NFTs and UX

Riding Along for an NFT Drop with the Canine Cartel, which SOLD OUT and Moved 500 ETH in an Hour

Watch 500 ETH move in 51 minutes via unbelievable screen-grabs.

As many of you know, I do generative NFT programming. That is, I take people’s digital artwork and do all of the coding to produce large sets (usually 10,000) of unique graphics and meta data. I then, along with a development partner, provide mint-on-demand services. It’s exciting stuff, and you can real all about that here.

As an NFT enthusiast and collector, and as a person involved in providing minting services for generative NFT clients, participating in NFT drops is particularly fascinating for me. Much as I did with the Rebel Kids Familiars last week, I’ll now do a “ride along” with the Canine Cartel, a group I’ve been watching for a while now, as their artwork and community are truly fantastic examples of how NFT drops come together.

Hmmm, maybe I should call it a “walk along.” Grab your leash and let’s get going!

The Setup

One thing I want people to understand about running successful NFT drops is that you can’t just have a “build it and they will come” attitude. You have to build out a community first. (Well, you don’t have to, but you really should.) Let’s see where the Canine Cartel was with this, just so we have some context from which to watch the drop:

Discord:

Their Discord server is here. By the start of their drop day, they had 3.66k members. That’s a good number, considering they’re aiming to sell 10k NFTs. Keep in mind that not everyone is on Discord, so their audience is likely much, much higher than 3.66k. But, looking at a Discord member count is always a good indicator of potential, in my opinion.

Twitter:

They’d amassed 3,000+ followers by launch day. Again, that’s a healthy number!

Pre-Launch, 10 Minutes Beforehand

Atop the page on launch day was a “Connect” button. So, we’ll start by connecting the ol’ MetaMask wallet. Once I did that, here’s the top, showing that I’m connected:

The web site featured a dog inviting you to mint now:

… and that scrolls down to a countdown timer:

From there, we wait, of course. Now, I can’t say for sure, but I swear the minting went live here a couple of minutes prior to when it was supposed to. Thankfully, I’m the kind of person to sit there relentlessly refreshing, anyway. As soon as I saw it, though, I pounced!

When the minting is enabled, here’s what that interface looks like. You can mint a custom number, or a single-click for bulk buys. I decided to mint two:

And so it starts processing and you’re asked to confirm. (I didn’t screen-grab that because I wanted to get that all done as soon as possible.) But anyway, after you click, it begins processing your order, and they’ve included a nice graphic there as well. Just goes to show the level of detail and forethought this group put into it!

When the mint is successful, you get a welcome message like this:

Anyway, let’s look at the financial side, just so you can see… Canine Cartel NFTs minted at 0.05 ETH each, or $159.13 each as of today. So, the two dogs cost me .1 ETH or $318.27. And we can’t forget ETH gas fees, right? Those were $41.53 for my purchase. So, all totaled, I paid $359.79 for two JPEGs. (Yes, I realize that is insane. But such is the world in which we live.) The receipt for your viewing pleasure:

So, let’s hop over to OpenSea and see what the pre-reveal images look like:

That’s from my wallet, but we can also look at the OpenSea Canine Cartel collection page now:

Funny, I noticed that, as of 11:05 a.m., people had already listed their for sale, sight-unseen! How crazy is that, considering that (1) at this time, you could still have purchased a dog on the main site, and (2) the meta data hadn’t been released yet, either. I guess these flippers just wanted to get the ball rolling asap.

Anyway, let’s watch the canine insanity unfold, shall we. Here are some screen grabs during the sale:

Time Check-Ins:

11:06 a.m.:

11:14 a.m.:

11:18 a.m.:

11:20 a.m.:

11:28 a.m.:

11:35 a.m.:

11:42 a.m.:

11:49 a.m.:

11:51 a.m.:

So, within one hour, ALL of the canines had been sold. That’s 500 ETH or $1,586,575 in revenues, all transacted in 51 minutes. Congrats, Canine Cartel! And now starts the wonderful secondary market.

TBD: Later after the reveal, I’ll update this with the individual dogs I got, as well as their rarities. I’m looking forward to being a part of the cartel. :-)

Update 8–26:

It’s a few days on now, and there have been some delays in the IPFS system, causing a delay on the reveal. So, as of this morning, no one has yet seen their beloved canines. That said, they’re working on the problem, reportedly, and I’m sure it’ll reveal very soon. One super-interesting note here is that the floor price on these pups, still in pre-reveal, is already .13:

This means that the $318.27 I spent (well, plus gas), could now be sold for $821.81. And I’m sure a lot of flippers are busy doing just that, which seems crazy as the artwork is not even revealed yet! I wonder if we’ll see purposeful delayed reveals in the future for this very reason?

Anyway, personally, I’m not selling. I’m too eager to see what I got art-wise and rarity-wise. Such a crazy time this is, eh?

UPDATE: Here are my dogs:

Interesting, btw, that the floor has dropped a bit since the reveal, though the number of owners has increased. As of 8–30–21, here it is: