To say that the Ethereum NFT marketplace is saturated doesn’t really do it justice. It’s overflowing.
If you’re new to NFTs (like me), this can be bewildering. Many upcoming Ethereum NFT drops are listed on websites like rarity.tools, and if you check out the “Upcoming” tab there, you’ll see several NFT projects coming out every single day. Of course, if you’re really new, the projects may all look interchangeable, but you can research their communities on Twitter and Discord as well as check out their websites.
What you WANT to see, in my opinion, is a big, active community and some kind of plan for the future. You also want to get a good vibe. Do people seem thoughtful? Are new ideas being solicited and given? Or is seemingly everyone a semi-literate hype man whose goal is to pump the project?
Unfortunately, most new projects seem to be making as much noise as they possibly can. Projects often use referral campaigns to incentivize people to get their friends involved, knowing that the bigger the community looks, the more people might think the project has legs. Since the NFT space is so new, many people (including me) are not quite sure whose recommendations to trust. There is a whole lotta shilling goin’ on.
(Pro tip: you can use tools like Follower Audit to check how many of a Twitter account’s followers are likely to be fake as well as watch the account to see if the activity looks normal when it sends tweets, for instance.)
Furthermore, the project’s “road map”, or plan for the future, is very easy to write, but you don’t really know if it’s a plan the founders are invested in or if it’s just lip service. Some projects seem to be more like cash grabs. If the founders mint, say, 10,000 NFTs at .06 ETH each (a common price), they’d make ETH equivalent to (as I type this) about 2 million dollars. If they were unscrupulous enough, they could then abandon the project - in what’s known as a “rug pull”.
In that unfortunate situation, it would probably be quite difficult for those NFT owners to realize much value from their purchase, since without leadership and a plan for the project, they’re just one of many people holding a unique JPEG. Of course, even with the best intentions, a founder’s plans can fail, too.
Another current issue with all these new NFT drops is high Ethereum gas fees. With so many projects launching and so many people vying to mint a project’s NFT at the same time, the network becomes congested, which drives up gas fees. When you connect your (for example) Metamask wallet to the project’s website and click “mint”, Metamask will then tell you the probable cost of the gas for the transaction to go through. In some cases, the fee can exceed the cost of the mint and be hundreds of dollars. This obviously prices out many people and (all things being equal) makes the investment less likely to pay off.
The good news is that NFT projects are also available on the Solana blockchain - where speeds are potentially 10,000 times as fast as Ethereum’s and fees are 10,000 times lower. Solana - founded in Solana Beach by ex-Qualcomm engineers - has attracted a flurry of development due to its performance, as well as investment by firms like Andreessen Horowitz. The price of its SOL token has exploded. It has a fledgling but burgeoning NFT market, which you can check out at HowRare.is. Just like rarity.tools, HowRare.is shows you upcoming Solana NFT drops and offers a tool to check your Solana NFT’s rarity.
(To learn much more about Solana, check out this excellent Not Boring article.)
Many of the Solana NFT projects seem to be aping Ethereum NFTs - and I mean that quite literally. Ethereum has Bored Apes; Solana now has Degenerate Apes. But some others look more original.
One project in particular that caught my eye was The Grim Syndicate. I found out about it from Twitter, naturally. Kevin Rose -a very successful entrepreneur and investor - tweeted about the project around a week ago.
The Grim Syndicate is an upcoming NFT on the Solana blockchain, with a planned mint date of October 1st, 2021. One of the project’s leaders, Justin Mezzell, has an extensive illustration background. As you can see above, some of the art they’ve released so far is macabre and adorable at the same time.
When I got into the Grim Syndicate’s Discord server, I found that the community was small (around 1000 people) but welcoming. Justin himself, along with the other founders, are very active there. A few things that stood out to me in particular:
There’s no referral system. As of now, their team seems to be happy to let growth happen organically. To me, this is great, since having the goal of getting as many followers as humanly possible seems like it conflicts with the goal of your community being close, invested, and collaborative.
People in the Discord actually interact. There are channels for showing what you’re working on and for feedback about the Grim Syndicate project. Unlike certain Discord servers I’ve been in, the conversation is interesting to read. And the founders are taking the time to reply to most posts and inquiries.
Justin seems like a good guy. I watched his update videos, and he seems genuine, friendly, and excited about the project.
Speaking of plans, the Grim Syndicate project doesn’t have a roadmap yet. But I’d rather get involved with a project that will take the time to carefully develop a plan than one that throws up a plan on its website but then has perhaps only a vague intention of realizing that plan.
I hope that when the mint for the project happens that they’ll only allow one NFT to be minted per wallet address. This gives more people the opportunity to mint one, and a project in which 10,000 people own 1 NFT is probably more likely to be vibrant than one where, say, 100 people own an average of 100 of its NFTs. I also hope the mint price will be inclusive - but then, the founders seem quite invested in making the whole thing as fair and inclusive as possible.
Of course, just like any project, the Grim Syndicate could fail for any number of reasons. I realize that the Kevin Rose tweet by no means indicates anything other than Kevin likes and trusts Justin and his work. But I think - given the impression I have so far - that it’s an interesting opportunity that’s worth keeping an eye on as we approach the October 1st mint date.