To thank every one of you who collected Metaversal Badges, we got the creative force behind them, Patrick Lawler, to create a mega artwork referencing them, pieces from the Metaversal collection, and celebrating the projects, personalities, and peculiarities of the first half of 2023 in Web3. It’s called “Metaversalopolis,” and you should find it in the wallet you used to claim Badges soon!

DYOR 🔬

Building hype and a sizeable social media following ahead of a drop is often key to ensuring it’s oversubscribed and sells out fast, but it’s no guarantee. We were reminded of this earlier this week when Ether — one of the most highly-anticipated Ethereum drops in recent memory — failed to convert tens of thousands of followers into paying customers/card-holding community members on the terms it originally hoped to.

Originally Ether was meant to mint a 10,000-piece profile picture project (PFP) collection at the end of 2022 at a price point that looks outlandishly optimistic from today’s vantage point: 1 ETH for the public mint and 0.5 ETH for those on the allowlist.

The mint was delayed and — fast forward six months — the mint price was reduced to 0.65 ETH / 0.35 ETH. Nonetheless, allowlist minting was slower than expected, prompting the team to cut the supply to 5,555.

Despite this, the public mint was sluggish too (and a week after the allowlist, which is an eon in Web3 time), so the team shifted tack again, airdropping a second PFP to those who minted one, and using a Dutch auction to move the rest.

Eventually, the collection did mint out, and the project raised around 1,000 ETH (~$1.9 million) in the process, but what was billed as a sure thing turned out to be a shambolic series of missteps, pivots, reorientations, and scrambles.

Unsurprisingly, fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) abounded as the process unfolded, inevitably affecting Ether’s performance. It also didn’t help that Azuki’s Elementals launch happened just before Ether’s drop, siphoning liquidity from the market (and introducing all sorts of FUD of its own).

What can we learn from Ether’s errors?

• It’s very hard to time the NFT market

• There’s no telling what market conditions will look like when drop time comes when you’re months away from it in the planning phase.

• Price point matters, and so does how far in advance you announce it.

• People will fill any and all informational vacuums, usually with worst-case scenarios.

• Pivoting might be essential for a project, but it makes it look like the founders are making things up as they go, eroding trust in the process.

• Hype and social media followers don’t guarantee success.

• FUD is inevitable, so have a response ready.

• Transparency creates trust — a vague roadmap doesn’t.

• And perhaps surprisingly, you can still be an anon founder in 2023, and the market still has an appetite for anime-themed NFTs… but neither of those will likely be true forever.

To the moon 🌙

• Google announced NFT-friendly updates to the policies of its Google Play app store “to open new ways to transact blockchain-based digital content within apps and games.” Your move, Apple.

• A federal judge ruled secondary sales of Ripple’s $XRP token do not constitute the sale of a security, which could have major ramifications for other tokens, and how the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) views and regulates them:

• BlackRock chairman and CEO, Larry Fink, is bullish on cryptocurrency and its role in “democratizing investment,” and its ability to “transcend any one currency.”

• Art Blocks founder and generative art pioneer Erick “Snowfro” Calderon announced an important update about his seminal project, Chromie Squiggles:

• Warner Bros. is releasing the movie “The Flash” in cinemas and online at the same time next week. Those looking to watch it at home will be able to do so after buying a corresponding NFT.

• Music NFT platform Sound.xyz completed a $20 million raise and is now open to any artist who wants to use its service. It also released a free commemorative NFT anyone can claim for the next three days:

• To celebrate its annual Slurpee Day event on its namesake date, 7/11, retailer 7-eleven is letting customers claim a free “digital collectible” Slurpee… just don’t call it an NFT.

• CryptoPunk #8348 owner/helmet wearer DJ Seedphrase (AKA, Daniel Maegaard) has signed with talent management agency WME:

• Particle — which creates NFTs that offer holders fractionalized ownership of art — says it’s lending the Banksy painting “Love is in the Air,” to major museums. The move comes after a vote passed muster with the ~2,600 holders of the fractionalized NFTs tied to the work.

Thread of the week 🧵

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Until next time, see you in the metaverse!