Intro To PFP
Profile picture projects have come to dominate the #NFT ecosystem. In the last year or so, these generative avatars have created a ton of hype, a lot of disappointment, occasional rug, and strong communities. The idea of belonging and identifying with a certain group proved to be quite necessary and the market was ready to absorb the value.
It´s worth emphasizing that I think 90% of the projects are not genuine work, but rather cash grabs, useless derivatives and wash trading machines. However, some of them managed to capture the value and build a brand by adding utility and providing social benefits by allowing owners to participate in closed discord groups, events, and meetups. After all, we are social animals.
PFP will be remembered as the most primitive form of 'Metaverse', where individuals used randomly generated art as a representation of their online character. It's easy to spot a trend simply by tracking down the sentiment in Silicon Valley. It may sound cringe but it's a pretty good indicator of where's the ball going.
Both Instagram and Twitter are looking for ways to integrate and validate ownership over the digital asset you want to represent yourself with. It hits different, doesn't it?
Let's define what #PFP is in the first place, lol.
PFPs live at the intersection of collectibles and generative art. They’re collectibles in the sense that they usually come in large quantities (10,000 or so) and have varying degrees of rarity, somewhat similar to trading cards. Yet, PFPs are also generative. They are created using a simple plug-and-play method in which users load a variety of traits — like body type, head shape, background color, etc. — into an application that will in turn randomly compile vast quantities of NFTs.
What's interesting though, is the fact that simply by looking at someone's PFP you can assume the status of a certain individual and guess to which group of people he/she/her/they/them belong. That's quite an input if you ask me.
Flex it until you make it.
The Issues.
Oh, the issues, I don't even know where to start LOL.
In the last few months, I've been digging deep into the never-ending sea of #PFP projects claiming to be the new #boredapes.
The alarming fact is that it's extremely hard to recognize the real and genuine projects, simply because the information you're basing your opinion on, can vary drastically and the data you're using to evaluate the risk/reward ratio can be far from the truth.
What I've learned is that bot usage is on an extremely high level. Given that you mostly evaluate #PFP based on their socials, Twitter, and Discord being the most relevant ones, you understand what it implies right?
3 days old Twitter profile with more than 100 K followers?
5 days old discord group with 7 k members?
Sorry, I'm not buying that shit. We've been grinding on Twitter for at least 6 months and have a pretty good insight into how the algo works.
But how about bots on Open Sea or Magic Eden?
It's the same thing, bots execute the transaction even before the listing on primary markets because they mint #NFTs immediately on the back-end. So basically they have an advantage of a few seconds before the information arrives at the front end.
I'm not bitching around though, the market doesn't give a shit what any of us think, and that's fine, if I could do the same I probably would. Regardless, it was worth mentioning.
Going further, #NFTs are illiquid assets that are harder to sell and easier to manipulate. Mostly because they're relatively scarce (I'm not referring to general nft 'inflation') and usurping a large % of mint just to build the hype afterward and make profits is the expected way of doing things in the crypto space. lol
I'd be offended if you don't scam me from the beginning.
For real though, everything's shady as fuck - imagine, even teams that are fully doxed are pulling rugs hahahaha.
A 16-year-old kid scammed the KYC process 3 times and was laughing at Magic Eden and investors who thought it was their ticket to security haha. Propps to the kid haha.
On the other hand, which is a bit weird, I do believe some projects will push the industry into a more transparent and utility-based environment. The brand is a strong thing though, but the lack of things I can do with my #NFT (other than to flex on plebs) is opportunity cost.
Hive would be a perfect place to make the first on-chain social #PFP program.
That would be powerful - Public discussions should be... well... public haha.
Holding founders accountable matters, and while it won't mitigate the issues immediately, it might reduce or at least make it harder for scammers to scam.