Predictions aren’t useful because they’re correct. Usually they’re not.
No, the reason they are useful is because they force us to think about the future and if we tell other people what our predictions are, not only should that force us to think harder, it also provides a framework for debate.
This is particularly the case if you list the percentage chance of something happening, which is what all the smart kids are now doing; thanks to the popularization of such thinking by FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver in his excellent book The Signal and the Noise.
In that context, the fact that the four Blankos Block Party NFTs highlighted as being the first that it will be possible to bridge from the private Mythical Chain to Ethereum on 3 February jumped in price on the news isn’t a surprise.
The floor for Space Girl is up 155% to $74
Billy Bones is up 90% to $95
Boss Dino is up 25% to $250, and
Professor Meowington is up 49% to $387.
But what’s not clear to me is anyone has a deep understanding of why.
Bridging these assets to (and from) Ethereum is going to be expensive in terms of transaction fees, and while there’s currently an NFT price explosion happening on OpenSea, I’m not sure why any of those collectors will be interested in Blankos.
Notably, this is because every single Bored Ape, Azuki or Doodles is unique whereas Blankos are not. Each Blankos character is one of a set, only distinguished by their serial number.
In that context, I could see there being value in bridging a #1 serial number Blankos (or perhaps some of the very rare pre-launch items) but not in any of the other n-1 serial numbers.
But even that would also assume there’s a set of collectors on OpenSea who:
know what Blankos is
want to collect #1 serial numbers.
And this is hard to quantify.
NFT collectors are notoriously picky about what they collect. They don’t collect Axies for example, not even Mystics. Back in the day, WhaleShark bought into Blankos genesis drops but I’ve not heard much about his interest since.
So even though I use a Blankos NFT as my PFP and on a personal/financial level would love to see it become a collectors’ darling, I really can’t see it happening.
Let’s try to put that into percentages.
Probability +100 Blankos will be bridged to ETH during February — 50% (although this will depend on whether you can batch bridge!)
Probability a Blankos will sell for more than 10 ETH in 2022 — 10%
Probability Blankos will do 100 ETH of OpenSea trading in 2022 — 5%
Bonus: Probability I will bridge a Blankos to ETH — 99%
Product news
Animoca Brands has signed a licensing deal to make a game and NFTs based on the obscure Japanese early 1980s anime Gold Lightan The Golden Warrior.
As with all good stories, the hero is called Hiro, while Gold Lightan is a 30 meter-tall robot who is usually disguised as a golden Zippo lighter. Animoca expects to launch the first series of NFTs by Q2 2022.
Sky Mavis has already received over 1,500 applications for its Builders Program to build new experiences on the Ronin blockchain using the SLP and AXS tokens.
Get more details and apply here.
Anticipated P2E game CyBall has opened up its Alpha Test for both Windows and Android builds. All the deets are available via its Discord.
Backed by Bitkraft and raising $3 million in seed funding, CyBall also has strong support from guilds such as YGG and Merit Circle. It’s currently running on BSC with Solana planned in future.
Reality Gaming Group has partnered with Team 17 to launch a Worms generative NFT art collection.
Called MetaWorms, they will be minted on RGG’s private Ethereum sidechain. There’s no news on whether there will be game based on the collection.
Ex-Crytek game operation director Erkan Bayol has announced Angelic, a triple-A console-bound blockchain game running on Solana that’s due for release in Q3 2023.
Expect a heavy duty investment announcement before too long.
Funding news
Binance Labs has led a $5.5 million funding round in Heroes of Mavia, which is being developed by Vietnamese studio Skrice.
Broadly speaking, Clash of Clans on the blockchain, Heroes of Mavia is another P2E game with strong guild support. Merit Circle, YGG, Perion, AAG Ventures and Avocado DAO are all invested into its NFTs. The game isn’t expected to launch until Q4 2022.
Big RON Bags news
Yield Guild Gaming has announced its desire to become a validator for the Ronin blockchain.
Not only is YGG a prime mover in the Axie Infinity ecosystem with over 10,000 scholars, it’s also farmed over million RON tokens (worth around $2.5 million) during the recent farming program.
Should You Be Thinking About Avalanche? news
A decent overview of the Ethereum competitor but do note that gaming activity is currently pretty light.
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