He did not cause the crisis that the long-awaited NFT project Ether has faced. Yes, the team arguably messed with the ball in a number of ways: initially announcing a steep coin price of 1 ETH and then lowering it, cutting the project’s supply in half due to a lack of demand, and failing to deliver even that lowered amount to be spent number of NFTs after waiting a full week between private and public sale.
But you have to sympathize with the undoxxed team behind Ether, largely because, unknowingly, they seem to represent the last of their kind – an NFT project that followed the blueprint of the past amid a major industry change. Simply put, the NFT market has fundamentally transformed since the bull run of 2021. It is drastically different from the summer of 2022, when new projects were still able to achieve some success by copying and pasting and rolling out on the formula of those involved preceded.
Acknowledging this fact, along with the vital implications that follow, will mean the difference between survival and obscurity for companies looking to find fertile ground in Web3, especially the digital native. This is why.
NFT growing pains
NFTs are in bad shape. Weekly sales volume numbers have fallen significantly since December 2022 (numbers that already paled compared to June of the same year), and the number of unique buyers and sellers in the ecosystem — one of the better metrics to indicate the health of the market — has only followed a similar pattern. 2023 hasn’t been good for the ecosystem, and other than some notable sales of art from Art Blocks and Sotheby’s, there wasn’t much for the industry to keep its cap on.
Why is this happening? You could call it a kind of growing up; many in the space note that blindly throwing their ETH to random speculation from anonymous teams who have no transparency about who they are and what they intend to do is just not enough anymore. The load-bearing pillar on which NFT space has built much of its foundation has finally revealed itself (at least in part) as a column of sand. The challenge now is to reinforce it so that the entire structure does not collapse on top of itself.
as a private customer, why should you pay 1200 USD to the ether team for this NFT?
with liquidity tight, retail consumers are finally questioning the value proposition offered by new nft companies
I’ve seen nothing more than boring repeat plans here
— KBB
(@KingBlackBored) July 9, 2023
Reach out, reach out
Certain projects have been on the agenda for a while, taking steps to build a Web3-based empire that can withstand extreme weather conditions. Pudgy Penguins’ recent foray into children’s retail toys represents one of many approaches to adding value to keepers beyond the possibility of flips. The accelerated lore and media franchise of Forgotten Runes is another project that shows promise in justifying its continued existence for both holders and those who can’t care less about NFTs and crypto. Thanks to the clever design of Frank DeGods and the rest of the teams of those projects, DeGods and y00ts holders have more and more opportunities to grow their social following and thereby generate income.
None of this is to discredit the team behind Ether. The project had just about all the necessary ingredients for a successful launch that space is used to seeing. But transparency and practicality – real utility, not just buzzword rhetoric about the concept or tokens granting access to directionless and unimaginative “IRL events” – has taken the place of mystery and speculation in the NFT landscape.
That the bear market continues to provide a challenging environment for space builders could ultimately be a great thing. The longer it takes, the more likely it is to produce projects that consciously want to build beyond the Web3 echo chamber, the NFT scene. The next bull run will undoubtedly see a rapid return to much of what makes the space exciting, but it’s those same intoxicating features — flashy projects, volatility, casino-like randomness — that could really hurt the space if allowed to take a position to regain and maintain cultural and financial fame.
Mass adoption will have to wait
The NFT marketplace and aggregator Blur, despite all its potential problems, has shown a proactive strategy by targeting a specific demographic of people (in this case, the NFT pro-trader) and providing them with tools of value in no uncertain terms. wording. But while Blur is consistently responsible for much of the volume happening in the NFT ecosystem, retail platforms like OpenSea are by far responsible for the majority of users. The pro-trader demographic knows exactly why it is on a regular basis with NFTs. The space must ensure that the average retail buyer has an equal overview.
That will only happen if and when the majority of retail NFT volume consists of more than just people securing admission list spots for hyped projects and then turning them around for profit. Scalable Web3 projects with value propositions that recognize the importance of stepping outside the insular NFT Twitterverse are probably one of the best opportunities to move forward. Mass adoption is not an on/off switch, and hating the world of web2 is unlikely to serve Web3’s best interests.
Web3 enthusiasts would also do well to recognize that not all NFT projects are created equal; evaluating one against the metrics used to rate the other is akin to using the same measure of success to measure a tech company like Apple and a publishing company like Penguin Books. Cool Cats is not RTFKT and should not be judged as such.
So many people in NFTs stepping back and wondering why they are in space and what purpose these fascinating projects and communities ultimately serve is a sign of much needed industry self-examination. As the frenetic noise of the latest bull market continues to fade, now is the perfect time for consumers to expect more from Web3 projects and for builders to step forward and give it to them.
