Morning Minute | Rogue Developer Steals $1M from NFT Project

TylerD's Market Summary

Monday was a weird day, with a Remilia dev stealing $1M, the hyped $BANANA launch faltering, and another Friend Tech surge in TVL despite expectations of a pullback. Read on for more.

💸 Dev Robs Remilia for $1M

A developer involved with a segment of the Remilia Corporation (famous for Miladys), named Bonkler, stole nearly $1 million from the company's funds.

This wasn't the developer's only move; with the help of two accomplices, they stole codebases, tried to take over the company's social media channels and demanded valuable assets, including NFTs.

Luckily for the team, the central parts of Bonkler and specific NFTs weren't affected.

As a precaution, Remilia temporarily stopped Bonkler's daily minting process, with plans to relaunch it with an updated version soon.

Remilia's CEO Charlotte Fang announced that they're pursuing legal actions against those responsible.

But the damage was done.

Since the news:

• Milady's -13% to 2.86 ETH
• Remilio Babies -18% to 0.53 ETH

Milady had just recently made a run up to the 3rd spot in the PFP rankings (by floor price). That level seems hard to regain now, after this news and struggles in the altcoin market.

But we will see how the community rallies after this event.

🍌 A Rotten $BANANA Launch

The most hyped crypto token launch in some time ended in disaster yesterday.

The highly anticipated Banana Gun token, a token tied to the Unibot-like telegram bot featuring advanced sniping and sell capability, came out of the gate as high as $80M in FDV.

It was trading consistently in the $60M-$80M range, putting those who got in on the presale (2,500 tokens for 1 ETH) feeling great about their immediate 10x.

But then the team made a shocking announcement - they had a bug in their contract.

It allowed holders to sell tokens while still getting more from the tax fees (for every 100 tokens sold, the seller got 4 back).

The token immediately went to 0 on the news, with the team announcing plans for a re-launch along with a "Way Forward" post.

Though the re-launch may very well be successful - some damage has been done to the sentiment and confidence in this team, given the relatively simple error in their contract.

And the team potentially set to benefit the most - the Rampage team. Which is a good segue...

👥 Friend Tech Trend Tracker

This is a new daily segment I'm going to roll with as long as Friend Tech is the hottest thing going (likely for a while).

Here are some of the core Friend Tech metrics for 9/12 and their day-over-day change:

• New users: 3,200 -> 2,383 (-26%)
• Return users: 7,453 -> 7,363 (-1%)
• Daily Buy volume: $5.37M -> $4.5M (-16%)
• TVL: $19.7M -> $22.16M (+12%)
• Highest key: Racer at 6.15 -> 6.28 (+2%)

So we see a pullback in new user growth and in daily buy volume, but a nice increase in TVL.

Total users are now at 144,000 and total transaction volume is up to $135M.

Big winners on the day were Grug and Pokerbrat, the founders/team behind the Unibot and Banana competitor called "Rampage." They both surged from the 2.5 ETH range to 3.5 ETH on the day.

Holding their keys provides beta access to Rampage, and given the success of $BANANA (at least before the crash), many traders rotated there.

The other rocket was new joiner Jingtao, who had his X/Twitter suspended right before launching, came in under a new account called "the ghost" (@onetimebb) and immediately ran to 1.4 ETH on major buy volume.

NFT whale Dingaling made a notable sweep of the FT leaderboard, spending at least 30 ETH to buy the top 10 accounts.

Anecdotally, the other trend I noticed was a broad trend of dormant accounts becoming active again. People who signed up early, then either dismissed the app or just didn't pay attention to it - are now paying attention. They are running active chats and trading again.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• Trading volume notched up to 7,300 ETH on Monday; NFTs saw red with most leaders down 3-10% with DeGods (-10%) and the Milady ecosystem leading the downturn
• Yuga Labs announced the next phase of the HV-MTL game called "The Rift" will begin on 9/14
• gmDAO's "A Daydream for Lilly" mint from artist Adam Genlight minted out in its allowlist phase (at 0.15 ETH) before settling at 0.21 in early trading
• Mocaverse has raised $20M with Animoca Brands' help and funding partners CMCC Global; the funds will be used to facilitate web3 adoption, product development, and strategic partnerships, and will launch a Moca ID non-transferable NFT collection soon
• PROOF President Joshua Cook will leave the company at the end of the month; the news was shared by Cook's former employer, whom he is rejoining
• DraftKings Reignmakers saw over $4.5M in trading volume on the week, enough to push them to 2nd on the CryptoSlam weekly board behind just DMarket and above BAYC

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• The crypto market rebounded on Monday after an initial dip; BTC +2% at $26,100; ETH +1.5% at $1,610; SOL +4% at $18.30
• Technavio's research indicates a potential web3 market growth of $27.4B by 2027, noting 42% year-over-year growth in 2023 and 48% CAGR group 2022-2027
• Fireblocks, a cryptocurrency custody company, now provides its fintech clients a non-custodial wallet service, enabling end users to fully control their assets.

🚀 NFT Total Volume

• BAYC (1,205 ETH, 26 ETH Floor)
• MAYC (1,157 ETH, 5.12 ETH)
• Milady (780 ETH, 2.78 ETH)
• DeGods (615 ETH, 3.87 ETH)
• Azuki (532 ETH, 3.76 ETH)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase

• Full Send Metacard (35%, 0.32 ETH Floor)
• Metakeys DAO (22%, 0.44 ETH)
• Chronophotograph by Deafbeef (20%, 3.6 ETH)
• Checks - VV Edition (14%, 0.45 ETH)
• Cryptoninjapartners (10%, 0.43 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today has several drops on the list but with a few highlights.

The primary ones I'm watching are from notable artists DieWithTheMostLikes and William Mapan, and their respective "Chub Packs" and "Distance" drops.

Mapan's drop will be highly anticipated, as the generative artist drops his 250 supply set for 2 ETH a pop with LACMA and Cactoid Labs. See my prior write up for more details.

Chub Packs are launching today on Nifty Gateway, with 364 packs selling for $69.69. From the project page "A pack consists of unique editions and your chances of winning each edition can vary. It's like opening a pack of baseball cards or pokemon cards."

If you want more, see the full list of today's drops from Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• William Mapan x Cactoid Labs "Distance" (2:00 p.m. ET)
• DWML "Chub Packs" (6:30 p.m. ET)

Enjoy this write-up and/or want to sponsor the Morning Minute? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.

For all volume and floor price data, see Lucky Trader's Project Rankings page.

For all upcoming mints, see Lucky Trader's NFT Calendar page.