虫子游戈

The last discussion on Cardano NFT was in September last year. After a quarter of vigorous development, the scale of the CNFT ecosystem has expanded to an astonishing degree, and the number of CNFTs I personally hold has exceeded 1000. With the new year here, I have some free time today, so I’ll share some of the CNFTs I’ve invested in over the past few months. This article will only cover the NFTs I have purchased and will not discuss other NFTs that might be considered blue chips but are not in my wallet. Of course, this article is for sharing purposes only and is not investment advice. The order of project introductions roughly follows the ranking on opencnft.io, focusing on the top ten.

1. Spacebudz#

When it comes to CNFT, Spacebudz is an unavoidable topic. This is an absolute OG project in the Cardano ecosystem!

The success of this project is not only because it is one of the earliest NFT projects in the Cardano ecosystem but also because its founder Alessandro has made immeasurable contributions to the development of Cardano. This young man, who is still studying at the University of Munich, was the first to launch a truly usable smart contract on the Cardano mainnet; to successfully run his contract, he developed the now widely used Nami wallet. Not only that, but he also open-sourced the code for these projects, greatly accelerating the speed at which the Cardano community adopted smart contracts.

On October 12, 2021, SpaceBud #9936 (see image below) sold for a historic high price of 510,000 ADA on the smart contract market at spacebudz.io, which was worth about 1.1 million USD at the time, and was valued at about 690,000 USD when I wrote this.

According to OpenCNFT statistics, the current floor price of Spacebudz is 3800 ADA, and the total transaction volume in the statistics has exceeded 16 million ADA, with the top position never lost.

2. Clay Nation#

Clay Nation is a 10K avatar NFT project that started selling in early September, featuring a unique clay animation visual design. Currently, the project ranks second with a total transaction volume of 14 million ADA and a floor price of 948 ADA.

I personally noticed this project only after its price increased and bought 2 without doing detailed research, just hearing that its team is relatively reliable.

The project plans to launch movable clay 3D models and a style-matching game environment in February this year—similar to a metaverse.

3. Pavia#

Speaking of the metaverse, this recently hyped but practically unproductive concept has also given rise to the current third-largest CNFT project Pavia. Pavia is named after the Italian city of the same name, which is the hometown of scholar Gerolamo Cardano, after whom the blockchain project Cardano is named.

The goal of this project is to create a virtual world in the metaverse. Users can own digital assets in this world and easily trade ownership. However, so far, the only available part of the project is just a rough map.

The first round of virtual land sales for this project was not very popular initially, but just a few days after the sale, by the end of October, Facebook suddenly rebranded as Meta, igniting a frenzy of investment in the metaverse concept. The second round of virtual land sales for Pavia was wildly snatched up, and the minimum price for its virtual land has continued to rise, currently maintaining around 300 ADA.

So far, the project has sold 60,000 plots of land, with total trading volume in the secondary market exceeding 9.7 million ADA. Additionally, there are still many plots that have not been sold.

The hype around the metaverse concept and Pavia has also spawned other metaverse projects on Cardano or prompted some projects to increase their plans for metaverse development; however, so far, I have not followed any other metaverse projects.

4. Yummi Universe - Naru#

Currently, the fourth-largest CNFT project is Naru, a cute cartoon unicorn creature with a visual style leaning towards Japanese aesthetics, featuring emoticons on their faces, suitable for use as stickers.

Naru is part of Yummi Universe. As far as I know, the project's initial plan was to create 3D digital NFT collectibles, but later, seeing the popularity of avatar NFT projects, they created Naru. It has proven to be a wise decision. The sale of 10,000 Naru was a hit, and after the sale, it received a period of popularity, with the floor price once exceeding 300 ADA. However, with the continuous emergence of new projects, its floor price has currently fallen back to around 150 ADA.

Additionally, Naru has issued some derivative holiday edition NFTs for holders (currently including Halloween and Christmas versions) and has plans for regular updates of holiday edition NFTs.

5. Zombie Chains#

Zombie Chains is an avatar NFT project focused on zombies, and its team is currently preparing to release the next phase of zombie hunter NFTs called Zombie Hunters. Personally, I think these zombie avatars are well-made, and with a YouTuber who has quite a few fans on the team, the price performance has been decent. Similar to Naru, its price is also in a downward trend.

6. Baby Alien Club#

Baby Alien Club is currently the cutest NFT in the Cardano ecosystem, but unfortunately, it is also the project that has caused me the most losses. The project performed quite well in its early stages, attracting a frenzy of purchases at launch, and at one point, it was the most widely held NFT on Cardano. The initial hype has kept its total trading volume in the top ten, but its ranking has been continuously declining, currently falling to 9th place.

From my observations, many holders have lost confidence in this project, and its floor price has dropped below the issuance price, currently only 24 ADA. The second round of spaceship NFTs issued at 42 ADA has even dropped to a floor price of 8 ADA—keep in mind that 8 ADA is actually the lowest price that many trading platforms can list.

Because of their cuteness, I hold a considerable number of Baby Aliens, but aside from the airdropped derivatives that are hard to sell, unfortunately, it seems unlikely to see any returns in the short term.

7. Chilled Kongs#

Chilled Kongs is the hottest CNFT project at the time of writing this article.

Anyone familiar with the NFT space knows that regardless of the chain, monkey/gorilla/ape NFTs are among the most common NFT categories, thanks to the tremendous success of the Bored Ape Yacht Club project. However, it is clear that most of them are unlikely to succeed. As for Chilled Kongs, its rapidly rising price has largely attracted the attention of some ETH NFT investors and has a very active community.

In just a few hours of writing this article, the floor price of this NFT project rose from 400+ ADA to 625 ADA, and the total trading volume has already surpassed 2 million ADA, ranking tenth. It’s worth noting that this project has been around for less than a month.

Whether this project is just a temporary craze or can thrive in the long term, I cannot predict, but I still hold some expectations.

Other NFTs I Hold#

Among the top ten CNFT projects, I have dabbled in seven of them, considering myself a veteran in the CNFT space ^_^. In addition to the seven projects mentioned above, my wallet also contains some other NFTs:

• CardanoKeys: Sometimes I randomly receive passive airdrops, but so far I have only received one reward of just 10 ADA. This project has very few people paying attention to it now.
• CardanoSpace: A public billboard project that initially seemed promising, but the development team is too small and overly conservative, leading to stagnation.
• Zombit and Humbit: These are two sets of NFTs from the same project. The plan for this project is to create a pixel game, but the currently released web game version is quite poor. The price has hit rock bottom and seems hopeless.
• ADAPunkz: Similar to monkey types, Punk types are also a major category of NFTs. There are quite a few Punks on Cardano, but most are unremarkable.
• Hosky: Hosky is the Dogecoin of Cardano, and besides the coin, there are also NFTs. The team has stated from the beginning that they would take the money and run, but they haven't done so yet, which is disappointing.

• LionLegends: A lion avatar NFT project that includes 5555 male lions and 5555 female lions. Holding both male and female lions in the wallet will yield airdrops of baby lions in the future.
• Happy Hoppers Club: A recent new avatar NFT project featuring frogs. I personally quite like it, and there are some interesting posters; I printed one and put it on my door, but its price has already fallen below the issuance price.
• Equine.GG: A horse racing-themed game NFT project. A set of NFTs includes a horse, a rider, and a skin. The NFTs look quite exquisite, but I don't know how long it will take for the game to go live.
• Deep Vision: A byproduct of computer vision technology.
• Some ticket projects: NFTs can not only mark ownership of digital artworks but can also serve as tickets or passes. I hold a pass NFT from the gaming platform PlayerMint and a permanent ticket NFT for the CNFT Conference.
• Other NFTs: My wallet also contains some NFTs that I have hardly paid attention to, as well as some that I received from airdrops or for free (most of which naturally have little value), including Lunars based on the twelve zodiac signs, cartoon dinosaurs CryptoDino, pixel frogs (Pixel Village by The Kaeru Kingdom), New Year greeting cards, Easter eggs, Professor Cardano, airdrops from the CNFT Conference, Gumball, Reginald, BitLands, etc. Additionally, ADA Handle innovatively implements the use of NFTs as personalized wallet addresses (Nami wallet already supports this), allowing for permanent ownership, but I have not yet purchased my personalized address in the presale and need to wait for its public sale.

CNFT Tools#

When researching and investing in CNFTs, there are some useful tools:

• CNFT trading platforms: Currently, the platform with the best user experience is jpg.store; Tokhun supports bulk trading, allowing multiple NFTs to be sold in a package; there are also nftjam.io, adapix.io, cnft.io, genesishouse.io, cardahub.io, and more. For more markets, you can visit Cardano Cube for more information.
• Wen CNFT and CNFT Calendar: These gather information on the release times of various CNFT projects.
• pool.pm: Currently, Cardano wallets perform poorly in viewing assets, and this is a good alternative tool.
• CNFT Tools: Analyzed some CNFT projects and can sort NFTs based on rarity, price, and other criteria.
• OpenCNFT and CNFT Analytics: These provide statistics on CNFT trading data, such as the highest, lowest, and average prices of a series of NFTs, total trading volume, etc.
• Additionally, there are many on-chain data analysis tools for Cardano, which I won't elaborate on here; you can also visit Cardano Cube for more information.

Conclusion#

Currently, it seems that most NFT projects find it difficult to achieve long-term success. For success, the team and community are key, and a good story is also needed to attract external funding. In my view, the risks in the NFT market are much higher than in cryptocurrencies, as many projects have a total NFT supply of only around 10,000, making it hard to form a stable market; and as long as someone is determined, a single whale can quickly pump or crash any CNFT project. Therefore, investing in NFTs requires a mental preparation for the possibility of losing everything.

Currently, I am still in the net investment phase regarding CNFTs. The CNFT market is still very nascent, and no project has yet matched the leading projects on Ethereum, so there is significant room for development. Based on this, I am more looking forward to the potential substantial long-term returns from a few projects that may emerge in the future rather than short-term gains.