NFTs: Deep Alignment, Status Symbols, Go-To-Market Strategies

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“Art brings us together.”

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❓ What You’ll Learn

• Who raised $200,000+ for charity with NFTs?
• What’s social investing?
• What’s activity based income?
• How can NFTs unlock experiences?
• How will fractionalization impact NFTs?
• How to build an NFT-gated community?
• How do celebrities force appreciation?

💎 Why It Matters

NFTs transform art, governance, gaming, finance, charity, communities, logistics and more.

🔍 Problem

Authenticity and ownership are hard to prove.

Until now…

💡 Solution

NFTs help you prove ownership of unique assets.

Without intermediaries.

🏁 Players

Marketplaces

• OpenSea • Largest NFT marketplace
• SuperRare • Curated marketplace
• Foundation • Permissioned marketplace
• Rarible • Has its own token (RARI)
• Async • Interactive NFTs
• Nifty Gateway • Drop-based marketplace

Collections

• CryptoPunks
• CrypToadz
• Bored Ape Yacht Club
• World Of Women
• Art Blocks Curated
• Cool Cats
• Loot
• Lazy Lions

Tools & Platforms

• Dune • Blockchain analytics
• Collab.Land • Tools for communities and creators
• Solid NFT • Turn NFTs into physical art
• Mirror • Community-owned publishing
• PartyBid • Buy NFTs as a group
• Fractional.art • Buy, sell and mint fractional NFTs

🔮 Predictions

• NFTs will unlock online and in-person experiences.
  • A BAYC event was just held in Chicago.
  • VeeFriend owners get access to VeeCon.
  • Tickets to see Beeple’s $69 million NFT cost $475.
  • Disclosure sold an NFT which grants the owner lifetime access to their shows.
• NFT owners will force appreciation via ownership. Jay-Z, Jason Derulo and Odell Beckam Jr. own punks. Steph Curry and Dez Bryant own apes. Their ownership boosts the value of their items and everyone else’s.
• Physical versions of NFTs will create embedding effects. Buying prints of your NFT makes it less likely that you’ll sell the underlying asset.
• NFTs will transform charity. Donations are easier to make. Funds are easier to trace. Donors can receive NFTs representing their contributions.
  • Sartoshi donated 50% of NFT proceeds to GiveDirectly
  • Jack Butcher raised $200,000+ for families in Afghanistan
  • Cryptonimals donates royalties to help endangered species
  • Foundation helped raise $8,000,000 for Freedom of the Press Foundation
• Activity based income will be used to deploy treasuries and direct efforts.
  • Each Noun in the Nouns DAO is a vote in the treasury.
  • Lazy Lion holders get Roar Rewards for updating their profile picture and adding a crown emoji to their name.
• Fractionalization will make “blue chip” NFTs more accessible. Boosting liquidity and valuations. There are 6969 CrypToadz. Fractionalization will lead to millions (or even billions) of owners. See Fractional and PartyBid.

☁️ Opportunities

• Build tools to make, exchange and manage NFTs. Dune, Nansen, Rarity and Icy help you find buying opportunities. Collab.Land adds token-gated access to communities. OpenSea helps you mint and sell NFTs. There are still gaps in the market:
  • Rarity does not automatically add new projects.
  • We lack a robust no-code tool to build smart contracts.
• Launch an NFT media company. See the Forefront newsletter, Proof podcast and Finematics YouTube channel. Learn while building distribution and optionality.
• Launch an NFT-gated community. Gen.art grants membership with NFTs. This assumes that your audience are early adopters. Shared tokens create deep alignment.
• Advise NFT teams. There are DAO politicians. Where are the NFT advisors? Our fast-moving space has lots of information problems. Which smart contract should you use? What’s your go-to-market strategy? Which pitfalls to avoid?
• Look at successful NFT projects to build a go-to-market strategy.
  • VeeFriends and NBA Top Shot used personal and business brands, respectively. These are brand extensions.
  • Wicked Ape Bone Club followed Bored Ape Yacht Club. Bloot followed Loot. These are unofficial derivatives of popular projects.
  • Larva Labs (Meebits, CryptoPunks) and Dapper Labs (CryptoKitties, NBA Top Shot) lobbied legitimacy from previous wins into new projects.

🔑 Key Lessons

• Building an identity on an NFT creates embedding effects. The switching costs of selling are high.
• NFTs create deep alignment in communities. PFP projects align community members on identity, emotion and ownership.
• Status symbols are changing. Signalling is an old job. NFTs are new tools. JPEGs are better signals than rolexes.
• NFTs are a form of social investing. Owners can affect outcomes. As a Proctor & Gamble shareholder, you may buy the brands’ toilet paper. This has little to no effect on the stock price. As an NFT owner, you can meme and build utility. Asymmetric efforts.

😠 Haters

“I can just copy an NFT. Then I own it.”
The more you copy an NFT. The more value accrues to the owner. You’re spreading the meme.

“NFTs harm the environment.”
Carbon-negative projects like CryptoTrunks address this. As well as Nori. As for Ethereum, proof of stake takes less energy than proof of work. Everything affects the environment, including the infrastructure that supports you reading these words.

​​🔗 Links

• Boom • Stories from the contemporary art world.
• On JPGs • A thread addressing common tropes from haters.
• NFTs and a Thousand True Fans • Chris Dixon on how NFTs change creator economics.

📁 Related Reports

• Audience-First Products • NFTs are audience-first products. 
• DAOs • Groups governing million-dollar treasuries. 
• Paid Communities • NFTs form alternative paid communities.
• DeFi • Fractionalization and collateralization marry DeFi and NFTs.
• Social Tokens • Like NFTs. But fungible. 

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Hiten Shah (Nira), Max (Solid NFT), Linda Xie (Scalar Capital), Patrick Rivera (Mirror), Ethan Jones (Tools for MGMT), Ashwin (Trends.vc), Stewart Townsend (Channel as a Service), Yarty Kim, Rahul Prakash (Unlocking Blockchain), Lu (OS Bundle), Monika Birkner, Edward Mcenrue, Edward Rooster (The Big Stack) and Edward Danilyuk (dock90). We had a great time jamming on this report. 

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📈 What else?

Trends PRO #0071 — NFTs has more insights.

What you’ll get:

• 14 Marketplaces (133% More)
• 25 NFT Collections (212% More)
• 14 Tools and Platforms (133% More)
• 19 Predictions (216% More)
• 10 Opportunities (100% More)
• 11 Key Lessons (175% More)
• 16 Links (433% More)
• 33-minute audio episode with exclusive NFT stories, insights and opportunities.

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

• (📈 Pro) Who raised $2,000,000 using NFTs?
• (📈 Pro) What are revenue-generating NFTs?
• (📈 Pro) Who turned 10 ETH into 800 ETH in 30 days with NFTs?
• (📈 Pro) How do sales royalties work?
• (📈 Pro) Who’s renting NFTs?
• (📈 Pro) How are 1031 exchanges used for art?
• (📈 Pro) What are synthetic assets?
• (📈 Pro) How do NFTs change gifting culture?
• (📈 Pro) What’s a skeleton project?
• (📈 Pro) How do SaaS companies use NFTs?
• (📈 Pro) What are NFT derivatives?
• (📈 Pro) How do NFT coupons work?
• (📈 Pro) How to build a vertical marketplace?
• (📈 Pro) How to fractionalize NFTs?
• (📈 Pro) How to add utility to your NFTs?