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This week was always prepped as a humongous minting week. There was Great Goats on the Sunday, Vandal City on Monday followed by Just Ape on Tuesday. These three projects dominated the headlines leading up to mint with a rush as always to whitelist. Surrounding the three-headed monster were also other mints such as MegaWobs by Wobblebug, Susanoo, Hello Pantha and Shin Sengoku. In this write up, we will cover the social media metrics as well as the price action for these projects and what it means in the current state of the market as well as what it could possibly mean going forward. Against the backdrop of this article is the reality that Solana has hit it’s yearly low so far, dipping to the $33 region.
Everyone involved knew about how hyped the three main mints were. Not only were there loads of Twitter Space AMAs with each team leading into their launches, but the three projects collectively totalled 800K twitter followers. There was also some controversy leading into two of the three projects which we managed to cover last week. As we stand right now about 5 to 6 days into all three projects launching, the project which minted for the highest price of 5 SOL (Just Ape), has transacted the most volume with 140K+, Great Goats in second with 110K+ and Vandal City coming in third with 41K+. All three projects managed to finish top 4 across all projects for the week with Okay Bears and Trippin Ape Tribe rounding out the top 5. It was interesting to note that Vandal City, arguably the project with the utility and strongest team, with the least amount of FUD going into mint, complete only a third of the volume of the Just Ape and Great Goats. Personally, this was the surprise of the week for me.
Let’s take a closer look at the price action. It’s important to note that all three collections have a 10K+ supply, with Great Goats clearly pushing for the money pot with 11,111 (did someone say cash grab?)
Great Goats mints first for 2.75 SOL on Sunday. Arguably at this point, you’d argue they are in prime position in terms of extracting liquidity as all the mints are to follow. In the first 24 hours they transact just under 60K volume and are sitting at a healthy 3x in that 9-10 SOL region. If you’re whitelisted and minted, you’ve tripled your funds at this point and I’d argue that a huge portion of minters take profit here in the first 24 hours and then the laggers take the remaining profit on the second day as prices retract down to 6 and then slowly track towards 3 for the rest of the week. There are a couple reasons why profits were sucked so quick. In recent weeks, perhaps ever since Okay Bears hit the market, there’s been huge indications that the first 3-12 hours post-mint is when prices for new mints peak. It’s rare for a project to return to that immediate price range in most cases, but we’ll touch on this later. Examples of this quick profit taking phenomenon are evident with Trippin Ape Tribe (another 250K+ follower on twitter project) and you could argue even Communi3. The big gains have been there to be taken. Over the last month, there’s been no clearer indication and one thing with the Solana NFT market I’ve realized is that we learn quickly and hence our meta evolves and changes. I’d argue that Trippin Ape Tribe may have been the project to really reinforce this notion of quick flip, easy money meta.
Vandal City was next up amongst the triple header. In my opinion, the most legitimate mint out of the three with the strongest team, least amount of fud leading in as well the project which handled AMAs the best. However, even this project fell victim to this profit taking concept with their peak also falling in the first 3-6 hours of trading. What was evident in my eyes was that Vandal City had strong support at mint price on secondary. Listings have been trending down all week with no uptick in listings at all. Something you don’t see in any of the other three projects. The project also reached a 5 SOL high which was arguably around their peak at the beginning of their secondary sales. These have been bullish signs that signify the believe in the project from the community. As it stands right now, the project is holding around 4 SOL with heists coming in around a weeks time. We’ll circle back to what I think all this means later on.
Last but not least, Just Ape minted a day after Vandal City for 5 SOL. Which is probably why VC took 2 days to start moving back up in price as you could argue profits from the first day of Just Ape moved into VC’s second and third day of trading—at least that’s my theory. Just Ape is an interesting one. It hasn’t seen the same deterioration in price action and rhetoric as Great Goats. At this stage of the week post mint, it’s clear to say that Great Goats is looking hella derivative in nature and may potentially fade from memory from here on in. The price action would suggest so.
Great Goats was never even displayed as a PFP on twitter with a measly only 2.5% of holders displaying on Twitter.
Just Ape in comparison has 12% and it’s been rising all week. The price action has been decent, still a solid 2x with a chance at moving up. That being said, I do have hesitations as to how it’ll go long term.
What does this quick listing, profit taking meta mean to me? It means missing out on WL may not be the worst feeling. Vandal City could have been picked up as a trader for under mint price. As a trader, I did also have the luxury of knowing there was another hyped mint that was going to give me the opportunity to buy low into VC at that time. I was not alone in thinking that but it’s a reflection of market psychology. Experienced traders are all thinking the same because they’ve seen the same. We will revisit this week in around a months time to review price action and community sentiment. I’m willing to bet that Vandal City will make up ground on the other two projects. As someone who evaluates teams, roadmaps, ability to execute, value of service/product, I’m willing to place a bet that VC overtakes JustApe in a months time. Someone create the market on Cubist Collective please.
There are a couple things that won’t ever change and that is that stronger teams will come out on top in the long run. This profit taking meta is only giving us an opportunity to value roadmap delivery or value creation not in the short term or leading up to mint, but over the course of time. Frankly, I believe this to be bullish for the scene as we weed out the paid actors who pump out fiver art and a 10k supply to try suck our liquidity. The current quick flip meta works well for someone like me who doesn’t have a lot of time to grind whitelists. I have more fun sniping on secondary anyway and then calling low but safe entries into projects in our Broccoli Dao.
That’s a wrap for me on the current state of whitelist and minting. Hope it all stays the same because I see opportunities.