A33 Weekly Newsletter #2
Genetic Chain, Punkscapes, Sipherian Surge
Gm everyone!
With ETH reaching new ATHs and gas in the 100-200 Gwei range for most of the week, the NFT market seems to be taking an extended breather. New projects have not been minting out as quickly, and overall prices for projects in the 0.1-0.3ETH range have been taking quite a beating. This is a good time to turn our attention to some older projects that are at bargain prices right now. The projects we have chosen this week have been consistently creating value for holders, and continue to amass strong base of supporters in the midst of this mini NFT “winter”.
This week, ShinyMrMagpie wrote about Genetic Chain as they have a grand vision of building a platform for artists looking to get into the NFT space. LowKey wrote about Punkscapes as it was one of the first pixel banner projects. Blokitek wrote about Sipher because there's deserved hype around their recent venture capital funding, and they have a new collection coming out on 6 November.
Project #1 - Genetic Chain
Contributor: @ShinyMrMagpie
Project Details
Mint Date: 24 September 2021
Mint Price: Free + Gas
Collection Count: 6,305
Team: @tronicdreams
Opensea | Discord | Twitter | Website
What is Genetic Chain?
Genetic Chain describe themselves as a team focused on helping create and foster a community centered around digital art and NFTs. Their first and only (to-date) NFT drop is Spiral Frequencies, an animated spiral of varying colours, shapes and backgrounds.
Spiral Frequencies were originally minted for free and although they are aesthetically pleasing and an art piece in themselves, they also act as a key to unlock future mints released by Genetic Chain artists and partners. In addition to the spiral you need to hold a chain pass. Chain passes are awarded to the community based on their Discord role but will soon be able to be bought on the secondary market
Spiral Frequency NFT + Chain Pass = Future free mints
The Genetic Chain team is actively working with artists to create future drops for the community. At the time of writing, all mints planned are free+gas, a refreshing change from the majority of projects currently out there.
This is a project that creates value for holders in return for loyalty and engagement.
Upcoming free mints:
Interesting History
Genetic Chain has a thriving Discord server which partly happened by accident. During the highly popular Alex Becker and EllioTrades’ Neo Tokyo whitelisting event, there were hints that the Genetic Chain discord was somehow connected. After it became apparent that this was not the case, most of the community stayed and adopted one of three roles: Founders, Chain Gang and Geneticists.
Strengths
One thing to reiterate is that this project did not sell their NFT’s to the community. Everything to-date has been free + gas. When you consider that prices on secondary have fluctuated between 0.1E and 0.3E since the date of minting, this has been a fantastic investment for holders.
The GC team benefits through royalties from sales. This means that the health of the community and the quality of the art is the team's first priority. This is a nice footing to have as an investor.
Once you have a Spiral and a pass, you will be rewarded with regular drops, which you can choose to hold or sell. This is probably one of the reasons the holder-to-NFT ratio is very high, currently sitting at 4k holders out of 6.3k Spirals, which is around 63% (in comparison, BAYC is at 57%).
The community is active, friendly and helpful. There are no roadmap promises other than to keep producing art for the community. The longer you hold, the more benefit you will accrue from participating in their drops.
Project #2 - Punkscapes
Contributor: @LowKey_DimLight
Project Details
Mint Price: 0.03 ETH
Mint Date: 25th September 2021
Collection Count: 10,000
Website | Opensea | Discord | Twitter
Dune Analytics: https://dune.xyz/echolon166/Punkscape (Credits to: https://dune.xyz/echolon166)
Strengths
Most NFT projects focus on either Generative/Traditional Art (e.g., Art Blocks) or PFP (Profile Pictures) with or without added utility. Punkscapes innovates by pursuing a vastly unexplored area of our online profiles: Banners.
Twitter recently announced that NFT integration and validation will be an added feature:
ENS profiles will also provide ways to show off your PFP together with a banner. Thus, it only makes sense that NFT banners are part of a market just waiting to blow up.
While this is not the first banner project (see https://twitter.com/aipixelbuddies and https://simiheaders.io/gallery), this project arguably has more active development, and has the greatest potential to become a blue-chip. I believe they will have historical significance when the integration that I cited above happens.
The community is strong and produces a lot of derivative work, and the developer @jwahdatehagh is passionate, dedicated, and most importantly competent.
Some examples of what you can expect inside the Punkscapes community:
1) Development of resources and tools:
2) Discussion about the expansion of the project
3) Activities such as hackathons and “art-athons” are strongly incentivized by the creator
Blockchain Metrics
An exciting aspect of Punkscapes is that the aesthetics are more valued than rarity itself, making the collection's value more homogeneous. That does not mean that rarity does not play a role. Rarity hunters still pay a premium for more unique pieces.
There are 3760 unique holders, the floor is stable at ~0.1, and it has survived both the post-mint dump and ETH/BTC pump that happened over the last few weeks.
It's interesting to note that this was one of the few projects that kept its price relatively stable over the last few days (week of 15/10/21 to 22/10/21) since ETH/BTC started to pump.
Potential Risks
The project has no utility in the sense of generating $tokens and a good ROI might take some time (highly dependent on the adoption of #PFB as a trend).
Related Projects
Pumpametti released another stealth drop on the 22nd of October. The drop is called Metti Landscapes and is another project featuring #PFB.
Project #3 - Sipherian Surge
Contributor: @blokitek
Project Details
Mint Date: 9 September 2021
Mint Price: 0.1 ETH
Collection Count: 10,000
Website | Opensea | Discord | Twitter
About
SIPHER aims to build a new blockchain-based MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) game, as well as an open metaverse. The game is set to be released in June 2022, along with other utility in the pipeline such as staking Siphers for the $SIPHER token. There are will be 4 different genesis races with a 10k supply each (Inu, Neko, Tori, and Buru). This reason for this large supply is to grow the game community and allow Sipher to grow.
Sipher’s founder is Tin Nguyen, who was once named in Forbes 30 under 30, and had created a startup hub in Vietnam that was visited by Obama. Other investors include Hashed, Arrington Capital, and Konvoy Ventures. During mint, 10,000 Sipher Inu NFTs were sold out in less than 15 minutes ,and the project held its spot as one of the top 20 most traded NFTs on OpenSea for a few days thereafter.
Strengths
Sipher has an impressive roadmap with key milestones achieved each month, and weekly AMAs are held with the founder and the team. The discord community has grown organically and is active every day with members participating in events, competitions and factions wars. The first faction war art piece sold for 5 ETH.
Sipher also recently raised $6.8 Million from top VCs, and the team also reinvested funds from the Inu drop back into the project, setting up Sipher HQ in Ho Chi Minh City and acquiring new talent to further grow the ecosystem.
They also released a sneak peek of the game trailer, featuring in-game characters in 3D, and showcased the ability to visit multiple worlds.
Potential Risks
Although Sipher is advertised as an MOBA game, developments so far reveal very little on how the actual game will look or operate. They are also releasing another 3 races at 10000 each every month after the INU race, and these releases may be too frequent considering the uncertainty surrounding actual game mechanics.
Overall, I think Sipherian Surge is solid long term project with a great team that is fully committed and fully engaged in the community. This was my first ever NFT purchase as well, so I am excited to see how this project grows in the future.