0
0
Metaversal Issue

The Low-Cost Mint Meta

gm Bankless Nation, the NFT meta has shifted from exclusive digital luxury items to accessible digital memorabilia. What comes next?
0
0
Oct 18, 2024 • 3 min read
The Low-Cost Mint Meta
Published on Oct. 18, 2024
View in Browser

Sponsor: Cartesi — Discover the power of Linux for your ambitious dApps, only on Cartesi.

Visit cartesi.io to learn more
.  .  .
NEWS ROUNDUP
The Low-Cost Mint Meta

The a16zcrypto team just published their State of Crypto 2024 report, and therein noted that better infra is unlocking new onchain applications.

The authors said:

Take NFTs, for instance. When crypto transactions were much more expensive a few years ago, people were trading NFTs on secondary markets for large sums totaling billions of dollars. That activity has since subsided, and in its place has risen a new consumer behavior: minting low-cost NFT collections on social apps like Zora and Rodeo.

For example, consider Yuga Labs' infamous Otherside mint. Not only did each plot deed cost ~$6,000 to mint, but the massive interest also caused major congestion on Ethereum, sending transaction fees skyrocketing across the network.

However, since then blockspace has exploded atop Ethereum, with more than 100 Layer 2s now offering fast and cheap transactions. They're only going to get cheaper, too, as the Dencun upgrade recently showed us.

This shift has made it easier to buy and create and collect NFTs. But it's also come alongside a cultural shift here.

Except for cryptoart and the very largest PFP collections, many people have migrated away from NFTs as expensive and exclusive luxury goods with huge secondary markets toward approaching them as affordable and accessible digital memorabilia collected non-speculatively.

Accelerating this trend has been the rise of open edition mints (come one, come all) and the rise of onchain social (Farcaster, Lens, Zora, etc.). L2s under the hood bring it all together. When I want to collect a post on Rodeo, it costs me ~$0.25 in ETH, which I don't think twice about.

For the foreseeable future, I expect we'll increasingly see NFTs becoming more integral components of digital identity and onchain social interactions. I don't mint a Rodeo post at $0.25 to flip it. I do it to express my taste onchain and supportively connect with a creator I admire.

The "luxury" NFT category will always exist and is still compelling in various ways. It's just that its prominence has subsided as tech advancements and cultural shifts have made participation around NFTs more accessible in general. And that's a good thing!

📰 General news

🎨 Cryptoart & music

🏆 Digital collectibles

🎮 Decentralized gaming

📱 Onchain social

🪙 NFTfi 

🌐 Virtual Worlds

FRIEND & SPONSOR: CARTESI

Cartesi did the hard work, like putting Linux on the blockchain, so that building dApps could be radically simple. Discover a boundless design space for your most ambitious web3 projects.

Visit cartesi.io to learn more
.  .  .
LEARN
What I'm Reading

Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here.

Published in Bankless

There’s a revolution in the world of money. Ethereum, Bitcoin, crypto, open finance, DeFi—a bankless revolution. And you want part of it.

Are you sure you want
to log out?
You'll lose access to your Bankless account until you log back in again. Oh and also, we'll miss you too much! 😢
Cancel
Continue
Account Light mode Log Out