5 NFT projects to watch | Q4 2021
Dear Bankless Nation,
The NFT ecosystem is exploding with activity lately. There are new dapps, drops, and developments around every corner!
It’s not possible to keep up with everything going on across the space right now, and that’s perfectly fine. My advice? Follow a range of info aggregators and stay current as best you can that way.
That said, this week I was putting together a file of interesting NFT projects that I wanted to explore deeper in the months ahead. After some note-taking, I figured I’d just polish the draft into a listicle for Metaversal’s readers so we can all track some rising NFT themes together.
Thus here’s that list. I’ve certainly no crystal ball when it comes to how these projects will fare going forward, but in the very least they’re all up-and-coming and currently have some interesting things in the works!
-WMP
1) DAOpunks 🤟
Created by artists Crypto Bushi and Sinjun in collaboration with Bankless DAO, DAOpunks is a new NFT collectibles series looking to build up a war chest for on-ramping people from traditional work “into full-time DAO work.”
Key resources: Website | Twitter | Discord
What they’re saying:
“We will be allocating 25% of the public sale to the DAOpunks public treasury. The DAOpunks public treasury will be primarily used to fund community-approved projects that have the ideals of growing and supporting the overall DAO ecosystem and the people behind it. These ideas revolve around providing a ‘public goods’ style grant that will provide funds to people who want to move from a traditional job into full time DAO work ... 50% of all secondary sales revenue will be allocated to the DAOpunks public treasury to continue funding these initiatives.”
Theme to watch: DAOs increasingly turning to NFTs to further their goals, foster culture, and improve self-sufficiency.
2) Supdrive 🕹️
Described as an “Art Blocks for games,” Supdrive is an on-chain fantasy console for minting games as unique NFTs. The project is steered by dom, a Nouns co-Founder and the creator of Loot and Blitmaps. Supdrive currently doesn’t have a set launch date, but the original target was October 2021 so it seems plausible we could see it hit mainnet by year’s end.
Key resources: Twitter | Discord
What they’re saying:
“These games all run on the Supdrive Virtual Firmware, a toolkit that allows games to be written in concise instructions that are gas friendly and ideal for on-chain storage. Although every game will be released in fixed edition sizes, every edition is unique — every version of the game will be different, whether it's color palettes, difficulty, special abilities, or more.”
Theme to watch: Innovators like dom and company continuing to push the boundaries of NFT gaming.
3) Nouns Party 🎉
The Noun project is an NFT avatar experiment that has attracted tremendous interest in recent weeks. So much interest, in fact, that most of the earliest Nouns have been selling at auction for +100 ETH each. As such, the co-owners of Noun #13 joined forces to create Nouns Party, a dapp that creates a rolling fund for groups of strangers to bid on Nouns together. If the “party” wins an auction, the Noun in question gets fractionalized for bidders via Fractional.
Key resources: Website
What they’re saying:
“Nouns are an experimental attempt to improve the formation of on-chain avatar communities. Nouns Party is an extension of the core ideas powering nouns, but with the community in mind. Now, with Nouns Narty, anyone can contribute to a collective vault so that the community can win nouns together.”
Theme to watch: Group bidding on highly-sought NFTs becoming increasingly common.
4) Doodle Labs 🖍️
Doodle Labs is an NFT minting platform directly powered by Art Blocks technology. The upstart project focuses on facilitating limited-edition, generative NFT drops by mainstream artists and brands.
Key resources: Website | Twitter | Discord
What they’re saying:
“Doodle Labs is dedicated to bringing established IRL artists and brands to the blockchain. Our platform is powered by Art Blocks’ generative minting technology, bringing you high quality collectible NFTs written on-chain.”
Theme to watch: New projects experimenting with the Art Blocks minting model toward new ends.
5) Cool Cat Creatures 😸
As Meebits are to CryptoPunks and Mutant Apes are to Bored Apes, Creatures are an upcoming companion release for Cool Cat holders. The Cool Cats team is planning to release Creatures along with an associated egg and item system in Q4 2021.
Key resources: Twitter | Discord
What they’re saying:
“Similar to Cool Cats, these Creatures are made up of a variety of components including a range of faces, bodies, arms, tails, and colors … Use items to interact with your Creature and grow them from egg to final form.”
Theme to watch: Top NFT projects continuing to widen and bolster their ecosystems with companion drops.
Action steps
- 🎨 Read “Meet Manifold” by Metaversal
- 🐮 Read “Multi-year NFT bull run?” by Metaversal