Drama, Innovation, and Pets: OpenAI, Blast Layer 2, and FrenPet Stir Up Web3
OpenAI leadership shifts, BLUR Season 2 airdrop lands with several making 7-figures as Pacman launches a new layer 2 solution (Blast). Meanwhile, FrenPet captures attention on Base.
I’ll use a decade of traditional finance/corporate experience to refine the chaos into bite-sized chunks for you to digest.
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Market Overview
Headline News
My Views and Insights for the Week
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OpenAI hits the headlines as Big Tech moves to secure corporate brain drain.
The TL;DR is:
OpenAI Board removes Sam Altman
Microsoft appoints Sam as CEO of their AI division
OpenAI appoint former Twitch CEO (also a subsidiary of Amazon)
One of the Board Members states on social media that he regrets his decision
Meanwhile crypto continues to range:
Bitcoin is above $37K
ETH hovering around $2K
SOL back above $60 as traders shift their attention to airdrop farming and altcoins on Solana following the Jupiter DEX aggregator airdrop.
AVAX is up 20% this week — I’ll be looking into the Avalanche ecosystem with FPS games like Shrapnel in the pipeline and potential JPMorgan settlements.
BLUR Season 2 Airdrop
The NFT market is primed for activity around the BLUR token as the season 2 rewards are due to go live. The token has rallied 2x over the past few months in anticipation:
The token initially dumped 10% before rallying more than 20% as the market digested the Blast L2 narrative Pacman announced alongside the airdrop.
Flooring Protocol was less than impressed with the revised Blur incentive structure:
FLC intends to acquire up to 30% of every NFT collection for the protocol.
The key farmers’ responses were a mixed bag — Machi was not impressed.
While Hanwe netted $7.2M worth of Blur tokens and has since withdrawn the most from the Blast contract:
When Blur is claimed it automatically goes into the Blast contract and the owner needs to withdraw to receive it into their wallet.
125 airdrop farmers have since withdrawn more than 100k ($30K USD) Blur tokens.
Perhaps the writing was on the wall pre-airdrop:
My guess is we will be seeing a lot of traders bridge to Blast given both successful Blur season airdrops.
After all:
“Fool Me Once, Shame on You; Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me.”
As of the time of writing $33M of liquidity has been bridged to BLAST.
NFT Market Volume
Daily trading activity is down significantly on the prior week's volume, trading at around 10M USD daily:
While NFT trading is down it appears that FrenPet activity has picked up and caught the timeline as NFT traders speculate on the outcome of the BLUR Season 2 unlock.
Key Volume Drivers
A (November 14): 95 Bored Apes traded for a total of 2,830 ETH ($5.7M).
This could be the calm before the Blur season 2 airdrop storm.
Notable NFT Sales
Several CryptoPunks trade above the floor price
A Fidenza and “ETH boy” represent art sales with a combined 279 ETH
Some BAYC continue to be farmed going into the Blur airdrop
H/t
for his daily snapshot.Active wallets interacting with Ethereum NFTs continue to fall in the 15K range:
Headline News
FrenPet — The On-Chain Tamagotchi
Other News (h/t Moritz)
blur_io launched Blast, an L2 solution
Inspect integrates Cardano
ChampionsVerse announces first free mint by Ubisoft
Disney diving back into web3 with DisneyPinnacle
ParallelTCG Open Beta has been approved by EpicGames
LooksRare Infiltration mint on November 23
AuroryProject Seekers of Tokane Alpha is live
dotSWOOSH releasing TINAJ shirt on November 29th
MoonfrostGame Wave 2 is now live
Overlord_xyz partners with Endclothing for Creepz clothing line
AOFverse teasing a token reward for the upcoming Genesis collection
Ronin_Network RNS Public Sale is live
The OverworldPlay whitelist application is now open
PirateNationNFT Game Shop is live
TaprootWizards announced $7.5M seed round
FrenPet — The On-Chain Tamagotchi
FrenPet ran up 24x from $0.07 to an all-time high of $1.70 since the Coinbase announcement last week.
It has since retraced as the team grapples with minting issues and a buggy app, but could we see a healthy correction before going to the next phase?
The Tamagotchi-style game uses a token ($FP) to purchase food to keep your pet alive. BUT also appeals to the degen with PVP battles - Casino spins & dicing.
This video was posted by Coinbase on Friday leading to renewed attention on the gaming app built on Base:
Gaming Strategies
There are several strategies that can be deployed depending on your risk appetite and financial backing.
1) Whale Strategy (High Risk)
Pump the points on your pet with multiple beers — The more points you accumulate, the bigger the share of the ETH reward distribution you receive.
That's why you will see several big accounts buying significant amounts of $FP and feeding on 'beer' to accrue 1k points each time.
It would cost 10 ETH ($20K) to take rank #1 FrenPet.
Pranksy/Adam were leading with c234k points, until recently. That's 234 beers, with a price tag of 11,700 $FP ($20K USD at $1.70 per $FP).
But be wary! People will bonk you (PVP) for a chance to seize a 0.5% share of your total points.
A Wolf Game style risk to knock you down the leaderboard (& lower ETH rewards).
Many at the top of the leaderboard have purchased shields to provide 24-hour immunity but at a hefty FP cost.
2) Low-Cost Strategy (Lower Risk)
This strategy involves:
Minting multiple pets
Spinning the wheel daily for each pet in the hopes of winning 2K points
Lower risk of being ‘bonked’ given low level and points distributed across pets
Feed a tea every 3 days for a cost of 1 $FP
3) Marketing Strategy
This plays into the referral code approach.
Create content and act as an extension of the team’s marketing function. Then drop your referral codes and earn 10% of all FP fees your referees pay.
Gaming Benchmark
FrenPet hit 25% of the Aavegotchi market cap but with more liquidity than the Polygon rival.
Where to Next?
There have been some teething issues with the traffic on the app:
Referral fees are yet to be properly distributed with some congestion
The mints have been paused and will be resolved soon
Despite this, the FP token appears to still be holding up. Players have found a workaround by buying the NFTs on the secondary market to continue playing.
Cosmetic rarity will be relevant if the game has staying power — I have purchased the bunny mask but with $FP increasing it’s becoming more expensive, especially for the Baby Yoda Mask.
Once these have been ironed out the game will need to ship additional features to keep players engaged.
The team sounds like they’re bootstrapped but the game theory is addicting and similar to Friend Tech I suspect we will see a second wind once the next phase is rolled out.
Will it have staying power? It’s hard to say especially with high-profile traders locking liquidity up in Pacman’s new Layer 2, Blast.
That’s a wrap for issue 47 of S4mmy’s Snippets. I hope you enjoyed it.
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Disclaimer: The content covered in this newsletter is not to be considered investment or financial advice. It is for informational and educational purposes only.
I hold some of the NFTs mentioned in these newsletters.