Soon after the public minting, the short-term market performance of the NFT project Nakamigos outpaced blue-chip NFT projects like BAYC, Azuki, CLONE X, and Moonbirds, even topping the daily transaction leaderboard on Opensea. What has allowed Nakamigos, another PFP NFT project, to distinguish itself in the fiercely competitive NFT market?

One of the most noticeable trends was the escalating Fomo heat for the Nakamigos project on Twitter at the end of March, with unique characteristics about the project beginning to circulate widely among the NFT player community. The origin of the name Nakamigos is particularly intriguing, drawing from the name of the BTC founder, Satoshi Nakamoto. ‘Migos’ signifies ‘friends’ in Spanish, thus giving Nakamigos a nuanced interpretation - ‘Friends of Satoshi Nakamoto.’

Interestingly, the birth of Nakamigos coincided with the 14th anniversary of the publication of the BTC whitepaper, on October 31, 2022, a gesture that clearly pays homage.

What is Nakamigos?

Nakamigos is a PFP NFT project comprising 20,000 pieces, each featuring 24x24 pixels. Primarily, it’s divided into human types (six kinds) and non-human types. The latter includes rare categories such as frogs, crocodiles, robots, ghosts, snowmen, and balloons. Of these, 17,000 NFTs are used for minting, with the project team reserving 500, which equates to 2.5% of the total.

The style of Nakamigos is similar to the NFT blue-chip project CryptoPunks and is considered by many as the new-age clone of CryptoPunks. Moreover, Nakamigos NFT holders are also granted corresponding commercial rights, a move reminiscent of Yuga Labs providing commercial licensing rights after acquiring CryptoPunks in 2022.

During this year’s annual NFT industry event, NFT.NYC, Nakamigos made free and public mints available to the holders of End of Sartoshi (EOS). Public mints were carried out in a Dutch auction format, with prices ranging from 1ETH to 0.01ETH, and the final price standing at 0.01 ETH.

The EOS mentioned here was the last NFT released by the founder of mfers before his retirement, after which he simultaneously deactivated his Twitter account. However, mfers reappeared this year and used EOS as a pass card, allowing for free minting of the projects in collaboration with him.

At that time, the success of Nakamigos NFT was not particularly impressive. After its public sale, the price of the NFT once fell from 0.01ETH to 0.005ETH, nearly breaching the floor price and reverting to zero. Many users consequently lost their optimism about the project’s prospects.

Nakamigos’ Remarkable Rebound

Despite the bearish outlook that greeted Nakamigos upon its launch, a swift reversal was in the cards.

Within a mere 24 hours, the floor price of Nakamigos was hoisted back to 0.03ETH, with a rally that saw a relentless surge over the next two days. Concurrently, many NFT OGs and KOLs actively flocked to Twitter to foster Fomo, briefly elevating the highest floor price to 0.25ETH.

In just a few days, Nakamigos racked up a total trading volume of 4305ETH.

The most recent data for Nakamigos outstrips its initial sales figures, an observation vividly illustrated on Opensea. Currently, Nakamigos has a total trading volume of 29415ETH, with a floor price peaking at 0.3299 ETH.

Achieving such remarkable results in a bearish NFT market is indeed surprising for Nakamigos. Part of this success may be attributed to strategic measures undertaken by the project team, though this remains speculative at present.

Putting aside the support of KOLs, the artistic style of Nakamigos NFTs is highly resonant with the preferences of CryptoPunks NFT enthusiasts, and other NFT OGs. Moreover, the quality of the NFT designs is rather commendable. Judging from a quality perspective, Nakamigos is indeed noteworthy and captivating.

Further, the technical support for this Nakamigos release was provided by the @WestCoastNFT technical team, which had previously participated in the release of well-known NFT projects such as Doodles and mfers.

This information suggests that the Nakamigos project demonstrates potential, though it is still in its early stages. Further observation is needed to assess its market performance fully.

However, looking at Nakamigos’ market rebound since its launch, one might speculate that the brief threat of insolvency was an unexpected twist. The project itself possesses intriguing aspects, such as its name and NFT design style, which tend to captivate the majority of incoming users.

Of course, the discussion surrounding Nakamigos involves even more exciting topics, such as the veil of mystery surrounding the project team, HiFo Labs.

The Enigmatic HiFo Labs

Since the project’s public disclosure and launch, HiFo Labs has chosen to remain fully anonymous, sparking a great deal of speculation.

After the surge in the popularity of Nakamigos, this speculation reached unprecedented levels. HiFo Labs’ brief introduction, stating that the team has many years of experience in NFT projects, did little to dispel these doubts.

During their publicity campaign, HiFo Labs frequently mentioned cryptopunks. Combined with the near-identical NFT design and a similar stance on granting commercial licensing rights to users, akin to Yuga Labs’ practices with CryptoPunks, they fanned the flames of curiosity among Nakamigos’ followers. After all, both the founding teams of CryptoPunks, Larva Labs, and Yuga Labs behind them, command considerable attention in the NFT market.

If HiFo Labs harbors an internal partnership with Larva Labs or Yuga Labs, or if it is directly a subsidiary of Yuga Labs, Nakamigos’ future ecosystem outlook would inevitably be brighter, with an increased recognition from users and the market.

Although there are many similarities between Nakamigos and CryptoPunks, including the fact that the establishment of the HiFo Lab team coincided with CryptoPunks in 2017, these are merely conjectures, and it remains uncertain whether there is any connection between the two.

By the end of March, the Nakamigos project team officially responded to these speculations on Twitter: “Not Larva, Not Yuga, Nakamigos.”

（Image source:twitter.com）

With the emergence of this statement, many past conjectures seem to have dissipated, but the discussion regarding the true identity of HiFo Labs still remains a subject of enthusiasm for many Nakamigos users.

Yet, with the surge of interest in Nakamigos, HiFo Labs has taken many initiatives. The company revealed during its project publicity phase that Nakamigos’s creation comes from a myriad of artists involved in crypto-art for many years. Though they currently remain anonymous, there’s a certain connection between the project and crypto-art.

HiFo Labs has also been actively engaged around this topic. In homage to 24 renowned crypto-artists, HiFo Labs introduced a new Honorary Nakamigos NFT series and offered it as a gift.

This includes the co-founder of the Layer2 project Manifold, Richerd Chan, NFT project Art Blocks CEO Erick Calderon, American rap superstar Snoop Dogg, NFT collector GMoney, crypto-artist XCOPY, famous American DJ Steve Aoki, and NFT collector Farokh.eth among others.

Such marketing activities are seemingly justified for sustaining project popularity. Still, it illustrates that HiFo Labs currently defines itself within the realm of NFT crypto-art.

This notion can be understood from Nakamigos’s collaboration with mfers before its official release. Seeking new users and the value of NFT applications, coupled with the close relationship between HiFo Labs and mfers creator Sartoshi, ultimately facilitated this collaboration.

This also happens to be the third NFT project collaboration for EOS PASS. The previous two collaborations were carried out through raffles, and the final sales results were lukewarm.

However, the real face of HiFo Labs is still unknown to the outside world, including team members and their past involvement in NFT projects. They might be an independent NFT project studio, but many find it hard to believe this.

Several clues suggest that HiFo Labs has quite a significant background.

Speculations between HiFo Labs and Larva Labs

As mentioned in the previous analysis about the similarities between Nakamigos and CryptoPunks, commercial licensing rights were granted to users. This news initially came from HiFo Labs on social media and was presented on the project’s official website after Nakamigos was released.

（Image source:nakamigos.io）

Nakamigos has associated itself with CryptoPunks since its initial publicity stage, and HiFo Labs has consciously or unconsciously compared itself with Larva Labs, it seems to have been a successful publicity case.

However, such open mention has not elicited responses from Larva Labs and Yuga Labs, which seems rather unusual.

Recently, Larva Labs updated their Twitter bio to “and a few other things,” which some believe is a subtle hint at Nakamigos.

Interestingly, both Larva Labs and HiFo Labs share a unique trait on Twitter - neither follows any other accounts.

All these intriguing elements imply a high probability of a connection between Larva Labs and HiFo Labs. Even if they’re not collaborating, there must be some links between the two studios. But based on Nakamigos’s performance before and after its release, it seems unlikely that Larva Labs would market under a pseudonym.

Conclusion

In short, there are many similarities between HiFo Labs and Larva Labs, possibly due to intentional guidance or imitation. However, they are likely still independent studios.

Regardless, Nakamigos has attracted significant attention and acclaim due to its impressive creations, a shining achievement for HiFo Labs in the recent NFT market.

Although various speculations around it have become one of the crucial factors affecting the project’s market performance, Nakamigos earns praise primarily through its high-quality and unique creative expressions in the fiercely competitive NFT world.

The future development of Nakamigos is highly anticipated, given it’s an NFT series with the potential of a blue-chip project.