White Lists: as Common as Toilet Paper and Starting to Smell the Same
The current WL trend is saturated and flushable.
HOW’S EVERY1 DOIN’? - I’m a NYer, remember - I’m here to rant and vent. No, don’t leave. It’s probably been on your mind, too. I won’t name-drop, ‘git ugly’ as my aunt Rose (RIP) would say, or have a non-fungible tantrum. And I don’t have stats since this is off-cuff. I just want to say - at the risk of offending some or many - that love might stink as the song says, but white lists stink more. Much more. So much that the stench has interrupted my day-to-day tasks to write this. But I have to. The olfactory offense is at ATH right now, and I’m tired of holding my nose, watching idly.
White lists, commonly and individually known as WL, are currently plaguing the NFT ecosystem right now. Starting off as an alternative project launch-method late last year, as an effort for projects to stand out from others in the increasing ocean of non-fungible offerings, WL madness quickly ensued. In a nutshell, it’s all about gated access. Where BAYC, for example, was open access, allowing anyone to have their own Ape or more than one, white lists thrive on exclusivity, mystery, and tons and tons (and more tons) of hype. An aspiring pfp-owner now has to - as per common WL requirements - 1. trade their pfp for said (unproven) project’s pfp; 2. retweet until carpal tunnel sets in; 3. jump through hoops of fire; 4. run around your neighborhood stark naked, yelling out the project’s name, and you might be included on the Holy White List. A huge maybe that’s drowning in all probability that you will be rudely and casually excluded, after having performed massive acts of free-promotion for said and unproven project. Sadly, even the better contenders turn out - after all the waiting and endless hype - to be Noisome Failures of a Token. Meka, Squiggles, Bored Bunny, etc. etc. And the list goes on (pun certainly intended).
So that’s where we are now. WL’s are not the biggest NFT woe right now (the naive, open-armed welcome to all that is Web 2 would be our biggest threat IMO) but they are a disease. I think one simple way to counter this illness is to go back to basics. I suggest the old-fashioned way of simply announcing a project, having no white list (and perhaps no roadmap either), and just letting the curious JPEG or PNG do its thing. Crypto Punk style. I mean, they were the first far beyond-Moon NFT project (props also to Crypto Kitties) that realized exponential ROI. Isn’t $0 (+ a Jurassic, pre-sanitarium Eth gas fee) to 6 figures in a few years good enough? Punks happened magically, as did BAYC. But white list mania is a mega-ponzi tragedy.
It’s not surprising, but awful nonetheless. For example, because of a DAO affiliation, I got WL’d on a project I didn’t like but which was supposed to take off into the Ether. It was Squiggles, which had at the time something like 200k+ Twitter followers. Yes, nearly a quarter of a million. Who are these ppl? I didn’t know. How many of those followers were unique and true? Wasn’t sure and didn’t look into it (time waste since I never liked it but was strongly encouraged to get on WL). I felt Squiggles was just another copycat NFTrash project. And after I saw that public mint was 1E ($3,200 *at time of writing), and WL mint was 0.4 ($1,280 *atow), I immediately and quietly deleted the project from my Discord. Yet another shameless cash-grab, like SOo many other NFtrash projects with garbage art and copycat ‘utility’. My hunch turned out to be correct to the fullest degree: Squiggles has since gone down in NFT infamy.
So How Can We Be Better?
I often think about NFT - particularly pfp - projects from the perspective of the creators. Project authors / teams are making a lot of money, regardless of that project’s success. That’s why for projects on Ethereum I suggest smaller scale (more scarce) and waay more affordable mint prices (0.02-0.05) or free mints. It just smells better. And it’s compassionate. WAGMI, right? Or, better yet, mint on Tezos, Polygon (SSW r n), Kusama, or Near (I have personal experience with these and heartily vouch for them). Or Wax, Cosmos, Fantom, etc. Wax claims to be ‘King of NFTs’ so that needs to be confirmed. Atom’s tried n true, and Cronje is on Fantom, so…and there are others. And more to come. AND THEY’RE ALL basically GAS-FREE. So, why Eth? Why WL? There are so many better ways to do this, folks.
Screen saver world (Polygon)
Kalamint (Tezos)
HEN (Tezos)
Singular (Remark app on Kusama)
Objkt (Tezos)
Fxhash (Tezos)
So go back to basics. Create good or great art (easy since the bar is pretty low r n) and have an affordable, fair launch (even a very sophisticated one like Pixel Vault recently did for Elite Ape covers). And please consider giving yourself a break from ever-farting Ethereum (no hate, just options thankfully) and visit any one or all of those other chains I just mentioned (SOL purposely excluded). They work well, are fun, and best of all are a relief (think Alka Seltzer). Of course you’ll need the chains respective wallets: for examples, I use the Near browser wallet, the Polkadot{.js} extension for Kusama, and Fearless wallet for Kusama mobile. Next just send a moderate amount of BTC to KuCoin for swapping. I’ve had an account with them for over a year, so getting one today is an experience I don’t know about. But if you have an account already, DO IT (frat chant). I did. No rug. Pretty sure I used VPN.
As is typical at Elated Pixelations, I’ll provide some art before I part. These were recently acquired at the Singular marketplace on Kusama. The 2nd one is interactive…try it out.
gIII