The Cavalry NFT Collection
What a crazy year it has been in Blockchain country. De-fi has taken off and Bitcoin and Ethereum are chasing all-time high after all-time high. And if that was not enough the last months have shown the Blockchain is getting a lot of traction in the creator community with NFTs being the talk of the town.
And while many are still trying to figure out what these NFTs actually are and what to do with them, innovative brands are already starting to play around, launching their first collections and seeing huge success.
Earlier this year NBA Top Shot was in high demand and still continues to be. On NBA Top Shot users can collect and trade officially licensed NBA and WNBA content provided as NFTs.
It’s fun to do it — check it out. But there’s more to the story. The project was developed on FLOW which is a new Blockchain invented by Dapper Labs that tackled the scaling issues that Ethereum (currently) still has.
From here onwards things really picked up speed. Dozens of NFT projects were launched, like the Kings of Leon who was the first band to release an album as an NFT. Fans who bought these tokens received special perks like limited-edition vinyl and front row seats to future concerts.
One of the high-profile projects this year certainly was “the apes”. Or Bored Ape Yacht Club. The Bored Apes Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 Bored Ape NFTs — unique digital collectables living on the Ethereum blockchain.
I am bringing up the Apes collection because they not just managed to get a lot of traction (at the time of writing this article there was more than $1bn of volume traded according to OpenSea) but they also got on the radar of some large brands.
End of November Adidas released this tweet on their Twitter channel:
Just a few days later this photo appeared across social media:
It shows Adidas partnering with Bored Apes Yacht Club. While we are still quite early in the adoption of Blockchain technologies it is astonishing to see how quickly some forward-thinking brands adopt the new tech and are open-minded to play around with it probably tapping into whole new communities.
A graphic from the World Bank and Crypto.com shows a very nice and impressive comparison of Internet vs. Crypto Adoption. If this is anywhere close to the reality (which I don’t doubt) the “crypto industry” hasn’t even started yet and there is more impressive stuff to be expected.
This is why we at Cavalry are dropping our first NFT collection
At Cavalry, we are not just investors but we are also entrepreneurs and nerds. As a nerd entrepreneur, I was always not just interested in the economics of markets and technologies but I actually wanted to understand how things work. So what better way to learn, than to get your hands dirty. While spending a few weekends figuring out how to create NFTs with generative art and then how to mint them at scale, I and my partner in crime Roland (who is the SVP of Engineering at Productsup) learned so much about the gaps and unsolved problems of the NFT space, that we already gathered a long list of ideas and products that one should develop.
These moments of enlightenment are hard to teach. You need to experience things to get to that. This is one reason why all our portfolio companies at Cavalry will receive a set of our unique “The Cavalry” mascot NFTs. In order to claim them they will have to wrap their heads around things like non-custodial wallets (e.g. Metamask), will have to learn about Ethereum and Polygon blockchain, learn about how to transfer assets between wallets, how to trade NFTs, experience gas fees (or none — depending on which blockchain you are on) etc.
Even though we at Cavalry invest in top-notch founders and technologies I strongly believe that even our start- and scaleups can be disrupted by blockchain technology if they don’t pay close attention. Let’s not repeat the mistakes of publishing houses, record labels, the high street and so many other industries that the internet started to disrupt 20 years ago.
Another reason for dropping a Cavalry NFT collection is that Christmas is coming up, and we wanted to gift our founders something actually useful. All kinds of swag are nice but with an NFT our founders receive something that might actually grow in value and might even help our portfolio companies recruit talent by giving away the NFTs as a perk.
What’s more, is that NFTs are not only a piece of art, they can be loaded with all kinds of utilities. A utility we are exploring is using a Cavalry NFT as a key to get preferred access to future token sales in family & friends and community rounds.
Blockchain country is a big playground and seriously we have no idea what this experiment will turn into which is why we will be donating the majority of the proceeds (if there are any) to charity.
We picked The Climate Change Fund and The Patient Philanthropy Project from Founders Pledge because we believe that both funds reinforce each other. Climate Change needs to be combated now whereas safeguarding the future of humanity might be pressing in years, decades or even centuries ahead. The way Founders Pledge operates ensures that 100% of funds donated will reach their desired cause.
Now check out “The Cavalry” at OpenSea get your personal one and make sure to use it as a profile picture once Twitter unlocks this functionality ;)
