Letter 9 - Misfit University
Alright alright alright. I was really not planning on writing about this god damn drop. I tweeted a lot about it, I steered clear, I aped in late, I sold some, I listed some, I went to sleep. I was ready to more or less move on. Five hours later I wake up to 100 notifications across discord, twitter and group chats with words like “rape culture” and “deleted discord”. Christ. Let’s look at what happened over the past 12 hours. I’m going to be learning some of this as I go along as I am still trying to piece together the last few hours.
Launch Drama
My approach to this drop was always to watch how it was going before and during launch before deciding whether or not I wanted to buy in. 99% of the time this ends up with me tricking my brain into aping in for one reason or another, but I’m proud (?) to say that I minted 0 Misfits (i did buy some on secondary later, but we’ll cover that in a bit). Aside from the macro concerns I share that the market is quickly becoming diluted with all these 10k generative projects, there were a lot of red flags specific to the Misfits that I started noticing. Let’s look at them.
First up, the metadata for the drop was leaked early. Essentially it was discovered that anyone could go to the following link: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmbumZq4f81hc2KsVWMMH2AmRpw7nSwX3KBsjABewabNnj/1234.json and see the traits for any of the Misfits that would be minted. Just change the “1234” at the end to another number and you can see the traits of a different Misfit. This was a red flag. It was not immediately or abundantly clear whether or not someone could exploit this information, but in a world where front running bots pick away at everyone’s DeFi transactions, it is not at all unreasonable to suspect that something similar could happen here. They addressed this briefly prior to launch basically saying “not ideal, still launching”:
The next red flag is one I saw personally when I went to connect my MetaMask wallet to their site to mint and saw this pop up:
Now I am not a solidity dev or anything remotely close to a smart contract expert, and there is every chance there was a legitimate explanation for this. But the fact that their website wanted me to connect my MetaMask wallet to something with the words “beta” and “one click dapp” in it, let’s just say, confidence it did not instill.
Next up it looked like one of the Misfits that the devs minted to test things out was listed on OpenSea for 1 eth:
I think it has since been revealed that someone was able to mint from their contract before launch which is how the metadata leaked, and that this listing was from one of those people and not the devs. But we didn’t know this at the time and it was just one more tiny red flag and piece of FUD - it gave off slight Apymon vibes from when one of their devs listed an egg for sale.
The last thing I noticed was that something odd was happening when attempting to view the max supply via the contract on etherscan:
Again, as I am not a smart contract expert I couldn’t read too much into this other than to say that this was unusual compared to all other projects. One more minor red flag for me.
Phew. I tweeted all of the above basically as it was happening and as I was seeing things unfold, and steered clear of minting. Another drop happened around the same time that I was much more excited about, and I feel awful for not mentioning it in the ‘on my radar’ section of my last Newsletter. I honestly just plain forgot. There are too many things on my radar/plate at the moment and I am hopelessly unorganized, which is something I need to rectify. Anyway, that other drop was The Meta Key - a utility NFT akin to a House of Kiba membership which promises a whole host of future metaverse benefits: airdrops, discounts, skins, merch, etc. They released their third and final ‘collectors edition’ key at the same time as the Misfits launch and I was fortunate to be able to pick up a few. They look amazing, shout out to the incredible artist Marc-o-Matic who created the design:
So I was more or less moving on with my night and occasionally checking on on the Misfits. It looked like a couple of hours after launch they still hadn’t sold out and the floor price was down to 0.035 - 0.04 ETH ($65 - $75), which was not good given the mint price was 0.08 ETH ($150). Then out of left field fucking Snoop Dog retweeted the Misfits launch with a string of diamond/moon emojis. The tweet has since been deleted (likely for reasons I will cover shortly) or I would link to it. What did this mean? Honestly, my first thought was that he was paid to shill the project. The team claims this was not the case:
Irrespective of that fact though, with the floor as low as it was I thought it might be a good opportunity to buy some floor Misfits and ride the inevitable snoop dog hype train.
I was so close to making it through the night with zero Misfits ever having been in my wallet, but alas, it was not meant to be. I bought 8 and quickly flipped some and listed some for sale and went to sleep. I woke up five hours later to my phone blowing up, a mostly-deleted Misfits discord, and a floor price of 0.02. I think the blow-up started with this tweet (my apologies if someone else broke the news first):
Cancel culture has entered the NFT arena. I agree that this is in poor taste, and not at all a good look. While I was asleep it seems as though the twittersphere and discord blew up and called out Misfits for allowing these types of images to be generated. I think at best it was a gross oversight, and at worst it was an awful joke/decision made by someone on their team who thought the look was funny. Upon waking up to this news I listed all my Misfits for sale under floor, and was ready to be done with the project. The team had made these two announcements:
Not the best response, but not the worst either. It’s rarely a good idea to completely shut down a discord (EmberSword did it during their last land sale and it was not well received) but sometimes it is the best of two bad options - especially if they did not have the mod staff around to keep things in check.
I could probably write an entire Letter on cancel culture in the NFT space, but that is one can of worms I don’t wish to open right now. I’ll just state that I think there is no place for celebrating violence towards women, or anyone, and that we can all do better to create a more inclusive community. Projects would do well to be especially mindful of this going forward.
As I was writing this, a new announcement just came through from the Misfits team.
Honestly.. a pretty good response. Is it enough to save this project from going down in flames? Time will tell. After reading their response I once again picked up some floor Misfits, this time for 0.02ish. For those keeping count, and I barely am, my Misfit count went from something like 0 -> 8 -> 2 -> ?? (just checked, I have 8 again 😶). The fact that they are donating $150k and pledging all secondary market sales in perpetuity to be donated to charity is kind of incredible. The fact that they didn’t just complete the rug pull and leave with everyone’s money is also kind of incredible. It would have been very easy for them to just delete everything and vanish with roughly 800 ETH in sales in their wallets. They might still do this - I am far from bullish on this project, and I think they have an enormous hole to dig themselves out of.
As I always say, it’s less about the issues and more about the way a team responds to issues, that determine how I feel about a project. Well there was no shortage of issues for the Misfits and I still want to hear from them on some of the initial red flags I had. But I am at least willing to give them a chance to prove themselves, and I wish them the best. They’ve made a good start, I think. But everyone will make their own minds up about this and it’s an incredibly risky project to have exposure to. Then again, what isn’t in this space.
What’s on my radar?
I add this section to the end of my newsletters because I frequently get asked by people how they can know about drops that are coming up. I myself find out by spending most of my day on twitter and in various discord channels. That isn’t feasible for everyone, so I try and post about a few of the projects on my radar at the end of my letters. Please always DYOR (do your own research) and do not construe my posting about a project to be me endorsing it. These are just the things I hear about coming up, and may or may not invest in.
ArtBlocks drop CENTURY by casey REAS - I wrote about ArtBlocks in my last Newsletter, and I am so much more excited about the platform and this drop than any of the generative avatar projects. A bit more about this particular drop, from the artist:
CENTURY is my homage to paintings and drawings from the twentieth century and the countless hours I’ve spent looking at them. The references span the origins of concrete and non-objective art to color-field painting and minimalism. The strongest direct reference is a series of pictures created by Ellsworth Kelly in the 1950s where he cut his paintings into pieces and reassembled them in different orders
Bulls on the Block - Dropping sometime this weekend. Another 10k generative project, but perhaps slightly better than most of the other ones we’ve had recently. A great breakdown on it by Lord Truffington:
The space really is becoming diluted so be especially careful with every new 10k project going on, but this is one I’ll be keeping a closer eye on than most.
Lucky Maneki - Beautiful art collectibles with generous rewards. The luckiest NFT collection created on Ethereum blockchain. Another generative project, and another one that seems to be a cut above the rest. They’ve been working on this for quite some time and have been receptive to community feedback. I recommend researching it some more - I myself need to look into it more to decide if I am investing, but it has piqued me interest more than most of the other crap out there.
I rushed this Letter out which is something I don’t like to do - but it seemed an important topic/project to cover and sooner rather than later, and I have a social engagement to head off to now. I hope that I was accurate with all my facts but please reach out to me in the comments or on twitter with any corrections. If you enjoyed this content then please consider subscribing :)
We’re still early.
Disclaimer: The content covered in this newsletter is not to be considered as investment advice. I’m not a financial adviser. These are only my own opinions and ideas. You should always consult with a professional/licensed financial adviser before trading or investing in any cryptocurrency related product.
No comment about the sparse minting page? That was the first signal I picked up on Twitter that told me I was probably saved by missing this one.
Bullish on the Bulls and Maneki also. Would love to get an Artblock as well. Thanks for the well-written posts always!