When Yuga Labs announced the acquisition of PROOF, the development team of Moonbirds, there was almost no doubt about Yuga Labs’ label of “LVMH of NFT”. Now, Yuga Labs owns top NFT IP/projects such as CryptoPunks, BAYC, MAYC, BAKC, Monkeyland Otherdeed, Meebits, Moonbirds, etc. These projects account for 8 of the top 15 projects with the largest transaction volume in OpenSea history.
But at the same time, Yuga Labs also encountered its most powerful challenger ever. On February 17, the floor price of Pudgy Penguins surpassed BAYC for the first time. Contrary to Yuga Labs’ continuous progress in acquisitions in recent years, the charm of “Boring Ape” has continued to fade.
We cant help but ask, why? Why has Pudgy Penguins gained favor in the market? Why did the boring ape lose its charm?
The project team is doing something is not a mockery, NFT players are actually very tolerant
Pulling is justice is a saying that has been widely circulated among NFT players for a long time, and has even become one of the bases for some voices criticizing NFT players as being toxic. There is also a golden saying circulated among the Chinese NFT player community, The project party is doing something. Everyone always half-jokingly says that the project party is most afraid of doing things. The more they do things, the more NFTs fall.
However, the success of Pudgy Penguins actually proves that many project owners who were doing things in the past were actually motivated by themselves or stayed within their own comfort zones. The so-called doing things did not allow the holders to clearly see the goals of the project. Long-term strategies cannot bring long-term value to projects.
In the last bull market of NFT, every PFP project would say that they wanted to make IP. The results of it? What we see is issuing new series, issuing tokens, staking...most of them stay in their own comfort zone, and use the familiar Ponds incentive involution in Web3. In fact, making IP is a long-term and large-scale project, and teams that start with Web3 are often only good at operating in the NFT or Web3 circle. When a project party successfully obtains money from retail investors with dreams, how much of it is spent on hiring professional talents in brand structure, content creation, social media operations, etc.?
Is pulling the pan just? Yes, it can even be said that the increase in floor price is the biggest source of emotional value for NFT players. Are there market makers behind Pudgy Penguins? I don’t know, but I believe most people agree that the answer to this question is “yes.” So can Pudgy Penguins achieve such great success just by pulling the wheel?
cannot. Such success requires the joint efforts of possible market makers and retail investors’ value recognition. Pudgy Penguins series of logics in IP construction are reasonable. They have formulated a brand concept that matches their cute and friendly image. They chose the breakthrough point of selling toys based on the characteristics of the image and achieved good results. These things, combined with the increase in floor prices, have not only stabilized their own community, but also formed new value recognition among the NFT player group:
Its an NFT project that works well, it can really rise.
Whether the narrative is logical or not depends on whether the market recognizes it. So we can also see that Doodles, which was criticized so much before, has also risen by nearly 70% in the past month. What are the benefits? No, the latest news is a joint watch with G-SHOCK, but Doodles has been doing things.
Cool Cats has also started to make toys, so in the past month, Cool Cats has also achieved a similar increase as Doodles.
On the road to IP development, Pudgy Penguins can only be said to have had a good start, but it has already had such amazing performance in the NFT market. NFT players are actually very tolerant and not toxic at all.
As long as there is a tide, it will recede one day.
The floor price of Pudgy Penguins surpassed that of BAYC, which is regarded by many players as a historic moment. In fact, many NFT players are not surprised, and they all have their own perspectives to explain why they think this historic moment is actually an inevitability. But for me, the answer to this question is actually very simple:
Yuga Labs is no longer cool
Does BAYC, or Yuga Labs, still remember where it came from? I’m not saying that they have forgotten that they are an NFT project, I am saying that do they still remember the excitement of “I want to do something cool” when they were doing BAYC, and forget the idealism of the past?
Lets make a NFT, everything stems from the words of Greg Solano, one of the co-founders of Yuga Labs
Hang out in a secret club in the swamp, only for apes. And graffiti on the collaborative pixel board on the wall of the clubs bathroom. This kind of vibe attracted me, who couldnt afford BAYC at the time, to try my best to observe BAYC holders. group, and felt like being in a drunken tavern filled with wild and unimaginative idealists.
When did the old vibe, the old unity, the old community communication and collective decision-making disappear? The slogan Apes together strong seems to be becoming more and more hollow. The community watches Yuga Labs rush all the way on the acquisition road, pulling out small games accompanied by new assets (Otherside is cool, but after that...) . Commercially, Yuga Labs has been expanding, but what is left to the community seems to be more confusion and loss.
Whether it is IP or games, these are the new stories planned by NFT after the first round of rapid and violent value expansion. Although later on, NFT players became immune to these new stories and even scorned them, but firstly, this is not shameful - just like stocks, sometimes you can also think that a company is telling stories -> delivering -> telling new stories. In the cycle of stories, what can be delivered is called value, and what cannot be delivered is called bubble. Secondly, at that time, everyone was heartily excited about the infinite possibilities of these NFTs, and stood on the wave of the new era and sighed from the bottom of their hearts——
cool!
According to the NFT value accumulation funnel theory of Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz, 8,888 Pudgy Penguins, assuming there are 3 million loyal fans, can be digested with a conversion rate of 0.3%. But NFT is not a security after all. No matter how profitable the physical business is, it is difficult for NFT to directly distribute dividends to holders under current regulations. So to convert this kind of fans into consuming NFT collectibles, they still have to rely on coolness.
NFT Value Accumulation Funnel Theory
If BAYC wasnt cool at the beginning, it wouldnt have attracted a group of staunch supporters. Who would want to support a project full of paper hands? Forgetting cool is actually abandoning the community and forgetting the original intention.
Like the NFT giant whale Teacher Guan@jivacoreAs he said, Yuga Labs is just like Supreme is no longer cool. As long as it is a tide, it will recede one day.
Among the voices from the BAYC community, what touched me the most was not the confusion or criticism of the Yuga Labs acquisition by those big Vs, but the@votefloridamanThis sentence:
The motto Degen Only has gone with the wind.
Conclusion
We are about to survive the cold winter of NFT and even the entire crypto market. As a practitioner who has always been in the NFT field, there is only one reason why I can persist:
NFT is really cool and interesting. We don’t lack good projects, we just lack good teams.
How to do it actually depends on how you think. Without that touch, is there really any difference between a large NFT project and a copycat Token with a picture that has a huge market value but is slowly declining?
NFT will definitely have the next bull market, and will definitely be the most attractive crypto asset for young people. For a series like BAYC with a high floor price, the vast majority of civilian NFT players like me cannot afford it. So for the remaining 10% of players with spending power, how to attract them?
There may not be much time left for Yuga Labs to think. This will be a race against the bull market.
