Morning Minute | Zynga Nails NFT Debut
TylerD's Market Summary
Zynga's Sugartown is showing the playbook for other web3 games and founders to follow - find out what they've been doing right.
🤝 Zynga's Sugartown Oras Shows the Blueprint
It's not easy to find success in this NFT market.
Most teams and creators have simply stopped trying, with the influx of new daily projects (besides art) down significantly from the bull market days.
All while existing teams continue to make mistakes and trip over themselves.
Not Zynga, at least so far.
Their Sugartown project is showing other team's the blue print for how to launch an NFT project successfully.
What's Been Happening?
Zynga's Sugartown is in the news this week because of their PFP reveal event.
To back up, Sugartown is Zynga's first web3 game.
Back in August, they announced that they would be minting NFTs, the Oras, who would be the characters in this game (also PFPs).
They held their mint on Sept 13 (a free mint), with a 6,000 allowlist supply and 3,999 held in reserves.
Then the reveal was yesterday, October 19 - a solid 5 weeks post-mint, but the holder base didn't seem to mind too much.
And so far it's been a bullish reveal.
The floor is basically even at 0.2 ETH, there have been 8 sales over 1 ETH (including highs of 1.5) and 30 sales at 3x floor or higher.
Almost every reveal these days has been a bearish reveal, meaning floor price goes down signficantly after.
But Sugartown didn't - why is that?
The Blueprint - What Sugartown Did Right
Here's 4 major things Zynga/Sugatown did right with this launch:
- free mint
- launching a fun game
- building and rewarding a community
- great PFPs
Some of these are more subjective than others, so I'll go in order from most objective to most subjective.
- Free mint: This is the safest way to go in this market. No value extraction from the market, no fud angles, and all minters are "up" post-mint. It also avoids any securities issues.
- Building and rewarding a community: They held 3,999 NFTs back to be used to reward 1) Ora holders who play the game (existing community) and 2) Rewarding new games (expanding the ecosystem). Brilliant way to reward the OG folks while also rewarding and incentivizing new players.
- Fun game: While I haven't played myself, first-hand reviews of the game itself have been very positive. It's fun, casual and doesn't require an NFT to play (they opened it up for everyone for a brief time). Many games in web3 aren't fun and rely on tokenomics to get players - not as big of an issue here.
- Great PFPs: The Oras revealed yesterday, and I like the art quite a bit. They're cute, differentiated, have nice rares and are recognizable. While the reaction to the art is subjective, the market reaction isn't. And the floor is up post-reveal - a sign that the market likes the art.
It's been a slow, methodical roll out so far - and it's worked. Now we wait for the game to open up more broadly, NFT integration and more.
But for new teams and founders looking for insight into how to launch a project/game in the NFT space - Sugartown just set the blue print...
👥 Friend Tech Trend Tracker
A slower day in SocialFI with lower volumes was highlighted by a (small) new Friend Tech app update and a major rebound in Stars Arena.
Here are some of the core Friend Tech metrics for 10/19 and their day-over-day change:
- Return users: 4,410 -> 3,839 (-13%)
- Daily Buy volume: $1.5M -> $0.85M (-43%)
- Total Volume: $2.66M -> $1.59M (-40%)
- TVL: $43.37M -> $45.4M (+4.6%)
- Highest key: Vombatus 8.33 -> 8.33 (even)
*TVL in ETH terms 27,919 -> 28,058 ETH (+0.5%)
So buy volume and overall volume down ~40% in a much slower trading day.
The main news on the day was a slight change to the UI on the Home page, now showing a Portfolio balance, the user's key price and rank at the top.
This is yet another move highlighting the financial aspects of the app over the "social" ones.
Racer did share a message (in app) stating that they've been working on items like scaling, workflows, and a bug bounty program, and now they are "starting to think about product stuff again," in a sign that more updates may be coming soon.
Across the rest of SocialFI:
- Stars Arena TVL rebounded 40% off the bottom, now $1.4M as prices rally
- Tomo TVL ticked up another 9% to $1.62M
- New Bitcoin City is closing in on $2M TVL, now at $1.91M (+3%), though down a touch in BTC terms
The wild card in SocialFI right now - the crypto market and NFT market are starting to come alive.
Will traders pull out of SocialFI to focus on those markets? or will the rising tides lift all boats?
🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
- Trading volume jumped 8% to $7.7M (4,750 ETH) on Thursday; the leaderboard was washed in green on the day
- Top movers were led by Blips (+175%) and Michelin 3xplorers (+78%) now a solid 2x from its 0.05 ETH mint
- Jack Butcher teased a potential next Opepen set which may pay homage to the Chromie Squiggles project (no other details known); Opepens rallied 17% to 0.42 ETH
- Memeland's Memepoint Farming Dashboard went live on Thursday, allowing completion of quests, colleting memepoints and harvesting; Captainz up another 5% to 4.2 ETH
- Azuki announced its Garden Tour, featuring 5 community-led events across the Asia-Pacific, starting with Hong Kong on Nov 2nd
- Animoca Brands and Mocaverse are teaming up with Elite Apes Hong Kong to host the "Elite Moca Cruise," coming on Nov 5 from 5-9 pm
- Art Blocks released details on its first reGEN collection, "Bakhoor Assandal" by Melissa Wiederrecht, releasing on Monday, Oct. 23 at 1:00 p.m. ET
- Beeple announced his next event - Crypto Winter Wonderland - at his studio in Charleston, SC on Dec. 16
- Cool Cats avatar building system went live, allowing holders of Cats and Shadow Wolves to customize to their liking
🌎 Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
- The crypto market surged overnight; BTC +5.4% at $30,000; ETH +4.2% at $1,620; SOL +12% at $26.94
- Unibot soared 27% on the day to $61 as coin trading heats back up
- JPMorgan said that the SEC is likely to approve the Spot Bitcoin ETF in the next few months, likely driving some of the overnight rally
- A new Ordinals trading fund has launched with Unbroken Chain, who has plans to actively trade and invest in Ordinals-related assets
🚀 NFT Total Volume
- BAYC (1,204 ETH, 26.16 ETH Floor)
- MAYC (706 ETH, 5.02 ETH)
- Pudgy Penguins (458 ETH, 5.1 ETH)
- DeGods (362 ETH, 3.3 ETH)
- Azuki (330 ETH, 4.36 ETH)
📈 NFT Floor Price Increase
- Blips (105%, 0.17 ETH Floor)
- Michelin 3xplorers (78%, 0.1 ETH)
- CryptoNinjaPartners (49%, 0.67 ETH)
- Valeria Genesis Lands (38%, 0.54 ETH)
- BlockGames Dice (35%, 0.12 ETH)
🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals
Several drops today across sectors.
The highlight is likely the conclusion of the William Mapan Sketchbook A auctions, which are holding a $3,000 min winning bid at time of writing for the 60 available NFTs. Expect that number to climb closer to the auction ending time.
See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor.
- Trekki NFT (9:00 a.m. ET)
- Renya (10:00 a.m. ET)
- Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET)
- Harvey Rayner - marfaMESH (1:00 p.m. ET)
- William Mapan - Sketchbook A auctions (3:00 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.
