor user experience, which greatly affected the loyal and loyal users in the community. For details, please see this article from Planet Daily:Azuki encounters a crisis of confidence: new works are questioned, prices plummet

The management made such a major mistake. Perhaps the development team was so praised by the community that it fostered arrogance. Or perhaps the team forgot its original intention of community-first content being king in the bear market and focused on temporary benefits. In short, this wave of operations disappointed many holders and left the market one after another, causing the floor price to fall sharply.

Azuki has been emphasizing TTP (Trust the process) with community members, and it seems that he has ruined his brand because of the inconsistency between his words and deeds.

But for something, there will always be followers. Although the departing members are a great loss to the team, how to adjust the rhythm as soon as possible, comfort the remaining members, and how to maximize the support and mutual trust of the community? , Carry out “post-disaster reconstruction”, which is particularly critical.

It is reported that from November to March next year, Azuki officials will support five Asian communities to hold offline activities and launch Azuki Passport.

After seeing each other in the most embarrassing state, admitting our mistakes and being honest with the remaining loyal holders, putting the community first again, and building a blueprint for a better future with everyone, this may be the best start.

Azuki was once a good student who handed in many high-quality test papers. Its unique blend of Eastern and Western culture, exquisite painting style, and vital community have always been its trump cards. If in the future, it can supplement its accumulated essence with continuous innovation and step by step If we keep going forward, I think the future market premium value will recognize this craftsmanship.

3.2 Summary

In the context of the overall economic downturn in the cryptocurrency market this year, the liquidity of blue-chip NFT projects has become increasingly poor, and they have fallen by more than half to a low point.

In other words, after the bubble of the boom period dissipated, these NFTs finally returned to the price cooling period position where they should have been.

Each project team has encountered considerable changes and challenges, and they are all exploring other paths besides JPEG avatar narrative to support and fill their huge blueprints. Only by solving these urgent problems one by one can we discuss the future market premium space.

No matter how many nice things you say about your vision and blueprint, no matter how big or round you draw the pie, if you fail to deliver constructive projects for a long time, it will always wear away the patience and enthusiasm of the holders.

When the living environment becomes harsh and funds flow out one after another, how to still stick to the original intention and keep the promise to build step by step in the atmosphere of market downturn, and at the same time run the community well, is a topic that every project team must face.

PFP NFT is a value symbol used to demonstrate scarcity, and is an excellent medium to attract and expand the entry of users outside the circle.

When the market is quiet, if the project side also hides in the dust and does not make some noise, this will only accelerate the holder to give up on you.

It is an exciting feat to allow fresh blood to continuously flow in, rather than just catching old users as leeks. Are there no good projects on the market this year that do this?

In fact, there is. The one that performed well in the NFT market this year is undoubtedly Fat Penguin.

4. 23 years of excellent NFT case analysis——Pudgy Penguins

4.1 What is a fat penguin?

At the end of July 2021, Pudgy Penguin was officially launched, and soon caught up with the NFT boom, with an increase of more than a hundred times.

However, the founding team was gradually exposed to scandals, and Fat Penguin experienced a collapse in floor prices and was acquired and changed hands. Since then, under the leadership of the new leading CEO Luca Netz, Fat Penguin has begun to change its appearance little by little, and has also gained unique insights and results in marketing.

Although the price has also gone through a series of fluctuations and shocks, Fat Penguin experienced a surge in July this year, with the highest average price reaching 10.48 ETH. From the perspective of Q3, the overall trend is positive upward growth.

4.2 What did Fat Penguin do right?？

1. Marketing

Thanks to Luca’s various brutal and brutal entrepreneurial experiences in his early years, he understands that NFT needs to rely on long-term marketing to achieve success.

Therefore, unlike other projects, Fat Penguin’s youthful marketing has been done incisively and vividly, such as increasing the number of Instagram account followers by 700,000 in one year, uploading a series of popular Fat Penguin emoticon gifs on Giphy, and also At the same time, short videos and graphic content related to IP secondary creation are released…

In traditional Web2 social media platforms, they have completely forgotten their image of being born out of Web3 NFTs. They have worked hard to create high-quality and innovative content and attracted a large number of real-life user audiences. These accumulations have also played a great role in subsequent physical product sales. .

1. Emotional connection

Rather than treating NFT as an expensive digital toy for adults, we will use the meme marketing mentioned above and the output of IP-derived peripherals to expand its audience to the general public and even children, making it generally younger.

1. Sustainable external revenue sources

Instead of blindly issuing new NFTs to obtain income and diluting the value of the existing NFTs, we should find other more sustainable sources of income and lead the project to grow efficiently and steadily on a large scale.

Founder Luca’s marketing experience sharing is quite informative. Ruby and Star in Web3Brand also carefully organized and analyzed the key points. It is strongly recommended that everyone who is interested in Fat Penguin’s marketing journey can read it:The large-scale adoption of NFT will come from users’ love for IP: Fat Penguin CEO shares the business model design of Web3 IP

In addition to changes in strategic guidelines, Fat Penguin is also working hard offline every step of the way.

In February this year, Pudgy Penguin reached a cooperation with Retail Monster to put its IP product Pudgy Toyline on the shelves of offline retail stores around the world.

Then in May, Fat Penguin completed a 9 million round of financing led by 1kx, and announced that it would use the funds to expand its intellectual property, team size, and “provide more services” to its community. It launched the physical doll “Pudgy” Toys” will also be online on Amazon.com.

The response to this breakthrough feat was very good. 20,000 pieces were sold in just 2 days after the product was launched. It even won the Toy Insider 2023 Best Summer Toy Award, beating Barbie, Lego and Poke in the new product sales list. Dream.

In September, Fat Penguin even announced that its toy products would be available in 2,000 Walmart stores in the United States.

Fat Penguin’s various innovative linkages with the real industry have brought continued rising popularity to its IP itself, and this affirmation has also been reflected in the increase in transaction unit prices in the secondary market.

Fat Penguin’s out-of-circuit marketing has provided a good start for many NFT projects that have fallen into innovation bottlenecks.

It is very clear about its own advantages, attaches great importance to maximizing the use of intellectual property and cultural construction in the new era, and the differentiated punches it can produce. More importantly, it is practicing every step of the roadmap and not letting those plans become utopias. .

5. Ending

Let’s focus back on the question at the beginning of the article: “Should I buy NFT at this time?”

5.1

If you really just like IP and the small pictures themselves, perhaps this problem will not exist. The bear market price has almost halved, and now can even be said to be your best time to buy;

But if you are looking to invest but are still staring at the PFP narrative of the past with old eyes, you may have to admit that the boom of taking off every time you buy it from 2021 to early 2022 is difficult to repeat.

@Christianeth I was very impressed by this Q&A. What he probably meant was that the biggest problem facing NFT is that it is still immature.

It often takes a long time for traditional Web 2 companies to build IP, but in Web 3 everything is pressed on the accelerator button. It only took less than a year for BAYC and Azuki to grow into benchmarks in such wild and fertile soil. IP, but people haven’t realized that those teams are actually not very professional yet. In other words, when the trend took off, many shortcomings were ignored or even covered up.

They always lack experience and outstanding talents, and these need to be experienced and accumulated over time.

5.2

But unlike some people who say “NFT is dead”, I think NFT will certainly exist in the future.

Originating from the field of art, it represents an innovation that brings content IP to digital life. It is a widely applicable tool based on Infrastructure and is used to solve some problems that could not be handled well in the past.

The inspiring underlying technology will not go out of date, it can be optimized and iterated, and it will always be on the ascendant road.

5.3

In the future, PFP-type NFTs must strategically minimize their most superficial “small picture” characteristics, and even treat them as the most basic and least worth mentioning node in the entire narrative.

What attracts users the most is its content creation prospects, IP intellectual property rights, more practicality, multi-scenario application potential, etc…

Only in this way can the development team be forced to create more interesting and potential new concepts and open up more and longer-term paths.

A good PFP NFT should be a super entrance. It is a niche product that is not limited to enclosures. It is a breakthrough that boldly throws out anchors, catches the olive branch of the real world, and strives to attract more people’s attention. Super icon.

It can serve as a low-threshold bridge, enrich the Web 3 ecological environment, and derive a lot of content and gameplay.

When the bubble in the PFP NFT market gradually dissipates, and when fewer people are rushing to make quick speculative profits in the short term, everyone who enters the game will choose to be more cautious and honest.

For them, NFT, from high-priced consumer goods to closer to their true and pure preferences, I think this will be a better development direction for the entire NFT market and more consistent with long-termism.

5.4

Zhang Yiming has a saying that I particularly remember: “Empathy is the foundation, imagination is the sky, and logic and tools are in the middle.”

This is the underlying logic of making products, especially in the Web3 world.

Empathy is like the emotional card of a community. The better the place where it is operated, the more stable the foundation will be;

Unlimited and bottleneck innovation capabilities are the vast sky for Web 3 projects, and content cultivation is also very imaginative.

At present, the sky of imagination is obviously crowded with all kinds of narratives, excellent and perfunctory, essential and dross, so we might as well let the bullets fly for a while longer;

The middle path is logic and tools, that is, the project party’s complete roadmap and the supporting technology, and even the solid resources behind it.

These three things complement each other and each one is indispensable.

So if you want to ask which NFT projects we should focus on in the future, I think we can combine the above three points to see whether the project party has these characteristics——

Good community operation + continuous content innovation capabilities + complete Roadmap & solid technology & rich resources

Of course, nothing is completely safe in the ever-changing market, but at least it is a better indicator for your reference.

5.5

Finally, from a long-term perspective, it can be said that the entire NFT industry is not mature enough and is currently in a very early stage of development.

All the fluctuations and changes in the early stage can be regarded as a small step of trial and error. We still have to believe that there are many builders with strong vitality in this soil full of opportunities.

Maybe adversity is more inspiring. We can hold expectations and patience and give the project and project parties time to grow.

As mentioned in the tweet pinned by @Christianeth:

“We need to stand up and face the difficult we have, give more tolerance and confidence to what we loved.

The dawn will arrive.”

Divergent thinking of Easter eggs: No community, no NFT?

From the development history of several NFT projects mentioned in the article, it can be found that interestingly,

Every dream big project owner wants to create differentiated “after-sales service” and will turn its attention to the community.

Betting on the community, in the final analysis, still values ​​the “people” inside, each and every living community member.

Human hearts are complex and fickle, especially in the Web3 world that relies heavily on the attention economy.

6.1

Standing in Shenxiong and looking back, we can clearly find that if a project relies on narrative to create beautiful bubbles, it can attract attention. However, no matter how often the story is told and how nice it sounds, if it fails to translate into actual actions, it will not be possible. It will eventually be questioned and abandoned by people.

In the final analysis, any commercial project has to deal with human nature, so it is necessary to understand the pain points of human nature, grasp the weaknesses, follow the cool points, and finally satisfy the itchy points.

Although it’s not pleasant to hear, to put it bluntly, the fundamental aspect of trading is greed.

According to Liang Ning’s “Thirty Lectures on Product Thinking”, people’s pain point is fear, their pleasure point is instant gratification, and their itch point is being able to satisfy their virtual self.

Greed will feed unlimited demand and drive people to do various operations. In the NFT trading market, these points can be more concretely refined into——

6.1.1

Fear is like a big stone that was originally pressing firmly on your heart being removed. Negative emotions from all directions will take the opportunity to get in and beat your heart repeatedly.

Being present in trading will now cause you FOMO (Fear of missing out), and may also form a FUD matrix (Fear + Uncertainty + Doubt).

Its existence is to shatter what you originally believed in, and then fill your head with a lot of information to confuse your thinking. If you cannot defeat fear, the result may be that you passively lose your steering wheel and your mind is empty. I couldn’t pretend to have any opinions of my own, so I just listened to someone else’s words, got into a car on the side of the road, and set off.

6.1.2

Instant gratification can be reflected in increased asset value and good interactive feedback among community members.

For example, if the NFT you hold has risen sharply, and the more positive and optimistic the heated discussion in the market is, it means that you have done something right and you will have a greater sense of accomplishment;

Another example is when you find many like-minded friends in the community. Although they are strangers to each other and live in different places, when people with the same hobbies and visions come together to speak out and contribute to a common project, the resonance is a wonderful chemical reaction. Indescribable and addictive.

6.1.3

Satisfying your virtual self sounds like a natural fit for the Crypto and NFT markets.

It creates a perfect image of your ideal self. It is not something you must have and you cannot live without it, but it will bring you spiritual satisfaction and comfort, like a superstructure that contrasts with the economic base.

In my opinion, the itch in the NFT market is, at a superficial level, the intuitive avatars in the virtual world, and at a deeper level, the long-term compound interest that this NFT project can bring you (whether in terms of asset value or level of spiritual growth).

We never need to beautify trading in the financial market. It is actually bloody and cruel. Many people enter the game with a fighting spirit and rush in and out quickly. It is best to go all in for a few big waves and then stop and enjoy the peace and quiet of the years.

In comparison, taking the long-term compound interest path is a “possible but not necessary” secondary option for them. But for most people who are not very good at frequent operations, instant gratification is more like a good thing that can only be obtained by building momentum and gathering good luck with the right time, place and people. Only long-termism can be the itch. The ideal self that needs to be satisfied.

Unlike instant gratification, which can bring you strong stimulation in a short period of time, long-term compound interest is like a thick book. Every time you read it, it can give you even a little bit of new inspiration, but it also provides you with lasting and practical peace of mind. feel.

6.2

A good project/project party must take care of the above-mentioned points——

It will soothe your fears, dispel your anxiety, appropriately satisfy your greed, and bring you periodic waves of instant gratification. But in essence, it can also cultivate your mind and make you agree with the project side. Long-term vision, follow the roadmap, slowly taste the fruits of progress little by little, help you find something relatively certain in uncertainty, and help you find relative peace in turmoil.

Therefore, according to this logic, if a project wants to operate well, it must have a clear understanding of the current needs and emotions reflected by community members, and accept, resolve and treat them honestly one by one. The direction of the output of community members’ opinions is based on the operation of the project itself, which returns to the essence of content being king. The project party must work hard to polish the IP content, have good plans, and implement them at every step forward, showing a methodical and positive trend.

6.3

This is a two-way positive cycle process between the project party and community members.

It is necessary for the project party to stick to the original intention of starting the project, to block the temptation of Rug Pull and to continue to provide new things to community members; it is also necessary for community members to reflect on their original intention of entering the game, and to cooperate well with the project party while being mentally prepared for the long run. Members organize community activities to build a cultural atmosphere, actively interact and respond, speak out for the project and inject endless enthusiasm.

This process will indeed be lengthy and enough to screen out many people.

If you can’t give up anything, the result is likely to be nothing.

In the end, those who can settle down must be those loyal fans who recognize each other and have a high degree of connection. If they can serve this small group of people in a long-term and stable manner, and operate this part of the vertical content well, there will definitely be positive feedback.

Sometimes a “small but beautiful” team operates more efficiently and has a stronger ability to block outside sounds when working together.

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1. This article is reprinted from [chaincatcher]. All copyrights belong to the original author [Lorraine]. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.
2. Liability Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute any investment advice.
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