A New NFT Business Model
A New NFT Business Model
An NFT project is building a decentralized coffee company and aiming to disrupt supply chain financing with NFTs and ERC-20s. Here's what you need to know.
TylerD's Market Summary
GM!
Today's top news includes:
Pons launching a new web3 business model
A very busy day in crypto ft. CRV, the DoJ, Saylor and more
Yuga teases Wreck League
DirtyRobot takes over as CEO of Renga
DraftKings is #1 in sales volume across blockchains
Today's Morning Minute is brought to you by Gondi, a newcomer to the NFT Lending market looking to make a splash. And they’ve got some ammo, after completing a $5.35M seed round led by hack.vc and backed by major players like Foundation Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Pantera Capital, and 6th Man Ventures
Gondi is a decentralized lending protocol, designed to create the most efficient NFT lending market possible for its users. How does it drive that efficiency? By enabling continuous underwriting, refinancing, and renegotiation of loans.
Gondi stands out with its unique auto-refinancing & interest accruing only on duration, features hard to find elsewhere. With auto-refi lenders can instantly refinance any given loan & borrowers can get more favorable terms without action (or facing gas fees).
Arguably the best feature-borrowers only pay interest based on time they hold the loan. If a 30-day loan is paid back after 15 days, only 15 days of interest is paid. This is different from how early loan protocols were designed with fixed interest.
Check out their Twitter and/or their platform to learn more about the "most innovative NFT lending protocol."
And if you are interested in sponsoring the Morning Minute, reach out to me on Twitter.
☕️ Pons Launches Making Coffee
An NFT project made a shocking reveal yesterday.
And I'm not talking about CryptoDickbutts.
Pons' Wen Utility made the major announcement yesterday that they're launching 2 businesses - Making Coffee and WenSwap.
Here's what you need to know.
What Happened?
Wen Utility has been a very secretive NFT project to date, with holders buying in on faith in Pons and future potential.
Yesterday they were rewarded for their faith.
Pons announced two companies:
Making Coffee, which made a strategic partnership with El Salvador to use Bitcoin and blockchain to connect all the humans in the supply chain process to create a new kind of Web3 coffee brand
WenSwap, a replacement for "supply chain financing" using NFT technology
Pons provides an example of how WenSwap will power Making Coffee.
In this "new cashflow model", the flow works like this:
Coffee beans are sold directly to members at a discount
Members receive an NFT providing ownership of the beans
Making Coffee sells those beans to customers via coffee products
NFT holders will be paid back at a higher price than they paid
Both Making Coffee and WenSwap have plans to integrate the ecoystem's $FRG token as their decentralized utility token.
According to the pitch, profits from selling coffee, from opening retail stores, to vending machines and franchises will be used to buy back $FRG.
NFT holders (The Plague) can get $FRG by staking their NFTs and claiming monthly or via buying on Uniswap.
Additionally, each holder of the Wen Utility NFT has been given a vested interest in the brand, receiving:
Predicate License
Making Coffee Founder's Pass
WenSwap Pass
Why Does It Matter
This is one of the first examples of an NFT project and its founder launching a real-world business leveraging Web3 concepts and including NFTs and ERC-20 tokens.
They certainly have lofty goals (5-year goals include opening 500 retail stores, 9.500 vending machines, and $1B in WenSwap annual transactions).
If Pons and his holders can make it happen, they will be a major case study, beyond just our Web3 niche and likely examined in business schools across the country.
Many complain about NFT projects not pushing the needle or using the tech - well here is a major example of one team doing exactly that.
Now it's time to let Pons cook (or grind those beans).
📰 A Busy Day in Crypto
A busy weekend in the crypto space may have just been an appetizer for the week ahead.
Several major headlines came through in the crypto space across late Tuesday and into Wednesday.
Major highlights included:
The CRV situation continues to be fragile as DeFi protocol Abracadabra proposes to charge 200% interest on CRV founder Michael Egarov's loan, effectively squeezing him out of their protocol
The Department of Justice is seemingly afraid of going after Binance too hard for its alleged fraud in a potential "too big to fail" scenario
Michael Saylor's Microstrategy is raising $750m in a stock share sale to buy more Bitcoin
Litecoin went through another halving (falls 6% to new monthly lows)
Robinhood crypto trading revenue fell 18% in Q2 2023 to $31M, after removing all the tokens named in the SEC lawsuits in June
The odds of a spot Bitcoin ETF approval in the U.S. this year are now up to 65% according to Bloomberg
A few takeaways here:
It seems more and more clear that the BTC ETFs (and likely ETH ETFs to follow) will get approved, which likely cements crypto in the investment space - very bullish long term
The CRV situation remains very fragile and volatile, and the decision of a few core, key individuals could rock the whole DeFi space; it's worth following closely if you have any investments in that area
The DoJ news and how they choose to handle the Binance fraud allegations is likely the single most important story in crypto in the near term. They seem to think 1) Binance has committed major wrongdoings, but 2) the extent of that wrongdoing, and its corrections, may severely impact the crypto space.
I personally won't believe they tread lightly on Binance until we see it, but expect that outcome to have a major impact one way or another.
🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
Trading volume again came in around 8k ETH on Wednesday; NFTs were mostly red with Where My Vans Go as an outlier surging 50% to 21 ETH and CryptoDickbutts rebounding
Yuga Labs, Animoca Brands, and nWay teased "Wreck League" (likely as some kind of next game), with more information expected today
A 3d Hoodie Punk sold for 235 ETH ($433k) yesterday, with the seller taking a 115 ETH loss but $92k gain on the transaction after a little over a year of holding
DirtyRobot has taken over Renga, stepping in as CEO after severing ties with previous CEO Tails in a major internal shift
Forgotten Runes Wizards released their entire collection in 3D, game ready and playable
0N1 Force introduced a point-based reward system where its holders can earn loyalty points by using their 0N1 Force as their X (Twitter) profile picture
DraftKings was the #1 project in NFT sales volume across all blockchains on Wednesday on the back of its FedEx Cup Playoff Packs selling out
Insrt announced it will be launching Perpetual Mints in Sept 2023, a new method for on-demand minting of any asset as an NFT; it will feature a real-time probabilistic auction system, without oracles or price risks
🌎 Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
The crypto market fell on Wednesday; BTC -1.2% to $29,140; ETH -1.2% at $1,835
Elixir Games, a web3 gaming distribution platform, formed a strategic partnership with Gala Games to bring popular blockchain games, such as Town Star and Spider Tanks, to the Elixir Games Launcher
Vault Music is reintroducing "Cassette Culture" using blockchain technology to preserve and distribute exclusive live albums from top independent musicians in New York City
🚀 NFT Total Volume
BAYC (2,003 ETH, 29.15 ETH Floor)
MAYC (792 ETH, 5.43 ETH)
DeGods (334 ETH, 8.78 ETH)
CloneX (447 ETH, 1.32 ETH)
Azuki (328 ETH, 4.97 ETH)
📈 NFT Floor Price Increase
Where My Vans Go (50%, 21 ETH Floor)
CryptoDickbutts S4 (30%, 0.08 ETH)
Murakami Flowers (29%, 0.36 ETH)
Ether Avatars (29%, 0.09 ETH)
CryptoDickbutts S3 (12%, 0.85 ETH)
🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals
Today is another day filled with art drops.
There is a new drop on Verse and other releases from Dustin Yellin and Dave Krugman.
The Verse drop from Stuart Bachelor may be the highlight here with some very aesthetic outputs. Though it is a generative set, there only appears to be 10 outputs so it may be a hybrid generative/edition drop.
Dustin Yellin's collab with the Nouns DAO will likely see demand as well; find out more in their Spaces at 11 am ET.
If you want more, see the full list of today's drops from Swizzy's daily mint monitor.
Dustin Yellin x Nounish "Persons, Places & Things" (12:00 p.m. ET)
Dave Krugman "ROLLS" (1:00 p.m. ET)
Verse "Linea" (1:00 p.m. ET)
Stapleverse x Jruffhouse (TBD)
Enjoy this write-up? Want to sponsor the Morning Minute? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.
For all volume and floor price data, see Lucky Trader's Project Rankings page.
For all upcoming mints, see Lucky Trader's NFT Calendar page.