In an NFT project, the mint – the process by which tokens are initially allocated – largely determines who your community is and how they and the broader market view the project going forward. You are who you keep company with – which means you need a mechanism that draws participation from the people you want, and to execute it in a way that is easy, secure, and engaging.
In this piece, we review a new minting strategy recently introduced by 1337 Skulls [ed note: who are hence coauthors of this piece] – something we call a “wave mint,” in which members of different NFT communities are invited to mint in a series of waves, starting with closely overlapping communities and gradually expanding outwards. The wave mint leverages people’s on-chain data and reputation to select for holders who are well matched to a project’s culture and goals – while at the same time driving attention and energy to the project. It also avoids common problems with “free” mints, like gas wars and bots.
We explain how the wave mint mechanism works, its advantages and challenges, and some notes from our own experience running a wave mint in practice. As NFT communities experiment with different minting and engagement strategies, we hope this will be a useful element of the overall toolkit of options artists, builders, and other project creators have.
Giving away NFTs for free can be a great way to involve many people in a project – at least in theory. But in practice, free mints make it hard to curate the community because such offerings can be overrun by botnets and/or “tourists” who are just planning to resell the tokens and not stay in the community long-term.
How can a project instead find people who share the project’s values and goals? One answer is to look for those who already have related NFTs in their crypto wallets and invite them in.
In a wave mint, different groups of people are invited to mint in sequence, with each open minting “wave” running from anywhere between a few minutes and a couple of days. As long as the number of people participating in each wave is low relative to total token supply, minting can be free (or, more generally, below the market-clearing price) without leading to gas wars.
The groups invited to mint during the different waves should be chosen with an eye toward recruiting holders who are likely to engage seriously with the new project and support its goals and aspirations. Perhaps the easiest and most straightforward way to do this is to draw upon established communities with shared interests: 1337 Skulls offered minting waves for similarly-situated cc0 projects such as Nouns and Blitmap; an on-chain game, meanwhile, might open waves for holders of projects like DigiDaigaku and Pirate Nation.
Crucially, each wallet should be allowed to mint only once, even if it qualifies for multiple waves. Many NFT communities do overlap, so limiting each wallet to a single mint helps ensure a broad distribution of holders. (Even with such a limit in place, it can still be beneficial to hold NFTs from multiple invited communities because that gives multiple opportunities to mint if, for example, someone misses their first wave of eligibility.)
The communities themselves should be curated thoughtfully to first develop a strong core holder community and then build outwards from there. This strategy relies on the strength of close ties for building a core community and establishing social proof, and then leverages weaker ties to bridge into more distant, but still like-minded networks.
Early waves: “trusted ties” – Early waves should focus on communities with “trusted ties,” where the creators have strong personal connections as well as an established presence and reputation. Working with close and trusted communities early on can help build faith in the new project, and also provides an opportunity to watch for bugs or anomalies in a controlled environment. And this is a logical starting point especially because in a wave mint, people are typically minting from wallets in which they hold other NFTs, potentially even high-value ones; establishing early mints from trusted-tie connections helps provide the social proof needed for people to be comfortable with the minting process.
Next waves: “strong ties” – Once a core community with trusted ties has been established, it becomes possible to target “strong tie” communities, that is, those with significant overlap in holder numbers with the communities recruited in through the earliest waves. This enables word-of-mouth to grow and also helps bring in people who are especially likely to want to be part of the project.
Subsequent waves – Once a project has established a core community and has drawn attention from other related communities, it becomes possible to open up a number of mint windows to larger communities with weaker ties, pulling in people who didn’t necessarily have direct connections but who have become excited about the project over the course of the earlier waves.
We tested out this minting approach in the context of launching 1337 Skulls, an NFT project aiming to build bridges among NFT communities that have opened up their intellectual property for extension and remixing under “Creative Commons Zero” (cc0) licensing. The wave mint was a way to draw in holders who were themselves enthusiastic about cc0, on-chain art, and Internet remix culture, more broadly.
We started with communities that we ourselves were personally close to, and then opened waves for holders of a number of other projects in the cc0 NFT ecosystem. As we progressed through the mint, we gradually introduced waves that targeted larger groups, but were shorter. Toward the end, especially, we aimed for especially brief waves for holders of various NFT projects that had commonalities with those selected in the early waves (e.g., similar aesthetics, launch dates, and community management styles). In this way, we implicitly selected-in members of those weak-tie communities who were especially interested in joining ours.
https://opensea.io/assets/0xFE3ca380E5C6309D9DcF86757e28b15Dc7509098/2