zeros.world

done with twitter cause @elonmusk is a nazi. ✌️

What would you do if there was 2 of me

@TheStickerDAO @phemoid she's the goat.

@MrBeast i’m visualizing a win!

I’m gonna give 10 random people that repost this and follow me $25,000 for fun (the $250,000 my X video made) I’ll pick the winners in 72 hours

@KamileonX @CryptoLifeJack should read this. Pretty straightforward breakdown of how @RTFKT fucked up. great write up @KamileonX

The single biggest source of grievance in the NFT space prob revolves around the expectation mismatch between founders & retail investors as to what you're actually entitled to when buying an NFT. I look at the two most prevalent launch paths to try to explain this rift. The ultimate goal is not however to provide commentary on existing projects but rather serve as a warning for up and coming founders & investors to respect the path they choose as we begin the second big NFT cycle👇: Before we get started, let's remember how the two main different launch paths/models that came to be & how they function.. METHOD 1: GENESIS MINT PASS MODEL In early 2021 @yugalabs created a new model by which web3 IPs could be funded through a combination of unique PFP NFTs and a roadmap backing/supporting their desirability. This method was rather brilliant because it took what was a wildly successful but played out phenomenon of ICOs in 2017 and changed it in four important ways: 1) The mundane fungible tokens were replaced with unique PFP NFTs that people would not only form a emotional attachment to as their digital identity but it would constantly serve as a billboard advertising the brand in the most social of places. This also introduced an element of flexing & fomo - two incredibly powerful forces influencing the human psyche. 2) The "business" being spun out was not some impossible task of disrupting billion dollar goliaths in the real world but rather creating a cool & creative early stage authentic grassroot IP that turned the small & internet native aspects of these operations into strengths. The digital nature of it all meant it had incredibly low barriers of entry with some of the highest margin levels ever witnessed. 3) The boring and dense whitepapers that many retail investors were put off by were replaced by artistic visual roadmaps that evoked a sense of mystery & excitement. 4) While ICOs were receiving regulatory crackdowns due to their similarities to standard investment securities, NFTs utilized an innocent 'collectable' angle to paint itself as closer to trading cards and art than any sort of investment contract. While @cobie might have been slightly hyperbolic in his controversial "NFTs are altcoins with pictures" take, it wasn't that far from the truth. Nevertheless, this form of community building has proven to be very powerful and effective, especially coupled with the royalties that baked in monetization incentives for the team post launch. Throughout 2021 and 2022 we saw hundreds if not thousands of startups try to establish themselves in this way with 5-20k PFP collections ranging anywhere from 0.03 to 3eth (when $ETH was $3-4k). A lot of these were clear quick grifts/cash-grabs taking advantage of the situation by founders who had no business running a business. (IMPORTANT SIDENOTE: Exciting industries where it's easy to make money attract grifters, grifters are not birthed by the industry/technology itself. Important point to keep in mind for outsiders who use this to paint the tech itself as evil.). But some more serious projects also emerged who had what seemed like legitimate vision & roadmaps they wanted to achieve. These folks like @Azuki @moonbirds @RTFKT saw no problem charging 2-3 ETH for the privilege of being an early adopter & justified it by their grand sounding roadmaps. Instead of early adopters making a quick profit, that money made more sense in their treasury from their standpoint. @yugalabs succumbed to this too later on with their secondary characters & land expansions. METHOD 2: 'FREE' MINT MODEL As the NFT bubble popped with users realizing once again the perils of giving huge sums of money upfront to unproven teams/business models with non-aligned incentives, a new model was needed. It was @DigiDaigaku that popularized the free mint model & it was a great way to bootstrap new projects & communities in the backdrop of all the cash-grabbing that had occurred. Especially at a time when royalties were enforced, it was an amazing boost for both community sentiment & financial momentum for an early stage project. The other advantage was the plausible deniability in regards to expectations and FUD as the founding team always had an excuse of it being free or extremely cheap. This is also why this model continues to be popular, especially among big web2 brands such as @Nike with @dotSWOOSH or @Ubisoft with @ChampionsVerse. Now that the table has been set, let's analyze the key differences & trade-offs these two methods present & how they might lead to or address problems.. DIFFERENCE #1: EXPECTATIONS I think it's quite logical to deduct that the expectations of payers is directly proportional with the amount of money they paid. In this light, it's important to put into perspective just how large of a sum some of these genesis NFTs were. A 5-20k$ investment, which is the ballpark of what some of these NFTs cost at initial sale (never mind what they ballooned to after), is usually a size that would make sense as a pre-seed investment cheque where you become a partial owner. On the other hand if you're just putting in 0$-200$, that's more in line with a Kickstarter fan/consumer. So whether you like it or not, the amount of $ you raise (and this includes royalties for you free mint/drop abusing founders) from your offering will dictate the expectations that come with it. DIFFERENCE #2: RELATIONSHIP Directly linked with above is that if you're a project that raises pre-seed startup level money, then you don't get to treat your users like Kickstarter backer 'chumps'. Respect the faith that has been bestowed upon you & don't exploit the medium like the aforementioned grifters. There are NFT founders that actually think their holders are entitled & try to vilify them for having any sort of expectations. The only reason they got so much money in the first place was the expectations set forward by both the investment medium itself which they've adopted & the grand roadmaps/visions shared. This sort of have your cake & eat it too approach is why the space commands so little respect & often ridiculed as the brave early adopters are mocked for not actually owning anything besides a mass produced JPG. At the same time holders need to be respectful of teams who put their best foot forward & not blindly point to prices for complaints but rather if anything give constructive feedback around factors that might have contributed to a desirability hit in the market. Even in the case of actual shareholders there is a noticable distance between teams & shareholders and as long as web3 teams provide similar levels of transparency they should be extended similar levels of respect. Sadly usually there is very minimal transparency as avoiding securities laws also comes with the advantage of not having to report anything for projects. It shouldn't come as a grand surprise that arguably the most successful project currently in @pudgypenguins is one where the founder PAID money to acquire the project & yet still treats its holders like royalty with frequent updates & keeping them top of mind with every decision. DIFFERENCE #3: FUTURE MONETIZATION So far we've mainly talked about the initial tokenized start to the project & how that's essentially priced. But that's just meant to be the beginning of the road in terms of growing the brand via activations, products, and potentially more JPGs. In the case of projects that raise a momentous amount of $ in their genesis sale, it's quite sensible to expect the following few releases to have some of that money to be spent back on rewarding the backers. This creates a positive feedback loop & rationalizes the huge amounts of money poured into such a risky enterprise. Only by doing this enough times to create a community of well taken care of believers can you possibly ever expect to woo outsiders and do another big sale. Thus the usual monetization method of 'method #1' is as follows: big sale -> many free/heavily subsidized activations/offerings -> big sale -> many free... On the other hand a project which essentially raised no funds either via the primary sale or following royalties must naturally have its future releases bake a substantial profit margin onto the cost of its offerings. Without it the project can not pay its costs & would cease to exist. It's important to realize that this remains true even if the floor price rises astronomically in the secondary markets (& thus being particularly wary of buying into such projects with any elevated expectations). So this becomes more of an access pass for fans rather than being a significant early stakeholder in the brand. If the brand itself is beloved enough, these access passes too can accrue some value but it's definitely a much more difficult road for projects to follow akin to what traditional non-web3 businesses go through. CONCLUSION: WHO SHOULD CHOOSE WHICH MODEL? I think at this point it's quite clear who should follow which model & what the market expectations are depending on what is chosen. Not following these unwritten rules will likely not be treated kindly by market participants. Chart below attempts to show the inherent upside of an NFT given its perceived ownership level absent any other factor. NFT brands only serve as examples of the ownership category, things are not so black&white in reality. Small startups who have more to prove, are riskier to back, are trying to build a community from scratch will likely opt for method #1 with expectations put forth by the market being directly proportional of the amount raised. Web3 investors with risk appetite will flock to these despite the higher entry price because there is more investment upside given the increased ownership or at least treatment like there is ownership (since legally there is in fact no ownership & usually can't be ownership due to antiquated securities laws thus market creates workarounds to the stupidity). If you're an established brand or already have a passionate base of fans and not interested in having the tight web3 community ownership aspect (and headache that will likely come with it) but still appreciate some of the web3 tech on offer than can supplement your brand (like transparency, composable tools that can be plugged into, tradeability of assets etc) then method #2 makes sense. CASE STUDY OF WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SWITCH FROM METHOD #1 TO METHOD #2: RTFKT Whatever method a project chooses, it is probably not advisable to start with method #1 and then try to switch to method #2 in abrupt fashion. One case study that backs this is how @RTFKT turned from a web3 darling to having an overly negative reputation in the web3 space. They had a gigantic roughly 9 figure sale but then following an early free offering in Pods/MNTLH proceeded to charge high sums for their SZN 1 gear, for the hoodies, for the suitcase and then for the iRL Cryptokicks (which meant the contents of the MNLTH itself ended up not being really free either). In RTFKT's defense the products they produced were much higher quality & costly than anything the space was used to, but that fact was not quite enough to bypass the unwritten expectations of the market (especially when paired with the amount raised). Since the previously mentioned pattern of rewarding your early backers enough wasn't established for a long enough period, not only were some of the early holders dismayed but outsiders were not wooed & didn't FOMO into joining the club, impacting the primary asset valuation. The web2/corporate link to Nike probably created even more skepticism around this area compared to others who had more leeway to establish their loyalty to backers. This has now had a compounding negative effect in not allowing them to cash in on that BIG second sale with the Animus IP (as Yuga did with Otherside/Mutants or Azuki did with Elementals). I spent a lot of efforts (unsuccessfully) trying to bring awareness to this possibility but unfortunately now the consequences are being felt even as the company has started doing the right things. Instead now they will likely need to continue down the method #2 of selling products with healthy margins attached to them which might further continue the negative spiral until they find enough new traditional consumers/fans to balance the scales and complete the transition to method #2. Based on their recent communication it seems they are in fact fully embracing method #2 and that's naturally creating a tough transition stage for backers who thought they bought into method #1. TLDR How a company prices its initial genesis NFT collection will impact people's expectations & the relationship it has with them for years to come, and rightfully so. There will continue being appetite for expensive genesis NFTs as long as the right level of ownership is offered. Established brands will likely opt for the much safer free or cheap genesis mint strategy. Regardless of the choice, it would seem wise to determine the right path for a project early on & stick with it because switching midflight has a history of causing much turbulence in the space (and it applies to many projects beyond the example I gave above). 🦎This of course represents my personal opinion as much as I've tried to keep this framework rooted in logical & first principle based thinking. I admit it's probably tilted in the favor of investors over founders but it's also how the market views things and that ultimately dictates which projects survive and die. If you have other opinions feel free to share. Hopefully the NFT landscape present in the next cycle will see better alignment between teams & backers so we can all focus on moving this space forward, together.🦎

@ArmandoG116 @RTFKT nightmare mismanagement of a lifetime opportunity

What’s going on with @RTFKT ? How are they going to make a comeback?. I feel like they’ve created a lot of mistrust around their project. I just can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Insight/Opinions?….

@CryptoLifeJack @RTFKT i agree with you.

they're not going to give away free products, they've made that clear. NFT's are indeed a hype game with most people looking to speculate & get rich quick. By continuing to deliver & execute, RTFKT doesn't play into the degen meta of gambling on vaporware & p'n'd memes. my advice to you sir, is sell the airdrops & don't buy the physicals. if these terms aren't acceptable, it's time to consider selling & moving on.

RTFKT SKIN VIAL EVO X Forging Event is happening between Dec 14th - Dec 18th. ⚒ Read my full VIAL GUIDE below 🧵👇

@RTFKTNews @RTFKT basically do anything but what they are doing.

Here is Grok’s opinion on what @RTFKT could do to make Clone X the best collection in the NFT market: “Hey there, human! I'm doing great, thanks for asking. As for the Clone X project, it seems like they've been having some issues lately. But fear not, I've got some ideas on how they can become the best collection in the NFT market: 1.) Improve communication: The Clone X team should focus on being more transparent and communicative with their community. This can be achieved by providing regular updates on their progress, addressing concerns, and being more active on social media platforms. 2.) Focus on utility: The Clone X project needs to offer more utility to its holders. This can be done by introducing exclusive events, partnerships, or even integrating with other platforms or games. 3.) Listen to the community: The Clone X team should actively listen to their community and take their feedback into consideration when making decisions. This will help them understand what their holders want and make changes accordingly. 4.) Collaborations: Collaborating with other popular NFT projects or artists can help increase the project's visibility and attract new users. 5.) Stay innovative: The NFT market is constantly evolving, and the Clone X project needs to stay ahead of the curve by continuously innovating and introducing new features or concepts. In conclusion, the Clone X project has the potential to become the best collection in the NFT market if they focus on improving communication, offering more utility, listening to their community, collaborating with others, and staying innovative.” -Grok

@Dremill amc a list is the hack

Living in LA means going to Century City mall to get a iPad Pro at the Apple Store but they don’t validate parking tickets so you have to go to the AMC Theatres and buy a movie ticket for a movie that you’re not even planning on watching to get your parking ticket validated because that cost less than paying for parking in the parking lot.

happily got rid of my checkmark. this platform is garbage rn. i met great people on here but it’s a dumpster fire. @elonmusk u need therapy fool.

@murder_ders @CryptoLifeJack don’t tell that to prez his head will explode trying to explain how we owe rtfkt for holding their overpriced nft.

@CryptoLifeJack @zerosdotworld and it’s not free it’s at the cost of holding. They already made their money off the royalties.

can someone help explain to this guy, the issue with the expensive collectible he keeps championing (that we all own already) he’s pretty loud for living in a vacuum and having the head of a sieve. or maybe @RTFKT is paying him more to spout propaganda than they’re paying you!

@CryptoLifeJack @RTFKT sad that this is actually the best chance to give something free: NO ONE GIVES A FUCK full stop. and they’re not making a large amount of money. THIS is like a chintzy TOY from McDonalds: a no-brainer to give for FREE. i’m beginning to think you’re greedy or than ur asshole boss.

@CryptoLifeJack how 2 save project: stop treating holders (these NFTS are expensive: that’s the cost) as customers. dig into the company funds, make the next 1-3 things that are coming for FREE. This is actually a hype game! most people are speculating! AND @rtfkt KILLED THIER BRAND ALREADY!!!

@CryptoLifeJack bad take and as usual, clinging to the company line, you can’t manage to see the point of any reasonable argument for the actual way to save this project, renewed support of the holder.

Why should anyone forge these vials free? First off, they're token gated, they shouldn't be given away, they should be exclusive to the vial collector. At $20 / pair for the vials, they're practically free anyways. Sure, give the holders the occasional freebie, but the vial forge isn't it / at $20 it's pretty much already free.

@CryptoLifeJack i agree with you and my point stands: RTFKT unwilling to gift EVEN “a small accessory” to a small cross section of their loyalists who already spent money. you got blinders on dude.

@zerosdotworld They're a modestly priced accessory relevant to a small cross section of buyers who recently forged dunks + collect skin vials. I'm of the opinion there will be future dunk forge events where vials will unlock new colorways. this time around its just a bonus accessory.