DYOR — Finding NFT projects
In this space, we often tell others to ‘do your own research’, DYOR in short. But where do we beginning doing our own research and what should we research about?
Trading NFTs is a kind of art that you’ll have to master. I don’t claim to be an expert, and I still have much to learn from the NFT veterans. But over the many months, I’ve learnt a few things when it comes to trading NFTs which I hope to reflect and share. That is why I’ve come up with a series called DYOR — where I run through the different ways of trading NFTs, the thought process, and the kind of research that needs to be done.
The first and most important starter to earn money trading NFTs is to find the NFT projects. There are many ways to get the ball rolling on finding some of these projects, but here I will share some sources which I found to be personally helpful.
Friends
As NFTs get increasingly popular, you will begin to see more of your friends flexing certain digital art and how much they are selling for on their social media (or sometimes even in real life). The best way to get accustomed to this space is through friends — and it is my experience as well.
There are many great ways to start, but if you can find a few friends who are already in the space, it makes everything easier because you could ping each other about projects that you/they come across, get second/third/forth opinions about projects, and also to keep yourself motivated.
If your social circle isn’t that big or have friends who are not public about their NFT experience, you can still ask them openly about what they know about NFTs and involvement in it. This can get you to evangelize to friends who might be curious about the space and perhaps want to explore with you as well.
On the other hand, you might be surprised by friends who are already in the space but are absolutely low-key about it. It’s not a surprise, though, that people would want to remain out of the radar. Anything with regards to money and investment that are highly volatile cannot be taught with full certainty of success. Furthermore, the NFT space is moving extremely quickly and people who are already deep within this space needs to be able to be updated on my information in high speed, therefore not as invested to guide someone who is new and have no idea what the space demands.
Many of my success stories came from friends who introduce to me projects which they have invested their time to study them, so make tap on your friendships around you!
Many people in the NFT space get their sense of projects based on a few things which I eventually will share in my next few posts. One of them, which is also great for discovering new projects, is Twitter.
If you do not have friends that are already in the space or like-minded friends who want to explore NFTs with you, Twitter will be the next best place to start — so get your dead-ass Twitter account alive again. It is one of the places with the lowest barrier of entry and highest level of success in finding projects.
I personally recommend creating a NFT Twitter account so you do not dox yourself unnecessarily. Of course, if you’d like to use your personal account, it’s your choice as well.
There are two types of Twitter accounts that you must follow — NFT influencers, and NFT projects.
NFT influencers would usually come with a huge following and they come with certain content:
- Giveaways for projects — these help projects gain public attention and in turn, help you to discover projects that general public are setting their eyes on.
- Project mints — these help you get into projects that are currently on initial sales.
- Thoughts about certain projects — these help you to gain some insight against projects that has been in the market or is about to enter the market.
- NFT and crypto trends — these give you a sense of what is happening in the space in general so you get an idea of how the market is doing.
As a beginner, I used to rely a lot on these influencers to get some grounding, so it is a good place to start. However, also do take everything that these NFT influencers say with a pinch of salt.
The truth is none of it are financial advice, they are just information to be processed by you personally. There are times where multiple influencers might agree on the same thing but it turns out to be wrong as well.
Furthermore, some of these giveaways might be a paid advertisement. Meaning to say that the projects that the influencer shilled (advertised) may not be a project that the influencer has invested time to study. This could be dangerous if you take them at face value because you might get hurt relying simply on their tweets.
Sometimes, influencers will also mention projects that are stealth minting which could be extremely degenerate and risky plays at times. Influencers know that when they mention something, it will definitely gain the eyes of the public and price would eventually increase. So some influencers might have bought in a stealth mint at very low price, then to mention it publicly so everyone would go crazy over them. Eventually, when the prices peak, the said influencers will then sell them at a higher price than the price that they bought at, but significantly lower than what the floor price is currently at— this is what we call a pump and dump.
Lastly, you will begin to realize some of these influencers have a certain style or preference over the type of NFT projects that they support. These preferences will yield a deeper insight but also bias to said projects. While the insights are helpful, the biases will set you up for failure if you follow them blindly.
NFT projects, on the other hand, can be easily discovered through the Twitter algorithm when you follow enough people/influencers who talks about NFTs.
Twitter is ultimately a great place to get started, but you do need to be careful and to make your own judgement. My personal take is to enter them but your brain needs to be working, processing, and be critical on what you accept helpful.
Discord
As much as I hate it, Discord is currently the most popular place to nurture NFT project communities — it is a story for another day. You will see many NFT projects on Twitter with Discord links and they’ll bring you to the main source of information and community for the project itself.
As such, you get to discover even more of the project and make more friends within the main project platform itself. Sometimes, just hanging out and chatting with people in Discord will lead to other projects as people would mention them. Some servers also include a shilling channel for people to advertise other projects (which are requirements on some projects to get special privileges).
If you get lucky, you may even find yourself talking to people who have exclusive information on certain projects or even people who have connections to a big pool of projects — we call them alpha Discord servers.
There are currently many public alpha Discord servers but are locked behind a certain paywall — either by purchase of a pass on the marketplace or entry by invitation only. These alpha servers are extremely helpful in discovering NFT projects, as it helped me tremendously, but are the hardest to enter due to it’s high barrier of entry.
To not fret over alpha servers which you currently do not have access to. As you discover NFT influencers, talk to people in Discord servers, you will eventually catch wind of such alpha servers. These servers also have requirements to sustain it’s alphas, so it may not necessarily be a good thing to enter them without knowing how to first find projects on your own! Finding a good alpha server is the least of your concerns now.
This sums up our very first lesson to DYOR — Finding NFT projects. Seems like some work to be put in simply to find NFT projects, but I have no concerns on anyone’s capability to find NFT projects through these platforms I mentioned. If you do need help, you can find me over at Twitter! For most people I know in this space, we’ll end up finding way too many NFT projects. Some positioned to fail, while others are primed for success. How do we spot a good one from all that we see? We’ll find out in the next post of this series.
