NFT God Newsletter 7/18: Crypto Pumps, Otherside Takes First Voyage, STEPN Launches

The Daily Alpha 7/18- Happy Monday everyone! I posted a thread today on self improvement through learning new tech skills. It was interesting to see the types of responses I got. Surprisingly I got a lot of replies saying "learning these skills take too long. Time is too valuable". I couldn't disagree more with this sentiment. Time used to improve your skillsets is never time wasted. It's the best use of your time possible. Even if nothing comes out of it no time has been wasted. Anyway, onto the alpha-

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Today's News:

🔥 Crypto is PUMPING

🔥 Otherside takes its first voyage

🔥 STEPN launches on Ethereum

👀 Project I'm Watching: Tableland Rigs

BULL BACK ON?

If you’re reading this newsletter there’s a very good chance you woke up today with a smile on your face. If you’re anything like me you woke up, turned on your phone, and saw ETH reaching new recent highs of $1500. This wasn’t isolated to just ETH, as all risk-on assets in the global markets including tech stocks made a big leap higher today. What’s particularly interesting though is Ethereum was by far the biggest winner, outpacing even ERC-20 alt coins like APE and SAND who typically are more volatile and make bigger moves. There could be several reasons behind this. Many are speculating it’s because of the upcoming Merge which is set to happen in September. I’d like to believe ETH is outpacing the market simply because it is the only popular cryptocurrency with a consumer use- NFT’s.

One of my biggest hobbies in life is poker. I’ve read dozens of poker books in my lifetime. Anyone who knows poker understands the concept of pot odds. Pot odds is basically the ratio between the size of the pot and the size of the bet. The better the pot odds, the more likely you are going to come out of the bet a winner. For me, I believe we have excellent pot odds right now. I think the market can for sure go back down in the short term, but in the medium to long term the odds of coming out a winner at even $1,500 feels good to me. Now I’m not going all in, but I’m slowly making small bets while the market keeps these pot odds.

OTHERSIDE'S FIRST VOYAGE

Over the weekend Yuga Labs Otherside had their first tech demo labeled “The First Voyage”. Thousands of holders of Otherdeeds were able to log onto the game from their browser and actually explore the “metaverse” for the first time. It was a demo consisting of jumping into a portal then running around an island. Eventually you simultaneously fought a Koda boss with thousands of other users. If you watched any of the clips on Twitter or Twitch, you know just how much of a visual marvel this was.

While I was for sure impressed by the clips I saw, it’s important to keep in mind this was a tech demo of a game engine that’s been around for several years now. The technology is incredible, but since Improbable’s inception in 2012 they have yet to find the right use case for the engine. Seeing thousands of people on the screen was cool, but not surprising. The challenge in executing will be with integrating blockchain functionality in the engine. For me to be impressed I’m going to need to see NFT’s in the game being used in interesting ways. A true metaverse is also interoperable, so I’m looking to see how Yuga allows for NFT’s from other projects to be included in the game. There’s a long road to a full release, so I’ll be watching. But the first voyage certainly did a great job of stirring up noise in a space that was getting quieter by the day.

STEPN TAKES FIRST STEPS ON ETH

Popular SOL NFT project STEPN made its debut on the Ethereum blockchain this week to a ton of noise and hype. For those not in the know, STEPN is a P2E project where you earn tokens for walking. Walk a certain distance and you get the project’s crypto coin. The part about this project that I find particular interesting is the way they released though. This has to be the first project that had success on one blockchain and then moved to another one with equal success. It’s an interesting release plan. Basically run a proof of concept on SOL, a blockchain where it’s incredibly cheap to make transactions. Then if you find success move it over to Ethereum where ETH holders will probably be feeling FOMO from not being able to participate on SOL. Clearly the strategy worked, as STEPN has been at the top of the charts all day with a 2.54 ETH floor.

Project I’m Watching: Tableland Rigs

https://tableland.xyz/rigs/

Yesterday I tweeted about how the Degen meta needs to die. I truly believe for the next bull run to come we need some new innovation. Innovation at the technology level, not at the marketing level. Moving forward I’ll primarily be looking for projects that fit into this “tech meta”. A project that recently launched that I think fits into this mold is Tableland Rigs. Tableland has been working on a SQL/blockchain hybrid storage solution I find particularly interesting. I believe the centralization of modern data platform technologies like SQL and MongoDB have a lot of advantages over the blockchain (speed and privacy), and if these advantages are combined with the strengths of the blockchain you can make some really compelling products. Tableland Rigs is the first NFT project built on this kind of hybrid technology.

The NFT is a cyberpunk vehicle that has its token on the blockchain, but its data in SQL. This will allow for dynamic functionality that can change over time. By placing your rig in a garage (staking) it can evolve, be customized, and earn badges. This is the kind of technological innovation I really want to see in new projects. While I don’t think this is technology defining innovation, I like that the team is trying to move the space forward. The price has seen a massive pump over the last couple of days, so I’m definitely not recommending making a buy. But my ask is this- look for this kind of innovation when researching projects. We need to start expecting more out of the teams we put our hard earned money into.