Welcome to Goblin Town π€―
Welcome to Goblin Town π€―
Understanding goblintown.wtf NFTs!
Metaversal is a Bankless newsletter for weekly level-ups on NFTs, virtual worlds, & collectibles
Dear Bankless Nation,
After the implosions of Terra and the UST stablecoin began on May 9th, 2022, cryptocurrency markets took a turn for the worse.Β
As crypto prices plummeted in the days after these collapses, chatter about the cryptoeconomy entering a bear market surged.Β
In kind, a joke that the cryptoeconomy had instead entered βGoblin Townβ β a reference to how the advent of DeFi and NFTs would make a new crypto bear market weirder than prior cycles β also started gaining traction.
In this atmosphere, a free-to-mint NFT project dubbed goblintown.wtf was quickly spun up by an anonymous team, and the mysterious project has since taken the NFT space by storm. Letβs get you up to speed on the madness for todayβs Metaversal.
-WMP
π Sponsor:Β Brave Wallet - the secure crypto wallet. No extension required.β¨
The goblintown.wtf invasion
βAAAAAAAUUUUUGGGHHHHH gobblins goblinns GOBLINNNNNNNNns wekm ta goblintown yoo sniksnakr DEJEN RATS oooooh rats are yummmz dis a NEFTEEE O GOBBLINGS on da BLOKCHIN wat? oh. crustybutt da goblinking say GEE EMMM DEDJEN RUTS an queenie saay HLLO SWEATIES ok dats all byebyβ β goblintown.wtfβs collection description
The contextΒ
Minting began for the goblintown.wtf collection on May 19th, 2022. The project was launched without any prior marketing and with little available information; its website mainly noted the collection was CC0, had no roadmap, and had a β1 mint + gasβ price per wallet. Additionally, the site noted that goblintownβs unnamed creators had reserved 1k of the collectionβs 9,999 NFTs for themselves.
As word spread of the strange but highly-memeable project, savvy NFTers and chain watchers rapidly minted the collection out and then started telling even more people about the goblins. Excitement around the collectionβs hideous characters grew, and rumors began to spread regarding who was actually behind the project.Β
To be sure, the NFTs look scary, but the art itself is of a high-quality style. So too is the projectβs smart contract well fashioned, as was the goblintown.wtf website. The projectβs crypto-savvy dadaist approach to social media also suggests the creators are zany NFT veterans rather than novices.Β
As such, one rumor thatβs made the rounds is that Bored Ape Yacht Club creators Yuga Labs are the minds behind goblintown.wtf β theyβd certainly have the requisite experience has been the popular line of argument. Another rumor weβve seen is that the artist Beeple was on the projectβs creative team, an assertion the artist has denied.Β
Regardless of the ongoing mystery and of the chances the project wasnβt created by NFT superstars, more than a few people have been piling into the collection in recent days in anticipation that something bigger might be going on.Β Β
goblintown by the numbers
At press time, goblintownβs been live on the Ethereum mainnet for 12 days. In that span, the NFT collection has seen nothing short of an incredible rise. Pulled from Nansen and OpenSea, some key metrics circa May 31st, 2022, include:
Current floor price: 3.5 ETH
Average NFT price: 3.41 ETH
Highest sale price on the day: 11 ETH
Highest sale price to date: 26 ETH
Trade volume to date: +14.7k ETH (~$28.8M USD)
Current holders: ~4.5k addresses
A spinoff boom
The stats above would be impressive for any new NFT collection. But whatβs also incredible is how many derivative projects goblintown.wtf has already inspired in less than two weeks of existence.Β
For example, a casual perusal of Nansenβs Mint Master section at the time of this articleβs writing showed then-ongoing mint events for HumansTown, OgreTown, boogeymentown.wtf, GoblinBirds, True Plebs in Goblin Town, Zen Goblin, and more. These are all third-party goblintown.wtf spinoffs, or in some cases, plain ripoffs.Β
Zooming in, the largest goblintown spinoff so far has been Elftown.wtf β an effort that has noticeably lower-quality art compared to goblintown but that has now facilitated over 2k ETH worth of volume to date in the slipstream of its progenitor.Β Thatβs β¦ pretty astounding.
The free-to-mint meta
Besides gas, goblintown.wtf NFTs were free to mint. Interestingly, the collection has seen so much volume since launch that the creators have already made in ETH royalties what they would have made and then some if they had originally charged, say, a 0.1 ETH mint price.Β
Not bad, right? Of course, not every upstart free-to-mint NFT collection can emulate this sort of rapid success. Yet the rise of these goblins has cemented the influence of this free-to-mint strategy going forward, as evidenced by the fact that many new NFT projects have already adopted the approach in recent days.Β Β
Whatβs next for the goblins?
Well, donβt quote me on this because Iβm not actually sure what Iβm looking at β¦ but it seems the tweet above indicates thereβs a new expansion collection mint for goblintown.wtf holders arriving as soon as this week.Β
For now, itβs not clear how closely linked the goblintown and McGoblinBurger efforts are, although the similar art and styles of the projects suggests they have the same, or at least share some of the same, creators.Β
That said, it may be that the goblintown NFT ecosystem is only just getting started. Will this project go down as 2022βs BAYC-like mint event, the collection that came out of nowhere to bloom and keep conquering the space as we know it? In the very least, goblintown will have many of us updating our priors.Β And I think itβs safe to say that things are going to get much weirder from here if the creators really are just revving up.
Action steps
πΉ Check out goblintown.wtf (if you dare!)
π Read my post Pull Together for PoolTogether if you missed it last week
Author Bio
William M. Peaster is a professional writer and creator of Metaversalβa Bankless newsletter focused on the emergence of NFTs in the cryptoeconomy. Heβs also recently been contributing content to Bankless, JPG, and beyond!
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Not financial or tax advice.Β This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.
Disclosure.Β From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See ourΒ investment disclosures here.