Visu-Whale
Blubber Notes #10 - Alpha for Future NFT Whales
Dear Future Whales,
Art as an NFT category has historically been the least interesting to me. I can appreciate its impact on culture, the benefit of creator fees to global artists, but I’ve struggled to understand why so many participants in Web3 insisted on focusing on art as the main NFT use case. Instead I dove into land, gaming, and other categories, the ones with real, potential utility. However, just as I’ve asked you to broaden your minds when it comes to NFT use cases, I have done the same. This week’s note takes you down the rabbit hole and is heavy on art. There is an interesting mint, a featured project and an educational resource that surely you can devote two minutes to listening to.
Summary of today's notes:
Take 2 Minutes to Better Understand Generative Art
Featured Generative Art Project: Thingies
Upcoming Mint
Alpha Leaks
YouTube Podcast: Should AI Art Scare You?
This podcast, that is also available to watch on YouTube opened my eyes related to the effort that goes into creating generative art. Specifically listen to two minutes starting at minute 16:12. In short, to create high quality, generative art, you need to do more than enter in a few text prompts.
Featured Project: I think she really nails the explanation…
No, this is NOT a joke. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, then you are already familiar with Flufworld and Altered State Machine as I’ve introduced you to these phenomenal projects in the past. So what do you get when you merge the two together?
Thingies - AI-integrated spider artists, capable of producing original generative art as NFTs. Or Fur with Brains; ASM brains to be exact.
Around Halloween 2021, Thingies were a free, claimable NFT for all Flufworld holders. They were somehow made to look cute and cuddly and had a natural artistic flare. As a community member, we knew these furry artists would eventually contribute in a big way to the ecosystem and now their latest works may make Thingies, bigger than DAll-ee.
The above is an example of Art that my Thingie created. Check out more of the art made by these furry companions!
Upcoming Mint: New Explorer’s Club
Another land/metaverse project I like is Portals on the Solana chain. You can read about it here. They are minting their New Explorer’s Club Pass on Magiceden.io on September 19th. In advance of the launch, a pre-mint experience will open for all Portals Genesis Card Holders. You can purchase one of these cards currently for less than 5 Sol. These Genesis cards will be burned on MagicEden.io between 9/14-9/17 for a whitelist spot that gives you the “free” mint.
The Genesis cards will be burned in exchange for the New Explorers Club NFT. Here is what you get:
A 2D PFP that is both an avatar and is “programmable”. Not sure what this means, but sounds interesting.
A Pod that is a smaller metaverse space that you can design and invite friends over to hang, voice chat, display items, etc.
Additional note - Because of the features offered by Portals, this project has been chosen as an upcoming communication platform for our VanEck NFT Community. The launch of our community space will likely take place in late September/early October.
Alpha Leaks: Brains = art, but maybe land too.
ASM Gen2 Brains = land? This is speculative, so NOT CONFIRMED. It does seem interesting that the current mining of Gen2 Brains may play a role in shaping the AFIA Moon. This is something I’ll keep an eye on and report back once we get solid information. At the current price of .03 ETH as of today, it would seem like a great price for land in an “open” metaverse ecosystem.
Additionally, when I inquired about this on Discord, my fellow community members were quick to share additional intel. It seems that Altered State Machine Founder, David McDonald also sees some good things coming to “Genesis” Brain holders. If you want to learn more about this project, see my previous newsletter.
Authored by Matt Bartlett, CAIA. Follow Matt on Twitter @MattBartlettVE.
NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE
Please note the author has invested in all NFT projects mentioned within the article including ASM, Flufworld, Thingies, Portals.
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