For the best part of the last six months I have been focused on selling my photography NFTs on ETH and trading ETH NFTs. So I was super excited when I saw this Punks on Hive (https://punks.usehive.com/) project launch. Thanks to @themarkymark for the effort he has put into this project; and cool to see they are unique punks not just clones of the original Lava labs ones. The fact that these sold out so quickly shows I am not the only one bullish on them. These are the OG avatar NFTs for Hive. They will go down in hive history.
I have always thought the potential for NFTs is massive on Hive but it has been held back by lack of serious investors willing to develop a high value market. I think the fact one has to use SWAP.HIVE and the quazi decentralised Hive Engine are also issues that hold us back. This has led me personally to have to still use ETH platforms for my sale of work as that is simply where the majority of high net worth collectors are (the top prices on NFTShowroom or Lensy just don't compare with ETH sales). But lets be honest ETH gas is horrific and bad for the environment; so it would be better for the world if the markets shifted over to POS or DPOS chains.
This brings me back to hive punks. I am super bullish on hive punks as I think the broader crypto NFT userbase really understand 10k mint avatar projects and this is the crack in the door to onboard them to Hive. If we can get seamless user experience happening here without any gas it could be a breakthrough. I ended up picking up 101 of them when I saw the mint was going to sell out yesterday. Did not do so well in the rarity luckydip but have quite a few nice ones and will be trying some out as my avatar to see which one feels right. Love how easy it is to set it as an avatar though the site itself.
Few thoughts on where I think this needs to go having spend a lot of time on other NFT platforms.
Be cool to get a blue tick or something similar on your avatar if you verifiably own the NFT (this is the direction twitter is going)
The marketplace needs a fair bit of work in terms of being able to sort by parameters (price being the most urgent as currently only by rarity and hard to determine the floor price) but also sub restrict view to certain traits. I think @themarkymark is aware of this and probably felt that he had more time to update the site before they all sold out. Nice problem to have however.
I think the 10% market fee is a major issue. 10% is ok for a virgin mint but as a ongoing transactional tax its too high. Ongoing fee/royalty beyond 2-4% kills projects. There is a lot of evidence for that on other platforms. It simply kills liquidity; and liquidity is the lifeblood of any market, it is basic economic theory that tariffs kill volumes. Would Bitcoin have ever taken off if you had to pay 10% fee for every transaction? People won't come from other chains if they see such high fees. The original ETH punks have no fees on their internal market,Opensea takes 2.5%, new generation fully decentralised platforms like Tux.art are a combination of fully on chain and IPFS (even for the platform webpage) and have 0% fee (essentially peer to peer sales). These are the numbers the existing industry is used to. I accept that for now sales prices are very low compared to ETH NFT sales so perhaps a cap or sliding scale based on price could also work in the interim if 10% is needed to fund the platform short term).
The reliance on swap.hive and its 1% conversion fee will become a limiting factor stopping prices rises into very high value territory (sell a punk for $500,000 and 1% conversion fee, each way from hive to swap.hive and back, starts to look terrible compared to 200$ in ETH gas (let alone the $50k market fee with it at 10%). This will cap how high these prices can go IMO. I understand LEO does this for less; not sure what liquidity limits there are via Leo.
Would love to see the ability to set prices in HBD; this would be a game changer as an NFT market IMO. Also an interface where people can just bid in Hive or HBD and the Hive.swap transactions take place in the background. Would cut out one step which is complicated for new entrants. The more seamless the better.
Cross chain swaps on the market place would be amazing. Existing NFT whales could log in with ETH/SOL/WAX/EOS/etc wallet and buy a hive punk. This brings in fresh equity and removes any barrier to entry for a massive existing bunch of traders. Pricing Punks in HBD would also decouple them from the volatility of the hive price and make investors more comfortable IMO.
Anyway a few ideas to think about and in no way intended to diminish the work @themarkymark has put into this epic project. I would love to see crypto twitter shift to Hive. It pains me that I have to spend so much time on Twitter to interact with the main crypto NFT community as part of my photography NFT business. Having native on chain avatars on Hive is a big step forward towards a truly decentralised Web 3.
LFG
Edit to add some clarification of the point above about fees. You can't compare 10k generative avatar projects (like punks/apes) to fees on dedicated art platforms that allow users to mint their own 1/1 art (like MakersPlace/Foundation/SuperRare/KnownOrigion/etc, NFTshowroom being the Hive equivalent). To do so misunderstands the whole NFT market as 1/1 art secondary sale fees are predominantly royality that goes to the original artist who supplied the art not to the platform. The platform takes its main revenue from the initial (primary) sale. This does not represent the existing model with respect to successful 10k generative avatar projects, you need to look at the avatar projects themselves for existing precedents. The original ETH Punks have zero fees for example on sale. This allowed people to flip without the restrictions of fees and was critical in the early days in developing liquidity (they use their own market platform). They monetised the punks after first building a successful community, and did this via the early access program which let punk owners exclusively mint Meebits (basically leveraging the brand into another project).
A more recent example is Board Apes (BAYC) that launched into a much more developed market using existing platform rather than building their own. They charge collectors 2.5% royality, add this to the Opensea market fee (of 2.5%), so a total of 5% (split between BAYC and Opensea). These are the magnitude of numbers we should be looking to target long term for generative avatar projects IMO. I understand this might have to be a phased approach of Hive Punks as the initial mint price was very low (so initial revenue to build a business around is low) and subsequent trading fees will be low (even at 10%) until punks appreciate significantly from the 20 hive mint level.
Very cool stuff and awesome ideas that you have!
Thanks. I have spent a lot of time trading and minting in NFT markets ; I would love to see the Hive side of it take off.
oh for sure! even though I was too late to the party - I only found out today about the sale FML - I am still very happy to see the punks sale go so fast as it means that the punks will indeed be bullish as hell! 🚀🚀
Yep you can pick them up on the market; some in the 30 range so not much more than mint
I see many have been getting into it :D
Yep its going to be big. NFT avatars are a huge market.
I know. But I personally haven't found a lot of interest in it. But I know there are a lot of money on it now.
Yep people spending millions on single NFTs
Some great suggestions. It would be terrific is some of this knowledge was implemented.
I really like the idea of being able to trade them using HBD. That would be a fantastic use case for the coin and perhaps give people are reason to mint some more of them.
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Thanks. Over the years since 2017 I have tried to onboard people who follow me elsewhere (like Instagram) to Hive (or Steem originally). It always seemed an impossible task explaining keys etc and keeping their interest. Having spent the best part of the past 6 months fully immersed in NFTs (mostly on crypto twitter and ETH NFT platforms) I think they are the main market we should be targeting to onboard new users to Hive. They are all already Web 3 believers and drunk the coolaid that the metaverse is the path forward. They all know how to use metamask browser extension for keys (so using keychain extension would be simple for them), and they are all stuck on a centralized platform they love to hate (Twitter). And there are a lot of them (300k users of Opensea, 2 million just singed up for the Coinbise NFT marketplace prelaunch, etc).
Really solid insights. I did feel like the 10% was strange but I didn't know what to compare it against since I haven't done a ton outside of hive. And for as much as we all ridicule ETH for their terrible user experience via gas fees you're right that they would be incredibly less expensive for large purchases on ETH than presently on HIVE. Which is sad considering we're supposed to be the less expensive chain. But in this case it seems like we're only cheaper for smaller purchases.
One day we'll have to catch up and hear all about the rest of your NFT adventures.
Yes ETH gas is fixed per transaction so quickly becomes very cheap for large transactions; and the issue the small guys have is the whales are fine with it (the fees on the creator end like 200$ in gas just to mint a piece of art actually act like a quality control barrier as far as the whales are concerned). The small guys and the third world then get stuck on platforms with low fees for NFT creation and low fees for small transactions. Those platforms then try and cover themselves and make some revenue from lower price transactions; to do this they often charge higher blanket market % fees. But becomes catch 22 as fees makes large purchases out of the question for any whale to come here and buy something for $100k let alone $500k. And then people wonder why none of the massive NFT whales come across to platforms like Hive (when all they care about is liquidity for their investment which comes from depth of resale markets and market friction (fees as a % of value of sale)). Just my observation as someone who spends a lot of money on ETH gas but still does because that is where the market is at. The swap-hive issue complicates it further. People are used to dealing in WETH however so its not insurmountable but it needs to be more seamless. Like in ETH for example you can wrap ETH into WETH within the metamask wallet extension itself with a couple of clicks (or Opensea allow you to wrap within their interface). If Keychain had this functionality it would be amazing. Also the term swap not well known compared to wrap. All just little things but add to the barriers of entry.
You have some good ideas and suggestions here... and yes, this seems like "cracking open the door" to something bigger, beyond.
Certainly, to be able to trade in HBD would be a great thing, and establish a use case for somewhat of a "stablecoin" here... we really could use some kind of HBD-based commerce here, and that would be a great start.
=^..^=
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Yep; continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.
i minted 4, 3 of them are bold, 2 of those are really boring :D
jokes a side, really great points. would be interesting to get some feedback on them from the team.
NFT markets walkthrough would be really nice if you ever get the time :D
I have been chatting on discord to raise some of these points. I am sure they are sick of me and wish I would just go away lol
from what i managed to understand those are all legitimate and the discussion is needed. so appreciate you bugging them 😂
would love to see these do well. I don't think most people on Hive realise just how big the NFT market is and how fast it is growing.
Love the punks!! I am glad I picked up 3.
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Yep they are very cool
You should consider using one as a pfp for support and spread the word. You can do so via you gallery built into https://punks.usehive.com/
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I agree with the 10% market fee being way too high. When I sold my punk, I lost about 500 Hive to that fee, which is a pretty substantial amount. I thought about an over the counter sale to bypass that fee, and I am sure plenty of people have been trading punks this way to maximize their profits.
Yes people can develop their own market for sure. That is the beauty of decentralisation.
Great article, and suggestions! Fully agree about the 10% fee being way too high/greedy, and can kill the project outright, if it stays that way. When it comes to comes to swaping between hive and swap.hive, it's worth checking out beeswap (leofinance, as you say), which takes 0.25%. The markedplace UI I think will be improved pretty fast, so not too worried about that. Hive also allows for a lot of 3rd party solutions to be built – can for instance see all the stuff like peakmonster, monstermarket etc. that has popped up around Splinterlands, so hope that will be the case for the punks as well.
Yes I think there will be third party solutions unless it changes. In the mean time most large sales will go private to avoid the fee I imagine.
Great ideas!
We love the punks!
We love them indeed
The market fee has been reduced to 5%. Just FYI.
Cool. I think that's more sustainable and will drive more trading/flipping activity and ultimately bring you more revenue. I think it hurt the upper end of the market more than it does the lower end. Would love to see some more price discovery for the more rare punks.