Financializing a Meme: Dissecting the Wassieverse NFT Mint
How to productize a meme and community
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This week: Wassieverse
Full interview with Wassieverse member, Bags:
Welcome to The Weird Corner of Crypto Twitter
You’re scrolling through Crypto Twitter.
You stumble across an interesting, somewhat funny thread.
At the bottom of it, a stranger has tagged one account:
“@Inversebrah”
If you’ve hung around Crypto Twitter long enough, you’ve likely come across the bizarre subculture of “smolting”, also known by his Twitter handle as @Inversebrah.
Whenever something of interest happens on Twitter, smolting is invoked as a way to commemorate the moment: Twitter users tag him on tweets that are meme-worthy, and smolting would screenshot and share them.
In fact, smolting is one of many fictional creatures known as “wassies”, which emerged organically in the depths of the 2018 crypto bear market, and have since evolved into a staple of crypto internet culture, with Inversebrah garnering 180,000+ followers and countless more accounts emerging.
This month, some of the original purveyors of the wassie meme will be launching Wassieverse -the official NFT collection for the 4-year old community.
Below, we’ll break down what Wassieverse is, and present a summary of how the current market is valuing various NFT collections.
Blockcrunch VIP subscribers have the option to enter a free raffle for the NFT whitelist at the end of the memo. However, note that this research memo is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an inducement to participate in any mint.
What is Wassieverse
Wassieverse is a high-fidelity NFT collection of 13,370 3D “wassies”.
Unlike static NFT collections, users can pose their Wassieverse NFTs with Canvas - a 3D environment wherein users can interact with their wassies. Over time, the team expects to build mini-games that users can play with their wassies.
Wassieverse Team
Wassieverse is built by a team of 14 anonymous developers who claim to have years of experience in tech, with 3D modeling, as well as serving as advisors to other crypto protocols.
Unlike other Wassie-themed projects, the main originator of the meme, smolting (Inversebrah) is also directly involved (see full list here).
Roadmap
Each wassie is a master key to all of the planned experiences, games and airdrops in Wassieverse. Some utility/games/experiences planned by the team include:
Mini-Games: 3 of them revealed, with more to come. Wassieverse’s 3D models and focus on mini-games calls to mind popular game franchises like Ubisoft’s Raving Rabbids (which has sold 20 million units and has a animated television series aired in 110 countries) and Sony’s Little Big Planet.
Virtual Identity: Ability to use wassie avatar in video calls (v-tubing) and third-party metaverse projects
Community Involvement: Building out pose-library in Canvas
Physical Shop: Wassie plushies and other merchandise
Other possible developments: Wassie animated short films and application
Comparable Selection
While it is reasonable to attach a premium to Wassieverse NFTs due to its strong functionality relative to most other static NFT collections, it is important to recall that NFT valuations are extremely culture-elastic and sensitive to community consensus of perceived value (see VIP note on NFT valuation framework here).
In lieu of a bottoms-up valuation approach, we will compare several collections we identified as serviceable comparables: By Wassies, Milady Makers, Ragnarok Meta and Anata.
By Wassies
Wassie NFT project by one of the big wassie-affiliated accounts, Loomdart. Each wassie grants owner access to their gated community, as well as airdrop of another Loomdart project, Loomlocks - a physical lockout device designed to help curb addiction and vices.
Milady Makers
Collection of generative profile picture NFT in a neo-chibi aesthetic inspired by subcultural fashion tribes of Y2K Japan. (Update: this memo was prepared prior to the recent controversy round Milady)
Ragnarok Meta
Collection of Ronins that allows exclusive access to Ragnarok, a Play-to-Earn browser based game that developed a sizable community lately and one of the few projects that had a working demo prior to the NFT mint.
Anata
Brand new form of identity for Web 3 and beyond - they are the first ever collection of NFTs that has v-tubing capabilities, which allows owners to represent themselves as their Anata NFT during video-calls and live-streaming.
Competitive Analysis
To better understand how Wassieverse stands against these projects, we will assign subjective grades to the different projects by their:
Community: how sticky is the community, how relevant is it to crypto-twitter
Utility: beyond a jpeg, what benefits does it bring to the holder?
Team: is the team capable enough to execute all that is promised?
Valuation Analysis
Below we will outline the possible scenarios for Wassieverse NFT’s floor price based on their relative performance with the closest comps.
We have presented some core details around the major comps below:
As NFTs can be valued either as a collection (using the estimated fully diluted value, i.e. total supply * floor price), or as individual pieces (using the floor price), we will present both scenarios for consideration. Note that below is highly subjective and is not intended as financial advice.
As reference, we also included the FDV and floor price for comps as their recent peaks to account for more favorable conditions in the NFT market.
Outlook
Our base assumption is that as the de facto “canon” project in the “wassie” lore, Wassieverse benefits from an existing community that has had its roots in crypto since 2018.
While there is significant market headwinds for crypto as an asset class due to broader weakness, with numerous “blue chip” collections trading 50%+ lower from their highs, we are compelled by Wassieverse’s innovative use case surrounding Canvas, which we see as belonging to a larger trend in utility-infused NFTs.
There is material risk around Wassieverse not achieving the mainstream appeal that projects such as Anata has had, and without a robust existing gameplay it is unlikely to capture the same mindshare as Ragnarok in the short term as well.
For reference, we present the following summary of various scenarios should Wassieverse command a floor price comparable to various collections. Note that this is merely a summary of available market data and not to be construed as financial advice.
Whitelisting for Subscribers
The minting details for Wassieverse NFTs are as follows. Blockcrunch VIP subscribers qualify for a raffle for 300 free whitelist spots (note that while whitelist spots are free, minting still costs 0.3 ETH).
Minting Date: June 3rd for Whitelisted Addresses.
Public sale: 48 hours after
Total Supply: 13,370
Price: 0.30 ETH (WL), 0.33 (Public)
NFT: 3D wassie with different traits (body type, skin, feet, pants, shirts, jackets, headwear and other unique items, traits may also have different functions in future games)
Raffle Mechanics
We have partnered with Wassieverse to give away whitelist slots to 300 Blockcrunch VIP subscribers.
To join the raffle, submit your email (the one used to subscribe to VIP) and ETH address over here by 27th May 2022, 23:59 (GMT+8)
Monthly VIPs = 1 ticket
Yearly VIPs = 12 tickets
Each VIP is only able to submit 1 ETH wallet
Each wallet is only entitled to win 1 slot in the raffle i.e no repeat winners per raffle
We will send out an email with an Excel sheet of all the winners. Alternatively, you can also check if you have won via Wassieverse’s Discord channel
All the best! This is 1st of the many partnerships we have in store for our beloved VIP subscribers.
Resources To Check Out
Wassieverse
Others
DISCLAIMER
The Blockcrunch Podcast (“Blockcrunch”) is an educational resource intended for informational purposes only. Blockcrunch produces a weekly podcast and newsletter that routinely covers projects in Web 3 and may discuss assets that the host or its guests have financial exposure to. Views held by Blockcrunch’s guests are their own. None of Blockcrunch, its registered entity or any of its affiliated personnel are licensed to provide any type of financial advice, and nothing on Blockcrunch’s podcast, newsletter, website and social media should be construed as financial advice. Blockcrunch also receives compensation from its sponsor; sponsorship messages do not constitute financial advice or endorsement.
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