Keep you friends close and your anemones closer!
Blubber Notes #33 - Alpha for Future NFT Whales
Dear Future Whales,
In recent weeks, there has been lots of drama tied to a major personality in the space and his investor communications, as well as the very public royalty and volume battle between Blur and Opensea. I’ll get you caught up on it all with some additional Alpha you won’t want to miss.
Summary of today's notes:
Daily Dose - Change of Course
Blur vs. Opensea - The battle continues!
NFT Alpha
Daily Dose - Change of Course
The bad news: We are only two months in, and one of my predictions for the year has already fallen flat. The Daily Dose, hosted by Ryan Carson, was an extremely popular Twitter Spaces over the last few months and grew a community faster than any Spaces I had been a part of. Most recently, Ryan stepped down due to various issues related to investor communications. The entire web3 community seemed to quickly jump at the opportunity to portray him as a bad guy, and the pressure worked. So while I had high hopes for his project, it appears that it’s now not happening.
The good news: Zeneca is now taking over the 10:30am Spaces block to keep the community going and has plans for rewarding/acknowledging all of the participants who collected the previously coveted Daily Dose POAPs. An engaged community is a valuable commodity, and I fully expect Zeneca to make the most of it.
I recommend grabbing one of his free student IDs and heading to his Discord channel to learn more.
Blur vs. Opensea - The Battle Continues!
I’ve highlighted two podcasts that do a terrific job of breaking down what’s going on between these two powerhouse marketplaces and how they are navigating the issues around royalty or creator fees.
Web3 Academy - Start at minute 15:44 to hear about their take on the marketplace war. Start a bit earlier, at minute 6:44, to get the short version of Coinbase’s launch of Layer 2.
The war over royalties is about acquiring current users, and the Web3 Academy team makes the case for why these marketplaces should be thinking longer term around generating revenue such as running ads, tokenizing (like $BLUR), or adding subscription or membership models.
Floor Podcast - Dive in at around minute 3:28 to get a quick take on the battle over royalties.
Blur has done a great job of taking market share outside of royalties. This fact combined with their recent airdrop has put immense pressure on Opensea who recently went on the defensive by adjusting marketplace fees temporarily in response to moves made by Blur.
NFT Alpha:
Muhamad Ali: The Next Legends - One of my predictions that I still have high hopes for is TNL and their upcoming AI-enabled Boxing game. Today’s Alpha is that there is an additional reward/claim for the upcoming ROOT token. If you bridge your “Pro Boxer” from the wallet from which it was minted, there will be something extra in store for when the time comes.
BoredBox - If you have been holding on to a BoredBox, then you have been accumulating “Boredom.” This past week the team announced a “Bored Store Exclusive” item that can be purchased for just 1 Boredom. This is just the beginning as they test the store's functionality with your Boredom purchase. These utility tokens will be available for redemption of unique items soon.
SegMint.io - If you are currently an Alpha tester for SegMint.io or if we have a chance to meet in-person to discuss SegMint while at ETHDenver, then I have a special POAP to pass out. I look forward to meeting many of my readers later this week.
Authored by Matt Bartlett, CAIA. Follow Matt on Twitter @MattBartlett
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