Despite the bearish turn, the NFT market saw a number of bullish events in the past month. The first to make serious waves was Moonbirds. Kevin Rose and his team broke records in terms of volume and price in the days following their launch. Many feel they contend with BAYC for the next 100 ETH PFP* project due to their execution and experience as entrepreneurs.

Didn't win the raffle for @moonbirds_xyz ? Mint price out of your range? Come join us! We're starting a Alpha Birds Album, starting with collective ownership of Moonbirds: szns.io/album/alphabir… Read more: docs.google.com/document/d/1nL… Anyone can join, but keeping it small at 50e!

docs.google.comAlpha Birds Album on szns.ioALPHA BIRDS Album TLDR We are aiming to acquire several Moonbirds on Secondary with max of 50e in a SZNS album with an exclusive group of NFT enthusiasts. For those who can’t afford a full Moonbird, you can buy $ABIRDS for collective ownership. Join for as little as 0.001 ETH Contribute any am...

6:17 PM ∙ Apr 15, 2022

45Likes13Retweets

The day prior to the Moonbird launch, some SZNS teammates launched a new Album on the platform called Alpha Birds. This drop was the highest anticipated event for major collectors in the NFT space at the time. In 12 hours 26 ETH was collected from 44 people and the $ABIRDS journey took flight. The inaugural Alpha Birds doc defined the broad mission of the Album to purchase some Moonbirds, and then collectively manage them via the SZNS Album tooling (btw, an Album is a DAO controlled by a governance token).

The purchasing phase of the $ABIRDS Album required members to trust the Album creators to make decisions. The goal was loosely set to purchase 3-4 birds at around 5 ETH. This expectation quickly turned out to be optimistic. A group chat opened in discord where members could get a play-by-play of the experiment, and shout out opportunities they saw.

At the end of the day the $ABIRDS group secured two Birds at an average of 12.15 ETH. The community continued to speculate and had the goal of becoming an Album that held more than just one blue chip. As the Moonbirds continued on an unprecedented tear to 20 ETH the community thought there might be an opportunity to sell and buy back if the floor dips post hype. One bird listed and sold for 24.69 ETH. Days later Moonbird floor price blew past 30 ETH.

Ultimately this was a remarkable learning experience. While the overall performance of the Album deserves a grade C, the learnings from the experiment are invaluable.

Album Management Takeaways

Stick to a plan with long term conviction.
Give authority to buyers.
Listen to intuition.
Reduce voices during time sensitive activities.

Defining a plan, and giving someone authoritative control over the execution of the plan would have proven to be beneficial to the effectiveness of the Moonbirds project. Further, the individual(s) who are given authority should feel comfortable making fast decisions on the day of the drop. Their intuition takes first priority, and the voice of the community suggestions second priority.

Lastly, SZNS only supports trusted purchasing of NFTs at this time. The Album architecture works well specifically for raising ETH and distributing $ALBUM ownership. Once the Album owns the NFTs, the architecture does not move nimbly. SZNS Albums are build with long term thinking and security in mind. They don’t currently support rapid execution of trading as is necessary for those wanting to participate in the NFT market in a short term manner.

If you’d like to build an Album, the thesis should focus on long term NFT opportunity. Decentralization does not lend itself well to fast moving markets.

* PFP (profile picture) — used to describe NFT art collections that people flex in their Twitter profile. Typically 10K collections of generative imagery.