Apr 19
NFT Whitelists are Transparent Gimmicks
If you don’t have demand, feign scarcity. But there’s a better alternative…
The original purpose of WL spots was to mitigate gas wars on Ethereum, by allowing oversubscribed sales to let people take their time to mint. Now, they are a beast with a life of their own. And the master of the best is Big NFT.
Big NFT is not art. It is gamified biz at best, gambling at worst.
Whitelists were designed to guarantee a minting spot. Simple math means, # WL spots must be less than # of NFTs. But the reverse is happening! Projects are whitelisting anyone — including multiples more WL spots than NFTs.
And let’s be honest, the music has stopped.
Whitelists no longer guarantee project mints for collectors.
Rather, they ”guarantee” collectors minting for a project!
Ridiculous things required for whitelisting:
- Draw a picture, sing a song, do a dance (seriously)
- Chit-chat to random internet strangers regularly (feign “engagement”)
- Solve an unrelated games/puzzles/riddles (to prove your desperation I guess)
- Invite more people (pyramidonimcs anyone?)
- Buy merch, like hoodies (cha-ching)
(“Cartoons” NFT offered this in a tweet — account now suspended, so…) - Pay $5/hour to people typically in South East Asia to “grind” for your WL spot
The formula is:
Do childish things, to fall for a childish false-scarcity ruse, to buy childish cartoons.
It’s simple:
If you can create unlimited jpgs with zero marginal cost, supply is a non-issue. And since there’s little demand for your cartoons, creating false scarcity is your best weapon. Hence, completely unnecessary “Whitelists”.
The alternatives:
A: Sell something useful.
B: Let the invisible hand price your NFTs according to real supply/demand
Dynamic Pricing
For option B, you need Dynamic Pricing.
This is offered exclusively by Dynamic Drops, and Holdem Heroes is the first NFT collection to launch with it.
