Opinion: The key to NFT’s bullish comeback lies in “fresh blood”, and signs of recovery have emerged

Author: Greg Oakford , Cointelegraph

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

In an interview, Wale, a researcher at the NFT project Azuki, recalled his past involvement in NFT and elaborated on his views on the recent recovery of the NFT market. He believed that the interest of new participants is the key to the NFT market returning to its peak, and Bored Apes has begun to rise to the top. True collectible status.

Wale minted his first NFT in early 2021 and was "immediately hooked" after it changed hands for a few hundred dollars.

“Before getting into NFTs I bought some BTC and ETH but didn’t care too much and didn’t pay much attention to what was going on in the crypto space and then discovered NFTs. Real life friends and family were not interested but I started paying attention, minting new NFTs on exchanges and buying them from the secondary market.”

At that time, Wale was studying at a university in Germany and had not yet graduated. Despite making a lot of money trading NFTs, he was hesitant to commit to Web3 full-time because he was working for a German automaker at the time.

 _Wale Azuki PFP_

“Although I was making a lot of money through NFTs at the time, more than I had ever had in any job. But I also felt that the whole space felt unreal. Not confident enough to give up on everything else in 2021. So continue on Automotive in Germany The company works in marketing. I went full-time in late 2022 when not only did the market crash a bit, but I started thinking more seriously from a creator perspective and I got off to a slow start in terms of committing to going all-in on NFTs.”

Is NFT reviving?

NFTs have seen a huge resurgence over the past month. The prices of many NFTs such as CryptoPunks, Pudgy Penguins (the PENGU token has just been launched), and Doodles have increased.

But has NFT really recovered? Wale thinks these phenomena are good, but still far from the frenzy of 2021-22 that was once spearheaded by the cultural phenomenon of Bored Ape Yacht Club.

The price of CryptoPunks, which was around $50,000 or slightly higher not long ago, is now over $150,000. With the PENGU airdrop announcement, other traditional projects and Pudgy Penguins also saw big gains. The NFT rally has spread throughout the ecosystem, with even defunct collectibles rebounding by 50% or more.

Wale believes that “for a true recovery, the market must be excited not only about mature projects but also about new projects emerging. We are not seeing that yet. This is similar to how memecoins work. The best performance in this cycle Well a lot of memecoins are not the memecoins of four years ago.”

“Looking at it from a broader perspective, a lot of the top-performing memecoins actually attracted a lot of new people and new money. If your collection minted at 0.01 ETH or 0.05 ETH could go up to 4 ETH, that would be a real recovery, but right now It hasn’t reached this level of enthusiasm, but it’s gratifying to see early signs of a return of excitement and interest in NFTs.”

Bored Apes rise to true collectible status

CryptoPunks showed strong momentum for the first time in the NFT rally of the past four to six weeks, but to the surprise of many collectors, including Wale, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) doubled in price despite no catalyst. Fan. At the same time, Pudgy Penguins announced the launch of the PENGU token, for which Pudgy holders will receive a certain allocation, a move similar to the APE allocation for BAYC holders in March 2022.

Flamingo DAO member Derek Edwards coined the term "minimal external dependencies". This is a framework for thinking about certain types of NFTs, and many art collectibles and punks fall into this category. Aside from the NFT itself, there are usually no promises, no catalysts, no airdrops, and no roadmap. Speculation is still there, but it's not built on the external dependencies that an NFT project with a strong IP or a gaming focus might have.

During the last bull market, there was discussion as to whether BAYC would fall into this least externally dependent category and become a collection that people just wanted to own, not because they expected future gains. Wale believes Apes may be showing early signs of moving in this direction.

Wale pointed out two main reasons. One is the launch of the ApeChain ecosystem. They have found something that really attracts the core community and NFT traders, collectors and people who like NFT.

The second reason is to really see that Apes is becoming more of a status symbol, maybe not to the punk level in Web3, but when talking about mainstream NFTs, 90% of people know the brand Bored Apes, not Pudgy Penguins or Doodles. This has a lot to do with the mainstream attention NFTs received as they boomed in 2021 and 2022.

Projects that continue to be built during the bear market

Although a large portion of NFT projects made a lot of empty promises and failed roadmaps in 2021-22, those that persisted and continued to build are starting to gain traction again.

Doodles' recent large-scale collaboration with McDonald's is an example, with 110 million coffee cups printed with Doodles IP. The same goes for Pudgy Penguins, which launched PENGU this week, partners with Walmart and other major retailers that sell plush toys, and has billions of impressions across all major social media platforms.

“From Pudgy working with Walmart to Azuki working with anime.com, many projects are starting to show some results. Despite being in an NFT bear market for most of 2024, memecoins and broader cryptocurrencies are performing really well. From the perspective of projects delivered this year, I think we've done a good job and maybe we're now seeing the market starting to value it in a way that it hasn't been in the last few months."

Quick Q &A

What NFT projects do you think are currently undervalued ?

Wale: I would give a slightly different answer than name an NFT project. I think the Ordinals space as a whole is still undervalued. There are no top Ordinals projects among the top five PFP market capitalization projects. There are some projects that I think are undervalued, such as Bitcoin Puppets, NodeMonkes, Quantum Cats.

I'm surprised, especially during this rally in Bitcoin, that they haven't done better on the floor, but I would say the Ordinals ecosystem is still undervalued relative to NFTs on ETH or Solana.

Which project do you think will be successful in the long term in 10 years? Doodles , VeeFriends or Pudgy Penguins ?

Wale: I think from an attention perspective, Pudgy Penguins will have an advantage over VeeFriends and Doodles. Doodles are great too, but Gen Z may understand them a little less. I wouldn't pay too much attention to VeeFriends. They're kind of out of touch with the daily conversation on NFT Twitter, so I don't really know what they're doing in terms of content.

If I were to rank them, I would choose Pudgy Penguins, Doodles, and VeeFriends.

Related reading: NFT market rebounds: multiple leading projects announce currency issuance plans, blue-chip projects become the main force of recovery