When the NFT community is talking about free-mint, goblintown.wtf is the first thing that comes to mind. Yes, I know you may be very tired of hearing goblintown again and again, yet you can’t deny it might become the first-ever free-mint blue-chips NFT project. Those well-known blue-chips players, say BAYC and Doodles, both of them required at least a fraction of ETH to mint.
Almost instant sold out for Azuki, Moonbirds & CLONE X. Those were the glory days of NFT projects
NFT projects are slowly fading into the dark, the crypto winter is even accelerating their death. Ethereum’s price plummeted from $3,000 - $4,000k to $2,000, and now it’s barely struggling to sustain its $1,000 mark. Projects that work their socks off got caught in the wind; if the mint price is set too high, nobody would go for it. Often the developers had no choice but to lower the mint price, or even cut supply. Before June, most developers have no idea how a free-mint could turn out for NFT projects. The zero-cost mint experiment by goblintown hit a home run, and from then, everybody in the NFT scene is following the goblin’s footstep.
The floor price movement of goblintown.wtf. From zero to hero!
Sadly, there aren’t any other free-mint projects hit wonder like goblintown. But still, free-mint projects are definitely doing better than projects that required an entrance fee. For instance, Ikusa NFT, quote ‘a WEB3 Streetwear brand inspired by anime and Japanese aesthetics’, a highly anticipated project that launched in April, is having difficulties selling out. While Azuki, the project that inspired Ikusa I believe (as they shared the same anime art style) sold out in 3 minutes with the mint price of 1 ETH. During then, one single ETH cost above $3,000. Originally, Ikusa mint price is set at 0.1 ETH for WL and 0.2 ETH for public sale, with a total supply of 7,777 NFTs. Due to the bear market and crypto crash, Ikusa ended up having to cut supply to 2,222 and lower mint price to 0.1 ETH for the public sale. As of writing this piece, Ikusa has yet to complete its sale.
Art style of Azuki and Ikusa
Compare to the unfortunate Ikusa, free-mint projects are having the time of their lives, such as ill poop it and WAGDIE that I shared last month. Subsequently, there are Gossamer Seed, Moonrunners, WZRDS, etc. All these free-mints projects are bagging in sweet loyalty fees, and that’s how the developers earn from their hard work. However, among these free-mint projects, there is a common problem: the hype is momentary. One day we are looking at the all-time high (ATH) while the next day it goes back to square one. To the people who minted free-mint NFT, they are only required to pay a small gas fee as a transactional cost, other than that is net gain. Whenever there is a new NFT project in town, we can see the money (as in ETH) flowing out from older projects and start to switch sides.
The floor price movement of various free-mint projects. You can tell from the above graphs, they all went downhill inevitably
If you are a vivid NFT collector, perhaps you do not care about the floor price as much. Meanwhile, for the NFT traders, the strategy to make profit in such a bear market is to mint free or start investing as early as possible. When the crowd goes overhype, pumping the floor price to an unreasonable level, it might be a good time to take profit. Keep in mind that NFT prices are ultra volatile, DYOR before you begin this trading business.
Written by: [Coinlive] Nell