Degods &..Y00ts.. Are they the Bored Apes of Solana? + NFT Scoop hits the Big Screens.
Must read.. Yes that's you Eth Maxi
We have a lot of the team on holiday this week ☀️ The Scoop team needs to enjoy some Scoops of gelato in the sun once in a while🍦. But that doesn’t stop NFTscoop..
So today, unfortunately for some, you are stuck with me.. @thebarbell_ Founder & Chief Scoop.
I’d love to meet you on Twitter.
Think of me like when you had a substitute teacher at school. Was always fun right?!
Enjoy.
First up! NFTScoop hit the Big Screens 🎬
That’s right.. Hollywo.. Well.. Youtube for now. Big news!
Too lazy to read?
You will now be able to tune in & watch your favourite NFT news. With hosts, myself @thebarbell_ & the legendary @ScoopAnchor. We will be recording the shows following the newsletter drop + exploring whatever else is going on in the space in real-time.
Do me a favour.. Go check out our first video update & be among the first to subscribe to our channel. We mean it. You’re early. 😄
y00ts Mint Breakdown
A lot of you reading like your ETH … but when we smell a good project. We are all over it. This project happens to be on Solana… but read on, leave your ego at the door ETH head, and open your mind to other worlds. These guys seem to be doing something different.
Let’s dive in.
There are some notable NFT project mints you can recall that burn so deeply in your brain that you will never forget them.
Which will generally fall into the below scenarios.
A) You tried your damned hardest to get a whitelist, you even got a tattoo to demonstrate your commitment to the mods..but just couldn’t convince the whitelist gods.
B) You did mint the project and you made enough profit to buy a small house.
C) The mint & reveal was a complete shit show that NFT Twitter went APE shit.
Whatever happened to you, the result has probably swayed your bias & thoughts toward the project. Some recent mints come to mind.
Invisible Friends - One the most Hyped mints of the NFT Bull run - Keyboard warriors fought valiantly on the discord battlefield for a spot. Some even spent $250 on merch for 0.1% chance of getting a whitelist. The majority failed, but those that minted & flipped made a monumental profit ($25k plus region)
Pixelmon - Total raised in mint $70M - Art reveal - Wouldn’t have impressed a 5-year-old.
Otherdeed Land Sale - $285 Million Raised - Many were priced out due to gas fees & lost out - A whopping $175 Million total GAS fees were paid.
Now onto y00ts..
Sitting on the Solana Blockchain ‘y00ts’ is a sister project to ‘Degods’ led by ‘FranksDeGods’. Y00ts has been one of the most hyped NFT launches since ‘Nam and the infamous y00tlist has swept NFT Twitter like wildfire. Given low volumes and bearish market sentiment. The traction they have gained is nothing short of exceptional.
Fortunate degens who achieved y00tlist have been lording it up over those who have fallen short. Lifes hard. Just like some of us can’t drive Lambos. some of us can’t get y00tlist. Including us..
This takes us to the y00tlist process & mint journey.
In order to achieve y00tlist you either needed to have held a Degods NFT which recently peaked its Floor around September 4th at roughly $20,000, chasing the Floor price of the Mutant Ape Yacht Club. The alternative was filling out an application form where the Degods team would then select who was eligible, turning the whitelist grind meta on its head. Think of it like a college or job application, describing your experience, aspirations in the NFT space, and why you should be a chosen one.
The y00tlist application process went viral across Twitter and attracted attention & applications from large Twitter profiles in the ‘ETH’ space as well as A-list celebrities. For you footie folks ‘Wayne Rooney’ made the cut. Novel in its approach, this style of whitelist certainly sparked debate. Twitter crowds claimed that the majority of the spots went to influencers with large followings, but when you look at the data we see a different story.
Whilst Twitter was crying out at large that only celebs & influencers got y00tlist, some data was shared showing that the two largest sectors that passed the y00tlist application were between 1-5K followers or less than 1k Followers.
Once your application was accepted, the y00tlist Twitter page would tweet out profiles that had passed. Our guess is that because prominent accounts are more visual, the good old Twitter Algo made these tweets more visible and created a sense that it was just celebs winning the race.
y00ts collection size - 15,000 - Magic Eden Link
Here is the breakdown of the mint allocation.
10,000 - DeadGods (66.6%)
3250 - y00tlist (21.66%)
1500 - DAO Pool (10%)
150 - DAO Treasury (1%)
100 - Participation Raffle (0.66%)
1400 waitlisted members. 235 t00bs are available for the waitlist.
In order to mint a t00b / y00t you had to pay in the Solana currency $ Dust Token (375 Dust per mint)
If you were lucky enough to mint, you didn’t actually mint a y00ts. You minted a t00bs NFT. t00bs is your ticket to Y00topia and as a holder, you have the choice to either exchange your t00b for a y00t or you choose to retain your t00bs. In essence, they will act as 2 separate NFT collections.
So what’s the drama around the Mint process?
Firstly the Twitter community felt this y00tlist was swayed towards celebrities and influencers. But we already dispelled this above.
Next, the team decides to delay the mint day due to a bug found in the contract. This never goes down well & those who didn’t make the cut now have ammo and start firing at Frank & the team on Twitter.
As far as we are concerned… The delay was a good move, it’s better to do it right than do it wrong. If a smart contract is deployed with a bug there is really not much you can do to change it once you have launched. Though despite delays, there were still issues during Mint that affect the user experience.
On to the waitlist controversy. We stated above that there are 235 waitlist mints available. Well, that number was originally 400 and changed last minute. Sure, moving the goalposts is never good, and those who couldn’t mint lost out following a tank in Dust token price. But there were 70,000 applicants & 1400 selected for the waitlist. You can’t please everyone.
The general feedback on Twitter is that the mint experience was clunky, and problematic, with some describing it as absolutely terrible.
If all else failed, you could enter the y00tlist raffle. 100 were up for grabs. The cost was 1 $ DUST token per entry / unlimited entries. Though Frank and the team decided to refund all those who were unsuccessful.
Closing thoughts..
Someone is always gonna hate. So at least give them something to remember you by.
In all seriousness, some of the most large-scale mints have been problematic.. look at Otherdeeds for example.. More hype & attention means more users, more noise, and more traffic which naturally attracts more problems and needs greater levels of tech to handle the throughput. You are always going to hear about the problems of largely hyped mints, there are always more people who can’t mint than those who can, this makes for a large cohort who want to openly whine, bitch and moan.
Post Mint Action;
Some people took their y00tlist and flipped their t00bs pre-reveal for circa $4k profit, and why wouldn’t they.. Degens will be Degens.
The floor of T00bs is currently 130 $Sol ($4,550) - Over a 10x since mint.
The team has gone dark on Twitter to take some time to fix the issues they encountered. In their words “No more excuses”
They Hype & price action will certainly die down, so look at for a drop in floor if you are looking to Scoop up a t00b / Y00ts
The art is currently pre-reveal & may be delayed for another week or so.
Our Take: Degods & y00t’s Future
Despite thoughts around the mint positive or negative, one thing is clear, momentum is building for the Degods Ecosystem. @Frankdegods has displayed quality leadership following the mint and has so far built a strong reputable web3 brand & community.
Degods & Y00ts sit under the parent company Dust Labs, which has recently raised $7M in Seed funding from an impressive roster of investors. We are talking FTX Ventures, Magic Eden & Mysten Labs to name a few. I was actually in a Twitter space the other night where Prominent Web3 investor @AmyWu expressed her confidence in Frank & Kevin (CEO of Dust Labs).
One thing that’s needed in for continued growth & innovation in web3 is funding. We have seen it with Yuga which has allowed them to grow arms legs & mutants.
Now can the Dust & Degods ecosystem see the same success as Yuga / BAYC on Solana?
It’s a bold claim, but maybe. They are strong marketers, innovators & have a first mover advantage with a number of web3 products they are releasing. We can say for certain there are some similarities, but can they capture the same cultural significance? Time will tell.
I hear you guys… “$7M is chump change in the ETH world”, “Solana NFTs are trash”
Bitcoin Maxis said the same when ETH first came around, and people doubted Bored Apes & PFPS in the early days. The point is, keep an open mind to whats happening & don’t get married to one chain.
Dust Labs exists to build software that helps NFT communities bring more value to their holders and is a company spun off from Degods. Something we can all agree is needed in a world of pump & dumps, scams & Ponzis. They’re doing ‘De’Gods work.
The $ DUST token is a utility token of Dust labs. the idea is that you will need to acquire $ DUST in order to use the software services & if the tech finds product market fit, then the sky is the limit for $ DUST token.
The team has stated they don’t try to start with a solution. They start solving problems they have faced. To me, it’s clear they move fast and break things, build, see what works, and what doesn’t then iterate & improve. The team is also experimenting with Y00ts in a number of ways:
y00ts' white paper outlines that rather than having a central entity control the project and its intellectual property rights (IP), the NFT collection will function as the "governing body’ that keeps track of individuals or groups authorized to use the NFT's IP rather than holding Creative Commons (CC0) licenses.
y00ts NFT holders who stake their NFTs for 30 days will receive a "ⓨ token" that will be applied to their metadata. Each y00ts NFT can earn up to 6 tokens. holders can use the tokens to customize the y00ts NFTs with traits from the y00ts store.
However, a y00t can only use a trait it already has e.g, you can swap a black Nike shoe trait for a customized golden shoe trait, but you can't swap a shoe trait for a customized hoodie.
The holder can revert their y00t to its base traits if they wish. + prior to adding a new customized trait, the holder must stake his y00ts NFT for another 30 days.
Finally, The Scoop team bloody love the art from Degods & Y00ts. they’re nostalgic, packed with character & make for perfect PFPs.
To me it’s clear. I love ETH, I am bullish on the Merge & the long-term trajectory of the chain, but I was once a bitcoin Maxi, but refused to bury my head in the sand & ignore the innovation happening on Ethereum. Dust Labs & the Degods ecosystem get my juices flowing. The team is pushing the boundaries of innovation, attempting to improve the NFT space, (Solana & ETH) & know how to market.
Bullish.
Trends so 🔥 they make your Ice cream drip
I’ll have to wrap up soon.
But here's one more pointer to get your brain ticking.. The entertainment industry, specifically Music, Gaming & Film (things people love) is ripe for disruption through NFT technology.
I’m spitballing here but my mind says:
Music NFT Launchpads
Video & film NFT Launchpads
Creator & artist fundraising through NFTs with value tied back to early supporters.
Someone will soon nail the perfect Video Game that utilises NFTs
Keep your eyes & ears out for projects who are looking to tap into this industry.
Signing off folks. Need to eat. ✌️
Disclaimer
The NFT Scoop newsletter or podcast is not financial advice, it is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only.
NFT’s can be highly illiquid markets, causing sharp drops in prices due to changes in narratives and trends.
We would love to get to know you and maybe grab a sundae one day 🍨🍨